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 down on the more
settled tribes. The result was a curious blending of war and industry,
artistic tastes and savage customs.

The organized slave trade of the Arabs penetrated the Congo valley in the