The Pope, Paul V, dispatched a mission to the King at San Salvador; Urban VIII, in 1640, erected the Congo kingdom into an apostolic prefecture depending directly on Rome, and missions of Capuchin monks proceeded to the Congo in 1644, 1646, 1650, and 1651: the fourth of these missions was accompanied by a Belgian priest, while two Belgians, one of whom met his death at the hands of the natives, were included in the fifth Capuchin mission of 1653. An independent mission of Franciscan Recollets, including a Belgian priest and a Frenchman, arrived between 1673 and 1675, but stayed only two years. The interest of the Popes in the Congo was unflagging: Innocent X sent a special mission in 1652, and not only did the Capuchins labour unceasingly for the propagation of the faith, but they rendered service to knowledge by accounts of the state of the Congo, and study of its language. Father Giacinto Brusciotta, once Apostolic Prefect of the Congo, published at Rome in 1650 and 1659 a vocabulary of the language with renderings in Latin, Portuguese, and Italian, while accounts of the customs of the peoples of the Lower Congo were issued by Fathers Cavazzi, Merolla, and Zucchelli, whose work, however, was largely based on hearsay and decidedly uncritical. But this not unfruitful activity was abruptly terminated by the expulsion of the Capuchins from the kingdom in 1717, and Christianity and civilization, such as they were, appear to have decayed with remarkable rapidity. In 1760, doubtless partly with political aims, the French government obtained the sanction of the Pope for a French Roman Catholic mission, and the Abbé Belgarde, appointed 'prefect of the mission of Loango, Cacongo, and other kingdoms on this side of the Zaire',1 arrived at the Loango coast in 1766, but the mission lasted only some eight years, and appears to have accomplished nothing of importance. Italian missionaries in 1778 were. more successful; but though they reached San Salvador they did not effect a settlement, and no better luck awaited

The Portuguese name for the Congo, a corruption of Niari, 'water'; Stanley, The Congo, i. 2.

an effort of Franciscans, under the protection of Portugal, to establish a mission at Sonyo on the Lower Congo and to reopen relations with the King of San Salvador in 1781. Their advent was met with suspicion and hostility, and in the following years the missionaries-French, Italian, and Portuguese-seem to have abandoned the Congo region, though a Portuguese mission seems to have continued its activity on the Loango coast up to the end of the century. Portugal still cherished political designs on the Congo: in 1784 the building of a fort at Kabinda to the north of the river attested a prospect of linking up her possession of Angola with the Congo. But this action aroused the jealousy of France, and the French naval commander, the Marquis de Marigny, drove the Portuguese garrison out of Kabinda in 1785. This step would doubtless have been followed by a French occupation1 had not the French revolution deflected the course of history.

The European War which ensued, while weakening France, brought a new factor of importance on the scene. The occupation of the Cape of Good Hope by Great Britain in 1796 had evoked great concern on the part of Portugal, and produced a spasmodic attempt to forestall British progress to the north, which was even at that early period foreseen, by joining the Portuguese territories of Angola and Mozambique. The resources of Portugal, however, were shortly too much engaged in the struggle in Europe to permit of the carrying out of the scheme, and the obligations of Portugal rendered it necessary for her to come to terms with the United Kingdom regarding the slave trade, which she found so profitable, but which had become obnoxious to British sentiment. A treaty of February 19, 1810,2 concluded at Rio Janeiro, bound the Portuguese Government to prohibit slave trading by Portuguese subjects except within the limits of the Portuguese dominions in Africa; and the treaty of Vienna of January 22,

1 An agreement to respect Portuguese claims was patched up for a time by the influence of Spain, on January 30, 1786; C. 3531, p. 35. 2 C. 3531, pp. 1-3.

1815, confirmed this obligation, while contemplating action by Portugal at no distant date to extinguish slave trading entirely. The extent of the Portuguese rights of trade were defined in a supplementary agreement of July 28, 1817, by which they were declared to extend on the east coast from Cape Delgado to the Bay of Lorenzo Marques, and on the west from 8° S. lat. to 18° S. lat., these being the territories possessed by the Crown of Portugal, and also to the territories of Molembo and Kabinda on the western coast from 5° 12' S. lat. to 8° S. lat., over which the King of Portugal asserted rights. The abolition of the slave trade by Portugal was delayed; but by a treaty of 1842 co-operation was arranged between the two powers in the suppression of such part of the trade as was not covered by the treaty of 1815, and in the execution of this treaty a Portuguese tribunal was created in 1844 at Loanda for the adjudication of vessels captured within Portuguese jurisdiction while engaged in illegal trade. The condemnation by this court of a Brazilian vessel captured twenty-five miles north of Ambriz, which was then thought to be on the 8th parallel of S. lat. and to mark the beginning of the Portuguese dominions, elicited from Viscount Palmerston a clear intimation1 to the Portuguese Government that the claim of the Portuguese Crown to territorial sovereignty over the territory from 5° 12′ S. lat. to 8° S. lat. was not recognized by the British Crown; and a year later, geographical research having revealed the fact that Ambriz lay eight miles north of the 8th parallel, the British notification was extended to cover the exclusion of that place from Portuguese jurisdiction. In 1853-6 controversy between the two countries ran high. Portugal occupied Ambriz, and contended that the terms of the agreement of 1817 justified her act; she also argued that the occupation of this port would be of value as a means of combating the slave trade, while she asserted that, as the United Kingdom claimed no sovereignty of her own, it was open to Portugal to occupy the territory in the same manner as the United Kingdom had taken possession of the Falk1 C. 3531, pp. 10, 11. 2 C. 3531, pp. 12, 13.

2

land Islands. Whatever force there was in the Portuguese contentions, was powerless to outweigh the objections felt by the British Government to the establishment of Portuguese sovereignty, which would carry with it grave restrictions on British trade, and, what was still more repugnant, extend the area in which Portuguese should be able to continue slave trading. A concession was made in the case of Ambriz,1 on condition that the boundary of the territory should not be carried beyond the south bank of the Loge, that the interests of British merchants should be secured, and that slavery should be abolished; but at the same time Lord Clarendon warned the Government of His Most Faithful Majesty that any attempt of the Portuguese authorities in Africa to extend that occupation will be opposed by Her Majesty's naval forces', and that 'this warning having been given, the responsibility of any consequences which may follow a disregard of it will rest upon the Government of Portugal'. Remonstrances by Portugal, which were renewed in 1860 and 1867, were answered in similar terms, and it was small consolation that in 1859 opportunity was taken of civil strife in the old kingdom of San Salvador to intervene in favour of a native Prince and to establish him on the throne as Dom Pedro V,2 though the occupation of the capital continued until 1866. San Salvador, which had been rediscovered by the German explorer Dr. Bastian in 1857, had sunk from its former legendary grandeur to an insignificant village with the most faint traces of its former Christianity.

Despite the long period of their connexion with the Congo coast, the knowledge of the Congo region acquired by the Portuguese remained rudimentary. Their knowledge of the Congo river extended no farther than Manyanga, nor is there any record of their knowledge of the existence of Stanley Pool, though vague rumours of a ruler, the Great Makoko, of the Anzico in the interior, had pene1 C. 3531, pp. 50, 51.

2 This potentate died in 1891, and was succeeded by his nephew, Mfutila, who died in 1896, and was succeeded by Dom Henrique.

trated to them. They advanced some distance east of San Salvador, and south-east to the Kwango and Kasai rivers, but the rapids on these streams prevented their progress north to the Upper Congo itself, and, for reasons which are unknown, their influence and civilization seem to have had no attraction for the natives of Stanley Pool or the basin of the Congo. But they endowed the country with food products of high value, the ox, the pig, the muscovy duck, capsicum, ground-nuts, maize, manioc, guava, limes, the orange, the pineapple, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and the sugar-cane, and provided it with the civilizing influence of tobacco, to rival successfully the intoxicating hemp introduced from the north-east under Mohammedan influence.1 They effected also a revolution in the weapons and modes. of warfare, but the total result of their Christianizing influence is doubtful, set off as it was by their relentless pursuit of the slave trade. When the Baptist Missionaries reached San Salvador in 1879 they found no other traces of Christianity than a few ruins of the cathedral, a crucifix, and some images of saints which the King used as fetishes, and which were sometimes brought out and carried round the town when there was need of rain.

Great Britain, on the other hand, contributed largely to the knowledge of the geography of the country. From 1783 the British fleet began to cruise off the coast of Lower Guinea, and ten years later Captain Maxwell surveyed the lower course of the stream up to Boma and Noki. The vagueness of the contemporary information as to the river may, however, still be seen in the instructions 2 which the Admiralty gave to Captain J. K. Tuckey, whom they deputed in 1816 to carry out a complete survey. The expedition met with disaster, the leader and seventeen others perished, but the survey was carried up to 172 miles from the mouth of the river, and ethnographic and linguistic material was acquired. The estuary of the Congo was surveyed by the British vessels Levin and Barracouta of 1 Johnston, George Grenfell, i. 76–8; ii. 600.

2 Stanley, The Congo, i. 5, 6.