Still the aborigines held out in corners, and defied the
conquerors. The latter ground them down, confiscated the
property of their half-dozen chiefs, and distributed it among
themselves. By way of showing their imperial imperiousness, they
built over some ruins left by their devastations a great church,
in which they ordered all the islanders to worship. This was at
first abomination to the islanders, who fought like devils
whenever they could, and ended by accepting the religion of their
foes. But the conquerors, afterwards choosing to change their
own faith, resolved that the islanders should do so too.
Forthwith they confiscated the big church and burying-ground,
and, distributing part of the land and spoils among their most
prominent scamps, erected a new edifice of quite a different
character, in which the natives swore they could neither see nor
hear, and their own clerics warned them they would certainly be
damned. To make the complications more intricate, these clerics
owed allegiance to an ancient woman in a distant country, who had
all the meddlesomeness and petty jealousy of her sex, and was,
besides, much attached to some clever wooers of hers, wily
sinners who covered their aims under the semblance of
ultra-extreme passion for her. The prominent scamps died, to be
succeeded by their children, or other of the hated conquerors,
from generation to generation. The islanders went on increasing
and protesting. T hey starved upon the lands, and shot the
landlords when a few gave them the chance, for most lived away in
their own country, and left the property to be administered by
agents. The Home Government had again and again been obliged to
assist these people with soldiers, to provide an armed police, to
shoot down mobs, to catch a ringleader here or there and send him
to Fernando Po, or to deprive whole villages of ordinary civil