But the explorer never got beyond the King of Kongo’s capital, that potentate refusing him permission to proceed further into the interior. Nevertheless, from Portuguese annals it is clear that numerous venturesome priests and soldiers attempted at this period to penetrate Darkest Africa, and were never heard of again. What a subject for romance would be their experiences in these lands, at that time absolutely free from the influence of the European—a condition which no longer applied to the natives of Darkest Africa when Stanley first made known the geography of those regions. For in the three and a half centuries which had elapsed, even those savages in the heart of Africa, who possibly knew nothing of the existence of white men, had nevertheless adopted many of the white man’s products as necessities or luxuries of their lives, such as maize, tobacco, sweet potatoes, manioc, papaws, chillies, the pine-apple, and the sugar cane. We may here fitly consider the greatest and most beneficial results of the Portuguese colonization of Africa. These wonderful old Conquistadores may have been relentless and cruel in imposing their rule on the African and in enslaving him or in Christianizing him, but they added enormously to his food-supply and his comfort. So early in the history of their African and Indian explorations as about 1510 they brought from China, India, and Malacca the orange tree, the lemon and the lime, which, besides introducing into Europe (and Europe had hitherto only known the sour wild orange and the lime, brought by the Arabs), they planted in every part of East and West Africa where they touched. They likewise brought the sugar cane from the Mediterranean and the East Indies and introduced it into various parts of Brazil and West Africa, especially into the Islands of São Thomé and Principe and the Congo and Angola countries. Madeira they had planted with vines in the 15th century; the Açores, the Cape Verde Islands and St Helena with orange trees in the 16th century. The cacao tree was introduced into São Thomé in 1822. From their great possession of Brazil, overrun and organized with astounding rapidity, they brought to East and West Africa the Musk duck (which has penetrated far and wide into the interior of Africa), chili peppers, maize (now grown all over Africa, and cultivated by many tribes who have lost all tradition of its foreign origin), wheat (into Zambezia)[61], tobacco, the tomato, pine-apple, sweet potato (a convolvulus tuber), manioc (from which tapioca is made), rice (into West Africa), haricot beans and lentils, onions, guavas, jackfruit, papaws, small bananas, ginger and other less widely known forms of vegetable food. The Portuguese also introduced the domestic pig into West Africa, and the domestic cat, possibly