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The Catholic missioners laboured amongst them for nearly two hundred years; some of these ecclesiastics were ignorant and bigoted as those whom we still meet on the West African Coast, but not a few were earnest and energetic, scrupulous and conscientious, able and learned as the best of our modern day.
Similarly in Syria the outbreak of war put an end to 'the humiliating and dangerous situation' of the presence of French schools and missions. There, for many years, French missioners had done the same work as Americans in Armenia, work in every sense liberal and civilising, but undenominational in religious matters and unproselytising.
I could not find out if the Congoese still practise the vivi- sepulture so common on the Western Coast the "infernal sacrifices of man's flesh to the memory of relatives and ancestors," as the old missioners energetically expressed themselves.
And I wadna wonner gin he had set's hert upo' merryin' her upo' 's ain Rob, and sae keepin' her bit siller i' the faimily. "'Deed! maybe, gudewife. He's a burnin' and a shinin' licht amo' you missioners, though; and ye maunna say ill o' 'm, for fear he has ye up afore the kirk." "Ay, deed is he! "Hoot, lass! Ye're ower sair even upo' him.
The first missioners sailed in December, 1490, under Goncalo de Sousa; of the three one were killed by the heat, and another having made himself "Chaplain to the Congolan Army," by a "Giaghi" chief. The seed sown by these friars was cultivated by twelve Franciscans of the Order of Observants. The Right Reverend Fathers of the Company appeared in 1560 with the Conquistador Paulo Dias de Novaes.
There were in that place many of the society, of whom the chief were Antonio Criminal, Francis Henriquez, and Alphonso Cyprian; for Father Xavier having written from Amboyna for the greatest number of missioners whom they could spare, towards the cultivation of those new plants at the coast of Fishery, all those who came from Portugal, after his own arrival in the Indies, went thither, excepting the three who went to the Moluccas, and two who stayed at Goa, for the instruction of the youth.
When you visit the places where those learned fathers once flourished, and see with your own eyes the evils their dissolution has caused; when you hear the inhabitants telling you how good, how clever, how charitable they were—what will you think of our poet laureate for calling them, in his “History of Brazil,” “Missioners, whose zeal the most fanatical was directed by the coolest policy”?
He built churches in every village, and made choice of the most reasonable, the most able, and the most fervent, to be masters over the rest, till there should arrive a supply of missioners.
Those plunderers had swept all away, and the Christians were more poor than ever; he therefore procured alms for them, and wrote a letter earnestly to the Christians of another coast, to supply their brethren in distress. The Paravas being resettled by degrees, Xavier left them under the conduct of the missioners, whom he had brought for them, and turned his thoughts elsewhere.
Hence the old missioners are divided in opinion; whilst some find the sound of the "little guitar," with strings of palm-thread and played with the thumbs of both hands, "very low, but not ungrateful," others speak of the "hellish harmony" of their neophytes' bands.
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