Duarte Lopes, who records this fact in his description of the Congo region at the end of the 16th century, gives incidentally or directly other interesting scraps of information, such as, that the coco-nut palm was _found_ by the Portuguese growing on the West coast of Africa. This palm, we know, originated in the Pacific Archipelagoes or on the Pacific coast of tropical America. It is possible to imagine that its nuts may have been carried over the sea to Southern India and thence to Madagascar and the coast of East Africa, but, inasmuch as the coco-nut palm cannot grow further south than Delagoa Bay owing to the cooling of the climate it is not very clear how it reached the tropical West African coast, unless it was introduced by Europeans. Lopes mentions the banana for the first time under the name “banana,” a name which seems to be derived from the Vai and other languages of the Sierra Leone-Liberia coast. Hitherto this fruit had only been known vaguely to Europe as the Indian fig or by its Arab name, which was latinized into _Musa_. The long banana or plantain was of ancient and widespread cultivation throughout tropical Africa, but the small banana with stubby fruit seems to have been a recent introduction from India which has penetrated into few parts of the interior. Footnote 63: Philip II of Spain had the best claim to the Portuguese throne after the death without heirs of the Cardinal-King Henrique. But the Portuguese disliked union with Spain and would have preferred to elect a Portuguese king. Footnote 64: In 1621 Pope Paul V sent a mission to the King of Kongo at São Salvador; and thenceforward, until 1717, the Kongo kingdom was evangelized by Italian and Belgian Capuchins, and after 1673 by Belgian Recollets friars. But in 1717 the Capuchins were expelled by the king’s people. In 1760 Catholic missions were resumed in Congoland (Loango and Kongo) by French, Italian and Portuguese missionaries; but these too came to an end by 1800, and for some eighty years the Kongo kingdom relapsed into complete barbarism. Footnote 65: This place was named after the Baron de Mossamedes, a Portuguese Governor of Angola, afterwards Minister for the Colonies. Footnote 66: This fort, by the abortive Congo Treaty of 1884, was to have been made over to England. Although the Portuguese never in any sense ruled over or controlled Dahomé, their indirect influence and their language were prominent at the Dahomean court because certain Brazilians had during the first half of this century established themselves on the coast and in the interior as influential merchants and slave traders. Their descendants now form a Portuguese-speaking Brazilian caste in Dahomé. Footnote 67: