man found them "thoroughly and
unimpeachably honest, brave to foolhardiness, and faithful to each other
and to their superiors." One of their kings, Calemba, "a really princely
prince," Bateman says would "amongst any people be a remarkable and indeed
in many respects a magnificent man."[27]

These beginnings of human culture were, however, peculiarly vulnerable to
invading hosts of later comers. There were no natural protecting barriers
like the narrow Nile valley or the Kong mountains or the forests below
Lake Chad. Once the pathways to the valley were open and for hundreds of
years the newcomers kept arriving, especially from the welter of tribes
south of the Sudan and west of the Nile, which rising culture beyond kept
in unrest and turmoil.

Against these intruders there was but one defense, the State. State
building was thus forced on the Congo valley. How early it started we
cannot say, but when the Portuguese arrived in the fifteenth century,
there had existed for centuries a large state among the Ba-Congo, with its
capital at the city now known as San Salvador.

The Negro Mfumu, or emperor, was eventually induced to accept
Christianity. His sons and many young Negroes of high birth were taken to
Portugal to be educated. There several were raised to the Catholic
priesthood and one became bishop; others distinguished themselves at the
universities. Thus suddenly there arose a Catholic kingdom south of the
valley of the Congo, which lasted three centuries, but was partially
overthrown by invading barbarians from the interior in the seventeenth
century. A king of Congo still reigns as pensioner of Portugal, and on the
coast to-day are the remains of the kingdom in the civilized blacks and
mulattoes, who are intelligent traders and boat builders.

Meantime the Luba-Lunda people to the eastward founded Kantanga and other
states, and in the sixteenth century the larger and more ambitious realm
of the Mwata Yamvo. The last of the fourteen rulers of this line was
feudal lord of about three hundred chiefs, who paid him tribute in ivory,
skins, corn, cloth, and salt. His territory included about one hundred
thousand square miles and two million or more inhabitants. Eventually this
state became torn by internal strife and revolt, especially by attacks
from the south across the Congo-Zambesi divide.

Farther north, among the Ba-Lolo and the Ba-Songo, the village policy
persisted and the cannibals of the northeast pressed