He
told the missionaries that he would deliver his subjects to
Christianity for a white wife, and they agreed to furnish her. Some
priests were sent to the Island of St. Thomas to hunt the wife. This
island had, even at that early day, a considerable white population. A
strong appeal was made to the sisters there to consider this matter as
a duty to the holy Church. It was set forth as a missionary
enterprise. After some contemplation, one of the sisters agreed to
accept the hand of the Negro king. It was a noble act, and one for
which she should have been canonized, but we believe never was.

The Portuguese continued to come. Gaton grew. The missionary worked
with a will. Attention was given to agriculture and commerce. But the
climate was wretched. Sickness and death swept the Portuguese as the
fiery breath of tropical lightning. They lost their influence over the
people. They established the slave-trade, but the Church and slave-pen
would not agree. The inhuman treatment they bestowed upon the people
gave rise to the gravest suspicions as to the sincerity of the
missionaries. History gives us the sum total of a religious effort
that was not of God. There isn't a trace of Roman Catholicism in that
country, and the last state of that people is worse than the former.

The slave-trade turned the heads of the natives. Their cruel and
hardened hearts assented to the crime of man-stealing. They turned
aside from agricultural pursuits. They left their fish-nets on the
seashore, their cattle uncared for, their villages neglected, and went
forth to battle against their weaker neighbors. They sold their
prisoners of war to slave-dealers on the coast, who gave them rum and
tobacco as an exceeding great reward. When war failed to give from its
bloody and remorseless jaws the victims for whom a ready market
awaited, they turned to duplicity, treachery, and cruelty. "And men's
worst enemies were those of their own household." The person
suspicioned of witchcraft was speedily found guilty, and adjudged to
slavery. The guilty and the innocent often shared the same fate. The
thief, the adulterer, and the aged were seized by the rapacity that
pervaded the people, and were hurled into the hell of slavery.

Now, as a result of this condition of affairs, the population was
depleted, the people grew indolent and vicious, and finally the empire
was rent with political feuds. Two provinces was the result. One still
bore the name of Benin,