not," says a candid historian [Faria y Sousa] of that age, "imagine that
I shall persuade the world that our intent was only to be preachers; but
on the other hand the world must not fancy that our intent was merely to
be traders," There is much to blame in the conduct of the first
discoverers in Africa and America; it is, however, but just to acknowledge
that the love of gold was by no means the only motive which urged them to
such endeavours as theirs. To appreciate justly the intensity of their
anxiety for the conversion of the heathen, we must keep in our minds the
views then universally entertained of the merits and efficacy of mere
formal communion with the Church, and the fatal consequences of not being
within that communion.


EARLY ADVENTURERS.

This will go a long way towards explaining the wonderful inconsistency, as
it seems to us, of the most cruel and wicked men believing themselves to
be good Christians and eminent promoters of the faith, if only they
baptized, before they slew, their fellow-creatures. And the maintenance of
such church principles will altogether account for the strange oversights
which pure and high minds have made in the means of carrying out those
principles, fascinated as they were by the brilliancy and magnitude of the
main object they had in view.

But while piety, sometimes debased into religious fanaticism, had a large
part in these undertakings, doubtless the love of adventure and the
craving for novelty had their influence also. And what adventure it was!
New trees, new men, new animals, new stars; nothing bounded, nothing
trite, nothing which had the bloom taken off it by much previous
description! The early voyagers moreover, were like children coming out to