When, for example, they could not persuade the people to renounce their superstitions, they used a large staff, with which they threw down their idols and beat them to pieces; they even stole secretly into the temples, and set them on fire.

A missionary at Maopongo, having met one of the queens, and finding her mind inaccessible to all his instructions, determined to use sharper remedies, and seizing a whip, began to apply it lustily to her majesty's person: the effect he describes as most auspicious; every successful blow opened her eyes more and more to the truth, and she at last declared herself wholly unable to resist such forcible arguments in favour of the catholic doctrine.

She, however, hastened to the king, with loud complaints respecting this mode of mental illumination; and the missionaries thenceforth lost all favour with that prince and the ladies of his court, being allowed to remain solely in dread of the Portuguese.

In only one other instance were they allowed to employ this mode of conversion.

The smith, in consequence of the skill, strange in the eyes of a rude people, with which he manufactured various arms and implements, was supposed to possess a measure of superhuman power, and he had thus been encouraged to advance pretensions to the character of a divinity, which were very generally admitted.