EARLIER ATTEMPTS TO CHRISTIANISE CENTRAL AFRICA. The Ancients were not so ignorant about Africa as is often supposed. Ever since that old Phenician fleet went down the Red Sea and appeared, three years afterwards, in the Mediterranean, people knew that it was possible to sail round the Continent. It is said that the great Portuguese explorers derived an impulse from old maps which described Southern Africa as bounded by sea, but in any case the Portuguese are justly celebrated for their African discoveries, for all the knowledge on this subject that came from antiquity was in their days as faint as a half-forgotten dream. No sooner had the Portuguese discovered places like the “Empire of Monomotopa” than they wanted to open them up. They sent their colonies and their armies; and the Church of Rome soon had missionaries among the native tribes. At Sofala the new settlers asked permission to build a ‘warehouse,’ but built really a fortification. The native king becoming aware of this, tried to surprise and massacre them, but he failed, and they eventually became masters of the country. Joano Dos Santos tells us in his history of Eastern Ethiopia how he left Portugal for Eastern Africa in 1586. His book contains several notes on the inhabitants. He questioned them about their belief in God, and inclines to think that at some period in the past they had been acquainted with ‘true religion’. He mentions in confirmation of this that they kept certain festivals with a strictness that might put Christians to shame. He found that they used ‘disagreeable herbs’ for an ordeal, and thinks it is possible that the Deity may interpose for the punishment of the guilty and the acquittal of the innocent. He expresses the view that the ordeal is founded on the Bible. The natives were fond of showing him their hunting powers and presenting him with what they caught. In his book, which is more a history of the country than of mission work, he takes note of the barbarous customs of the people; he speaks of their beer-drinkings, which on special occasions would last for a week, during which no one knew his companion. He mentions a tribe near Tete where men, women, and children were kept in pens, and killed and eaten in succession by their barbarous imprisoners. Sometimes the natives would overpower the settlements of the Portuguese, who were then treated in the most horrifying manner.