themselves to be much perverted--they scarcely retain anything
white about them except their skins." J. C. Feo Cardoso (Memoir
published in Paris in 1825) attributes the decadence of Angola
and Benguela to three reasons; rare marriages amongst the higher
orders; poverty amongst the lower; and the immorality and
incontinence of both. Lopes de Lima (p. 149 loc. cit.) traces the
decline and fall of Christianity in the eighteenth century to the
want of priests, to the corruption of the regular clergy
(Carmelites and Franciscans), for whom West Africa, like Syria
and Palestine, was made a kind of convict station, and to the
inhuman slave-export, as opposed to domestic slavery. All has now
changed for the better; society in Angola is not a whit inferior
to that of any English colony in West Africa, and, as a convict
establishment, Loanda is a great success.

The theoretical garrison is one regiment of the line, a squadron
of cavalry, and two companies of artillery with three-pounders;
the real force is of some 800 men, mostly convicts. No difference
is made between white and black, nor is the corps force, which
was once very cruelly used, severely treated as the Legion
Etrangere of Algeria. Most of the men have been found guilty of
capital crimes, yet they are allowed to carry arms, and they are
intrusted with charge of the forts. Violence is almost unheard of
amongst them: if an English sailor be stabbed, it is generally by
the free mulattoes and blacks, who hate the uniform for
destroying their pet trade of man-selling. It is true that these
convicts have hopes of pardon, but I prefer to attribute their
remarkable gentleness and good behaviour to the effects of the
first fever, which, to quote from the Latin grammar,