A perpetual source of trouble was of course the slave-trade: negroes being the staple of the land, and ivory the other and minor item, the great profits could not fail to render it the subject of contention. The reasons why the Portuguese never succeeded in making themselves masters of Sonho are reduced by the missioner annalists to three. Firstly, the opposition of the people caused by fear; secondly, the objections of the Sonhese to buying arms and ammunition; and, thirdly, the small price paid by the Portuguese for "captives." The "Most Reverend Cardinal Cibo," writing in the name of the Sacred College, complained that the "pernicious and abominable abuse of slave-selling" was carried on under the eyes of the missioners, and peremptorily ordered them to remedy the evil. Finding this practically impossible, the holy men salved their consciences by ordering their flocks not to supply negroes to the heretical Hollanders and English, "whose religion is so very contrary to ours," but to the Portuguese, who would "withdraw the poor souls out of the power of Lucifer." One father goes so far, in his fear of heretical influences, as to remunerate by the gift of a slave the dealer Ferdinando Gomez, who had supplied him with "a flask of wine for the sacrament and some other small things," yet he owns F. Gomez to be a rogue. As the Portuguese would not pay high prices like the heretics, disturbances resulted, and these were put down by the desperate expedient of shutting the church-doors--a suicidal act not yet quite obsolete. Whereupon the Count of Sonho, we are told, "changed his countenance almost from black to yellow," and complained to the bishop at Loanda that the sacraments were not administered: the appeal was in vain, and, worse, an extra aid was sent to the truculent churchmen. Happily for them, the small- pox broke out, and the ruler was persuaded by his subjects to do the required penance. Appearing at the convent, unattended, with a large rope round his neck, clad in sackcloth, crowned with thorns, unshod, and carrying a crucifix, he knelt down and kissed the feet of the priest, who said to him, "If thou hast sinned like David, imitate him likewise in thy repentance!"