Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo, Volume 2Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
History
Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo, Volume 2
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
Africa, West -- Description and travel; Congo River -- Description and travel; Ethnology -- Africa, West
The schismatics caused abundant trouble Captain Cornelius Clas
"went about sowing heretical tares amidst the true corn of the
Gospel;" amongst other damnable doctrines and subtleties, this
nautical and volunteer theologian persuaded the blacks, whom he
knew to be desirous of greater liberty in such matters, that
baptism is the only sacrament necessary to salvation, because it
takes away original sin, as the blood of the Saviour actual sin.
He furthermore (impudently) disowned the real presence in the
consecrated Host; he invoked Saint Anthony, although his tribe
generally denies that praying to saints can be of any use to man;
and he declared that priests should preach certain doctrines
(which, by the way, were perniciously heretical). Thus in a
single hour he so prevailed upon those miserable negroes that
their hearts became quite as black as their faces. An especially
offensive practice of the Hollanders, in the eyes of the good
shepherds, was that of asking the feminine sheep for a whiff of
tobacco--it being a country custom to consider the taking a pipe
from a woman's mouth a "probable earnest of future favours." When
an English ship entered the river, the priests forbade by
manifesto the sale of slaves to the captain, he being a Briton,
ergò a heretic, despite the Duke of York. The Count of Sonho
disobeyed, and was excommunicated accordingly: he took his
punishment with much patience, although upon occasions of reproof
he would fly into passions and disdains; he was reconciled only
after obliging 400 couples that lived in concubinage to lawful
wedlock, and thus a number of "strayed souls was reduced to
matrimony."
We can hardly wonder that, under such discipline, a large
ecclesiastical body was necessary to "maintain the country in its
due obedience to the Christian faith," and that, despite their
charity in alms and their learning, no permanent footing was
possible for the strangers. Nor can we be astonished that the
good fathers so frequently complain of being poisoned. On one
occasion a batch of six was thus treated near Bamba. In this
matter perhaps they were somewhat fanciful, as the white man in
India is disposed to be. One of them, for instance cured himself
with a "fruit called a lemon" and an elk-hoof, from what he took
to be poison, but what was possibly the effect of too much pease
and pullet broth. In "O Muata Cazembe "(pp. 65-66), we find that
the Asiatic Portuguese attach great value to the hoof of the
Nhumbo (A. gnu), they call it "unha de grãbesta," and use it even
in the gotta-coral (epilepsy).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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