From the time the Portuguese took possession of it, till the suppression of the slave-trade, a short time since, peace was banished from the land. The Mocouas, their immediate neighbours, were seized and sold, like beasts of the forest; the lands were made desolate, the palm, the mango, the casheu, (alia acajou,) soon covered the fields; and the wild elephants, the hippopotami, the rhinoceros, and the tiger, were to be seen roaming at large, as they are at this day, where peace, and happiness, and contentment had taken up their abode. The cross, the emblem of our holy religion, instead of proving a blessing, carrying with it, as it does, when duly propagated, a balmy influence, and bearing healing on its wings, has proved calamitous in its tendency. It has blasted the hopes of millions, confirmed the superstition of idolaters, and fixed more deeply the rooted prejudices of the Moslem. Thus the cross has, unfortunately, proved in the Brazil, in East and West Africa, in Arabia, in the East Indies, in China, and Japan; so that the name of Christian has become a by-word and a curse, whereever its doctrines have been propagated by the Portuguese or Spaniards. Every engine, which brutal force could apply, has been used without the slightest compunction. Humanity appears to have had no place in their adamantine breasts, and the mild and peaceful doctrines, expressly laid down by our Saviour, have never been inculcated; but fire and the sword, assisted by a detestable and horrible inquisition, have been preferred in _their_ place, and oppression, fraud, and cruelty have been resorted to in every shape, to answer the most nefarious purposes of the government and its religion, and the sordid views of unprincipled individuals. What might not have been the state of things, if the liberal views of the founder of the Roman Catholic religion, in Maryland, had been propagated, and they had been blessed with a government founded on just and equitable principles! Look at Maryland, and the Roman Catholic religion, as it exists in our own blessed country, and behold the contrast!!! Look at our political institutions, and the happy and prosperous situation of a settlement, begun upward of one hundred years after the Portuguese took possession of their present miserable colonies, by a noble, but persecuted band of English settlers--and see the present situation of Portugal and its conquests. With the exception of Brazil, which has just slipped her leading strings, what can be more wretched? To prove the unappeasable hostility of the nations, in East Africa, towards their oppressors, and every one who wears straight _hair_, it is a fact well known by all who are well acquainted with the state of things here, and substantiated by the Portuguese themselves, that they dare not go half a dozen miles into the country, without an armed guard. And this is the state of things, from Da Lagoa bay (alias Lorenzo Marques) to cape Delgado, after having