VII. GENERAL PROVISIONS (part 2 of 3)

VII. GENERAL PROVISIONS (part 2 of 3)

Livingstone did not descend into the lowlands on the lower Chambesi and about Lake Bangweola, but kept heading northward on the skirts of the Congo water-shed, in the direction of Tanganyika. He found about all the streams the spongy soil which so impeded his steps, the same alternations of hill and plain, forest and jungle. Everywhere were evidences of that gigantic and plentiful animal life which characterizes tropical Africa. To this wonderful exuberance was now added herds of wild hogs, whose leaders were even more formidable looking than the boars of the German forests.

In his course toward Tanganyika he passed the people of Moamba who import copper from Kantanga and manufacture it into a very fine wire for ornaments and animal traps. The Babemba villages were passed, a tribe living within close stockades, and more warlike than those to the south. The banana now begins to flourish, and herds of cattle denote a pastoral life. Tobacco is grown in quantities sufficient for a home supply. Hunting is carried on by means of the hopo hedges, within whose bounds the wild beasts are frightened by circles of hunters.

In the Balungu country, Livingstone found Lake Liemba, amid a beautiful landscape. The chief, Kasongo, gave him a royal reception. He was gratified here to find men from Tanganyika. The lake is at the bottom of a basin whose sides are nearly perpendicular but tree-covered. Down over the rocks pour beautiful cascades, and buffaloes, elephants and antelopes wander on the more level spots, while lions roar by night. The villages are surrounded by luxuriant palm-oil trees, whose bunches of fruit grow so large as to require two men to carry them. The Balungu are an excessively polite people, but chary of information and loth to trade. This is because they have been so much raided by the Arabs and native Mazitu. The waters of this lake appeared to drain to the north into Tanganyika, but more probably by some other outlet to the Congo. Livingstone had never seen elephants so plenty as in this section. They came all about his camp and might be seen at any time eating reachable foliage, or grubbing lustily at the roots of small trees in order to prostrate them so as to get at their stems and leaves.

At Mombo’s village were found cotton fields and men and women skilled in weaving. Elephants abounded and did much damage to the sorghum patches, and corn-safes. Leopards were destructive to the goat-herds. Bird life was even more various than on the Zambesi.

Though weakened by fever, Livingstone determined to deflect westward toward Lake Moero, on the line of the Lualaba, and in the heart of the basin which gathers the Congo waters. The route lay through a prairie region, well watered by brisk streams. The Wasongo people have herds of cattle, which they house with care, and a plentiful supply of milk, butter and cheese. But they were frequently disturbed by Arab slave stealers, and their supplies of cattle were often raided by hostile neighbors.

It was here that Livingstone came upon the caravan of Tippoo Tib, who even at that date seems to have been a marauding genius, greatly feared by the natives for his craftiness and cruelty. The tribe of King Nsama proved to be an interesting one. “The people are regular featured and good looking, having few of the lineaments of their darker coast brethren. The women wear their hair in tasteful fashion and are of comely form.” King Nsama seemed to have been a Napoleon in the land, till about the time of Livingstone’s visit when he had received a Waterloo at the hand of the Arabs.

Livingstone now came to the Chisera river, a mile wide, and flowing into Lake Moero. The land on both sides of the stream sloped down to the banks in long, fertile stretches over which roamed elephants, buffaloes and zebras. The people were numerous and friendly. They find plenty of food in the large game which inhabits their district. There was the same plenty of zebras, buffalo and hippopotami over the flat stretch which brought him to the Kamosenga river. Crossing this stream he was in the country of the Karungu, who live in close stockades and are by nature timid. They were chary traders, though they had abundance of ivory and their granaries were filled with corn. It was all the result of intimidation by the Arab slavers; and, it must be remembered that Livingstone was following in the track of one of their caravans.

Bending a little to the southwest the country was well wooded and peopled. Large game was still plenty and the natives captured an abundant supply of food. The Choma river was reached, abounding in hippopotami and crocodiles. The natives fled on the approach of the party and it was with difficulty that a supply of food could be bought. Beyond, and over a long line of hills, the natives became less timid. Here the party met a large herd of buffaloes from which a supply of meat was obtained.

Their course now bore them to the Luao, flanked by granite hills which continue all the way to Moero. All the valleys in this part of the Congo basin are beautiful, reminding one of English or American scenery. The soil is very rich. The people live amid plenty, procured from their gardens and the chase. They would be friendly if left alone, but they can hardly be said to lead natural lives owing to the frequency and cruelty of Arab raids.

As the lake is neared, the villages become more frequent. The lake is reached at last. It is a large body of water flanked by mountains on the east and west. The immediate banks are sand, skirted by tropical vegetation, in the midst of which the fishermen build their huts. There are many varieties of fish in the waters, and some of them are large and fine. At the north end is the outflow of the lake into the Lualaba river, whose continuation becomes the Congo. The inflow at the south end, Livingstone calls the Luapula, which name, he says, it keeps up to Lake Bangweola. Beyond that it is the Chambesi whose head-waters he had already crossed. West of the lake is the Rua country. The people about the lake are Babemba, timid to a fault and hard to trade with.

Though reduced by fever, the infatuation of travel was so strong in Livingstone, that he turned southerly along the lake and struck for the unknown regions, about its southern end. He crossed an important tributary, the Kalongosi, whose waters were literally alive with fish, from the lake, seeking places to spawn. South of this stream the people are the Limda, not friendly disposed, yet not hostile. They are of the true negro type, and are great fishermen and gatherers of salt on the lake. The forests are not of rank growth, and the wood is chiefly bark-cloth and gum-opal, the latter exuding its gum in large quantities, which enters the ground and is preserved in large cakes for the use of future generations.

The streams are now very frequent, and difficult to cross when swollen. After crossing the Limda he was in the Cassembe country, which is very rich and populous, growing the finest of palm-oil and ground-nuts. The capital village is in the centre of a plain, and is more a Mohammedan than a native town. As neither goats, sheep nor cattle thrive, the people depend on fish and vegetables for food. Every hut had a cassava garden about it, and honey and coffee were plenty, as were maize, beans and nuts.

The Cassembe, take their name from the chief or ruler, who is a Pharaoh, or general, called the “Cassembe,” the ninth generation of which was on the throne when Livingstone was there. He gave him a royal reception, differing in many respects from all others which he had received. Cassembe had a dwarf, captured from some of the northern tribes, who figured as clown of the occasion. Then his wife appeared as a conspicuous mistress of ceremonies, preceded by men brandishing battle axes, beating on hollow instruments, and yelling at the crowd to clear the way. She was a comely looking personage of light color and regular features. In her hand were two enormous pipes filled ready for smoking. This procession was followed by the Cassembe, whose smile of welcome would have been captivating but for the fact that he was accompanied by his executioner, bearing a broad Limda sword and a large pair of scissors for cropping the ears of offenders. The queen is a thorough agriculturist, and pays particular attention to her fields of cassava, sweet-potatoes, maize, sorghum, millet, ground-nuts and cotton. The people as a whole are rough mannered and positively brutal among themselves. Livingstone spent a month among them, before he could get an escort to take him through the swamps to the southern end of Moero, which he was anxious to explore further.

The Cassembe, like many other tribes on the head waters of the Congo, procure copper ore from Kantanga, on the west, and work it into bracelets, anklets and fine wire for baskets and traps. They have been visited time and again by the Portuguese. By and by Livingstone bade Cassembe farewell and pushed for the southern and western shores of the lake. He took views from many points on the Rua mountains and approached its shores at many points. At every shore approach there was a profusion of moisture and of tropical forests abounding in buffaloes and elephants, while the open spaces gave views of pasturing zebras. The latter had not yet become an object of chase as in the lands south of the Zambesi, where they give great sport to both native and foreign hunters and where so much of the larger game has been swept away by inconsiderate sportsmen. Lions and leopards were also plenty, and the camps had to be guarded nightly against them. The population about the lake is everywhere dense, and the fish supply limitless. Livingstone found the lake, at his various points of observation from the Rua heights, to be from 30 to 60 miles wide, and the natives claimed that it was larger than Tanganyika. They do not pretend to cross the lake in boats, deeming it too long and dangerous a journey, in a country where storms are frequent and the waters are apt to be lashed into fury by the winds.

The circuit of Lake Moero, the almost continuous wading of swamps and crossing of swollen streams, the arrival at Cassembe again and the expression of a determination to go still further south into the swampy regions, to discover Lake Bemba, or Bangweola, instead of back to Tanganyika, where rest and medicine could be had, caused the desertion of Livingstone’s entire traveling force except his always faithful Chuma and Susi. But having attained the consent of Cassembe to proceed, and having re-equipped himself as best he could, he started for Bangweola, keeping parallel with the Luapula, but a day’s march away from its swamps. Even then, the crossing of the frequent tributaries made his journey tedious and dangerous. It was through a region of hill and vale, forest and plain, of varied geological formation. At many points he came upon developments of iron ore, which the natives worked and he had no doubt that this valuable mineral existed in abundance in this region. It ought to be remembered that the Kantanga copper region, whence all the eastern coast draws a supply, lies but a few days’ journey west of the Luapula, and in this part of the Congo basin.

The people were the Banyamwezi, smart traders and given to lying like Greeks. They are populous, but having been raided by the Mazitu, many of their villages were deserted. Passing through their country, the land becomes flat and forest covered, and so continues all the way to Bangweola. The streams are all banked by the juicy sponge, before described, which make traveling so treacherous and tiresome. All the forests are infested with lions and leopards, necessitating the greatest care at night.

It was January 18th, 1868, when Livingstone first set eyes on Lake Bangweola. The country around the lake is all flat and free from trees, except the mosikisi, which is spared for its dense foliage and fatty oil. The people have canoes and are expert fishermen. They are numerous, especially on the large islands of the lake. The variety of fish is numerous and some are taken which measure four feet in length. The bottom of the lake is sandy, and the shores reedy. During windy weather the waters become quite rough and dangerous. The islanders have herds of goats and flocks of fowls, and are industrious and peaceable, not given to curiosity, but sitting unconcernedly and weaving their cotton or knitting their nets, as a stranger passes by. According to Livingstone’s estimate this splendid body of water is some 150 miles long by 80 broad. The Lokinga mountains, extending from the southeast to the southwest are visible, and this range joins the Mokone range, west of Kantanga, which range is the water-shed between the Zambesi and Congo basins.

The people are still the Banyamwezi. Besides being skilled in weaving cotton and in net-making, they are expert copper workers. In forging they use a cone-shaped hammer, without a handle. They use bellows, made of goat skin and wood. With these they smelt large ingots of copper in a pot, and pour it into moulds, which give a rough shape to the article they wish to forge.

Livingstone’s observations in this section taught him that there was no such thing as a rainy zone, to account for the periodical rise of rivers like the Nile and Congo. From May to October is a comparatively dry season, and from October to May almost every day gave a thunder shower, but there is no such continuous down pour as has been imagined by meteorologists in Europe. He accounts for the humidity of both the Congo and Zambesi watersheds, by the meeting of the easterly and westerly winds in that section, thus precipitating the evaporations of both oceans in mid-Africa. It is certain that the Congo does not get its yellow hue from its head waters, for all the streams run clear even when swollen. The sponges, or bogs, which are so frequent are accounted for by the fact that some six to eight feet beneath the surface is a formation of sand which cakes at the bottom, thus holding up the saturated soil above and preventing the escape of the water. The same is true of large sections on the Zambesi, and especially in the Kalahari Desert, though the vegetable mould is wanting on the top. In that desert wells must be dug only so deep. If water does not come, they must be dug in another place. To puncture the substratum of caked sand is to make an escape for the water, and create a dearth in an entire drainage system. A peculiarity of the sponge everywhere is that it absorbs so much water as to keep the streams from flooding till long after the shower. Then they assume what would be an unaccountable flow, but for knowledge of the fact that it has taken several hours for the rain-fall to penetrate them. When traveling on the Limda, Livingstone had great trouble with his ox teams, which became invariably bogged in the sponges, and when they saw the clear sand in the centre of the streams, they usually plunged headforemost for it, leaving nothing in sight but their tails.

Livingstone’s return from Bangweola to Cassembe gave him no opportunity for observation, owing to the fact that the tribes were at war with one another, instigated by the Arabs, who were gathering a rich crop of slaves. Yet this misfortune was compensated in part by a return of his deserters to his service, on his arrival at Cassembe, thereby enabling him to continue his northward journey more comfortably, and to run the gauntlet of the contending tribes with greater safety.

His journey to Tanganyika, arrival at Ujiji, sickness there, receipt of welcome stores from the coast, slow recovery, make a sad history, but does not add to our knowledge of the natural features and resources of the Congo region. However, our interest is again awakened in this heroic adventurer when we find him once more on his feet and resolved to visit the land of the Manyuema, off to the west and on the Lualaba, in the very heart of the Upper Congo valley, and the stamping ground of the now celebrated Tippoo Tib. The Manyuema country was then unknown, and Livingstone went in the trail of the first of those Arab hordes which ever visited it, but whose repeated visits in quest of ivory and slaves have carried murder, fire, theft and destruction to a once undisturbed, if not happy people.

The journey lay from Kasenge, on the west coast of Tanganyika, near its middle, in a north-west direction to the great market town of Nyangwe, on the Lualaba, or Upper Congo. He found the route hilly but comparatively open. Villages were frequent and the natives friendly, till the Manyuema themselves were reached. There was an abundance of elephants and buffaloes, which kept them supplied with meat. Where forests grew, the trees were of gigantic proportions, and very dense, affording a complete escape for wild animals when exhausted or crippled in the chase. The native huts were of a superior kind, with sleeping apartments raised from the ground. The soil was fertile, and the cultivation of vegetables was general. On the route they came into the region of the oil-palm, which does not flourish eastward of this, but assumes a more gigantic growth as the western coast is approached.

A little more than midway between Tanganyika and Nyangwe, is Bambarre, a flourishing village, surrounded by gardens, which the men help to cultivate, though all the other duties of farm and house are imposed upon the women, who are actual “hewers of wood and drawers of water” for the tribe. They made willing carriers, and are of comely form. Here the soko is believed to be a charm for rain. One was caught for meteorological purposes, with the result that the captor had the ends of two fingers and toes bitten off. Livingstone saw the nest of a soko, or gorilla, and pronounced it a poor architectural contrivance. A young soko, however, he regarded as the most wonderful object in nature, so ugly as to excite astonishment, yet so quaint as to stimulate curiosity. Like the kangaroo, it leaves one in doubt whether repulsion or attraction is uppermost in the mind when viewing it. In the vicinity are hot springs, and earthquakes are common, passing from east to west. The tribes of Bambarre hold the Manyuema in great fear, regarding them as of man eating propensity.

Leaving Bambarre, Livingstone was soon in the extensive country of the famed Manyuema, a tribe, or rather an entire people, hardly surpassed for size and power by even the Zulus, Macololos, Ugandas or Niam-Niams, a tribe whose name is one of terror far below Stanley Falls and far above Nyangwe, and whose unamiable qualities have of late years been greatly increased by the hold which Tippoo Tib, the Arab imperator on Lualaba, has gotten upon them.

Livingstone’s journey toward their capital was through the most remarkable country he had seen in Central Africa. He had elephant and rhinoceros meat of his own shooting, and plenty to trade to the natives for other dainties. The land is a beautiful succession of hills and dales. The villages are frequent and perched on the slopes so as to secure quick drainage. The streets run east and west in order that the blazing sun may lick up the moisture. The dwellings are in perfect line, with low thatched roofs, and every here and there are larger establishments with grounds, which answer for public assemblages. The walls are of beaten clay, and the insides are cosy and clean. The clay walls are so compact as to stand for ages, and frequently men return, after a site has been deserted for generations, to repair and re-occupy their ancestral abodes. The people practice the rite of circumcision, after the manner of the Abyssinians or Hebrews. The women are good housekeepers, and preserve their food from the ants, which are in great numbers and of many varieties, by slinging it from the ceiling of their huts in earthen pots or neatly made baskets.

Palms crown the heights of all the mountains and hills, and the forests, usually of a width of five miles between the groups of villages, are indescribable for their luxuriance and beauty. Climbers fold themselves gracefully over the gigantic trees, wild fruit abounds, and monkeys and brilliant birds skip and flit from bough to bough, with continuous chatter and chirp. The soil is excessively rich and the people cultivate largely, even though they are much separated by feuds and dense forest reaches. Their maize bends its fruit stalk round like a hook. They insert poles in the ground for fences, and these soon sprout making substantial and impervious hedges. Climbing plants are trained from pole to pole, and to these are suspended the ears of corn to dry. This upright granary forms a wall around the entire village, and the women take down corn at their will and distribute it to the men. The women are very naked. They are thrifty, however, and may be seen on any market day carrying their produce to the villages on their heads, or slung in receptacles over their shoulders. No women could be fonder of beads and ornaments than they, and Livingstone found them easy to trade with, when at all friendly.

The receptions Livingstone met with in the various villages, as he neared the Lualaba, were as various as the humors of the people. Some received him gladly, others with suspicion, and still others with rudeness, saying, “If you have food at home, why come you so far and spend your beads to buy it here?” On the Luamo, a tributary of the Lualaba, two hundred yards broad and very deep, the chiefs proved so hostile as to refuse to lend their canoes to the party to cross over. The women were particularly outspoken, and claimed that the party were identical with the cruel strangers (Arabs) who had lately robbed them. At length the warriors of the place surrounded the party, with their spears and huge wooden shields, and marched them bodily out of the district.

Wherever the wood has been cleared in this section, the soil immediately brings a crop of gigantic grasses. These are burned annually. Livingstone’s way now deflected to the north, through kindlier villages, separated by damp forests. The rainy season was on and the streams were all swollen. Evidences of large game were all around him. He passed an elephant trap, which was made of a log of heavy wood twenty feet long, with a hole at one end through which a vine passed to suspend it. At the other end a lance of wood, four feet long, is inserted. A latch string runs to the ground, which, when touched by the animal’s foot, causes the log to fall, and its great weight drives the lance into the animal’s body.

The people here were more friendly and very curious as they never had seen a white man before. They have a terrible dread of the Arabs, and strange to say the Arabs feared them as much, for nothing could convince an Arab that the Manyuema are not cannibals. It must be remembered that Livingstone wrote some years ago and before the Arabs acquired supremacy over these natives. It is a peculiarity of African tribes that nothing can exceed the terror inspired by a reputation in another tribe for cannibalism. It was a common thing on the Shiré and Zambesi, for Livingstone to hear the natives there speak of tribes far away to the north——like diseases, they are always far away——who eat human bodies, and on every occasion the fact was related with the utmost horror and disgust. Livingstone never took stock in these stories, nor in the wilder ones of the Arabs, and he mentions no authenticated case of cannibalism in all his volumes. It is more than likely that African cannibalism exists only in the imagination of persons who prefer sensation to fact.

Livingstone seems to have become bewildered on this northward journey, and crossed his track with the intention of making more directly for the Lualaba. Though he found the people kind and the country indescribably rich in vegetation, the way was difficult owing to the softness of the ground and the swollen streams. He however succeeded, with much hardship, in getting back to the route direct from Bambarre to the river. On this route the villages were almost continuous, as many as nine being passed in a single day. The people were kindly disposed and very curious. They brought food willingly, traded eagerly, preferring bracelets to beads, and in one village he was received by a band, composed of calabashes. Goat and sheep herds were plenty, tended mostly by children, who lived among and loved their charges as if they were human beings.

A grass burning resulted in the capture of four sokos by the natives, besides other animals. The full grown soko would do well to stand for a picture of the devil. One of them, it appears, was a young one which gave Livingstone an opportunity for study. His light-yellow face showed off his ugly whiskers and faint apology for a beard. The forehead, villainously low, with high ears, was well in the back-ground of a great dog mouth. The teeth were slightly human but the canines showed the beast by their large development. The hands, or rather fingers, were like those of the natives. The flesh of the feet was yellow. The eagerness with which the Manyuema devoured it left the impression that eating sokos was a good way to get up a reputation for cannibalism.

The soko sometimes kills the leopard by seizing both paws and biting them, but often gets disemboweled in the attempt. Lions kill sokos with a bound, tear them to pieces, but seldom eat them. They live in communities of about ten, each male having a single wife. Interference with a wife is visited by the resentment of all the other males, who catch and cuff the offender till he screams for mercy.

Livingstone was now sorely detained by sickness and the desertion of his carriers. The delay gave him opportunity to note the characteristics of the Manyuema country with more particularity. It is not a healthy country, not so much from fever as from debility of the whole system induced by damp, cold and indigestion. This general weakness is ascribed by some to the free use of maize as food, which produces weakness of the bowels and choleraic purging. Rheumatism is common and cuts the natives off. The Arabs fear this disease, and when attacked come to a stand-still till it is cured. Tape worm is frequent, and the natives know no remedy for it.

The natives have wonderful stores of ivory which the Arabs are eager for. They cultivate the ground with the hoe, but their hoeing is little better than scraping the ground, and cutting through the roots of the grasses. This careless husbandry leaves the roots of maize, ground-nuts, sweet-potatoes and sorghum to find their way into the rich, soft soil, which they succeed in doing. The ground-nuts and cassava hold their own against the grasses for years. Bananas grow vigorously on the cleared spaces.

The great want of the Manyuema is national life. Of this they have none. Each head man is independent of each other. Of industry they have no lack and the villagers are orderly toward each other, but they go no further. If a man of another district ventures among them, he is not regarded with more favor as a Manyuema than one of a herd of buffaloes is by the rest, and on the slightest provocation he is likely to be killed. They buy their wives from one another. A pretty girl brings ten goats. The new wife is led to the new home by the husband, where five days are spent, then she is led back to her home for five days, after which she comes to her new home permanently. Many of the women are handsome, having perfect forms and limbs. The conviction of Livingstone, after his experience with these people, was that if a man goes with a good-natured and civil tongue, he may pass through the worst people in Africa unharmed. He also draws a fine line between the unmixed and mixed African races, by a narrative of experience on the Shiré river. One of a mixed race stepped into the water to swim off to a boat, and was seized by a crocodile. The poor fellow held up his hands and screamed for help. Not a man went to his help, but allowed him to perish. When at Senna, in the Makololo country, a woman was seized by a crocodile. Instantly four natives rushed unbidden and rescued her, though they knew nothing about her. These incidents are typical of the two races. Those of mixed blood possess the vices of both races and the virtues of neither.

The fact that there is no supreme chief among the Manyuema, makes it difficult to punish murder except by war, and the feud is made worse, being transmitted from generation to generation. This state of affairs, when it came to be understood by such a crafty statesman as Tippoo Tib, contributed to his victory over the people, and that peculiar sovereignty which he exercises.

Livingstone got away from this place of confinement, and crossed the Mamohela, on his journey to Nyangwe. The country was a fine grassy plain watered by numerous rills, and skirted by mountains on either side, on which perched the neat villages of the natives. Then forests intervene of even more luxuriant growth than before, to be again succeeded by plains. The people seem to grow more stately and shapely, the women being singularly perfect in hands, feet and limbs, and of light brown color, but all with the orifices of their noses enlarged by excessive snuff taking. The humor of the villagers depended on how lately they had been raided by the Arabs. They seemed also to grow more clever in art, for now many forges were seen in active operation where iron was being shaped into spears and utensils.

At length the Lualaba is reached at Nyangwe, the capital of the Manyuema country, and the greatest market town in Central Africa. Long before Livingstone reached it he met upon the route hundreds of women wending their way thither with their marketing in baskets on their heads or slung in receptacles on their shoulders. As they trudged cheerfully along full of thought as to what they would receive in exchange or what they would buy, he could not help contrasting their condition with that of the women bent on a like errand in his own country, where the labor might be the same, but where there was happy exemption from such scenes of bloodshed as he was forced to witness while there. But as these have been already narrated the reader is here spared their horrible review.

The Manyuema prefer to do all their business in open market. If one says, “Come, sell me that fowl, or cloth,” the reply is, “Come to the market place.” The values there are more satisfactory and the transaction is open. The people had a fear of Livingstone, because they could not disassociate him from the Arab half-castes who had brought upon them untold misery.

He found the Lualaba at Nyangwe to be twenty feet deep in mid stream and subject to annual overflow just like the Nile——a mighty river, he says, three thousand yards wide, with steep banks and full of islands. The current runs at the rate of two miles an hour. His greatest trouble was to get a canoe to take him across the river. The natives thought his request for a large canoe, with which he intended to explore the river, meant war upon them, so they sent only small ones, capable of carrying two or three men, and which were entirely unfit for his purposes. The Manyuema on the left bank of the Lualaba, opposite Nyangwe, are called Bagenya. There are salt springs in their district, and they manufacture the salt for the Nyangwe market, by boiling the brine.

The salutations of the Manyuema are the same as those of the Bechuana people of the Kalihari desert, and indeed many of their customs reminded Livingstone of what he had seen south of the Zambesi, among the respective tribes. The natives of Nyangwe denied to Livingstone the stories of cannibalism that had been circulated about them. They never eat human flesh, unless it be the bodies of enemies killed in war, and not then through any liking for the flesh, which is salty and unpalatable, but because it makes them “dream of the dead man,” and, as it were, kill them over in their sleep. This a very comfortable way of getting a second vengeance, and is nearly allied to the reasoning which is at the bottom of cannibalism in the South Sea Islands, to wit, belief that the blood of a brave and fallen enemy transplants his bravery to the veins of him who partakes of it. Cannibalism, for the sheer love of eating human flesh, don’t exist in the world. It is a creation of the imagination, a product of the tale telling spirit, and is not fair to the pagan races.

Livingstone seems never to tire of praising the physical proportions of the Manyuema and says, he would back a company of them, for shape of head and physical form, male and female, against the whole Anthropological Society. He was surprised at the extent of country embraced in the Arab incursions. On questioning the slaves brought to Nyangwe by these marauders, he found them members of tribes far up and down the Lualaba, and westward of it many days’ journey. The copper of Kantanga reaches the Nyangwe market, and is readily bought up at high figures, in barter.

The great market of Nyangwe is held every third day. It is a busy scene, and every trader is in dead earnest. Venders of fish run about with potsherds full of snails and small fishes, or with smoked fishes strung on twigs, to exchange for cassava, potatoes, grain, bananas, flour, palm-oil, fowls, salt, pepper, and various vegetables. Each is bent on exchanging food for relishes, and the assertions of quality are as strong as in a civilized mart. The sweat stands out on their faces, cocks crow briskly from the baskets, and pigs squeal from their inclosures. Iron utensils, traps and cages are exchanged for cloth, which is put away for carriage in their capacious baskets. They deal fairly, and when differences arise, they appeal to each other and settle things readily on a basis of natural justice. With so much food changing hands among a throng which frequently numbers 3,000 souls, much benefit is derived, for some of them come twenty-five miles afoot. The men flaunt about in a nervous and excited way, but the women are the hardest workers. The potters hold up their wares and beat them with their knuckles to prove their quality by the sound. It is all a scene of fine natural acting——the eagerness with which they assert the value of their wares, and the withering looks of disgust when the buyer sees fit to reject the proffered article. Little girls run about selling cups of water to the thirsty traders, just as lemonade or ice-water boys ply their art in London during a procession. They are close buyers and sellers, prone to exaggerate the merits of their articles, yet satisfied when a bargain is clinched. Honesty is a rule, and when anything is stolen among the Manyuema, they know that it is the work of the Arab slaves.

The Manyuema children do not creep as white children do, but begin by putting forward one foot and using one knee. The fish of the Lualaba are of the same variety as in Lake Nyassa. Cakes made of ground-nuts are a common fare, as on the west coast. All Livingstone’s persuasions could not induce the natives to hire him a canoe large enough to navigate the river with. The Arabs had inflamed their imaginations by painting him as an enemy in disguise, but their real purpose was to keep control of all the larger boats themselves to assist in their river forays. Baffled by both natives and Arabs, and after waiting for many weary weeks at Nyangwe, he resolved to return to Ujiji, on Lake Tanganyika.

His return journey was a repetition of the sights and scenes already described, varied of course by new opportunities for observing natural features and events. On nearing the Mamohela, he passed through a most populous region, with well constructed villages, abounding in goats, fowls, dogs, and pigs, with vegetable food of every tropical variety in plenty, while palm toddy, tobacco and bangue (Indian hemp) furnished them the dainties. The soil was so fruitful that a mere scraping with a hoe rendered a generous return. The forests afforded elephants, zebras, buffaloes and antelopes, and in the streams were abundance of fish. The antelope species in Africa is rich in variety, stalwart in form, and heavy horned. Those of the Chobe river are dappled in color and very beautiful. The quichobo is a rare species, and is more of a goat than an antelope. It has amphibious qualities, and when frightened will jump into the water and remain beneath the surface till danger has passed. At this point Livingstone was given a secret which would have been worth a fortune to him had he possessed it in time to have saved the camels, mules and buffaloes with which he started on this journey from the coast. It was to the effect that lion’s fat was a cure for the bite of the tsetse fly. As he had never seen a fat lion, he was incredulous, till assured that the Basango lions, in common with all other beasts, actually took on fat. A vial of the precious stuff was handed him, a proof of the fact that such a thing as lion fat did really exist. The cattle raising tribes of the plains west of Tanganyika, know the virtue of this ointment, and use it when they drive their herds toward the markets on the eastern coast.

Sickness on the rest of the route to Tanganyika impaired his powers of observation and description. In general he found the country beautiful and fertile, but much disturbed by raiders. On his arrival at Tanganyika he was ferried across to Ujiji. Sick and in despair, his faithful Susi came rushing at the top of his speed one morning and gasped out, “An Englishman!” This was Stanley, on his mission of rescue. This meeting, and how the two explorers navigated Tanganyika, together with other things that went to make up one of the most remarkable interviews in history, are described elsewhere in this volume.

One would have thought that Livingstone could not fail to accompany Stanley home. But he did not, and, weakened as he was by disease, proclaimed to his rescuer a programme which embraced a journey round the south end of Tanganyika, southward across the Chambesi, round the south end of Lake Bangweola, due west to the mythical ancient fountains and thence to the copper-mines of Kantanga. All this, he says, “to certify that no other sources of the Nile can come from the south without being seen by me.” What heroism was here, yet in his condition, what infatuation! Poor man, deluded, self-sacrificial traveler, illy-advised adventurer! All this long journey, from the time he struck the Chambesi, months and months before, to Moero, to Tanganyika, to Bambare, to the Lualaba and Nyangwe, had been through the water system of the Upper Congo, and had nothing at all to do with the Nile sources, and now, going back to Bangweola and to the Chambesi for the purpose of contributing further to knowledge of the ultimate Nile sources, discovery of which he regarded as worth the sacrifice of his life, he was but stamping through the Congo basin again, and revealing the sources of a river which found an outlet in the Atlantic. But such were the uncertainties which confronted all these early African explorers. Even Stanley was uncertain whither the Lualaba would lead when he embarked on its waters, and although is volume furnished proof that it could not be the Nile, he was still prepared, from its northern course, to accept it as such, till it took its westward turn and straightened out for its Atlantic exit.

Writing on African beliefs, he says: “The African’s idea seems to be that they are under control of a power superior to themselves——apart from and invisible; good, but frequently evil and dangerous. This may have been the earliest religious feeling of dependence on Divine power, without any conscious feeling of its nature. Idols may have come in to give definite ideas of superior power, and the primitive faith or impression obtained by Revelation seems to have mingled with their idolatry, without any sense of incongruity. The origin of the primitive faith in Africans and others seems always to have been a Divine influence on their dark minds, which has proved persistent in all ages. One portion of primitive belief——the continued existence of departed spirits——seems to have no connection whatever with dreams, or, as we should say, with ‘ghost seeing,’ for great agony is felt in prospect of bodily mutilation, or burning of the body after death, as that is believed to render a return to one’s native land impossible. They feel as if it would shut them off from all intercourse with relatives after death. They would lose the power of doing good to those once loved, and evil to those who deserved their revenge. Take the case of the slaves in the yoke, singing songs of hate and revenge against those who sold them into slavery. They thought it right so to harbor hatred, though most of the party had been sold for crimes——adultery, stealing etc,——which they knew to be sins.”

In Central Africa one is struck with the fact that children have so few games. Life is a serious business, and amusement is derived from imitating the vocations of their parents——hut building, making little gardens, bows and arrows, shields and spears. In Southern Africa boys are very ingenious little fellows and have several games. They shoot birds with bows and arrows, practice with the kiri, and teach linnets to sing. They are expert at making guns and traps for small animals, and in making and using bird-lime. They make play guns with a trigger which go off with a spring and have cotton fluff as smoke. They shoot locusts very cleverly with these toy guns.

Desperate as Livingstone’s last undertaking seemed, he was well equipped for it by the receipt of fifty-seven porters sent up from Zanzibar by Stanley and a supply of cattle and donkeys. He found that much cotton was cultivated on the shores of Tanganyika, that the highlands surrounding the lake are cut into deep ravines, and that game was plenty everywhere, elephants, buffaloes, water buck, rhinoceri, hippopotami, zebras. The lake puts off numerous arms or bays into the mountains, some of which are of great width, cutting off travel entirely except at a distance from its shores.

Even before he had rounded the southern end of Tanganyika, he was out of heart with the experiment of using donkeys as carriers. He had all along contended that this hardy animal could be taken through regions infested with the deadly tsetse fly, even though horses, mules, dogs and oxen might perish. But he, for a second time, witnessed the death of one donkey after another from the bites of the African pest-fly. His cattle fared somewhat better, this time, but even they proved a poor means of keeping up a food supply, being apt to wander, subject to swellings from fly-stings, and a constant invitation to raiders. True, he escaped this last calamity, but other travelers in different parts of Africa have been less fortunate, as their accounts show.

As he passed down into the section which furnishes the head-streams of Lake Moero, the rains descended in volumes, the streams were swollen, the people were unkind, and travel became dismal and difficult, beyond any former experience. He was troubled with sickness and the desertion of his men. A leopard broke into his camp, at night, and attacked a woman carrier. Her screams frightened his last donkey and it ran away. The slave traders had stirred up the villages, so that trade for the necessaries of life was always difficult. He found the country a succession of hills and plains, forests and high grasses, with every evidence of great fertility. Dura, or the flour of sorghum seed, furnishes the staple food. His narrative of the streams he crossed is bewildering, but it shows the great plentitude of these Congo sources and quite reconciles one to the mighty volume of that magnificent river. With such an abundance of lively sources it must very largely defy active Equatorial evaporation and be at all seasons a surely navigable and valuable commercial water-way.

The sponges were now all full from the continuous rains, so that a stream 100 feet wide, had to be approached through a bog of twice that width. His last cow died, and he was wholly dependent on the natives for food. Pushing on, and bearing gently westward, he came into the immediate region of Bangweola. All around was flat, water-covered plain, alive with elephants and other large game. Every camping place was infested with ants. Life was miserable for the entire party, and Livingstone himself was so weak as to be incapable of passing the river and swamps, except by being carried.

He entered the lake with canoes, and pushed off to one of its numerous islands, or at least what he supposed to be an island, though it afterwards turned out to be only a rise in the plain which surrounds the true lake, and which was then entirely water-covered. The Basiba people occupy the northern shore of the lake. They proved to be hospitable and supplied plenty of fish and fowls with an occasional sheep. At every village a party of male and female drummers and dancers turned up, who gave music and exhibitions in dancing.

Crossing the mouth of the Chambesi in canoes, and entering the Kabinga country, he found a cattle raising section, though the cattle are wild. Elephants were plenty and very destructive of crops. The entire country about the lake was reedy and flooded. Many of the depressions in the plain were now arms of the lake, extending for twenty or thirty miles and so wide as to be seen across with difficulty. The journey now was mostly by canoes, and the camps were on elevations in the plain, which were now islands. Lions made the night hideous with their roaring. Fish and other food was abundant. The mouth of river after river was passed as it debouched into the lake. Livingstone grows weaker with every days’ exertion. It is only by the most herculean effort that he reaches Chitambo on the south side of the lake. His ability to observe and note has passed away. His power as a traveler and explorer is gone. Death seized him in Chitambo’s village, and his faithful Chuma and Susi bore his remains to the coast for transport to England.

We know of the Chambesi, of Lake Bangweola, of the Luapula, of Lake Moero, of the Lualaba, and of this magnificent section of the Upper Congo basin, from Livingstone. True, we know little of it, because the heroic traveler was sick unto death while threading the mazes of forest and plain which give character to the section. But he has given such an inkling of its wonderful resources of soil, animal life and people as to create fresh interest in the region and furnish supplementary evidence to all that has been said or dreamed of the wealth of the Congo basin.

The last of the sections into which Stanley divides the Congo basin is that of Tanganyika. This great lake is 391 miles long and 24 broad, with an area of 9400 square miles. The territory about the lake, belonging to the Congo water system, embraces 93,000 square miles. It is thickly populated, and contains probably 2,500,000 persons. The lake itself is 2750 feet above the sea, and it is bounded by mountains, north and south, which rise from 1500 to 2500 feet above its surface. The slopes of these mountains lead to lofty plateaus, which are fertile, densely peopled, and well covered with cattle herds. The natives are of a superior type, peaceably inclined and much attached to their pastoral occupations, and to the raising of sorghum, millet and maize. At various towns on the lake are large communities of Arab traders, the most noted being at Ujiji, where Stanley met Livingstone on his celebrated journey of rescue. The International Association supports a flourishing mission on the east side of the lake, and others have been recently founded.

In general this section supports the natural products indigenous to the Congo basin, though the oil-palm is not seen east of Ujiji. Around the lake the natives make a larger use of the cereals, than further west, where the banana and manioc grow more luxuriantly. There is hardly any finer market in Africa than that of Ujiji, where may be seen for sale an intermixture of products such as would do credit to a first-class city, were it not for the fact that human beings often constitute one of the articles of merchandise. On any propitious market day may be seen a full supply of maize, millet, beans, ground-nuts, sugar-cane, wild-fruit, palm-oil, bananas, plantains, honey, ivory, goats, sheep, cattle, fowls, fish, tobacco, nets, copper and iron ware, cloth, barks, hoes, spears, arrows, swords, etc., etc. On the northwest side of this section, at Uvira, are iron works of no mean proportions, whose products are iron wire and various iron utensils for both household and agricultural purposes.

In his recapitulation of resources, Stanley estimates the Congo basin to contain as follows:——

Area in square Length of Sections. miles. Population. Navigation. Lower Congo, 33,000 297,000 110 Upper Congo, 1,090,000 43,884,000 5,250 Lualaba, 246,000 4,920,000 1,100 Chambesi, 46,000 460,000 400 Tanganyika, 93,000 2,325,000 391 ————————— —————————— ————— 1,508,000 51,886,000 7,251

The ownership of the great basin, as determined at the Berlin conference, is as follows:——

Countries. Areas. Population. French Territory, 62,400 2,121,600 Portuguese Territory, 30,700 276,300 Unclaimed, 349,700 6,910,000 Congo Free State, 1,065,200 42,608,000

Inquiring, exacting commerce is ever ready with practical questions. When it has listened with attentive ear to Stanley’s bewildering estimates, astounding calculations and captivating statements, it coldly asks what return shall we find for our wares and for the expense and trouble of landing them in these tropical markets? He boldly replies, you cannot shut your eyes to the fact that Western Africa is already contributing her half of a trade with Europe, which already exceeds $150,000,000 a year. This comes almost exclusively from a coast line 2900 miles long. Enlarge this line, by adding the 6000 miles of navigable waters which are embraced in the Congo basin, and this trade by the products which would thereby find an outlet, and you would have a traffic equal to $500,000,000 annually. Improve this inland navigation by a railroad around the cataracts of the Congo, enlist the sympathies and energies of the 43,000,000 of people who inhabit the basin, or even of the 4,483,000 who dwell on navigable banks of the water-ways, give them some idea of the incomputable wealth that is over, around and under them, and which may be had by simply reaching for it, regard them as men and deal with them as such, and then you will soon realize that the Congo banks are worth far more to commerce, mile for mile, than the ocean shores. And well might he say this, for the banks of the Congo are a succession of villages, alive with people imbued with the trading spirit, well acquainted with the value of oils, rubber, dye-woods and gums, anxious for cloth, brass-rods, beads and trinkets. This cannot be said of all places on the sea-coast. Stanley narrates that eager natives have followed him for miles offering ivory and red wood powder for cloth, and that when they failed to effect a trade, they would ask in despair, “Well, what is it you do want? Tell us and we will get it for you.”

So sanguine was Stanley of the commercial situation on the Congo and in tropical Africa that he ventured to tell the practical merchantmen of Manchester how they could triple the commerce of the entire west coast of Africa by building two sections of narrow gauge railway, each 52 and 95 miles long, connected by steamboat navigation, or a continuous railway of 235 miles long, around Livingstone Falls, and thereby opening the Upper Congo to steamboats. Such a step would insure the active coöperation of more than a million of native traders who are waiting to be told what they can furnish out of their inexhaustible treasures, besides those they have already set a value on, as iron, oil ground-nuts, gum, rubber, orchilla, camwood, myrrh, frankincense, furs, skins, feathers, copper, fibres, beeswax, nutmegs, ginger, etc.

Stanley showed how a few factories at available points for the conversion of cruder articles into those of smaller bulk, and how the trading posts which were sure to spring up on the site of every important village, would gather in sufficient wares to tax the capacity of such a railroad as he contemplated to the uttermost, and realize a handsome income on the investment. He even gave estimates of the cost of the enterprise, which have been borne out by the practical engineers who have since taken the work of building it in hand.

He showed further how human and animal carriers had failed to solve the problem of porterage around Livingstone Falls, although the interests beyond, identified with the work of the International Association and with Christian missions, were expending annually a sum equal to 5-1/2 per cent. on the estimated cost of a railway.

He eloquently concludes his survey of tropical African resources thus: “Until the latter half of the nineteenth century the world was ignorant of what lay beyond the rapids of Isangila, or how slight was the obstacle which lay between civilization and the broad natural highway which cleared the dark virgin regions of Africa into two equal halves, and how nature had found a hundred other navigable channels by which access could be gained to her latest gift to mankind. As a unit of that mankind for which nature reserved it, I rejoice that so large an area of the earth still lies to be developed by the coming races; I rejoice to find that it is not only high in value, but that it excels all other known lands for the number and rare variety of precious gifts with which nature has endowed it.

“Let us take North America for instance, and the richest portion of it, viz: the Mississippi basin, to compare with the Congo basin, previous to its development by that mixture of races called modern Americans. When De Soto navigated the Father of Waters, and the Indians were undisputed masters of the ample river basin, the spirit of enterprise would have found in the natural productions some furs and timber.

“The Congo basin is, however, much more promising at the same stage of undevelopment. The forests on the banks of the Congo are filled with precious red-wood, lignum vitæ, mahogany and fragrant gum trees. At their base may be found inexhaustible quantities of fossil gum, with which the carriages and furnitures of civilized countries are varnished; their foliage is draped with orchilla, useful for dye. The red-wood when cut down, chipped and rasped, produces a deep crimson colored powder, giving a valuable coloring; the creepers which hang in festoons from the trees are generally those from which India rubber is produced, the best of which is worth fifty cents a pound in a crude state; the nuts of the oil palm give forth a butter which is a staple article of commerce; while the fibres of others will make the best cordage. Among the wild shrubs are frequently found the coffee-plant. In its plains, jungles and swamps, luxuriate the elephants, whose teeth furnish ivory worth from two to three dollars a pound in an unworked condition; its waters teem with numberless herds of hippopotami, whose tusks are also valuable; furs of the lion, leopard, monkey, otter; hides of the antelope, buffalo, goat and cattle, may also be obtained. But what is of more value, it possesses over 40,000,000 of moderately industrious and workable people, which the red Indians never were. And if we speak of prospective advantages and benefits to be derived from this late gift of nature, they are not much inferior in number or value to those of the well developed Mississippi valley. The copper of Lake Superior is rivalled by that of the Kwilu valley and of Bembé. Rice, cotton, tobacco, maize, coffee, sugar and wheat thrive equally well on the broad plains of the Congo. This is only known after the superficial examination of a limited line which is not much over fifty miles wide. I have heard of gold and silver, but the fact of their existence requires confirmation and I am not disposed to touch upon what I do not personally know.

“For climate, the Mississippi valley is superior, but a large part of the Congo basin, at present inaccessible to the immigrant, is blessed with a temperature under which Europeans may thrive and multiply. There is no portion of it where the European trader may not fix his residence for years, and develop commerce to his own profit with as little risk as is incurred in India.

“It is specially with a view to rouse the spirit of trade that I dilate upon the advantages possessed by the Congo basin, and not as a field for the pauper immigrant. There are over 40,000,000 of native paupers within the area described, who are poor and degraded already, merely because they are compassed round by hostile forces of nature and man, denying them contact and intercourse with the elements which might have ameliorated the unhappiness of their condition. European pauperism planted amongst them would soon degenerate to the low level of aboriginal degradation. It is a cautious trader who advances, not without the means of retreat; the enterprising mercantile factor who with one hand receives the raw produce from the native, in exchange for the finished product of the manufacturer’s loom——the European middleman who has his home in Europe but his heart in Africa——is the man who is wanted. These are they who can direct and teach the black pauper what to gather of the multitude of things around him and in his neighborhood. They are the missionaries of commerce, adapted for nowhere so well as for the Congo basin, where are so many idle hands, and such abundant opportunities all within a natural “ring fence.” Those entirely weak-minded, irresolute and servile people who profess scepticism, and project it before them always as a shield to hide their own cowardice from general observation, it is not my purpose to attempt to interest in Africa. Of the 325,000,000 of people in civilized Europe, there must be some surely to whom the gospel of enterprise I preach will present a few items of fact worthy of retention in the memory, and capable of inspiring a certain amount of action. I am encouraged in this belief by the rapid absorption of several ideas which I have promulgated during the last few years respecting the Dark Continent. Pious missionaries have set forth devotedly to instil in the dull mindless tribes the sacred germs of religion; but their material difficulties are so great that the progress they have made bears no proportion to the courage and zeal they have exhibited. I now turn to the worldly wise traders for whose benefit and convenience a railway must be constructed.”

THE WHITE MAN IN AFRICA.

On the bright, accessible side of Africa the Pharaohs built their temples, obelisks, pyramids and sphinxes. When history dawned the seats of Egyptian learning and splendor were already in decay. In her conquest and plunder of a thousand years, victorious Rome met her most valiant antagonists in Africa, and African warriors carried their standards to the very gates of the capitol on the Tiber. In later days the Italian republics which dotted the northern coasts of the Mediterranean found their commercial enterprise and their ascendency on the sea challenged by the Moorish States which comprised the Barbary coast. Still later, when Spain was intent on conquest in America, and the establishment of colonies which would insure the spread of the Catholic religion, Portugal, in a kindred spirit, was pushing her way down the western coast of Africa, acquiring titles by virtue of discovery, establishing empires of unknown extent, founding Catholic missions and churches, striving for commercial exaltation, till her mariners rounded the Cape of Good Hope, turned northward on the eastern shores, and again took up the work of colonizing, from Mozambique to the outlet of the Red Sea.

We never tire of reading the old stories of Portuguese discovery and colonization, and our sympathies are aroused for a people who struggled so heroically to open a new world to the civilization of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. But Portuguese effort came to naught, when measured by any modern standard of success. It was baffled by a thousand undreamt of forces. Its failure, however, rendered conspicuous the problem, now more pressing than ever: has the white man a natural mission in Africa? Has not God designed it as the natural home of the dark race? Are not all our visions of conquest and permanent redemption, through and by means of the white races, but idle outcrops of the imagination, or worse, but figments born of our desire to subdue and appropriate? Can compensation come, in the form of commercial, moral or spiritual advantage, adequate to the great sacrifice to be entailed on humanity by substitution of white energy for that which is native to African soil and climate?

It is not worth while to try to answer these questions in the affirmative by appeals to old historic Egypt, to Greek or Roman occupancy, to Arab and Mohammedan ascendancy, to Portuguese conquest and missionary enterprise, to the weird adventures and sad fates of the school of intrepid explorers which preceded and followed the redoubtable Scotchman, Mungo Park, nor to the long role of efforts and enterprises made by the respective nations of Europe to acquire rich slices of African territory, after Portugal began to lose her commercial grip, and after foreign colonization became a European ambition. No, for as yet nothing appears to show that the white man had a mission in Africa, except to gratify his home ambitions, cater to his European pride, satisfy his desire to pilfer, burn and murder. There is no thought yet manifest that the redemption of Africa involved more than the subjugation of her people and the forcible turning to foreign account of her resources. The question has not as yet been asked by the ethnologist, by the grave student of causes and effects, nor even by the calculating adventurer,——“Is there an African destiny which admits the white races as fair and permanent participants, or one which implies universal good when the seeming laws of God respecting the home of nations are reversed?”

Nor does an affirmative answer to any of the above questions arise out of England’s theft of the Cape of Good Hope, and of that sovereignty she now maintains over the Kimberly diamond diggings and the Vaal river sections. National greed or political finesse may excuse much, as the dark science of diplomacy goes, but they do not make clear how far the natural order of things can be changed with benefit to all concerned. This section of Africa is, however, below the tropics, and perhaps does not involve the problem of races so deeply as the equatorial regions.

Let us therefore turn to the real Africa, for further inquiry——that Africa against which Islamism has dashed itself so repeatedly in its efforts to reach the Equator; that Africa whose climate has beaten back Christianity for three centuries; that Africa amid which science has reveled, but before which legitimate trade has stood appalled——the tropical, the new Africa.

In this connection we come upon an order of events, not to say an era, which favors an affirmative answer to the above questions, which plainly point, not to white encroachment, but to white existence and possibilities in the very midst of a continent apparently destined for other purposes. The very fact that new discoveries in Central Africa have revealed vast populations untouched by civilization has opened the eyes of the world to the usual processes of nation-making afresh. Have any people ever risen out of barbarism without external help? What is civilized Europe to-day but a grand intermingling of Greek, Roman, Vandal, Hun, Goth, Celt, and Saracen? Had even North African influence, in some of its better moods, succeeded in crossing the Equator, who knows whether the savagery of the tropics might not have been extinct to-day, or at least wholly different from what it is?

Again, the order of events have brought forth whole masses of data for comparison, for experiment, for substantial knowledge. Who could separate fiction from fact when running over the old, fantastic chronicles? Until within the last fifty years the light of true scientific knowledge and of keener commercial knowledge had not been shed on the Central African situation. It began to dawn when Laird, in 1841, came home to England from the Niger, more of an adventurer than any predecessor, yet with no wild, discrepant tales, but only hard, practical truths, which commerce welcomed and business enterprise could rely on. Legitimate traffic sprang into line, and British trading houses, doing business on honorable terms and for cash values, planted their agents on the Gambia, the Roquelle, the Gold Coast, the Oil Rivers, at Gaboon and Kabinda, along thousands of miles of coast. German houses sprang up, in honorable rivalry, throughout the same extent, and Hamburg and Bremen steamers fairly outstripped those of Liverpool and Glasgow. France, too, came into competition, took permanent hold of territory, cultivated reciprocity with the natives, studied tribal characteristics, encouraged agential responsibility, and brought quite to the surface the problem of white occupancy and development.

Out of all this has grown something which is better than theory respecting the destiny of the respective races in Africa, superior far to all former strifes at mere land-grabbing, and empire building, and sovereignty enrichments. European commerce with the west and southern coast of Africa is now carried on by several regular lines of steamers, besides those owned by numerous large trading firms. The British and African Steam Navigation Company is a modern corporation, and employs 22 steamers. Its older rival, the West African Steamship Company, employs 9 steamers. They dispatch at least one ship a week from Liverpool to West African ports. The Woerman line of steamers runs regularly from Hamburg, the Portuguese line from Lisbon, and the French line from Havre. Then there are two London lines——the Union and Donald Curry. These lines go out heavily freighted with miscellaneous merchandise suitable for the African peoples, among which is, unfortunately, a large per cent. of gin and other intoxicants, and their return cargoes consist of rubber, gum copal, palm-oil, palm kernels, ivory, ground-nuts, beeswax, cocoa, coffee, dye-woods, mahogany, etc., gathered up at their various stopping points. All these are indigenous African products, but it will be observed that those which spring from a cultivated soil figure as next to nothing in the list.

Side by side with these practical sea-going and commercial movements went the unfolding of the interior by those indomitable men who sacrificed personal comfort and risked life that inner Africa might be brought to outer view. This volume is, in part, a record of their adventures and pioneering efforts. Their names——the Bakers, Barths, Schweinfurths, Spekes, Grants, Du Chaillus, Pintos, Livingstones, Stanleys, and others——form a roll which for honor outranks that of the world’s greatest generals. They have built for themselves monuments which shall outlast those dedicated to military conquest, because on them the epitaphs will speak of unselfish endeavor in the name of a common humanity.

What immense problems they had in hand! How heroically they struggled with them, through tangled jungle, dark forest, dense swamps, over plain and mountain, up, down and across unknown lakes and rivers, amid beasts of prey and hostile peoples, in the face of rain, wind and unkind climates! And all the while that they were toiling and dying, what weird and wonderful revelations came, now from the Nile, with its impenetrable sudds, its strange animal life, its teeming populations; now from the magnificent plateaus of the centre with their mighty and enchanting lakes, filled with strange fishes, on whose banks reveled peoples keen for trade or war, happy, if left alone, in smiling gardens and comfortable homes; now from the swift rolling Zambesi, shaded with mighty forests alive with troops of monkeys, vocal with bird songs, swarming with beasts, whose waters dashed here against curved and rocky banks, and there headlong over rocks higher than Niagara, bearing everywhere a burden of life in the shape of savage crocodiles, bellowing hippopotami and ponderous rhinoceri; now from Kalihari, the great desert of the south which balances that of the north, with stunted yet energetic populations, its troops of zebras, ostriches, giraffes, buffaloes, elephants, lions, leopards, making a paradise for hunters, with its salt pans, its strange grasses and incomprehensible geology; now from the great plain regions between the lakes and the water system of the western ocean, where are prairies that vie in extent and fertility with those of the Mississippi valley, where the numerous Dinkas dwell, brave in chase, rich in splendid herds of cattle, with cosy homes, surrounded by plantations of maize and sorghum and bananas; where also the Niam-Niams dwell, equally brave and rich and kind, yet savage when stirred, and formidable with their home-made iron spears and bright battle axes and swords; where too the Monbuttus dwell, rivals of their northern neighbors in agriculture, architecture and art, rich in corn and cattle, protected from intruders by a standing army of agile dwarfs, who know no fear and who make unerring use of their poisoned arrows in cunning ambuscade and in open fields; and now from the Congo itself, stream of African streams, island variegated in one stretch, cataract angered in another, draped with forest foliage everywhere, bounded by fertile shores backed by endless plains, pouring along through riches of gum, dyes, hard-woods such as would enrich kingdoms, supporting a water life as varied and gigantic as any other African lake or river, sustaining a population of incomputable numbers, opening a water way into the very heart of the continent for steamers, inviting the civilized world to come and go, partake and enjoy.

As all these surprising revelations were given to the outer world, by the pioneers of civilization who were struggling within Africa, we began to get new conceptions of situations whose existence never dawned on those who were skimming the ocean’s shores and fighting the battles of commerce. A new world had been brought to light, not only geographically, but as to its soil, water, vegetation, animals, people, climate, and every physical aspect. It was a world to be envied, possessed and reclaimed, because it was one which could be made to contribute to the wealth and happiness of all outside of it. Moreover, it was one to which all could contribute, not only of their better material things, but of their better social and moral things. Commerce decided at once that there was a demand for Africa. Politics cried out for its possession. Humanity and Christianity found a new and solemn duty in Africa.

It was not the province of the first traveler and explorer to argue questions which belong to others and to the future. He could state what he saw and felt——how hot the sun was, what the rain-fall, the quantity and nature of the resources. But when he revealed and mapped a new world, and created a desire for its possession and civilization by others, there was no fighting shy of the problems involved in the proposed new destiny. A thousand and one things would come up which had never arisen before. Many of these problems are of minor moment, many momentous. Some involve others, some are sweeping. There is one which overshadows all. Some would ask, “How shall we go about colonizing and civilizing Africa?” This question is the rind of an apple. At the core is another. Can the proposed colonizers and civilizers exist in Africa? After that is determined, we shall know pretty well how to do the rest.

Of all African explorers, Stanley has made this vital question the most conspicuous, because he, almost alone, has coupled pioneering effort with state building and the colonizing and civilizing process. He has been forced to face the climatic situation since it came squarely across his industrial and commercial plans and involved the question of capital, which is far more sensitive and cowardly than even human life.

Stanley’s personal career in Africa, as well as his extensive experience with others, goes far to establish the fact that the white race cannot transfer itself bodily and permanently to tropical African soil, with the hope of survival. The difficulty is not because it is white, but because its customs and environment are at variance with those which perpetuate life and conduce to labor under the Equator.

In the north temperate zone a man may believe himself capable of persistent effort and heroic work. He may think he has intelligence, valor and strength sufficient to sustain him under the greatest privations. But land him in Africa and he is both witless and nerveless. He has never learned the art of living the life that is required there. He is not the same being he was when he started out so hopefully and valorously. He finds he lacks equipment for his new existence, mental, moral and physical. A sacrifice is demanded. It is the sacrifice of an almost perfect transformation, or else the confession of failure must conclude his career.

Stanley’s most melancholy chapters are those which narrate the oozing out of ambitions, the confessions of cowardice, and the shirking away of his white companions, on the discovery that their civilized lives had been no school of preparation for healthful, energetic and useful existence in Equatorial Africa. It was a painful study to note how in the face of tropical realities, the fervid imaginations and exaggerated anticipations which had led them heroically on took flight, leaving them hapless malingerers, hopeless despondents, and unfit for anything but retreat. He had no fault to find where brave men fell through actual physical weakness, but the general fault, the grave, almost unpardonable mistake, was the terrible one of not knowing what they were at home and what they were to be in Africa. He says:——“The influence of the wine or beer, which at the first offset from Europe had acted on their impulses like the effect of quinine on weakened nerves, soon evaporated in a wineless land, and with their general ignorance of adaptation to foreign circumstances, and a steady need of the exhilarating influence of customary stimulants, an unconquerable depression usurped the high-blown courage it inspired, which some called nostalgia (home-sickness) and some hypochondria. Many had also, as they themselves confessed, come out merely to see the great river. Their imaginations had run riot amid herds of destructive elephants, rapacious lions, charging buffaloes, bellowing hippopotami, and repugnant rhinoceri, while the tall lithe-necked giraffe and the graceful zebra occupied the foreground of those most unreal pictures. Their senses had also been fired by the looks of love and admiration cast on them by their sweethearts, as they declared their intention to ‘go out to the Congo regions,’ while many a pleasant hour must have been spent together as they examined the strange equipments, the elephant-rifles, the penetrative ‘Express,’ and described in glowing terms their life in the far off palmy lands watered by the winding Ikelemba or the mighty Congo. Thus they had deluded themselves as well as the International Committee, whose members looked with eyes of commendation as the inspired heroes delivered with bated breath their unalterable resolution to ‘do or die.’

“But death was slow to attack the valorous braves while the doable lay largely extended before them. The latter was always present with its exasperating plainness, its undeniable imperativeness which affronted their ‘susceptibilities,’ and ignored their titles and rights to distinction. The stern every-day reality, the meagre diet and forbidding aspect, humbled their presumption. When they hear that in this land there is neither wine nor beer, as they have known them, nor comfortable cognac to relieve the gnawing, distressful hankering they suffered for their usual beverages, their hearts beat more feebly. They begin to see that those bright African images and beautiful dreams of tropical scenery and excitement are replaced by unknown breadths of woodless regions, exuberant only with tall spear grass and jungly scrub. The hot sun dares them to the trial of forcing a way through such scarcely penetrable growth. Distance and fatigue, seeming to be immense beyond any former conception, masters their resolution; and, alas! and alas! there are no fair maidens with golden hair to admire their noble efforts at doing and dying.

“Conscience, or the prickings of shame, may whisper to a few not quite lost in despondency, that there is brave work to be performed, and that they may experience the colonist’s pleasure of seeing the vegetables, fruit-trees and plants grow instead of that cane-grass and jungle now covering the broad acreage. But some answer, ‘Bah! I did not come to work; I came to hunt, to play, to eat, and to receive a big salary from the Commission.’

“‘Do you feel fatigued? Try some hot tea or coffee.’

“‘What!’ shriek they. ‘Try Congo water! No, thank you; my stomach was made for something better than to become a nest for young crocodiles.’”

In all the foregoing Stanley speaks of the white help that was furnished him for his mission to found the Congo Free State. The help was of a high grade, being composed of men who came recommended to the Commission. They were selected for their valor and skill at home and for their professed willingness to brave African climate and all the dangers of exploration and colonization. They were for the most part educated men and well qualified to engineer roads, build comfortable homes, establish trading and military stations, carry on just commerce and exercise wise government over consenting tribes and contiguous territories. They were young, ambitious men, who had their fames and fortunes to make and to whom failure at home would have been a misfortune and disgrace. Indeed, if one had been going to pick out a body of men for the express purpose of testing the question whether it is possible for the white races to exist and thrive in tropical Africa, establish civilized governments, cultivate the soil, carry on manufactures and commerce, redeem the natives, and introduce institutions such as are found at home, these would have been the men.

But let us see how they fared. Stanley takes one as a sample——he does not fail to make honorable exceptions of those who behaved differently,——and this one perhaps, the loudest professor, at the start, of heroic zeal in his undertaking. He is conducted to the site of a newly established station and endowed with full authority. He is given an army of forty disciplined blacks, and two or three of his own color are left with him as companion and assistants. He is made a rich banker for the surrounding tribes by heaps of cloth bales, bags of beads, and bundles of brass-rods, the bank notes of the country, with full liberty to circulate them to the best advantage. The river at his feet swarms with fish of edible varieties, which he may catch in plenty, if he chooses to imitate the industry and ingenuity of the natives. The surrounding villages are full of fowls, and eggs are plenty. Sheep and goats can always be had, if the slightest attention is paid to their grazing and to their protection against wild beasts. In the west, goat’s milk, and in the centre and east, cow’s milk, can be had with little trouble. The natives, almost everywhere, raise sweet potatoes in abundance and sell them cheaply. Most villages have their fields of cassava, whose root yields a wholesome food, which can be prepared in a variety of agreeable ways. All of the ordinary garden vegetables, as tomatoes, beans, pumpkins, and onions can be grown with easy tillage. In his commissariat are stores of rice, canned vegetables, wheat flour, fish, meats, and soups from Europe, together with tea, coffee, butter, jam, condensed-milk, and in fact everything to tempt a palled palate or a weak stomach. The question of food is therefore settled in such a manner as to require very little exertion or sacrifice to make the supply permanent, varied and wholesome.

What else is required? A strong block house is built, and this is surrounded by a comfortable dwelling, erected after the manner of the neatly thatched huts of the natives, or even after the more approved architecture of civilization, if time permits and the proper materials are at hand. A palaver is called and whites and natives put themselves on political and also commercial equality, with as much of social relationship as suits the tastes of either party. The solemn treaty is approved and promulgated, and the commandant of the station, governor of a province, official of a great state, arbiter of the destiny of tribes, custodian of the welfare of peoples, minister, judge, doctor, commercial agent, the man to whom civilization is looking as founder, teacher and exemplar; this wonderful man, so full of pride and responsibility, so exalted with a sense of duty, so endowed with grand opportunity, is ready for his instructions and commission. His domain is pointed out and the fact is impressed on him that it has been acquired with the sanction of the civilized world and that of the only parties on African soil capable of giving consent. He is left as master and sole arbiter of all questions that may arise, and only asked by the power that institutes him to be just in his dealings with the peoples he is to govern, to extend kindness to those for whom he has been made a protector, to prove that the authority imposed has not been misplaced. He is furnished with a written draft of instructions which is to be his code of laws, his state constitution, his plan for founding and developing his little empire. Could anything be more flattering to one’s ambitions? What greater inducement could one want to exercise every latent energy, to found deeply, build well and rule wisely? Visions of a future state, crowded with obedient, industrious subjects, crowned with wealth and prosperity, shedding lustre on its ruler, proclaiming to the world the success of a first and glorious experiment, ought to stimulate even the most indifferent to sublime endeavor.

But a few months passes, during which the embryo potentate is left to himself. Then along comes Stanley, from an up-river journey, on a tour of inspection. Where he expects to see his block-house and cottages expanded into a substantial village, he witnesses only roofless structures, exposed goods and every evidence of decay. Rank weeds grow where a site had been cleared for a vegetable garden, and the forest is asserting itself on the ground prepared for a banana orchard. Perhaps the natives have been angered, for they hold the capital in a state of siege, the stores are empty and grim famine stalks where plenty should have reigned. Or else, not being bloody-minded, they withhold their help and presence, and leave a trading mart to perish through sheer disinclination to traffic. He who was to have been a ruler is worse off than a subject. Where ambition should have stimulated, indifference prevails. Industry has been lost in idleness. Glory has ended in shame. One word of comment, one look of reproach, brings a resignation and an abandonment, and the once proud adventurer who went out to see and conquer strange worlds, beats a hasty retreat to his comfortable European home to curse his folly and denounce the spirit that sought to sacrifice him. Failure is written between every line of the long story with which he regales his friends as he drops back into his old haunts and resumes the thread of civilized life, once so willingly broken by dreams of glory, wealth and humanitarian good.

It may seem a surprise to the reader that Africa could so disillusion enthusiasts of the character above described. But he has only to follow Stanley along the line of the Congo, from one station to the other, and witness his disappointment on his return journey, to ascertain how frequent the failures were to improve opportunity or make even the slightest show of progress in building and cultivating. Nay more, since nothing could stand still, the signs of retrogression were still more frequent, and ruin marked the spots which he had dedicated to enterprise and prosperity. Why were these men so radically transformed? This is a mighty question. Was it the fault of Africa or of Europe?

Stanley reasons thus: “The conditions of a healthy enjoyment of life in Africa are very little understood by men of this class. It is a difficult thing to impart to them the rudiments of the lesson of life. It is a most thankless task, and the effort to do so is so ungraciously received that I have often been repelled by the visible signs of non-appreciation. Rarely have I been encouraged to proceed by those to whom counsel was addressed. They do not seem to take any interest in what concerns their own health. They duly acknowledge that it is a duty they owe to themselves to be as careful as possible; they are civil with replies and ready with promises of amendment. But they do not practice what they promise, and that active zeal and watchful prudence which would seem to govern one who loves his own life and welfare I rarely see exhibited. The performance appears to be too irksome, and neither their intelligence nor their conscience is provoked to assist them. I remember Frank Pocock, who must (almost as the sound of my voice died away) have been meditating on that step by which he lost his life, and which caused me, for months, a pang of sorrow, each time I thought of his sad end.

“I have observed also that not only in matters of self-preservation is this apathy evident, but that it is present in the every day duty of the expedition, which they are pledged to perform and for which they receive compensation. Any single order they will perform well and creditably, but if I accompany it with the expression of a hope that they will consider it a daily duty, the order becomes at once inoperative and is never observed. I have observed that such an order is too general to be followed; but a particular order will be mechanically obeyed. A promise of promotion, or higher pay, or a display of tender solicitude, creates no impression, and as yet I know of no motive powerful enough to excite a European or West African aborigine to distinguish himself by an assiduous interest in general work. The only people on whom my words created a prolonged impression were the foreign colored employes. Now to what may I attribute this absence of intelligent interest in their work which is characteristic of the European and the west coast native? Is it to the climate? Then why did it not affect all alike? Why did it not affect myself?

“But of all the rabid absurdities I have encountered in the tropics, the preaching of a young fool on the merits of intoxicants, who has heard it from an old fool that there is nothing like whiskey, astonishes me most. Mr. Puffyface, while in a semi-maudlin state, has been heard declaring, in the hearing of a youthful enthusiast, that ‘after fourteen years’ experience with the African fever, despite all that may be said against it, there is nothing like whiskey for curing it,’ For the benefit of after-comers let me prick this bloated bubble. Show me one of those old bloaters on the west coast of Africa and I will show you a sham and delusion. A few hours’ hard work in the interior would lay the lazy lion as low as a dead donkey. Gin and whiskey topers have lived long elsewhere than on the Niger and Congo, but if you meet him on the African coast a glance at his shirt will tell you the whole truth. If it is free from stains of bodily exudation, then he has simply been ‘sojering,’ and it will be difficult to say how long a time must elapse before the liver shows a deadly abscess or becomes indurated. But if you want to do humanity a kindness, trot him out on a ten-mile march through the African wilderness, and note the result.

“On the Congo, where men must work and bodily movement is compulsory, the very atmosphere seems to be fatally hostile to men who pin their faith on whiskey, gin and brandy. They invariably succumb and are a constant source of anxiety and expense. Even if they are not finally buried out of sight and memory, they are so utterly helpless, diseases germinate in them with such frightful rapidity, symptoms of insanity are so frequent, mind-vacancy and semi-paralysis are so common, that they are hurried homeward, lest they draw down a few more curses on Africa which apply only to themselves.

“The evils of brandy and soda in India need only be remembered to prove how pernicious is the suicidal habit of indulgence in alcoholic liquors in hot climates. The west coast of Africa is also too much indebted to the ruin effected by intemperance.

“But it is my belief that the other extreme is unwise. To abstain entirely from drinking wine because intemperance is madness, is not what I inculcate, nor do I even recommend drinking in what is called moderation. I do not advocate ‘liquoring up’ at any time, provided the drinker keeps within the limits of sobriety. I advise no one, in the tropics, to touch liquor during the hours of daylight, unless prescribed by a medical man. Wine, good red or white wine, should be taken only after sunset at dinner. Then it should be watered and taken in moderate quantities, that it may sooth the nerves and conduce to early sleep. After a full night’s rest, one will rise with a clear head and clean tongue, and can as easily do a full day’s work in the tropics as in the temperate latitudes.”

Stanley then goes on to correct misapprehensions about African climate and lay down rules of conduct which, if followed, would go far to insure a healthful condition. He takes a young European adventurer to the Congo, full of health and of the spirit of adventure. As soon as the anchor drops at Banana Point, the young man feels the perspiration exuding till his flannels, comfortable at sea, become almost unendurable. On stepping ashore the warmth increases and the flannels absorb perspiration till they cling to the body and oppress him with their weight. The underclothing is saturated, and he resembles a water-jug covered with woolen cloth. The youth makes an escape from this melting heat of 100° to 115° by going to the veranda of some friendly quarters. Here he does not observe that the temperature is 25° cooler, but mops his brow, fans himself, lolls in his easy chair, and sighs at the oppressiveness. Presently some one recommends the reviving quality of wine. Anything to lift him out of the condition he is in! One drink gives him freshness and courage. Another reconciles him to the strange situation. A third produces conviviality, and then, in the midst of story-telling companions, who spin rare old yarns of coast fevers, elephant adventures, crocodile attacks, hippo-escapades, “nigger” sensations, evening draws on. There is dinner and more wine. Then comes the veranda again. It is now cool, delicious, inviting. He has forgotten his damp clothing. Bed-time comes. He retires to toss till morning, or to sleep in the midst of horrid dreams. When he rises, he is unwell. His tongue is furred and a strange lassitude pervades his body. Nausea sets in. In a few hours his face is flushed, his eyes water, his pulse runs high. The doctor is called, and he pronounces it a case of African fever. He is given a kind native nurse. The battle of sickness is fought to an end. Death may ensue, but the chances are always in favor of recovery, though convalescence is slow.

Of a score who have witnessed this sight, each will have a theory. One will say, “What a pity he left his mother!” Another, “It must have been some organic weakness.” Another, “It was hereditary.” Another will cry out, “One more African victim!” The last one, and he as if in doubt and in an undertone, may venture to surmise that too much Portuguese wine may have been at the bottom of it——which is as bad as brandy.

The truth of the matter is, ignorance was at the bottom of it all. The young man may not have thought he was sitting in a cool night air, according to his European notions of temperature, but an evening in Africa, or a draught of air, presents as dangerous a contrast with midday heat, or as insidious a cause for congestion, as in any other country. Stanley suffered with 120 attacks of fever, great and slight, and endured fully 100 of them before he began to suspect that other causes existed for them besides malaria and miasma, or that he had within himself a better preventive than quinine. His observations, directed toward the last to this one point, utterly astounded him with the fact that the most sickness might have been witnessed at those stations which were not surrounded by putrifying vegetation, but had been selected so as to secure the highest degree of health. Old Vivi is one of these spots, situated on a rocky platform, with steep drainage, and with the majestic river dashing off between the slopes of high mountains for a distance of forty miles. Yet Old Vivi is, with the exception of Manyanga, the sickliest spot in all the Congo Free State, according to his observations. If all preconceived notions of health had been correct, Old Vivi should be the healthiest spot on the Congo, certainly far more so than scores of the Upper Congo stations, situated within ten feet of the water’s edge and surrounded by hundreds of square miles of flat, black loam covered with dense, damp forests. Yet to dispatch the fever-stricken and emaciated sojourners of Old Vivi, Manyanga or Leopoldville to some one of these upper, isolated and shaded stations, proved to be like sending them to a sanitarium in the pine-woods or by the sea shore. The change is simply astounding. The patient takes on flesh, grows ruddy, healthful, pliant and hopeful.

Stanley had much anxiety about the station at Kinshassa, because it was so low-lying, though in every other way convenient. But, strange to say, one of his commandants who was always feverish at Vivi, Manyanga and Leopoldville, escaped without an attack of fever, or any other indisposition, for eighteen months, when stationed at Kinshassa. He was equally anxious about Equator Station, situated as it was directly under the Equator. But the commandants all praise the climate as capital, with plenty of native products at hand, and no need of anything foreign except a little tea and coffee. Of the 29 Europeans in the service of the Congo Free State above Leopoldville, all served their three year term of service except two who were drowned, one who died of sickness and one who resigned on account of severe illness. The inference from these facts is that the nearer the coast the stations are and the more accessible they are by steamers, the better the facilities are for stores of whiskey, brandy and wines, whose free use is an invitation to African sickness. Also, that the further inland one goes the more experience he acquires as to the means of preserving health. Every day’s march inland is a species of acclimatization and a removal from temptation. It is a putting off of ignorance and a putting on of knowledge. Again, the farther up the Congo one goes the more he is freed from the draughts which haunt the cañons of the lower streams. While Vivi is an ideal spot so far as every visible hygienic consideration goes, it is at the top of an immense funnel with its wide end toward the sea, and the sea breezes sweep up the channel with cumulative vigor, producing a difference of temperature between day and night, or shade and sunshine, which is fatal to the overheated toiler. And the same may be said of Manyanga and Leopoldville. But the wide, lacustrine stretches of Stanley Pool dissipate this deadly draught and equalize the day and night and sunshine and shade temperatures. Thus inner Central Africa becomes even healthier than the coast rind, as it were by natural laws. From which arises the strange anomaly that at the Equator it is not African heat a foreigner need dread so much as African cold.

Yet no precaution against the oppressive heat must be neglected. And this precaution must become a law of life. It must not be spasmodic and remitting, but must be daily and hourly, in fact must be persisted in till the whole habit conforms to the environment, just as at home amid civilization. Captain Benton, after his visit to the Congo, proclaimed beef and beer as the true fortifying agents against the climate. Stanley says nay. Beef, he admits to be all right, in the sense of good, nourishing food. But, not beef alone, so much as that wholesome variety found in well cooked beef, mutton, game, fish and fowl, intermixed with potatoes, turnips, cabbages, beets, carrots, bread, butter, tea and coffee. Beers of civilization are too bilious for Africa, and the distilled spirits are fatally stimulating, leading up to a false courage which may tempt one to too much effort or to dangerous exposure to the sun’s rays. The Duke of Wellington’s health receipt for India is equally good in Africa: “I know of but one receipt for good health in this country, and that is to live moderately, drink little or no wine, use exercise, keep the mind employed, keep in a good humor with the world. The last is the most difficult, for I have often observed, there is scarcely a good-tempered man in India.”

Moderation is the key to health in central Africa. It must be moderation in action, food and drink. Yet there must be engagement of body and mind, great good humor, contentment with surroundings. A lesson in these respects might be learned from the natives. It is often and truthfully said, that they are the happiest and freest from care of any people on the face of the globe. “Take no thought of the morrow, for ye know not what a day may bring forth,” is the gospel of health among Africans. Prodigal nature helps them to a philosophy, which we may call shiftless ease, happy-go-lucky-effort, or go-as-you-please contentment, but it, nevertheless, is only a crude modification of our more deliberately framed and higher sounding hygienic codes for the preservation of health when we are in their land and subject to their climate and conditions of living and working.

Stanley exemplifies the effect of African cold in another way. In ascending the Congo in his steamers, the entire party enjoyed excellent health, notwithstanding the confinement to the stream and the almost continuous passage through reedy islands and along low, swampy shores. But on the descent, the swifter passage of the boats in the face of the prevailing west winds, and river draughts, produced a chill, during moments of inaction, which prostrated many of the crew, and resulted in serious cases of sickness. Anywhere under shelter, the body continued to perspire insensibly, but the moment it was struck by the wind, there resulted a condition which invariably ended in low fever.

For the ill-health due to African cold, especially where the situation is like that at Vivi, the rainy season is a corrective, because then the cold winds cease and the temperature is uniform. But at the same time, the rainy season is the prelude to sickness in the lower and better protected situations. The Livingstone Congo Mission at Manteka is in a snug nest between high hills, entirely cut off from winds, and surrounded by beautiful gardens of bananas and papaws. Ordinarily it is a healthful spot, and ought to be so always, if freedom from exposure is a law of health. But after the rainy season it is unhealthy. A peculiarly clear atmosphere and a correspondingly hot sun follow the African rains. These cause rapid earth exhalations which rise up around the body like a cloud, and soon deluge the person with perspiration. These exhalations bear the odors of decaying vegetation and become as pernicious as the effluvia from a dung-heap, unless resort is had to the heat of stoves or fire-places to counteract their deadly effects. Due care in this respect is all that is required to insure immunity from sickness caused by these evaporations.

Even the plateaus are not exempt from fevers. But they for the most part are covered with long grass. Vegetation so luxuriant, falling and decaying, constantly fermenting and fertilizing, would be a source of sickness anywhere. When once they are cleared and planted to corn, wheat or vegetables, this source of sickness will disappear. A well ventilated home, in the midst of a cleared and cultivated plateau, is as healthful in Africa as in any other part of the world. The lessons of health taught daily by the natives ought to be a constant study for foreigners. They fight entirely shy of the cañons of the Congo, whereas at Stanley Pool there is an army of ivory-traders. Then the immediate banks of the river are comparatively deserted, except where the spaces are open. The gorges, and deep valleys of tributaries, are by no means favorite dwelling places, though they are too often the sites of mission-houses and trading posts. The fetishes of the natives could not prevail against disease in the hollows and shaded nooks of their land, nor can the drugs of the white races. The native seeks a cleared space, open to sunshine, elevated so as to insure circulation of air, and for the most part, he looks down on the less favorable abodes of the foreigner.

Stanley summarizes the causes of ill-health in Africa, and arranges them in the order of effectiveness. He gives as the most serious (1) cold draughts. (2) Malarious hollows. (3) Intemperate living. (4) Lack of nourishing food. (5) Physical weakness, indolence of mind and body, general fool-hardiness. One source of encouragement became manifest as years rolled by, and that was the constant diminution of illness among the officials of the Congo Free State. This was in some degree due to the doctrine of “survival of the fittest,” looked upon from a constitutional standpoint, but in the main to the willingness of the survivors to learn, and their learning consisted in putting away the habits they had formed abroad and the assumption of those which fitted their new estate.

Owing to the formation of the African continent, with its fringe of low land and its miles of slope up to the central plateau, the prevailing winds sweep inland from the ocean, over the pestilential lowlands, bearing the seeds of disease. This meteorological law must be met by the inland dwellers, in order to secure immunity from disease. And it can be met very readily, as experience proves, by the planting of tree barriers on the ocean side of residences and plantations.

Stanley’s observations thus far relate to the climatology of central Africa as affecting the health of the white resident. He next discusses the question of tropical heat as it affects the effort of the white races. The intensity of the Congo heat is by no means such as the casual reader would suspect. An average of the highest temperatures in the year gives a mean of only 90°, while that of the lowest gives a mean of 67°. Clad in suitable clothes a European or American can do as much work in a day in Africa as at home, provided he works under an awning or roof. In the sun, the temperature is, of a clear day, as much as 115°, which would be fatal to one standing still. The ill-effects of such a heat are seldom apparent on a march, though for the comfort of all concerned Stanley usually limited his marching hours to from 6 A.M. to 11 A.M., thus giving ample time to prepare evening camps and to rest, feed and recuperate.

In tropical Africa there is manifest coolness for three months of the year. During the other nine months there is so much cloud and such an abundance of tempering breezes, as to prevent that intense heat which one would expect under the Equator or within the tropics. The nights are seldom oppressive, and though in temperate latitudes one might not feel the need of a blanket, such an article becomes an indispensable luxury in Africa.

At any point where facilities offer, as at a factory, trading station or mission, there is no need of exposure to the sun during work hours. Awnings are, or should be, a part of the equipment of every white African sojourner, but if these are wanting the trees are plenty, and their gracious shade will answer as a substitute. Few craftsmen in any country are compelled to work without cover, and it requires but an extension of the rule to make labor safe in Africa.

Exercise of any kind in Africa induces copious perspiration, and it should never be forgotten that between a state of action in the sun, or even under cover, and a state of rest in the shade, means a difference in temperature equal to 25°. This is a sure cause of congestion and other bodily derangements. It is the one invariable climatic law in Africa, and is wholly different from that at Para, where the variations are only 9°, thus insuring immunity from all diseases which have a cause in sudden or radical changes of temperature. Climatic inequality is deadlier in Equatorial Africa than its malaria. Yet it can be guarded against, and that too by the simplest precautions.

The early explorers, pioneers and commercial agents in Africa, especially on the west coast, were ignorant of the foregoing facts. Hence so many of them lost their lives needlessly. Hence the terrible stories borne home of the deadly effect of African heat and climate. They had never studied the law of adaptation, and instead of helping to solve the problem of white occupancy they only contributed to its defeat. In the wiser experience of Stanley a secret has been brought forth which, in its bearing upon the future of the country, is not even surpassed in importance by the opening of the Congo itself.

Tropical food is of as much moment to a foreigner as climate. It is clear that alcoholic stimulants are dangerous. Tea has a depressing tendency and the same may be said of coffee, though both are grateful, for a time at least. Cocoa tends to biliousness. Milk is hard to obtain on the west coast, though it may be had in the cattle producing sections of the centre and east. Soup implies fresh meat, and is therefore limited to the broth of the goat, sheep or chicken, unless it come in canned shape. Palm-wine, except when fresh, injures the kidneys and stomach. All taste is soon lost for the canned goods of civilization. Flour, rice and the native fruits and vegetables are wholesome standards.

Stanley’s code of health for the white sojourner in Africa would be as follows:——

Never build a house, factory or mission in a ravine or valley which may serve as a wind channel. Air must diffuse itself generally and gently. Points near the sea, plateaus and open plains are the safest localities for homes. All lower stories should be clear of the ground. In grassy sections the first floor should be elevated to the height of a second story.

Avoid all unnecessary exposure to the sun.

Guard against fogs, dews, exhalations, and night chills, by kindling fires.

Preserve a generous diet, avoiding oily and fatty foods.

Meats should not be eaten in large quantities at breakfast.

Take an early dinner, say at 11 o’clock, and let it be of meats, fish and vegetables. Cease work till 1 P.M.

Quit work at 6 P.M., and eat a second dinner, boiled fish, roast fowl or mutton, with plenty of vegetables. A glass of watered wine will not hurt then.

Seek amusement in social conversation, reading or games, till 9 P.M., and then retire.

Sleep on blankets, and cover with a blanket.

If marching, rise at 5 A.M., march at 6, and halt for the day at 11 A.M. When halted, seek shelter and put on a heavier coat.

Observe the strictest temperance. Don’t indulge in tonics or nostrums. A little quinine is the safest tonic. If thirsty drop an acid powder in your drinking water, or take a sip of cold tea.

Use an umbrella when in the sun. The best head dress is a cork helmet, or Congo cap.

If in a perspiration when wetted by rain or at a river crossing, change your dress immediately.

Go on a march in very light clothing, and let it be of flannel, with light russet shoes for the feet.

When permanently stationed, wear light clothing in order to avoid excessive perspiration when called on for sudden duty.

Don’t fail to exercise freely. Have certain hours for it, morning and evening, if your work is in doors.

Do not bathe in cold water, especially after you are in the country for a time. Water below 85° in temperature is dangerous.

Tropical fruits should be eaten only at breakfast.

Medicines specially prepared for tropical diseases can always be had of European druggists, and a supply should be on hand.

The diseases of central Africa are simple, consisting of dysentery and three kinds of fever, ague, remittent, and bilious.

Common ague is never fatal. It may be prevented, if one observes the symptoms.

The remittent fever is simply aggravated ague, it may last for several days.

The bilious fever is often pernicious. Its severity depends on the habits of the patient, the amount of exposure which produced it, and the strength of the constitution. It is preventable, but not by brandy or excessive smoking, as many foolish people think.

Dr. Martin, in his work on the “Influences of Tropical Climates,” also lays down a code which is both interesting and valuable.

1. Care in diet, clothing and exercise are more essential for the preservation of health than medical treatment.

2. The real way to escape disease is by observing strict temperance, and to moderate the heat by all possible means.

3. After heat has morbifically predisposed the body, the sudden influence of cold has the most baneful effect on the human frame.

4. The great physiological rule for preserving health in hot climates is to keep the body cool. Common sense points out the propriety of avoiding heating drinks.

5. The cold bath is death in the collapse which follows any great fatigue of body or mind.

6. Licentious indulgence is far more dangerous and destructive than in Europe.

7. A large amount of animal food, instead of giving strength, heats the blood, renders the system feverish, and consequently weakens the whole body.

8. Bread is one of the best articles of diet. Rice and split vetches are wholesome and nutritious. Vegetables are essential to good health, as carrots, turnips, onions, native greens, etc.

9. Fruit, when sound and ripe, is beneficial rather than hurtful.

10. The same amount of stimulant undiluted, is much more injurious than when mixed with water.

11. With ordinary precaution and attention to the common laws of hygiene, Europeans may live as long in the tropics as anywhere else.

Stanley’s final observation on the existence of the white race in Africa does not smack of the confidence he has thus far striven to inspire. Yet it does not suggest an impossibility, nor anything difficult to carry out, since the continent is so contiguous to Europe. He recommends a change of scene to the African denizen for at least three months in a year, because the constant high temperature assisted by the monotony and poverty of diet, is enervating and depressing. The physical system becomes debilitated by the heat, necessitating after a few years such recuperation as can be found only in temperate latitudes. Even with persons who retain health, this enervating feeling begins to dawn at the end of eighteen mouths; hence traders, missionaries, planters and agriculturists, who hope to keep up buoyancy of spirit and such a condition of body as will resist the climate through a lifetime, should seek the periodical relaxation to be found in trips to higher latitudes.

While this may not be giving his whole case away, or indeed suggesting nothing more than such change of scene as our own physicians recommend to overtaxed business men, it, nevertheless, brings up the ultimate question of natural and permanent fitness. Suppose that all fear of African climate is eliminated from the mind of the white man. Suppose it is settled that he can survive there to a good old age, by using the precautions herein laid down. Will any traveler, climatologist or ethnologist arise and tell us that the white man can escape physical degeneracy in the tropics? As his African offspring come and go for a few generations, will there not be a gradual loss of the hardihood which temperate climates encourage, and a gradual growth of that languor and effeminacy which equatorial climates engender? The presence of the white races in Africa can neither reverse the laws of their existence and growth, nor the laws which God has given to a tropical realm. Living nature, including man, is simply obedience to an environment. We agree to this in the vegetable world. The oak of our forest is the puny lichen of the arctic regions. The palm of the tropics withers before northern frost. Reverse the order, and the lichen dries up beneath a tropical sun. The oak finds nothing congenial in African soil. As to the lower animals, it is the same. Stanley found both mule and donkey power ineffective on the Congo. Livingstone’s mules were bitten by the tsetse fly on Nyassa and died a miserable death from ulcers. The horse dwindles away within the tropics. The camel fared no better than the mule with Livingstone, though the Arab may be said to have conquered the Great Sahara with it, and Col. Baker used it to overcome Nile distances which defied his boats. Even the native and trained buffalo was a failure with Livingstone when he attempted to make it a beast of burden through Nyassaland and into the Upper Congo section, notwithstanding the fact that it had been invaluable to him below the tropics, and in the form of the native ox is in daily use as a beast of burden and travel in the Kalihari regions. So take the elephant, lion, leopard, hippopotamus, alligator, soko, monkey, the birds, the fishes, and transport them north; how quickly they cease to propagate, and in the end perish! Thus far living nature seems to obey the immutable law of environment. It is equally so with the higher animal life which we find in man. The negroes, who were torn from their native soil by the cruel hand of slavery, could not be transplanted with success in latitudes remote from the tropics. It cannot yet be proved that the white races will deteriorate and grow effeminate in tropical Africa, but as to other tropical countries it is established that white energy is gradually lost in effeminacy wherever it persists in the unnatural attempt to face the eternal blaze of the equatorial sun.

It is well to study these things amid the glowing imagery of African vegetation, soil and resource, the unseemly scamper of the nations for African possessions, the enthusiasm over Christian conquest and heathen redemption. The real transforming power of the continent may not be at all in white occupancy; it cannot be, if such occupancy means white degeneracy, or such a sacrifice as the situation does not warrant. But it may lie, more wholly than any one living suspects, in the natives themselves, assisted and encouraged by the leaven of civilization, gradually introduced. They are there naturally and for a purpose. God will not alter his laws, and man cannot, brave as the latter may be, fond as he may be of possession and power, lustful as he may be of wealth, boastful as he may be of his civilization, proud as he may be of his humanitarianism, desirous as he may be to convert and Christianize. Africa means 200,000,000 of people, backed by a peculiar climate, fortified by an environment which is as old as the beginning of things. Let the civilization which is foreign to it all beware how it strikes it, lest, in the end, the effort prove a sad confession of failure. The good which is to come out of African elevation should be reciprocal. It is not good if it presupposes white occupancy followed by white degeneracy.

Centuries ago the brave, enthusiastic Saracen, propagandist of a faith, warrior for the sake of Mohammed, left his Arabian home and went forth into pagan Africa on a mission of conquest and conversion. Granting that Egypt, the Barbary States and the Oases of the Sahara are better off to-day than they were when they first caught sight of the victorious banners of the crescent, which is admitting all the truth will allow, how much superior to the chivalrous Saracen is the bigoted Mahdi, his depraved Soudan follower, or the Arab slave stealer, who is ubiquitous in east-central Africa to-day? There is a wonderful, a sad, descent from the Saracen conqueror to a benighted Mahdist. The contrast between a chief of Arabian troopers and such a chief as Tippoo Tib is enough to show degeneracy of the most ultra type. The brave, fiery Saracen, sweeping along the coasts and through the deserts, was a being infinitely superior to anything he came in contact with. His progeny, after centuries of acclimatization and intercourse with the native populations, is a lazy, inferior being, a curse to his surroundings, not half such a man as the native whom he plunders and carries off as human booty. He has failed to lift Africa to the height of a Mohammedan civilization, and has descended to a level even lower than the paganism with which he came in contact. Do not forget that in many respects he had adaptation superior to that any European or American can claim. He was contiguous to Africa. He had been reared under a burning sun. His color was dark. His heath was sandy like the sands of Egypt and Sahara. His ship was the camel which became the courser of the African wastes and by means of which he could connect the Nile bends more swiftly than we can do to-day with steamers. He had all the enthusiasm and persistency of a Christian missionary, all the ardor of an English merchant, all the vigor of a civilized pioneer, all the desire for possession of a monarchical potentate. Yet he degenerated into a thief of men and a murderer of innocence. The least respected, the crudest and most useless man on the face of the globe to-day is an Arab slave catcher. The chivalry of his fathers has no place in his bosom. The industry and the sense of beauty and refinement which the Moor carried northward into Spain were utterly lost in the swing toward the tropics. The Allah and Koran of Mecca are profane mummery in the Soudan, at Zanzibar, and on the banks of Tanganyika. It is not necessary to inquire what inherent causes helped to contribute to this deplorable result. We know that vital defects existed in the Mohammedan system, and that these defects were in part to blame. The only inquiry we make is, how much of that result was due to the African climate, the impact with tropical peoples and customs, the equatorial environment? For some cause, or better still, for all causes combined, the last end of the Arab in Africa is worse than the first.

If we study the impact on Africa of the Christian civilization of Portugal and even that of England, in its earlier stages, the result is not encouraging. The ruins of both trading and mission posts are sad witnesses of a misunderstanding of the true situation, or else monuments of a surrender to climatic difficulties which had not been anticipated. Our civilization was called off from a mad chase after the impossible, and it required years, even centuries, of consideration, before it dared a second attempt. In the meantime it learned much and in various ways. Inert, supine Portugal taught valuable lessons by her very incapacity. Patient Holland gave a valuable object lesson by peaceable conquests and her amalgamation with the South African peoples. All-conquering, commercial and Christian England afterwards came along to gather the harvests which others had sowed, yet to prove that something valuable in the shape of permanent colonization could be effected south of the tropics, and with mutual advantage. The pioneering spirit broke out as it had never done before, and out of it came lesson after lesson, of which certainly none were more valuable than those furnished by Stanley’s brave experiences.

Whatever may be the future of the white race in Africa, it is certain that, just now, no consideration of climate, distance or inaccessibility, weighs to cool the enthusiasm of Christianity as it marches to a conquest of heathenism in equatorial wilds. It is face to face with all the problems above stated and may be the means of solving many of them favorably. It deserves a better fate than any that has hitherto befallen it. But the fate of all former outbursts and experiments should prove a standing warning. Missionaries are only men. The cause of God, as well as that of commerce, agriculture, science and art, may be best subserved by using God’s natural forces and observing his immutable laws.

In a political sense, the mission of the white races in Africa has ever been a failure, and there is little transpiring at this hour, except the small beginnings of order and independence in the Congo Free State, but what is ominous of confusion and defeat. Greed for African possessions, jealousy of one another’s territorial thefts, threatened wars on account of undefined boundaries, petty usurpations of authority, these render unseemly the scramble for African acres, and bode no good to native Africans, whose allegiance is thereby rendered doubtful, whose fears are constantly at fever heat, who become as ready to train their spears and rush forth in battle array against one side or the other, as they are when their villages and gardens are invaded by neighboring tribes or marauding Arabs. They make colonization a farce, and reduce white dominancy to the level of cruel interference. The cold-blooded effrontery of this deliberate theft and partition of a continent, in a political sense, has nothing in morals to recommend it at any rate. There is nothing at the bottom of it except the aggrandizement of the Powers who commit the theft. Selfishness is the motive, however it may be glossed by the plea of a superior civilization. It regards no native rights, consults no native good, but in obedience to a spirit of tyranny and greed walks incontinently into the lands of a weak and helpless race, and appropriates them in true free-booting style, hoists its flag, and says to all comers, “Avaunt, this is mine!”

The almost hopeless entanglement of foreign Powers in Africa to-day may be seen from a glance at the following “political sections” on the west, or Atlantic coast:

Spain Claims Morocco. France “ Morocco. Spain “ Opposite the Canaries. France “ French Senegambia. Britain “ British Senegambia. Portugal “ Portuguese Senegambia. Britain “ Sierra Leone. Liberia “ A Republic. France “ The Gold Coast. England “ The Gold Coast. France “ Dahomey. England “ Niger. Germany “ Cameroons. France “ French Congo. Portugal “ Portuguese Congo. International Commission Portuguese The Congo Free State. Portugal “ Angola. Portugal “ Benguela. Germany “ Angra Pequena. England “ Walvisch Bay. Germany “ Orange River. England “ Cape of Good Hope.

Some of these claims are old, some new; some are confirmed, some vapid; some are direct political claims, some indirect, as where a protectorate only exists, and the real power is vested in a trading company, as in the British West African Company, with powers to occupy and develop the Niger country.

Passing to the east coast of Africa we find the entanglement still worse. There are pretty well defined ownerships beyond the Trans-vaal, then comes Portugal’s general claim of the Zambesi, Mozambique and Delagoa Bay, interfered with and overlapped by England and Germany. North of this, the Sultan of Zanzibar, who claimed sovereignty indefinitely north, south and west, has been cramped into a few island spaces along the coast, and graciously permitted to retain the Island of Zanzibar, because no person can live on it except Arabs and natives. Germany extends a protectorate and the country back of Zanzibar, and inland indefinitely, though England is by her side with a similar claim, and taking care that such protectorate shall be as nominal as possible and shall not interfere with her claims upon the lake sections. Italy claims all between the German possessions and Abyssinia and has even invaded that State. These claims are made under the veneering of trading companies, whose acquired rights, vague as they may be, the parent country is bound to back up. Not one of them have well defined metes and bounds for operations. All are confused and confusing, and liable to provoke misunderstanding and blood-shed at any moment, and the consequent disgrace of our boasted civilization, in the eyes of all simple minded Africans at least.

As a sample of the latest methods of land acquisition in Africa, and the consequences, one has but to study the recent bout between England and Portugal. The latter country claims the Delagoa Bay section, Mozambique and the Zambesi, indefinitely inland, and this though her rule has been limited to two or three isolated spots. On the Zambesi she established two or three trading and missionary stations which were used for a long time, but gradually fell into disuse. There is no dispute about her claims to the Zambesi section, though the Zulus south of the river do not recognize allegiance to her. The Zambesi, to a point five miles above the mouth of the Shiré, was declared a free river by the Berlin conference, so that there can be no dispute about that. So, there is no disposition to interfere with her claims to Mozambique or Delagoa, except as to their western boundary. To permit her to extend her claim to these territories westward till they met the boundaries of the Congo Free State, would be to give her possession of the Shiré River, Lake Shirwah and Lake Nyassa. Now starting at the Ruo affluent of the Shiré, England claims the entire Nyassa section, both by right of discovery——Livingstone discovered the lake——and occupation. Its non-native people are British subjects. She may not have taken the precaution to acquire rights of the natives by treaties, but neither has Portugal. Portugal never expanded, so to speak, beyond the coast on the line of the Zambesi, never did anything for the natives, and is charged with conniving with the slave trade. On the contrary, the established church of Scotland has many missionaries, teachers and agents in the Shiré Highlands. The Free Church of Scotland has several missionaries, teachers and artisans on Lake Nyassa. The Universities Mission has a steamer on the lake and several missionary agents. The African Lakes Company, chartered in England, has steamers on the Shiré river and Lake Nyassa, with twelve trading stations, manned by twenty-five agents. British capital invested in Nyassaland will equal $1,000,000. In his “Title Deeds to Nyassaland,” Rev. Horace Waller says: “Dotted here and there, from the mangrove swamps of the Kongone mouth of the Zambesi to the farthest extremity of Lake Nyassa, we pass the graves of naval officers, of brave ladies, of a missionary bishop, of clergymen, of foreign representatives, doctors, scientific men, engineers and mechanics. All these were our countrymen. They lie in glorious graves. Their careers have been foundation stones, and already the edifice rises. British mission stations are working at high pressure on the Shiré Highlands and upon the shores of Nyassa. Numbers of native Christians owe their knowledge of the common faith to their efforts. Scores of future chiefs are being instructed in schools spread over hundreds of miles. Commerce is developing by sure and steady steps. A vigorous company is showing to the tribes and nations that there are more valuable commodities in their country than their sons and daughters.”

In view of all these things, and perhaps spurred to activity by them, Portugal, following the fashion of England, organized a South African Company with the intention of consolidating her African possessions, by operating from the east coast, with a base at Delagoa Bay, Mozambique and the mouth of the Zambesi. The announcement, lately made, that Mapoonda, chief of the natives in the Shiré River District——the Shiré River flows into the Zambesi from the north, and is the outlet of Lake Nyassa——had accepted Portuguese sovereignty, was a distinctive victory for the Portuguese in their contest with the British for the control of that section of the Dark Continent. In July, 1889, Mr. H. H. Johnston, an experienced African traveller and naturalist, and British consul at Mozambique, took passage with several British naval officers on a gunboat, which went up the Chinde mouth of the Zambesi and entered the Shiré river. At a point 100 miles north of its mouth, where the Ruo enters the Shiré, Consul Johnston on the 12th of August “performed the significant act of hoisting the British flag at the Ruo station, henceforth marking the limit of Portuguese authority.” This was intended to close Portugal out of Lake Nyassa, the extreme southern point of which is 150 miles north of Ruo. By securing Mapoonda, however, Portugal took actual possession of the territory immediately to the south of Lake Nyassa. The English expedition in going up the river passed Major Serpa Pinto, the Portuguese leader, with a force of about 700 Zulus under his command. Serpa Pinto was on his way to take possession of Nyassaland. Consul Johnston protested, and assured him that, if he persisted in his purpose, he would bring about a rupture between Portugal and England. Serpa Pinto finally promised to turn back, but as soon as Consul Johnston had moved forward the Portuguese commander resumed his march to Lake Nyassa, and when he reached Mapoonda, which commands the southern entrance to the lake, threw up fortifications there and began preparations for a battle with the neighboring Makololo, in which the latter were routed with great slaughter. This battle appears to have been decisive, and to have led the native chiefs to transfer their nominal allegiance from the British to the Portuguese with alarming rapidity. By securing Mapoonda as an ally, the Portuguese cut off England’s communications with Lake Nyassa via the Zambesi and Shiré rivers, and precipitated the crisis which was threatened by the recent Portuguese proclamation which assumed to annex the whole Zambesi region.

This controversy which has already ended in the defeat of Portuguese designs, and which could have ended in no other way, because England is the stronger and more rapacious power, brings into play all the old arguments respecting colonial ambitions and enterprises. It will be remembered that for nearly two hundred years after the discovery of America, the European powers were a unit over the doctrine that first discovery gave a title to the discoverer. But when Great Britain awoke to the fact that this doctrine, if rigidly applied, would virtually dispossess her of American soil, notwithstanding the additional fact that she was proving to be the best permanent colonizer in Europe, she originated the new doctrine that actual possession of and settlement in a newly discovered country created a higher title than that of first discovery. This was a safe doctrine to adopt respecting America, for even then the English grip was now so strong as to be unshakable, and it was equally safe as to any other British claim, for the ocean supremacy of France, Spain and Portugal, her real rivals, was on the wane and hers was on the increase.

So now, notwithstanding the claim of Portugal to her territory on both the African coasts, by right of discovery, England does not hesitate to enter the Nyassa and Shiré region, hoist her flag and claim the rights of sovereignty, on the ground that she is the first permanent occupant. The fact that she has tangible interests to protect——invested property, missions etc., serves to strengthen her attitude with other European powers. But aside from this she does not intend to let Portugal establish a permanent possession clear across Africa from the Atlantic, at Angola and Benguella, to the mouth of the Zambesi. Such a possession would simply cut the continent in two, and erect a barrier on the east coast to that union of the British African possessions which her foreign diplomacy designs. Moreover, it is fully settled in the mind of Great Britain that the Nile water-way and its extensions through Lakes Albert and Edward Nyanza, Tanganyika, Nyassa, and the Shiré and Zambesi rivers, are hers, even if force has to be applied to make them actually hers.

But it must be said on behalf of Portugal, that she is not resting her rights on the ancient fiction of discovery alone. Her occupancy of the Zambesi region has, of late, become quite distinct and her vested rights have assumed impressive proportions. The management of her affairs are in the hands of Major Alberto da Rocha Serpa Pinto, whose exertions have greatly strengthened the Portuguese claims. His achievements in the way of African exploration give him high rank as a traveler, explorer, scientist and organizer. He was born in 1845 and educated for the Portuguese military service. In 1869 he first went to Africa, where he took part in the campaign against the rebellious chief Bonga, in the region of the Zambesi. He acquitted himself with distinction on the field of battle, and acquired wide repute as an explorer, by ascending the river as far as the Victoria Falls, making many important discoveries on the way, and crossing the African continent from one side to the other.

Upon his return to Portugal, Serpa Pinto was received personally by the King, who was first to greet him when entering the harbor; Lisbon and Oporto were brilliantly illuminated in his honor, and he received many honors and marks of distinction from the sovereign and public bodies.

In November, 1877, Serpa Pinto was again sent to Africa by the Portuguese Government and the Lisbon Geographical Society in conjunction. He organized a force of fourteen soldiers and fifty-seven carriers, and, starting from Benguella, he penetrated to the interior, traversing the districts of Dombe, Guillenguez, and Caconda, reaching Bihé in March of the following year. He was finally laid low with fever and carried by his faithful followers to the coast. Two of his subordinates, Brito Capello and Ivens, who have since become eminent as explorers, left the expedition in the interior, journeying to the northward to explore the river Quanza, while Serpa Pinto went to the eastward. On his return to Lisbon he was received with evidences of great esteem by the King, and was the object of popular adulation in all quarters. He described the sources of four great rivers heretofore unknown. His discovery of the river Coando, navigable for 600 miles and flowing into the Zambesi, alone placed Major Pinto in the rank of the great African explorers. After remaining in Portugal a few years, Serpa Pinto again returned to Africa, where he has since remained. In 1884, he made another extended journey of exploration, the results of which fully entitled him to the title of the Portuguese Stanley.

Following his discoveries the Portuguese have built a short railroad inland from Delagoa, and have established a system of steam navigation on the Zambesi and Shiré rivers, and opened a large and prosperous trading establishment. The activity recently displayed by the British in southeast Africa has led them to push forward their advantages and seize everything they can lay their hands on while the opportunity offers.

Commenting on this situation the London Times calls it “Major Serpa Pinto’s gross outrage on humanity and intolerable affront to England,” to which an American paper very appropriately replies:——

“Nothing would suit the English better than to have some excuse for wrenching away from little Portugal her possessions on the Dark Continent. England has played the cuckoo so many times with impunity that now it is believed a quickened public conscience will call a halt.

“The merits of this particular case will hardly exert much influence in determining the fate of Portugal in Africa. Left to themselves, England would dispossess Portugal in the twinkling of an eye, for if Turkey is the sick man of Eastern Europe, Portugal is the national personification of senility in the West. Four or five hundred years ago it was the foremost nation of Europe in point of commercial enterprise. The ships of Portugal were the most adventuresome of any that ploughed the ocean. As long ago as 1419 a bold Portuguese tar, Zarco, skirted along Western Africa, far below the Equator, and later, Vasco de Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope. Like Columbus, he sought the most direct route to India, and what the Genoese missed he found. The country which England is now impatiently eager to steal from Portugal is a part of the reward of that enterprise which revolutionized Oriental trade, and was second in importance to the world only to the discovery of America. It was as if both sought a silver mine, and the one who failed to find what they were after came upon a gold mine. Portugal may not have made very much use of her discovery for herself and her people, but mankind has been immeasurably benefited, and England incalculably enriched. For the latter to now turn around and rob Portugal of her African possessions, in whole or in part, would be poetic injustice. It would be the old fable over again of the farmer who warmed a snake in his bosom only to be bitten by it.”

MISSIONARY WORK IN AFRICA.

It is not alone as a commercial, scientific and political field that Africa attracts attention. No country presents stronger claims on the attention of Christian philanthropists. The Arabs entered Africa as propagandists of Islamism. The Portuguese advent was signalized by the founding of Catholic missions. When they arrived off the mouth of the Congo, in 1490, the native king, “seated on a chair of ivory, raised on a platform, dressed in glossy, highly colored skins and feathers, with a fine head-dress made of palm fibre, gave permission to the strangers to settle in his dominions, to build a church, and to propagate the Christian religion. The King himself and all his Chiefs were forthwith baptised, and the fullest scope was allowed to the Roman Catholic missionaries who accompanied the expedition to prosecute their appointed work.”

Thus runs an old chronicle. It is valuable as showing the antiquity of Christian interest in Africa, as well as showing the fine opportunity then presented for introducing the gospel into benighted lands. We say fine opportunity, because Portugal was then a power, able and willing to second every effort of the church, and the church itself was well equipped for missionary work. Its zeal was untiring. Its formula was calculated to impress the African mind. The regalia of its priesthood was captivating. Its music was pleasing and inspiring. But the sequel proved that something was wrong. The priesthood laboured arduously, establishing missions, baptizing the natives by the thousand, adapting their ceremonies and processions to heathen rites and superstitions. The process was not that of lifting pagan souls to a high Christian level, so much as a lowering of Christian principles to a heathen level. Then the church was too dependent on, too intimate with, the state. Even Portuguese historians admit that physical force was frequently employed to bring the natives more completely under the will of the priests. The accounts given of some of the floggings which took place, both of males and female, would be alternately shocking and ludicrous, but for the fact that they were associated with the propagation of religion. Also, both church and state countenanced the crime of slavery, and fattened on the infernal traffic. The ultimate result of such a system might have been easily foreseen. After a long career of so-called missionary success, during which hundreds of mission stations were founded on the entire western and on a great part of the eastern coast of Africa, and many even far inland, the priests fell under the jealousy of the chiefs, clashed with them respecting polygamy and various other customs, and were finally forced back with the receding wave of European influence, when the power of Portugal began to wane. Within one hundred years of the above described arrival of the Portuguese missionaries off the mouth of the Congo, no trace of the labors of Catholic missionaries could be found and no tradition among the natives that they had ever been there. The finest mission stations elsewhere had fallen into ruins, and only those remained which were near ports of entry and fortified commercial points.

It may be truthfully said that missionary work in Africa lay as if dead till the spirit of African discovery was revived in England by the formation of the British African Association, in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Even its first pioneers were not missionaries, but rather explorers in a commercial and scientific sense. They were, however, philanthropic Christian men, and the problem of evangelizing Africa was ever present in their minds. Among them were Leyard, Major Houghton, Mungo Park who met his death on the Upper Niger, Frederic Horeman, Mr. Nicholls, Prof. Roentgen, Mr. James Riley, Captain Tuckey who manned the first Congo expedition in 1816, Captain Gray and Major Laing, Richie and Lyon, Denham and Clapperton who pierced Bornou and visited Lake Tchad, Laing and Caillié whose glowing descriptions of Timbuctoo were read with delight.

These were followed at a later period by Richard and John Lander who really solved the problem of the Niger, and by Laird and Oldfield and Coulthurst and Davidson. Now came a time, 1841, when broader sympathies were enlisted. An expedition was organized under the direction and at the expense of the British Government which was not merely to explore the interior of the vast Continent, promote the interests of art and science, but check the slave trade, introduce legitimate commerce, advance civilization and social improvement, and thus prepare the way for the introduction of Christianity. For this purpose, treaties were to be formed with native princes, agriculture was to be encouraged, and Christian missions were to be established. Two missionaries went along, Rev. Messrs. Muller and Schon. The expedition began the ascent of the river Niger, but was soon forced to return. Failure was written over the enterprise, and the cause was the deadly climate, which had been too little studied in advance. African enterprise in the north again fell back on pioneering exploits, and we have the splendid researches of Barth, Krapf and Rebman in 1849, and in 1857 those still more brilliant efforts of Burton and Speke, who entered the continent from Zanzibar, on the east, and brought to light the mystery of Victoria Nyanza and Tanganyika. Following these came Baker, and then the immortal Livingstone, who united the pioneer and the missionary.

Livingstone entered Africa in 1840, under the auspices of the London Missionary Society, and founded a missionary station at Kolobeng, South Africa, 200 miles north of the Moffat station at Kuruman. He married Rev. Robert Moffat’s daughter, and was thus doubly fortified for missionary work. He labored earnestly and faithfully in his field till driven by the hostility of the Boers to provide himself another mission further north and beyond the great Kalahari desert. After suffering untold hardships in his trip across the desert, he discovered Lake Ngami, decided that it would be a good base for further missionary work, and then returned for his wife. A third time he crossed the desert, which had been regarded as impassable, and this time with his family. It was the year 1851. He reached the river Chobe after a hard struggle, his animals having perished under the bites of the poisonous tsetse fly. Here he entered the kingdom of Sebituane, the renowned warrior, whose favor he had previously secured. But that chieftain had died, and his successor detained Livingstone for a time. When a permit was obtained to go where he pleased, he pushed on 130 miles to Sesheke, and thence to the Zambesi, in the center of the continent, in the country of the famed Macololos. But finding the country too unhealthy for a permanent mission, he returned to Cape Town, whence he planned and carried to success a journey back to the Zambezi, and westward, through the Macololos and other tribes, to Loanda in Angola, quite across the continent. This was in 1852. This journey came about because, when at Cape Town, he learned of the total destruction of his parent mission station at Kolobeng by the Boers. This left him without a pastoral charge, but it proved a turning point in his life. Henceforth the field of adventure and exploration was his, and he easily became the most noted of African travelers, till Stanley established for himself a greater fame. What the Church lost a whole world gained. His further travels, how he lost and buried his faithful wife on the banks of the Shiré, his own sad death in the swamps of Lake Bangweola, the return of his dead body to Zanzibar, borne by his faithful servants Chuma and Susi, have all been described elsewhere in this volume.

The recent advance of the Portuguese toward the head-waters of the Zambesi, and their reduction of the Macololo territory to a Portuguese possession, together with the complications with other ambitious nations of Europe, likely to grow out of it, bring that strange Central African people again into prominence. The region was made known, in olden times, by the Portuguese traveler, Silva Porto, who described it as fertile, and the people as of divided tribes. But Livingstone describes the section as the empire of the Macololos, and gives many glowing descriptions of the people, their rulers, products and possessions. He was well received by them, liked their country, and left a profound impression among them, for Major Serpa Pinto, in his visit many years afterwards, found Livingstone’s name mentioned everywhere among the then detached and demoralized tribes with respect.

According to Livingstone, the powerful Basuto tribe, south of the Zambesi, crossed to the north side under the lead of their chief, Chibitano, and reduced the numerous tribes who inhabited the vast stretches of country as far as the river Cuando. Chibitano gave to his army, formed of different elements, and to his conquered peoples, made up of a variety of origins, the name of Cololos, hence the word Macololos, so well known throughout Africa. This powerful warrior and legislator held his conquered tribes as brethren in one common interest till his death, when they began to set up independent empires. In this disintegration the Luinas, under King Lobossi, came to the front, and are yet the most powerful of the Macololos. Pinto says that the Macololo empire is now composed of a mongrel crew——Calabares, Luinas, Ganguellas, and Macalacas——all given to drunkenness and moral brutishness. They are polygamous and deep in the slave traffic. Their country——200 miles long and over 50 wide——is full of villages and fine plantations. The Luina herds cover the plains of the upper Zambesi, and no finer cattle are to be found in Africa. Lakes abound, and while they contribute to malarial diseases, they give a rich variety of fish. The men do not take readily to farming, but the women are wonderful milkmaids and vegetable raisers. As a people, they are skillful iron-workers and wood-carvers, and expert at pottery work. They cultivate tobacco for snuff, but smoke only bangue. They dress fuller and better than most Central African people, and some of their garbs are quite fantastic.

Prof. Henry Drummond, of Glasgow, in a lecture on “The Heart of Africa,” gives a vivid description of the perils which beset missionary life in the Zambesi regions:

As his boat swept along the beautiful lake Nyassa, he noticed in the distance a few white objects on the shore. On closer inspection, they were found to be wattle and daub houses, built in English style and whitewashed. Heading his boat for the shore, he landed and began to examine what seemed to be the home of a little English colony. The first house he entered gave evidence of recent occupancy, everything being in excellent order; but no human form was to be seen or human voice to be heard. The stillness of death reigned. He entered the school-house. The benches and desks were there, as if school had been but recently dismissed; but neither teachers nor scholars were to be seen. In the blacksmith shop the anvil and hammer stood ready for service, and it seemed as if the fire had just gone out upon the hearth; but no blacksmith could be found. Pushing his investigations a little further, he came upon four or five graves. These little mounds told the whole story and explained the desolation he had seen. Within them reposed the precious dust of some of the missionaries of Livingstonia, who one by one had fallen at their post, victims of the terrible African fever. Livingstonia was Scotland’s answer in part to the challenge which Henry M. Stanley gave to the Christian world to send missionaries to eastern equatorial Africa. When that intrepid explorer, after untold hardship, had found David Livingstone, and during months of close companionship had felt the power of that consecrated life, he blew the trumpet with no uncertain sound to rouse the church to her privilege and responsibility in central Africa. But it was not till the death of the great missionary explorer, that the land which gave him birth resolved to send a little army of occupation to the region which he had opened to the Christian world. On the 18th of January, 1875, at a public meeting held in the city of Glasgow, the Free, the Reformed, and the United Presbyterian churches of Scotland founded a mission, to be called Livingstonia, and which was to be located in the region of Lake Nyassa, the most southern of the three great lakes of central Africa, with a coast of eight hundred miles. Although founded by the churches just named, it was understood that it was to be regarded as a Free Church mission, the others co-operating with men and means as opportunity offered or necessity required.

The choice of location was most appropriate, not only because Dr. Livingstone had discovered that beautiful sheet of water, but because he had requested the Free Church to plant a mission on its shores. The first company of missionaries, which included also representatives of the Established Church, who were to found a separate mission in the lake region, after immense toil and severe hardship, reached the lake, via the Zambesi and Shiré rivers, October 12th, 1875. They selected a site near Cape Maclear as their first settlement, and as soon as possible put into operation the various parts of the mission work they had been commissioned to prosecute——industrial, educational, medical and evangelistic. From the first the mission met with encouraging success, becoming not only a center of gospel light to that benighted region, but also a city of refuge to which the wretched natives fled to escape the inhuman cruelties of the slave traders. As the years rolled on, however, it was found necessary to remove the main work of the mission to a more healthful region on the lake——hence the desolation seen by Prof. Drummond——the work at Cape Maclear being now mainly evangelistic and carried on by native converts. The mission still lives and comprises four stations, one of which is situated on the Stevenson Road, a road constructed at a cost of $20,000 by an English philanthropist, and intended to promote communication between Lakes Nyassa and Tanganyika.

After this diversion, forced upon the reader by reason of Livingstone’s dual missionary and pioneering work, we turn again to the north of Africa, and to historic Egypt. Comparatively little has been done in this land by Christendom for the evangelization of its degraded population. Wesleyan missionaries were stationed at Alexandria in the early part of the century, but the field proved unpropitious and they were removed to a more promising sphere of labor. Even the Church of England, now most in favor there, has not achieved much in the way of Christianizing the people. Perhaps the American United Presbyterians have been most successful in this uninviting field. They have several missionaries there, numerous lay agents, over a score of stations and schools, and quite a following of converts and pupils. The Khedive has granted them toleration and valuable concessions. The Church of Scotland sustains one mission and several prosperous schools at Cairo, in Egypt.

In Nubia, the Mohammedan religion is so firmly fixed, that missionary effort has been almost entirely discouraged.

The Abyssinians boast of their relationship to King Solomon, resulting from the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Jerusalem. They also claim to have received their Christianity from its fountain head in Judæa, on the return of the Ethiopian eunuch to the Court of Queen Candace, after his conversion to the faith of the Gospel by Philip, the Evangelist. Whatever truth there may be in these traditions, it is a fact that the religion of the country is a species of Christianity, combined with certain Judaic observances, as circumcision, abstinence from meat, keeping of Saturday as the Sabbath, and also with many Catholic forms, as reverence for the Virgin, the calendar of saints, etc. As a missionary field the Catholics were the first to enter Abyssinia in 1620, and they succeeded in persuading the king to declare Catholicism to be the religion of the State. This bold step, however, occasioned civil wars which ended in their expulsion from the country. Jesuit missionaries from France came later, but they were also banished.

The Church of England Missionary Society in 1829 sent out two missionaries. Others followed, but little was accomplished. The well known German missionary, Herr Flad, has accomplished quite a work in recent times. The defeat and murder of the Abyssinian king was one of the sad events of 1888. It followed successful invasions of the country and the slaughter and enslavement of large numbers of Abyssinians in 1885 and 1886 by the Mahdists, and their defeat by King John in 1887. Herr Flad transmitted a letter to the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society from Christian Abyssinians, which is a most earnest and pathetic appeal for help from their fellow Christians and such help as will prevent their enslavement and the entire desolation of their country. Very pertinently these people, whose liberties and lives are in such imminent danger, inquire of Christians in other lands, after depicting the desolation of their own, the selling of thousands of people into slavery, and the cruel butchery of other thousands, “Why should fanatic and brutal Moslems be allowed to turn a Christian land like Abyssinia into a desert, and to extirpate Christianity from Ethiopia?” They close with this earnest plea: “For Christ’s sake make known our sad lot to our brethren and sisters in Christian lands, who fear God and love the brethren.” While Abyssinian Christianity may not be without spot, Abyssinians are God’s men and women.

Later missionary letters to the London Anti-Slavery Society say that the Mahdists have made Western Abyssinia a desert. Whole flocks and herds have been destroyed, thousands of Christians have been thrown into slavery, thousands of others have been butchered, and hundreds of the noblest inhabitants have been taken to Mecca as slaves in violation of treaties.

The English gunboat Osprey recently captured three cargoes of slaves off the island of Perim, which guards the Aden entrance to the Red Sea. When brought to the Admiralty Court at Aden they proved to be about 217 in number, chiefly Abyssinian boys and girls from 10 to 20 years of age, captured by the fierce Mohammedan Gallas, and run across to Mocha to be sold to the Mohammedans. The Foreign Missionary Committee in Scotland appeal for a special Rescued Slaves’ Fund for the support and Bible education of these captives.

In Barca, Tripoli, Fezzan, Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco, known as the Barbary States, owing to the exclusive character of the Moslem faith, all missionary effort for the evangelization of the general population has been precluded until recently. A note from Edward H. Slenny, secretary of the North Africa Mission, says Jan. 26, 1889: “I have just returned from visiting most of the missionaries connected within the North Africa Mission in Morocco, Algeria and Tunis. The prospect among the Mohammedans is encouraging and we are hoping to send out more laborers. There are now forty-one on our staff, and two more leave us in a week. We are now proposing to take up work among the Europeans as well as the Mohammedans, and also establish a station in Tripoli, which is quite without the Gospel.”

Algeria was occupied in some measure in 1881, Morocco in 1884, Tunis in 1885 and in 1889. Mr. Michell, who has been working in Tunis, accompanied by Mr. Harding, who left England February 1, landed in Tripoli the 27th. Thus far they are getting on well. They find the people more bigoted than in Tunis. Besides the work they may be able to do in the city and neighborhood, they will be able to send some Scriptures by the caravans leaving for the Soudan which, with the blessing of God, will spread the light around Lake Tchad.

A correspondent of The Christian, (London) writing from Gibraltar, says: “We have had very cheering news from Morocco. A wonderful work has sprung up among the Spanish and Jewish people of Tangier. Meetings, commenced two or three months ago, have been held in Spanish, addressed through an interpreter by some brethren of the North African Mission, and there has been an intense eagerness to hear the truth. The Holy Spirit has carried home the Gospel message with conviction to many hearts, and a few days ago the brethren informed me that seventeen Jewish and Spanish converts were baptized, and others were waiting for baptism. The meetings have been crowded night after night, so much so that the friends in Tangier contemplate hiring a music-hall, at present used for midnight revelry and sin. This revival has aroused the enmity of both rabbi and priest, consequently bitter persecution has followed. Several Jewish inquirers have been beaten in the synagogue, converts have been dismissed from their employment, and the priests have offered bribes and made threats to the Spanish converts to induce them to cease attending the meetings, but so far the converts are holding firm.”

E. F. Baldwin is meeting with great success in Morocco. He writes from Tangier:

“We have had great encouragement in the work here. For some two months we have had nightly meetings for inquirers and young converts, attended by from ten to twenty. Many have received Christ as their personal Saviour and have been at once baptized. For some weeks most of my time was occupied from morning until night talking with interested ones who visited me, and daily there would be natives in my room much of the time. At times conversions occurred daily. All of them are brought out of Mohammedan darkness. They all renounce that false religion formally at their baptism. Almost all are young men, some of good position, but most of them from among the poor. There is not one who has not prayed and spoken in our meetings from the day of his conversion.

“Two of the earliest converts are in the mountains traveling on foot without purse, scrip or pay, preaching in both Arabic and Shillah. They have been away now several weeks. Others, whose faces we have never seen, have been converted in distant places through one from here, and write us of many others believing through their word. We have reason to believe the Gospel has taken root in several places in Southern Morocco within these few weeks. Two others of our number are arranging to start at once to preach in another direction. Mr. Martain and I are also leaving as soon as we can get away, and will travel also as Christ commanded, on foot and without purse or scrip.”

Later he writes from Mogador: “For upwards of a year new accessions have been constant, and every one baptized has renounced Mohammedanism. For a time the work was seemingly much hindered by severe persecution, imprisonment, beating, disowning, banishment——these are all too familiar to the converts here in Southern Morocco. But when it was impossible to work longer here in Mogador we travelled and preached, going literally on the methods laid down in Matthew X, which we hold with, we find, increasing numbers of God’s children, to be of perpetual obligation. We have found them to contain the deep and matchless wisdom of God for missionary effort. Several others besides myself, including recently converted natives, are so travelling. The natives knowing no other methods, have gone gladly forth, without purse or scrip, on foot, taking nothing, and marvellous blessing in the way of conversion has followed the step of their simple faith. They go with no thought of pay or salary. The Father makes their simple needs His care. My own position as an unattached missionary, dependent only on God for temporal supplies (which, blessed be His name, He ceaselessly supplies), enables one to consistently instruct these native Christians in the principles and methods of Mathew x, and encourage them to go forth upon them.

“It is to this return to these first principles of mission work I attribute the constant flow of blessing we are having, and which is so exceptional in Mohammedan fields. I earnestly recommend them to others who may have the faith and are so circumstanced as to practice them. I say this without any reflection upon the more ordinary and accepted lines of mission endeavor. The field is vast and the need great, and by all and every means let the Gospel be preached.

“Just now the vigilance of our persecutors and adversaries has somewhat relaxed, and our frequent meetings (sixteen in Arabic and eight in English per week,) are well attended and we are cheered by more conversions. Several are just presenting themselves for baptism. Last night one of the most intelligent and best educated Moors I have ever met, publicly confessed Christ for the first time——both speaking and praying (as all the native Christians do from the hour of their conversion) in our meeting before many witnesses. He is one of the few ‘honorable’ ones who have been won. We trust he may become a veritable Paul. He was some months since arrested and thrown into prison on the suspicion of being a Christian, which at that time he was not. His feet, like Joseph’s, ‘they hurt with fetters,’ the scars of which he will never cease to carry. Poor fellow! He was then without the comfort that comes to a child of God in affliction, and yet enduring reproach for Christ. But God blessed his dreary sojourn in prison to his soul, and it contributed to his conversion.

“Some from among the few resident Europeans and from among the Jews also have turned to the Lord and confessed Him in baptism.

“Tidings from different places in the interior, where the word of life has been carried from here, tell us of many turning from Mohammed’s cold, hard, false faith, to the love and light the Gospel brings them. May not all this encourage the zeal and faith of scattered workers toiling in these hard Moslem fields?

“Some new workers, all committed to Mathew X lives, have just joined us. There are now six of us here, all men of course, with our lives given up to toil for Christ under his primitive instructions. A band is forming in Ayrshire, Scotland, of others who will come to us soon, we trust. Others in different places are greatly interested. We hope to have many natives together here in the summer months for training in the Word, that they may afterwards go forth two by two, without purse or scrip.”

Alfred S. Lamb writes as follows:

“Within four days’ journey of Britain one may land on African soil and find a large field——almost untouched——for Christian labor among the natives of Algeria, the Kabyles. Visiting recently among these people, and making known to them, for the first time, the glad tidings of salvation, I was much struck with the attention given to the message. Doubtless the novelty of an Englishman speaking to them in their own unwritten language, and delivering such a message as a free salvation without works, was sufficient of itself to call forth such attention. Seated one evening in a Kabyle house, I was greatly delighted with the readiness to listen to the Gospel. The wonderful story of the resurrection of Lazarus was being read, when my host announced that supper was ready, and when I liked I could have it brought up. Having expressed a desire to finish the narrative, the little company of Mohammedans continued to give the utmost attention to the words read and spoken. Supper ended, the conversation was renewed. One of our company, an honorable Marabout or religious Mohammedan, who, because of having made a pilgrimage to Mecca, was called Elhadj, entertained us while he read from an Arabian tract. The man showed us, with evident pride, a book in Arabic (I presume a portion of Scripture,) given him two years ago in Algiers by a Christian English lady who was distributing tracts among the people. Frequently during that evening’s conversation, my statements were met by the words, ‘You are right,’ ‘Truly.’ That night I had two sharing the sleeping apartment with me. Having seen me bow the knee in prayer, one of them asked me afterward if I had been praying. Replying that I had, he added, ‘May God answer your prayer!’”

The north of Africa, so long neglected by the missionaries, seems now to share in the interest that has been awakened in the whole continent.

We come now to the west coast. Western Africa is divided into numerous petty States, in all of which the most degrading superstition and idolatry, with their usual concomitants of lawlessness and cruelty, are the outstanding features. The entire population was no doubt pagan at no very remote period; but in modern times the religion of Mohammed has extensively prevailed, having been jealously propagated with fire and sword by northern tribes of Arab descent. But there is not so much difference between the Mohammedanism and paganism of the negroes as many suppose. The distinction is rather nominal than real, so far as the moral conduct of the people is concerned. All profess to believe in the existence of God, if a confused notion of a higher power may be so designated; but all are entirely ignorant of the character and claims of the Divine Being, and exceedingly superstitious. The African Mussulman repeats the prayers, and observes the feasts and ceremonies prescribed in the Koran, but he has quite as much, if not more faith, in his charms and amulets, or greegrees.

Paganism in West Africa is known by the name of “fetishism.” It assumes different forms in the various tribes. It is to a large extent a system of devil worship, in connection with which the belief in witchcraft plays an important part. Not only are the deities themselves called “fetishes,” but the religious performances of acts of worship, and the offerings presented are also spoken of as “fetish,” or sacred, because they are performed and offered in honor of those deities. In the daily household worship, in every domestic and public emergency, in seasons of public calamity, when preparing for and engaged in war, in the taking of oaths, at births and deaths and funerals, and, indeed in connection with every event in life, the “fetish” superstition holds the people in the most slavish, degrading, and cruel bondage. When a death occurs a solemn assembly is held in a palaver house to inquire into its cause; and as witchcraft is the one often assigned it results in death to some unfortunate individual suspected of the crime.

To be suspected of witchcraft is the worst thing that can overtake a man or woman in Africa, and at every death it is the priests’ business to make out who has been the cause of the death. On such occasions a brother, sister, father, nay, in many cases even a mother, may be accused of the unnatural crime of having occasioned the death of their dearest. Against such a charge there exists no defense. Free room has been left to the priesthood for the execution of its malicious plottings and selfish designs, as they mostly are. It is hard to say which men dread the most, the effects of witchcraft or being themselves accused of practicing it. People avoid with the utmost carefulness and solicitude every look, every word, every act, which is in the slightest measure open to misinterpretation. If any one is seriously ill, care is taken not to be too cheerful, lest it should appear as if one was rejoicing over the expected decease. But, again, one does not dare to seem too solicitous, lest it should be surmised that he is concealing his guilt under a mantle of hypocrisy. And yet, with all these precautions, one is never secure. If such a suspicion has once been uttered against any one, neither age, nor rank, nor even known nobility of character defends him from the necessity of submitting to the ordeal of poison, the issue of which is held infallible.

The people through belief in this doctrine, are the victims of the priests and priestesses——the “fetish” men and women——who constitute a large class. The most incredible atrocities resulting from this belief form one of the darkest chapters in the history of this dark land.

Some of the superstitious rites and ceremonies of the negro race partake more of the nature of open idolatry than any of those which have yet been mentioned. For instance, they pay homage to certain lakes, rivers and mountains, which they regard as sacred, believing them to be the special dwelling places of the gods. They also adore various animals and reptiles, which they believe to be animated by the spirits of their departed ancestors. In some places large serpents are kept and fed, in houses set apart for the purpose, by the “fetish” priests. To these ugly creatures sacrifices are presented and divine homage is paid by the people at stated periods——a liberal present being always brought for the officiating priest on all such occasions.

The ruling people of the Niger delta, at Bross, New Calabar, Bonny and Opobo, are the Ijos. Every community of them had formerly its “totem,” or sacred animal, in whose species the ancestral Spirit of the tribe was supposed to dwell. So profound was this belief that the English traders in the Oil River region——the Oil Rivers embrace the tributaries of the Niger, and are so called in general because the commerce in palm-oil is large upon them——were forbidden to kill the sacred lizard of Bonny, and the more sacred python of Bross. One agent of a large trading firm at Bross found a python in his house and inconsiderately killed it. On learning of it, the Bross natives destroyed the firm’s factory and store, dragged the agent to the beach and inflicted indignities on him. The British consul considered the case, but such was the sentiment against the sacrilegious conduct of the agent, that the consul, as a matter of trade polity, was forced to decide that redress was impossible, in as much as he had brought the punishment on himself.

This “totem” worship made the monster lizard at Bonny a nuisance. They grew in number and impudence, till it was nothing unusual to see their six feet of slimy length stretched across paths and upon doorways, and to feel the lash of their serrated tails on your legs as you passed along. If one were wounded or killed, there was no end of trouble, for the irate natives were sure to carry the case to the consul on board ship, where they secured the judgment of a fine, or else taking the law into their own hands, they insulted, or assaulted the slayer till their anger was appeased.

In other parts of the delta, a shark became the tribe “totem,” or a crocodile, or water-bird, but in no part was Zoölatry——animal worship——carried to a greater extent than at Bonny and Bross, where the lizard and python were favorites. In 1884, the Church Missionary Society took the matter in hand, and finally succeeded in doing what consuls and the war-ships had failed to accomplish. The society screwed the courage of the native converts up to the sticking point and finally proclaimed the destruction of the lizards in Bonny on one Easter Sunday morning. Men and boys, armed with hatchets and sticks went about killing the ugly beasts, and so complete was their work that the day ended with their extermination. But the sickening smell which pervaded the air for days, came near producing a pestilence. It was a hard blow to native superstitions, but the riddance soon came to be acquiesced in. A change equally abrupt put an end to the python worship at Bross, and so there has been of late years, a gradual giving up of this “totem” observance among the Niger tribes, thanks to missionary rather than commercial enterprise.

Here, surely, if anywhere on the face of the earth, the Gospel, with its enlightening, purifying, and ennobling influence, was needed. What then has been done to carry it to these degraded people, and what have been the results of missionary labor among them? Take a glance first at Sierra Leone, as it was the earliest visited by the missionaries. It is situated in the southern part of Senegambia. It has an area of 319 square miles, and a population of over 80,000, nearly all blacks. Formerly it was one of the chief emporiums of the slave trade. In 1797 the British African Company purchased land from the native princes with the view of forming a settlement for the emancipated negroes who had served in British ships during the American Revolution, and who on the conclusion of peace were found in London in a most miserable condition. In 1808 this land was transferred to the British Crown, additional tracts of country being subsequently acquired. The colony has since served as an asylum for the wretched victims rescued from the holds of slave ships.

The history of missionary enterprise, in this land of sickness and death, is a chequered one. Colonial chaplains were appointed at different times, from the beginning, to minister to the government functionaries and others; but owing to frequent deaths and absences from illness, the office was often vacant. The first effort of a purely missionary character for the benefit of West Africa was made by the Baptist Missionary Society in 1795. Efforts of other societies followed in rapid succession; but it was not until after the commencement of the present century, when the Church and Wesleyan Missionary Societies undertook the work of evangelization in Western Africa, that the cause took a permanent and progressive form.

The Church Missionary Society in 1804 sent out to Sierra Leone Mr. Renner, a German, and Mr. Hartwig, a Prussian, to instruct the people in a knowledge of Divine things. In 1806 Messrs. Nylander, Butscher, and Prasse——all of whom had been trained at the Berlin Missionary Seminary, and ordained according to the rites of the Lutheran church——embarked at Liverpool to strengthen the mission. In 1816 Wm. A. B. Johnson went out as a schoolmaster to this colony. “He was a plain German laborer, having but a very limited common-school education and no marked intellectual qualifications, but he was trained in the school of Christ and was a good man, full of faith and of the Holy Spirit. It became obvious that he was called of God to preach the Gospel, and he was ordained in Africa. His period of service was brief, but marvelous in interest and power, and he raised up a native church of great value. Into the midst of these indolent, vicious, violent savages he went. He found them devil worshipers, and at first was very much disheartened. But though William Johnson distrusted himself, he had faith in Christ and his Gospel. Like Paul, he resolved to preach the simple Gospel, holding up the cross, show them plainly what the Bible says of the guilt of sin, the need of holiness, and the awful account of the Judgment Day. He simply preached the Gospel and left results with God, confident that his Word would not return to him void. For nearly a year he pursued this course. And he observed that over that apparently hopeless community a rapid and radical change was coming. Old and young began to show deep anxiety for their spiritual state and yearning for newness of life. If he went for a walk in the woods, he stumbled over little groups of awakened men and women and children, who had sought there a place to pour out their hearts to God in prayer; if he went abroad on moonlight evenings, he found the hills round about the settlement echoing with the praises of those who found salvation in Christ, and were singing hymns of deliverance. His record of the simple experiences of these converts has preserved their own crude, broken, but pathetically expressive story of the Lord’s dealings with them, and the very words in which they told of the work of grace within them. No reader could but be impressed with their deep sense of sin, their appreciation of grace, their distrust of themselves and their faith in God, their humble resolves, their tenderness of conscience, their love for the unsaved about them, and their insight into the vital truth of redemption.”

The improvement in the appearance and habits and social condition of the people that followed was nothing short of a transformation. Their chapel was five times enlarged to accommodate the ever increasing numbers who attended. “Seventy years ago, if you had gone to what was afterward known as the Regent’s Town, you would have found people, taken at different times from the holds of slave-ships, in the extreme of poverty and misery, destitution and degradation. They were as naked and as wild as beasts. They represented twenty-two hostile nations or tribes, strangers to each other’s language, and having no medium of communication, save a little broken English. They had no conception of a pure home, they were crowded together in the rudest and filthiest huts, and, in place of marriage, lived in a promiscuous intercourse that was worse than concubinage. Lazy, bestial, strangers to God, they had not only defaced his image, but well-nigh effaced even the image of humanity, and combined all the worst conditions of the most brutal, savage life, plundering and destroying one another. Here it pleased God to make a test of his grace in its uplifting and redeeming power.”

When Johnson was under the necessity of leaving for England, hundreds of both sexes accompanied him a distance of five miles to the ship and wept bitter tears at the thought of being separated from their best earthly friend. “Massa, suppose no water live here, we go with you all the way, till no feet more move.”

Similar success attended the work at other stations, so that we find Sir Charles M’Arthy, the governor, reporting in 1821 as follows in regard to the villages of these recaptured negroes: “They had all the appearance and regularity of the neatest village in England, with a church, a school, and a commodious residence for the missionaries and teachers, though in 1817 they had not been more than thought of.” In 1842 a committee of the House of Commons thus testified to the state of the colony. “To the invaluable exertions of the Church Missionary Society more especially——as also, to a considerable, as in all our African settlement, to the Wesleyan body——the highest praise is due. By their efforts nearly one-fifth of the whole population——a most unusually high proportion in any country——are at school; and the effects are visible in considerable intellectual, moral and religious improvement.”

The bishopric of Sierra Leone was founded in 1851, and some idea may be formed of the trying nature of the climate from the fact that no fewer than three bishops died within three years of their consecration. In 1862 the Native Church having been organized on an independent basis, undertook the support of its own pastors, churches, and schools, aided by a small grant from the society.

In a work entitled “The English Church in Other Lands,” it is stated that “in the first twenty years of the existence of the mission, 53 missionaries, men and women, died at their post;” but these losses seemed to draw out new zeal, and neither then, nor at any subsequent period, has there been much difficulty in filling up the ranks of the Sierra Leone Mission, or of the others established on the same coast. The first three bishops——Vidal, Weeks and Bowen——died within eight years of the creation of the See, and yet there has been no difficulty in keeping up the succession.

The present results are a sufficient reward for all the self-sacrificing devotion. There is now at Sierra Leone a self-sustaining and self-extending African church. The only white clergyman in the colony is Bishop Ingram; the whole of the pastoral work being in the hands of native clergymen. Many native missionaries, both clerical and lay, have been furnished for the Niger and Yoruba missions.

An outline of the proceedings of the Wesleyan Missionary Society in this part of the wide field may be compressed into a few sentences. Among the negroes who were conveyed from Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone in 1791, there were several who had become partially enlightened and otherwise benefited by attending services of the Methodist ministers in America. Some of these having made repeated applications to Dr. Coke for preachers of their own denomination to be sent from England, in the year 1811 the society responded to their request by the appointment of the Rev. G. Warren as their first missionary to Western Africa. He was accompanied by three English schoolmasters. They found about a hundred of the Nova Scotia settlers who called themselves “Methodists.” These simple minded people had built a rude chapel in which they were in the habit of meeting together to worship God from Sabbath to Sabbath, a few of the most intelligent among them conducting the services and instructing the rest according to the best of their ability. They received the missionary from England with the liveliest demonstrations of gratitude and joy; and to them, as well as to the poor afflicted liberated Africans, who were from time to time rescued from bondage by British cruisers and brought to Sierra Leone, his earnest ministrations were greatly blessed. But the missionary career of Mr. Warren was of short duration. He was smitten with fever and finished his course about eight months after his arrival——being the first of a large number of Wesleyan missionaries who have fallen a sacrifice to the climate of Western Africa since the commencement of the work. Other devoted missionaries followed who counted not their lives dear unto them if they could only be made instrumental in winning souls for Christ. No sooner did the intelligence arrive in England that missionaries and their wives had fallen in the holy strife, than others nobly volunteered their services, and went forth in the spirit of self-sacrifice——in many instances to share the same fate. This has been going on for three quarters of a century; and although the mortality among the agents of the society is appalling to contemplate, the social, moral, and spiritual results of the mission are grand beyond description. Congregations have been gathered, places of worship erected, native churches organized, and Christian schools established, not only in Free Town, but in most of the villages and towns in the colony. High schools have, moreover, been established for the training of native teachers and preachers, and to give a superior education to both males and females. The advancement of the people, most of whom have been rescued from slavery, in religious knowledge, general intelligence, moral conduct, and, indeed, in everything which goes to constitute genuine Christian civilization, is literally astonishing. In addition to the Church and Wesleyan Missionary Societies, who took the lead in the work of religious instruction in Sierra Leone, other agencies have been advantageously employed. The census of 1881 showed 39,000 evangelical Christians, about equally divided between the Wesleyans and the Church of England. Some reports give the nominal Christian population as high as 80,000.

In the Gambia district the inhabitants on both sides of the river are chiefly Mandingoes and Jalloffs, most of whom are Mohammedans, with a few pagans here and there. A large number of “liberated Africans,” as they are technically called, have, however, been brought to the Gambia from time to time, and located on St. Mary’s and McCarthy’s islands and in the neighboring districts, as thousands before had been taken to Sierra Leone. These are poor negro slaves of different nations and tribes who have been rescued from bondage, and landed from slave ships taken by British cruisers while in the act of pursuing their unlawful trade.

No provision had been made for the moral and religious instruction of the colonists (British,) or the native tribes of this part of Africa, when the Wesleyan Missionary Society commenced its labors in 1821. The first missionary sent out was the Rev. John Morgan. He was soon afterwards joined by the Rev. John Baker from Sierra Leone, when these two devoted servants of God began to look about for the most eligible site for a mission station. Their object being chiefly to benefit the surrounding native tribes, they were anxious if possible to establish themselves on the mainland. Accordingly they went to visit the chief of Combo, on the southern bank of the Gambia. Having offered their presents, they were graciously received by his sable majesty, who signified his consent for the strangers to settle in any part of the country which they might select as most suitable for their object. They fixed upon a place called Mandanaree, about eight miles from St. Mary’s. Although considerably elevated it was far from healthy; and when the rainy season set in both were prostrated with fever, and were obliged to move to St. Mary’s where they could have medical aid. Before the end of the year, however, Mr. Baker proceeded to the West Indies by direction of the Missionary Committee, his health having become so impaired by his long residence in West Africa, as to render a change absolutely necessary.

Mr. Morgan had recovered from his attack of fever and was pursuing his work alone, when he had the pleasure of receiving as his colleague the Rev. Wm. Bell, who had been sent from England by the committee to reinforce the mission. This devoted young missionary appeared well adapted for the enterprise upon which he had entered; but he was soon called away to the “better country.” He died of fever at St. Mary’s forty-six days after his arrival. For a time his place was taken by the Rev. Geo. Lane, from Sierra Leone, but his health also failing he was obliged to return, and he shortly afterwards finished his course. On the 14th of April, 1824, Mr. Morgan was relieved by the arrival from England of the Rev. Robert and Mrs. Hawkins, who entered upon their work at once.

By this time it had become evident that the proper place for the principal station was St. Mary’s island, and arrangements were forthwith made for the erection of a mission-house and place of worship in Bathurst, the principal town. A number of native converts were soon after united in church fellowship as the result of the faithful preaching of the Gospel; schools were organized for boys and girls, and the machinery of a promising mission station was fairly put in motion. Mr. and Mrs. Hawkins suffered much from sickness during their period of service, but they labored well and successfully, and were spared to return home in 1827, the Rev. Samuel and Mrs. Dawson being appointed to take their place. Mrs. Dawson was smitten with fever and died at Sierra Leone, on her way to the Gambia, and her sorrowful and bereaved husband proceeded to his station alone. On the 18th of November, 1828, Rev. Richard and Mrs. Marshall arrived at the Gambia from England to relieve Mr. Dawson; and the school being once more favored with the supervision of a Christian lady, and the station with an energetic missionary, the work prospered in a very pleasing manner. Mr. Marshall had labored with acceptance and success for nearly two years, when he fell a sacrifice to the climate, and finished his course with joy at Bathurst on the 19th of August, 1830. Two days after the funeral of her lamented husband, Mrs. Marshall embarked with her infant son for England. They arrived at Bristol on the first of October; and worn out with mental and bodily suffering, the lonely widow sank into the arms of death about forty-eight hours after she landed on the shores of her native country. Gambia Station was thus left without a missionary or teacher, but six months later, on the 10th of March, Rev. W. Moister and wife arrived at St. Mary’s and set to work at once to recommence the mission schools and public services. Their labors were crowned with success; and native preachers having been trained to take a part in the work, they felt that the time had come when some effort should be made to carry the Gospel to the regions beyond. With this object in view Mr. Moister made three successive journeys into the interior; and with much toil and exposure succeeded in establishing a new station at McCarthy’s Island, nearly 300 miles up the Gambia,——a station which from that day to this, a period of over half a century, has been a centre of light and influence to all around, and the spiritual birthplace of many souls. Mr. Moister was relieved in 1833 by the arrival from England of a noble band of laborers. The Rev. Wm. and Mrs. Fox took charge of St. Mary’s and Rev. Thomas and Mrs. Dove were appointed to take charge of the new station at McCarthy’s Island. They labored long and successfully in this trying portion of the mission field, and some of them fell a sacrifice to the deadly climate. They were succeeded by others in subsequent years, many of whom shared the same fate; but whilst God buried His workmen, He carried on His work. A rich harvest has been already reaped, and the work is still going on. A commodious new chapel and schoolrooms have been built at Bathurst, and a high school established for the training of native teachers and others; whilst large congregations, attentive and devout, meet together for worship.

“The Gold Coast” is the significant name given to a maritime country of Guinea, in Western Africa, in consequence of the quantity of gold dust brought down from the interior by the natives for barter with the European merchants. The Wesleyan Missionary Society commenced its labors on the “Gold Coast” in 1834. Their first station was at Cape Coast Town, and though the missionaries died in rapid succession, the station was never without a missionary for any considerable time. As the work advanced native laborers were raised up; and in succeeding years stations were established, places of worship built, congregations gathered, and Christian churches and schools organized, not only in Cape Coast Town, but also at Elmina, Commenda, Dix Cove, Appolonia, Anamabu, Domonasi, Accra, Winnibab, and other places along the coast and in the far distant interior. In 1889 they had 21,000 Christians.

The Basle and North German Missionary Societies have also several important stations on the “Gold Coast,” at Accra, Christianburg, Akropong, and other places. During the last century the attention of Count Zinzendorf was drawn toward the propagation of the Gospel on the “Gold Coast.” Three times (1736, 1768 and 1769) missionaries were sent to Christianburg and Ningo; but all died after a short stay, without seeing any fruit of their work. They are buried, eleven in number, at Christianburg and Ningo. Upwards of half a century elapsed ere this “white man’s grave” was taken possession of again. At length in 1827, the Basle German Evangelical Mission sent out four missionaries, J. P. Henke, C. F. Salbach, J. G. Schmid, and G. Holzwarth. They arrived on the 18th of December, 1828, at Christianburg, then and until 1851 a possession of the Danish Crown. From Governor Lind they received a cordial welcome. Within nine months after their arrival three of them succumbed to the climate, two of them dying on the same day. Two years later the fourth (Henke) was removed. Three new laborers arrived in March, 1832, but in the course of four months two of them had died. The third, A. Rüs, having been raised up from the very gates of death, labored for several years, and afterwards removed to Akropong, the capital of Aquapim, a more healthful region in the interior. The Aquapims and their king proved very friendly. The reports from this new region had the effect of infusing fresh life into the society, and two missionaries, along with Miss Wolter, who became the wife of Rüs and was the first missionary lady on the “Gold Coast,” were forthwith sent to his aid. Two years thereafter, Rüs and his wife were left alone, the remorseless climate having again done its deadly work. The mission had now been in existence for ten years, and within that period no fewer than eight missionaries had died. Rüs returned in broken health to Basle in 1840. The directors of the society were greatly perplexed, as well they might be. The prevailing feeling was in favor of the abandonment of the mission, but a new inspector, the Rev. W. Hoffman, came into office. Fired with missionary zeal he proceeded in 1843 to Jamaica in order to enlist Christian emigrants for the work in Africa. Twenty-four members of the Moravian congregation there responded. They arrived in Christianburg in April of that year. Henceforth Akropong became as a city set on a hill. Rüs returned to Africa but was compelled to retire altogether from the field in 1845, his health having again completely broken down. But reinforcements were sent out by the society from time to time.

The mission now assumed a more encouraging aspect. Between 1838 and 1848 only one missionary had died, and by the close of the latter year forty natives had been gathered into the church. Ten years later the society was able to report that no fewer than eighteen missionaries, with nine married and three unmarried ladies, besides twenty-six catechists and teachers, had been settled at the stations already named and at various other places. The church members at the close of 1858 were 385. The next decade showed still more gratifying results, the numbers being 31 missionaries, 19 ladies, 25 native catechists, 15 native male, and 12 native female teachers, and 1581 church members. Out-stations were largely multiplied.

During this last period the work was developed in other directions. The Mission Trade Society had begun operations, its object being to prepare the way by means of trade based on Christian principles. Elders had been appointed to assist the missionaries in their work, and to settle minor cases of jurisdiction. Besides the day schools, boarding schools for boys and girls, a teachers’ training school, and a theological school had been established. Industrial departments too had been added at Christianburg. These are now self-supporting and are proving an important means of promoting the moral and social well-being of the natives. In these industrial schools may now be seen native shoe-makers, tailors, carpenters, and other craftsmen, busy at work plying their respective avocations, and preparing themselves for useful positions in life. Some of the missionaries have, moreover, rendered good service to literature, and to those who may succeed them in the field, by the useful dictionaries, grammars, and vocabularies which they have compiled of native languages, and the translations which they have made of Scripture into the dialects of the people among whom they labor. The entire Bible has been translated into two of the various languages——viz, in the Gâ or Akra, by the late Rev. J. Zimmerman; and in the Tshi by the Rev. Christaller——the latter language being spoken by at least a million of negroes on the “Gold Coast,” and far into the interior. During the Ashanti war in 1874 Captain Glover bore the following emphatic testimony to the piety and general good conduct of the native converts who joined the British army from some of the stations mentioned above: “Two companies of Christians, one of Akropong, and the other of Christianburg, numbering about a hundred each, under two captains, accompanied by Bible-readers of the Basle Mission, attended a morning and evening service daily, a bell ringing them regularly to prayers. In action with the enemy at Adiume, on Christmas day, they were in the advance, and behaved admirably, since which they have garrisoned Blappah. Their conduct has been orderly and soldier-like, and they have proved themselves the only reliable men of the large native force lately assembled on the Volta.”

In 1875 they sent out for the Ashanti Mission a staff of six men for two new stations——Mr. and Mrs. Ramseyer among them. One of these stations, Begorro, is not in the Ashanti territory, but is a frontier town, and a connecting link between their former “Gold Coast” Mission and Ashanti proper. It is the healthiest of all the African stations of the society. The other station, Abetifi, is the capital of Okwao, a former province of Ashanti, which gained its independence after the victory of the British army over the Ashantis. The chief of the capital, Abetiffi, told the missionaries to settle wherever they liked.

Early in 1881 two of the missionaries, accompanied by several native preachers and the necessary bearers, undertook a journey to Coomassie, the capital, in order to ascertain the disposition of the people and the prospect of establishing a mission among them. During their stay they preached regularly morning and evening, with the king’s permission, to large audiences. But the king did not desire a mission established there, and they deferred attempting to commence missionary operations in Coomassie.

One beneficial result of the war with Ashanti has been the abolition of domestic slavery in the “Gold Coast” colony.

The work of the society (Basle) generally on the west coast of Africa has been very gratifying. In 1882 under the care of the 34 European missionaries and upwards of a hundred other agents, there were some 4,000 natives, from whose minds the darkness of night has been dispelled, besides about 1,500 pupils under instruction who may be expected to do good work in the future. Many of the churches on the “Gold Coast” have attained to a position of self-support.

One single fact may be mentioned, as indicating the influence of the mission here. The king of Cape Coast in early life was the means of getting it established. He forsook the “fetish” of his country. In consequence he was cut off from the succession to the chieftainship, and publicly flogged. But after thirty years’ profession of Christianity, he was elected chief or king, and, on the occasion of the anniversary in 1864, he publicly acknowledged his obligations to the mission.

Lagos, a considerable island in the Bight of Benim, was in former times one of the most notorious slave depots on the western coast of Africa. It is situated at the mouth of a river, or rather, a large lagoon, which runs parallel with the sea for several miles, and affords water communication with the interior in the direction of Badagry, Dahomi, Abeokuta, and other parts of the Yoruba country. It is now a British settlement, with its resident lieutenant governor and staff of officers.

The population of Lagos and the neighboring native towns, both in the Yoruba and Popo countries, is of a similar character to that which is found on other parts of the coast. Perhaps it became somewhat more mixed several years ago, by the emigration from Sierra Leone of a large number of “liberated Africans,” who ventured thus to return to the countries from which they had been dragged as poor slaves, when they heard that the slave trade was abolished. Some of these emigrants had the happiness to find parents, brothers, sisters or other relatives and friends still living, who received them as alive from the dead; whilst others sought in vain for any one who could recognize them. There were many touching and affecting meetings, and great was the surprise of the natives of Lagos, Abeokuta, and other places in Yoruba and Popo countries, to see the change which had passed upon their friends and relatives by the residence of a few years in a free British colony. They all appeared decently clothed in European apparel, many of them had learned to read and write in the mission schools, and a few of them had become the happy partakers of the great salvation, which they had heard proclaimed in all its simplicity and power in the land of their exile.

It was the extensive emigration of civilized “liberated Africans” from Sierra Leone to Lagos and the neighboring towns in the Yoruba country, that led to the vigorous efforts of the Church and Wesleyan Missionary Societies to evangelize the natives of this part of Africa. The Christian emigrants who had been connected with these organizations in Sierra Leone, on reaching their destination reported to their respective ministers the state in which they found the country and earnestly requested that their friends and countrymen might be favored with the proclamation of the Gospel which had made them so happy. These appeals were cheerfully responded to by the parties concerned, and a work was commenced which for prosperity and blessing has had few parallels in the history of missions.

The Church Missionary Society was happy in the selection of the Rev. Samuel Crowther, an educated and ordained native minister, as the leader of the enterprise. The history of Mr. Crowther is equal in interest to any romance that was ever written. Torn away from his native land and sold as a slave when a mere boy in 1821, he was rescued from a Portugese slaver by a British cruiser and brought to Sierra Leone, where he was educated in the mission school, and being specially bright was sent to England. He completed his education in Islington Training Institution and was ordained by the Bishop of London. He returned to Sierra Leone and was afterwards in 1846 appointed as a missionary to Abeokuta, to labor among the Sierra Leone emigrants and others. It was here, to his inexpressible delight, he met his mother, twenty-five years after he had been snatched from her by the slave dealers; and in 1848 he had the further unspeakable joy of seeing her admitted, along with four others, into the membership of the Christian church. They were the first fruits of the mission. In 1864 he was consecrated at Canterbury Cathedral, Bishop of the Niger territory and superintendent of all the stations in the Yoruba and adjoining countries. Making the island of Lagos his headquarters, Bishop Crowther, assisted by a noble band of native missionaries, has succeeded in establishing stations, erecting churches and organizing Christian schools, not only in Lagos and Abeokuta, where the work was first commenced, but also in various towns and villages in Yoruba and Popo countries, and in several centres of population on the banks of the Niger. The principal stations on the Niger are Bonny and Bross at the mouth of the river, and Onitsha, Lokoja, New Calabar, and Egan, higher up. The last named is 350 miles from the mouth of the river. In 1877 a steamer named the Henry Venn was supplied to the mission, thus doing away with the hard labor and slow navigation by means of the old fashioned canoe in vogue on the river. An exploratory voyage made up the Binue in 1879 revealed the existence of numerous tribes ready to receive teachers.

At Bross and Bonny there has lately been a remarkable movement in the direction of Christianity, hundreds of people throwing away their idols and attending the church services, which are thronged every Sabbath. The famous Juju temple, studded with human skulls, is going to ruin. A village opposite Bonny has been named “The Land of Israel” because there is not an idol to be found in it. At an important market town thirty miles in the interior, the chiefs and people, influenced by what they had seen at Bonny, and without ever having been visited by a Christian teacher, spontaneously built a church with a galvanized iron roof, and benches to seat 300 worshipers, got a school-boy from Bross to read the church services on Sundays, and then sent to ask the Bishop to give them a missionary.

Rev. W. Allan writing from Bonny in 1889 says: “The worship of the iguana is overthrown, the priest is a regular attendant at the house of God, and the iguana itself converted into an article of food. The Juju temple, which a few years ago was decorated with 20,000 skulls of murdered victims, I found rotting away in ruin and decay. I passed through the grove which was formerly the receptacle of so many murdered infants, and I found it had become the regular highway from the town to the church, and that the priest was now a baptized Christian. At 11 o’clock I went ashore and addressed 885 worshipers, including the king, the three former heathen priests, chiefs, and a multitude of slaves, and was thankful to ascertain that the work of conversion was still going on; for, in addition to 648 persons already baptized, of whom 265 are communicants, there are over 700 at Bonny alone who are now under instruction.”

Bishop Crowther has now about 10,000 Christians under his care. He lately opened at Bonny a new church built of iron, with sittings for 1,000.

The agents of the Wesleyan Missionary Society have been as zealous and successful, in a somewhat more limited sphere, as those of the Church of England, with whom they have generally lived and labored in harmony and love. Among the emigrants from Sierra Leone there were many Wesleyans who preferred their own ministers, whilst the domain of heathendom, on every hand, was sufficiently extensive to occupy the agents of both societies. At an early period a commodious Wesleyan Mission-house and chapel were erected at Lagos, where the work has progressed in a very satisfactory manner from the beginning. Many have been converted from time to time and united in church fellowship, some of whom have gone out to make known the good news to their fellow-countrymen. To provide for the training of native preachers and teachers, as well as to give a better education to those who are in a position to need it, a Wesleyan high school has been erected and opened at Lagos, which promises to be a most useful institution. Common day-schools are also taught in connection with all the out-stations of the Lagos circuit, and the Gospel is preached to the people in two or three different languages. They have about 6,000 adherents. The drink traffic is one of the great hindrances to missionary work in this section.

Says Rev. W. Allan: “In Africa we have to contend against the devil’s missionary agency. The liquor traffic is increasing, and it is a gigantic evil——greater, even, than the slave trade——debasing the people and ruining legitimate commerce. In West Africa it has deepened the degradation of the negro instead of civilizing him. Over 180,000,000 gallons of spirits had been imported last year in the district of Sierra Leone, and in Lagos it was far larger, while all the land was strewn with demijohns. The Niger Company imported 220,000 gallons during the last two years, and 500 cases of gin and 500,000 gallons of rum were landed by the Caliban, in which I sailed from Liverpool. The selling price of rum is less than a penny a gallon, and the gin sold at three-pence a bottle. The liquor so sold was of the most execrable character.”

A lurid picture of the western part of this region has lately been presented by the English district commissioner. He says: “The population, which has been recruited for many years past by a constant influx of refugees from the surrounding tribes, falls roughly into three divisions. These are: the Popos, chiefly engaged in fishing, forestry, and farming, but averse to steady work of any sort, and much addicted to theft; the Yombas, the most enterprising people in the district; and the Houssas, who are farmers and palm-nut gatherers. The Mohammedans among them are more enterprising and industrious than the fetish worshipers; while the Christians, though few in number, form a fairly thriving community. But all are alike in ‘intense and obtuse conservatism, so long as they are left to their own devices, and in a keen spirit of petty trading.’ The sole article of their moral code is ‘to do to your neighbor as you hope to avoid being done to by him.’ It is useless to appeal to any higher motive, and it is certain that without European influence to urge them on commerce must decline. Fishing is carried on wholly in the lagoons, the people never having had the enterprise to build surf-boats, which would enable them to engage in sea-fishing. Some progress has been made in agriculture, owing to the efforts of the Roman Catholic Mission at Badagry, the administrative centre. In the Frah Kingdom, also, the local British officer has succeeded in inducing the people to plant a considerable area of fertile land with corn, so that villages which were almost starving two years ago on smoked fish are now supplying large quantities of grain to the local markets. But this increased prosperity has only increased the drunken habits of the people, who exchange for vile imported spirits the products of their labor. Katamu, the Frah capital, is rapidly falling into a ruinous state of disrepair. Every fourth or fifth house is a rum shop, and the so-called palm-wine sheds are filled every night with drunken men and women. The evils of the drink traffic are so apparent to the people themselves that they have petitioned the Governor to put an end to the sale of liquor altogether. If this were done the fertile flood lands of Frah might become a source of food supply for the whole colony. In spite of the valuable resources of the forests, nothing is done to develop them save the collection and treatment of the palm-nuts. Trading is the African’s special delight, but until quite recently the markets of Lagos were not in a prosperous condition. Now that a British firm has established a branch at Badagry, and made the place a market town, it is estimated that 5,000 persons with every variety of native produce assemble there every market day, and in eight months the monthly export has increased from £30 to £1,878. Cocoanut planting, road making, corn-growing, and the cessation of the drink traffic appear to be the official methods for civilizing the West African negro.”

An extensive district on the western coast of Africa, between Sierra Leone and Cape Coast Castle received the name of Liberia, from the circumstance of its being colonized by liberated slaves and free persons of color from America. On the 22d of November, 1888, the secretary of the Manchester Geographical Society read an interesting paper contributed by the Hon. G. B. Gudgeon, consul-general for Liberia in London. The following is an extract: “It was stated that the famous negro republic of Liberia was founded by the American Colonization Society in 1822. The work of civilizing and Christianizing the inhabitants of that almost unknown country was entirely carried on for more than twenty years by this society. The missions established along the coast and at various points inland had developed into Liberia’s prosperous towns and settlements. It became an independent state in 1847. Nearly 2,000,000 souls were subject to the rule of the Liberian Republic, consisting of about 40,000 freed slaves and their descendants, the remainder belonging to numerous aboriginal tribes. While the state possessed a seaboard of 500 miles and an interior extending over 200 miles, she had acquired no territory except by treaty, purchase, exchange, or barter. Bishop Taylor had described the country as healthy and its climate salubrious and enjoyable, without a plague of flies and with few mosquitoes. Many travelers had confirmed the bishop’s testimony. The Republic of Liberia stood before the world as the realization of the dreams of the founders of the American Colonization Society, and in many respects more than the realization. Far beyond the recognized limits of the country, and hundreds of miles away from the coast, the effects of American civilization were to be witnessed. Men of color entirely governed the republic, and if any proof were wanting of the capacity of freedmen to govern, Liberia was an interesting illustration. The ability, learning, and skill of many of Liberia’s citizens were found in their code of laws, which for humanity, justice, and morality no other country could excel. The English tongue is spoken throughout the republic except among the native tribes not yet civilized; but among these too it is making good progress.”

Rev. S. L. Johnson, who recently visited Liberia, says: “The scenery along the coast of Liberia, from Cape Mount to the Gulf of Guinea, a distance of about 600 miles, is exceedingly grand. A few miles from the coast the country rises to hills, with gigantic trees, presenting a panorama that can only be described by a skilful artist.

“Monrovia is the capital of the republic. It rests on a beautiful hill overlooking the sea, surrounded by trees. There are many fine buildings in the city, which are creditable to the Monrovian people. The president’s house is built of brick, as are also many of the buildings; others are built of stone. The wharves face the sea, where there are colored firms doing business with England, Germany, and America.

“Mr. Sherman does a large business with England and America. After my return to England I wrote to Mr. Sherman for information regarding the articles of trade. This is the answer:——‘The articles of trade are palm-oil, palm kernels, coffee, ivory, camwood, ginger, and rubber. Many of our merchants do a business of $100,000 to $150,000 a year. A vessel left here for New York on the 7th inst., with a cargo of $50,000 worth, collected within two months. In this cargo were 118,000 pounds of coffee.’

“The soil of Liberia is extremely fertile, and produces all kinds of tropical fruits, sugar-cane, indigo, Indian corn, rice, cotton, cocoa, peanuts, and coffee, the latter the finest in the world. Vegetables are cultivated with great success. There are to be found the finest dye-woods, ebony, gum plant, and the gigantic palm-trees, which produce the palm-oil. On my way to England from Africa 1,500 casks were shipt on the same steamer to Liverpool, a good share of it being from the coast of Liberia. Goats, swine, sheep, cattle, and fowls, all thrive in Liberia.

“This republic has a glorious work to accomplish in the future. It will undoubtedly be in time, the most prosperous state on the west coast of Africa. With the civil, social, and religious advantages she enjoys, she must succeed. The annexation of the kingdom of Medina, with five hundred thousand inhabitants, and her wide and fertile domain, extending over two hundred miles into the interior, will no doubt inspire renewed energy in giving fuller opportunities for the advancement of the Gospel, as well as an open door for civilization and commerce.

“Much zeal and perseverance have been displayed throughout the republic. Fine churches, school buildings, and a college are to be seen in Monrovia.

“At Nifou, on the coast of Liberia, I counted forty-nine canoes, with two or three men in each, going out fishing. At twenty-five minutes to ten we stopt at Grand Cess, Liberia. Here fifteen canoes came out, with from three to twenty men in each. These belong to the Kru tribe, the aborigines of a part of Liberia. They are a fine-looking people, and very industrious. But for this class of people I do not know what the European traders of the African steamship companies would do. All the steamers reaching Sierra Leone and the coast of Liberia take on board a gang of ‘Kru-men’ to do the work of the ship. One hundred and thirty men were taken on board our steamer to go down the coast to work. Many of them speak broken English well.”

As might be expected, this territory, extending upwards of 300 miles along the coast to Cape Palmas, has been occupied by the American churches——viz. the Baptist, Methodist Episcopal, Protestant Episcopal, and Presbyterian Church (north). Much zeal and perseverance have been displayed in connection with all these agencies, and the result is seen in the parsonages, and places of worship, colleges and school buildings which have been erected in most of the towns and villages in the settlements, and in the improved morals of the people.

For some years past the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church has been gradually reducing the appropriations for the carrying on of the missions from $37,000 to $2,500——a procedure that has been regarded by the conference in Liberia as inconsistent with the general spirit of the church and the growing interest felt of late years in the evangelization of Africa, and which for a time threatened to result in a severance of the ecclesiastical relations subsisting between the conference and the society. The action of the latter has been dictated solely by an earnest desire to secure in the native churches “the development of a spirit of self-reliance and independence——elements indispensable to a self-perpetuating church in any land.” The General Conference of 1888 changed the name and boundaries of the “Liberian Conference” to the “African Annual Conference” embracing the entire continent of Africa. In the other missions in Liberia there seems also a disposition to rely on foreign aid.

Fernando Po is one of the most important islands on the western coast of Africa, and enjoys many advantages from its peculiar position. It is situated in the Gulf of Guinea, about seventy miles from the coast of Benim. It is thirty miles long and twenty broad; and in its general aspect it is rugged and mountainous in the extreme, though there are some fertile valleys between the mountains, and several promising tracts of land along the shore.

Among the settlers and aborigines of Fernando Po some really useful missionary work has been done at different times, which deserves a passing notice. The first in the field were the agents of the Baptist Missionary Society. They labored for several years among the settlers of all classes with very good results, whilst the English had possession of the island; but when it was given over to the Spaniards, Roman Catholicism was proclaimed to be the established religion of the settlement, and the harshness and persecution with which the Baptist missionaries were treated by the government authorities ended in their removal to the continent. In 1870——some improvement having taken place in the Spanish government——the Primitive Methodists were induced to commence a mission in Fernando Po, the Rev. Messrs. Burnett and Roe being the first missionaries sent out. They and their successors labored for several years very successfully. In 1879, in consequence of some misunderstanding, the missionaries were again banished from the island. An appeal was at once made to the home authorities, and in the course of a few months they were allowed to return.

This question of conflict between Protestant and Catholic mission work in Africa has, at certain times and in certain places, been serious, and is greatly to be regretted, for it destroys the efficacy of both Churches, and proves a stumbling block to the natives. Pinto speaks of it with amazement, in his trip across the continent. He found places where the natives had been utterly demoralized by the spirit of contention indulged by the two Churches, and where their final answer to his advice to live at peace and deal justly with one another was, that white people might talk that way, but their actions proved that they did not mean what they said.

In former times——notably in the Spanish, French and Portuguese provinces of Africa——the Catholic mission was a part of the political establishment, and it was expected to use its influence to extend and perpetuate the power which protected it. This was equivalent to warning off all competitors as intruders. Happily this condition is undergoing rapid modification.

Similarly, the Protestant mission of other countries was treated as part of the commercial establishment, under the protection of the consul, and of the trading company, to whom the territory was allotted. Its business was therefore, in part, to cultivate the trading spirit and make its success contribute to the wealth of the parent country. This notion, too, is undergoing modification.

All of which is directly in the line of that Christian enterprise so much needed for the conversion of the African heathen.

On the mainland opposite Fernando Po, and on into the interior, good work has been done. We will speak first of the Old Calabar Mission.

Old Calabar, on an affluent of the Cross river, is a recognized centre of the trade of the Oil river sections. It has a population of 15,000 natives and 150 white. An insight into the characteristics of the natives beyond Old Calabar can best be gotten from the journey of Mr. Johnson up the Cross river in 1888. His object in making an ascent of the river was to treat with the natives and at the same time settle an old quarrel between the Union people and the tribes about Calabar. Stopping, merely to observe that the Kruboys, of whom Mr. Johnson speaks, are the Krumen——Kroomen——of the Liberian coast, among whom Bishop Taylor has, in his four years of African labors, established more than twenty missions, we let the adventurer tell his own story. He says: “Having decided to ascend the Cross river and having no steam launch at my disposal, I was obliged to make the journey in native canoes, of which I hired three, and fitted the largest with a small house in the centre for my lodging. I took with me about thirty Kruboys. These invaluable native workers come from the Liberian coast. Without their aid European enterprise on the west coast of Africa would be at a standstill; for, invariably, the negroes who are indigenous will not undertake any persistent work. The Kruboy is a strong, good tempered, faithful creature; able to row, paddle, carry, dig, wash clothes, or turn his hand to anything——in fact, he is a great deal sharper and more industrious than the average English navvy. My first object in going up the Cross river was to settle an outstanding quarrel between the people of a district called Umon and the natives of Old Calabar. Union is at a distance of about a hundred miles from the sea. The people speak a language quite distinct from the Calabar language. They were, till lately, terribly priest-ridden. Their life was a burden to them, with its load of cruel superstitious practices. The last few years, however, since they have come into contact with the missionaries, the state of affairs has greatly improved. As I appeared in the light of a mediator, I was most warmly welcomed. An imposing fleet of eighty large Calabar canoes reached Umon soon after I arrived, and formed a really pretty sight, as they were all painted in brilliant, but tasteful combinations of color, their little houses hung with bright carpets or leopard skins, each canoe being decorated with gaudy banners. The crews were most fantastically dressed in gorgeous clothes. The beating of drums, blowing of horns, and the firing of guns made a clamor most disturbing to my comfort, which I promptly stopped. I need hardly say that I had the Calabar people all under my control, for there was not only a personal attachment between us, but they knew that I was working in their interest, and the Umon people were much impressed by the way in which my shabby little despatch canoe, with two of my Kruboys in it, could marshal the imposing Calabar fleet.

“As both sides were longing to have their quarrel at an end, and were fully prepared to accept my decision, the conference was a brief one. I decided that it was six of one and half a dozen of the other. I made the Calabar people surrender the Umon captives, and the Umon surrender their Calabar prisoners. Peace was reestablished, trade was resumed, and I was free to continue my journey.

“We next visited the important Akuna-Kuna country, very populous, and inhabited by friendly, industrious people, whose chiefs very promptly and willingly concluded a treaty with the British Government, and loaded me with such an abundance of provisions——bullocks, goats, sheep, fowls, ducks, yams, and Indian corn——that our progress was seriously impeded, our canoes nearly capsized, and my Krumen suffered severely from indigestion.

“Some distance up the river we had rather a ticklish task to perform. Another quarrel, and that a bitter one, had to be settled between the people of Akuna-Kuna and the inhabitants of Iko-Morut. Here I was awkwardly situated. Had I been enabled to travel in a steam-launch, I could have gone safely up the river, or in any direction where there was sufficient water; but traveling simply in native canoes, the inhabitants of these wild countries in the interior, who look on every stranger as an enemy, had no idea that a white man was visiting them, and often proceeded to attack us before I could make myself seen.

“As soon as we came in sight of the stockaded villages of Iko-Morut, many excited chocolate-colored natives could be seen hurrying along the banks of the stream and posting themselves in ambush behind the trees. Then first one gun, then two, three, four guns went off; then there was a regular hail of slugs and stones, whipping up the surface of the water, and, in one or two cases, whizzing over our canoes. In the face of this warm reception, it would have been impossible to proceed, for, at any moment, a shot might strike our canoes and send them to the bottom. As to returning the fire of these poor, stupid savages, nothing was further from my thoughts. It was always open to me to retreat, and, unless I could proceed peacefully and with a friendly reputation preceding me, it was futile to continue my ascent of the Cross river. So I had the canoes steered to an unoccupied sand-bank in the center of the stream, and as soon as the natives saw that we stopt, they ceased firing. Then I got into my small despatch canoe, with two interpreters, hoisted my white umbrella, and assuming my smile, quietly landed on the crowded beach, to the silent amazement of the natives, who were armed to the teeth. I was conducted to the chief, who, for a long time, could not be prevailed on to see me, on account of my presumed powers to bewitch him; but a little friendly conversation through the red screen of his apartment, and the hint that I had brought a pretty present, reassured him, and we soon made excellent friends.

“To make a long story short; the result of my stay at Iko-Morut was equally satisfactory to that of Umon. I made peace between Akuna-Kuna and Iko-Morut, and the chiefs of the latter place concluded a treaty with me.

“Then on, beyond Iko-Morut, day after day, we paddled up the beautiful stream, sometimes received by the natives in a gush of friendliness, sometimes sullenly avoided, sometimes boisterously attacked. At length, in the heart of the cannibal country, on the outskirts of Atam, where the Cross river attains its furthest reach to the north, our journey came forcibly to an end. I had several times been captured and released, several times fired at and then hugged by those who had attacked me, but the strain was becoming too great for the nerves of my Kruboys.

“As we approached one village, a shot, better directed than usual, went through the roof of my little ark, and though no doubt our ultimate reception at the village would have been the same as at the preceding ones——first sullen hostility, then timid inquiry, and lastly a cordial hand-shaking and hugging, and the giving of presents——still, before this happy consummation should come about, some of us might have been accidentally killed, or our canoes——our only means of regaining civilization——sunk or disabled; consequently I decided to turn back. Then ensued an awful afternoon, when for miles and miles we had to run the gauntlet past populous villages of cannibals, whom we had much difficulty in avoiding on our ascent of the river; and who, taking our retreat for a flight, seemed bent on capturing us or plundering our canoes and eating the wretched Kruboys, who turned blue with fright at the prospect of being eaten, as they desperately paddled down the river past shrieking natives, who waded out into the shallows, or pursued us in canoes. Every now and again we would stick on a sand bank, and the shouts of the natives would come nearer and nearer; then we would get off again, and paddle for our lives; then stick again, and so on, till at last we were out of this savage district. I hesitate to say hostile, for, wherever I landed, or was captured, I was always well treated as soon as they found out what I was like and what my objects were in visiting their country. At length we arrived in the delightful district of Apiapum, where we put up for a week at the clean and comfortable town of Ofurekpe, whose chief and people were some of the nicest, kindliest, most friendly folk I have ever seen in Africa, though they were in their practical way cannibals, like their neighbors——that is to say, they were given to eating the flesh of all whom they might catch in war. I did not here observe that other kind of cannibalism which I have occasionally met on the Upper Cross river, which is of a sentimental character, namely, where the old people of that tribe, when they become toothless and useless, are knocked on the head, smoke-dried, pounded into paste, and re-absorbed into the bosom of the family.”

The Old Calabar Mission originated with the Jamaica Presbytery of what is now the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The first band of missionaries, led by Mr. Hope Waddell, a member of the Jamaica Presbytery, reached their field of labor on the Old Calabar river on April 10th, 1846. They were cordially welcomed by King Eyamba and the chiefs of Duke Town, as also by King Eyo of Creek Town and his chiefs. Suitable sites for mission stations were readily granted. Mr. Waddell held a service with Eyamba and his chiefs the first Sunday after his arrival, and presented the former with a Bible.

Mission houses and schools were in due time erected at both stations, a printing press being also usefully employed in scattering the seeds of Divine truth. At Creek Town the first sermon was preached in the court yard of King Eyo’s palace, the king himself acting as interpreter.

The mission was reinforced in July, 1847, by the arrival of additional missionaries from Jamaica.

In May previous King Eyamba died. It was the occasion of one of those scenes of cruelty, too common in heathen lands.

Notwithstanding the efforts of the missionaries, no fewer than a hundred victims were sacrificed, among whom were thirty of the king’s wives. Here is the account given of the burial: “The people dug a large hole in one of King Eyamba’s yards, and having decked him in his gayest apparel, with the crown on his head, placed him between two sofas, and laid him in the grave. They killed his personal attendants, umbrella carrier, snuff box bearer, etc., (these the king was supposed to need in the world of spirits), by cutting off their heads, and with their insignia of office threw them in above the body; and after depositing a quantity of chop and of coppers, they cover all carefully up, that no trace of a grave could be seen. Over this spot a quantity of food is daily placed.”

In February, 1850, an Egbo law was passed abolishing the inhuman practice of sacrificing human beings when a king or chief died. It is spoken of as “A good day for Calabar”——“One memorable in the annals of the land.” About the same time the marriage ceremony was introduced——King Eyo having witnessed the first regular marriage.

On the suggestion of Mr. Waddell, their domestic idol, which consisted of a stick surmounted by a human skull and adorned with feathers, was expelled from every house.

The death of King Eyo in December, 1858, put the Egbo law to the test. Much excitement prevailed. Fears were entertained that the old superstition would triumph. Happily no such dreaded result followed. Other heathen practices were one by one abandoned through the influence of the mission.

The mission extended its sphere of operations from time to time——Ikunetu, situated on the Great Cross river, about twenty miles above Creek Town, being occupied in 1856, and Ikorofiong, also on the Cross river, about twenty miles above Ikunetu, in 1858. The Presbytery of Old Calabar was established September 1st, 1858, under the designation of the Presbytery of Biafra.

In 1878 Mr. Thomas Campbell, the European evangelist at Old Town, accompanied by a number of natives, explored in two directions——first in Oban, up the Qua river, and then beyond Nyango, on the Calabar river. Everywhere he was well received by the chiefs and people. On September 6th, 1880, there was an agreement entered into between D. Hopkins, Esq., British consul, and the kings and chiefs of Calabar, in accordance with which a number of superstitious and cruel customs are held as criminal and punishable by law. These include the murder of twin children, human sacrifices, the killing of people accused of witchcraft, the giving of the esere or poison bean, the stripping of helpless women in the public streets, etc., etc.

In the Missionary Record, June, 1881, appears the following intelligence: “The mission which seemed so long fruitless, is now one of the most fruitful in the whole earth. The increasing number and activity of the communicants, the increasing number of students in training as teachers and evangelists, and the manifestations of a Christian liberality not yet reached at home, tell of the changes which the Gospel has wrought. We ploughed in hope: we sowed in tears: and now already we reap in joy. The most recent tidings are the most heart-stirring. A new tribe, which had long resisted our approach, has been visited. They had never seen among them a white man till they looked on the face of the devoted Samuel Edgerly. They invite teachers to settle among them. They offer us suitable sites. The country is far beyond the swamps; it is high and healthy. This favorable entrance was greatly aided by the wise and good King Eyo, who sent a prince to accompany Mr. Edgerly beyond Umon to Akuna Kuna. When the expedition returned and the king heard the result, he gave utterance to one of the noblest of sentiments. ‘God,’ said he, when Mr. Edgerly had told his tale, ‘has unlatched the door, and wishes us to push it open.’”

Such results as have been achieved at the Old Calabar Mission are worth all the money and toil and sacrifice of health and even of life which they have cost.

The mission to the Cameroons was established in 1845 by the Baptist Missionary Society. When the missionaries of that society were expelled from the neighboring island of Fernando Po, where they had been laboring since 1841, they settled among the Isubus at Bimbia, where a mission had previously been projected. The mission was afterwards extended to King Bell’s Town in an easterly direction, the people inhabiting that region being the Dualas. The entire New Testament has been translated into the languages of both tribes.

The Gaboon Mission was called into existence by the American Board in 1842. Baraka was the first station occupied. It was transferred in 1870 to the Mission Board of the American Presbyterian Church (north.) The Mpongwes on the coast, and the Shekanis, Bakalais, and Pangwes in the interior, are the tribes embraced in the field of operation. Not much progress has been made owing to the opposition of the Roman Catholics. In all the French possessions on the west coast of Africa the Roman Catholics predominate and very little has been accomplished. Recently the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society has been doing a good work at Senegal and other settlements.

We come now to Angola. Angola was discovered by European mariners long before Christopher Columbus had given to the world another continent, yet many years passed before the value of the discovery was recognized and the country taken possession of and occupied by the Portuguese, at that period when Portugal was made remarkable by the commercial enterprise and maritime prowess of its people, more than three hundred years ago.

For several years before the occupation of Angola, the king of Congo had been doing a large and lucrative trade with the Portuguese in slaves. The sources from which were drawn victims to keep alive this nefarious barter were never failing. The superstitions of the people, their customs and habits, a season of drouth, a failure of crops, in fact anything, even the least trivial happenings, were all factors giving Congo’s king excuse for the selling of his subjects to securing wealth; wealth represented by many wives, granaries filled to bursting with manioc, and wooded hills and fertile valleys stocked to overrunning with flocks of sheep and droves of lowing kine; wealth which enabled Congo to dominate and overawe all contemporary tribes, and which naturally incited the jealousy of other kings and chiefs who ruled over the natives of other districts in this country of Congoland.

Among the savage rulers who were envious of the power of their rival, was Nmbea, king of Angola, autocrat of a large and densely populated country. Holding at his disposal millions of helpless and superstitious subjects, Nmbea soon recognized that by copying the practices of his powerful neighbor he, with but little difficulty, would also become chief and powerful. So, moved by this desire, he opened a correspondence with the Portuguese. He sent one of the rich men of his tribe, with presents of slaves, ivory and strangely wrought curios, as ambassadors to the Portuguese court at Lisbon, with instructions to endeavor to have the Portuguese establish trading relations between the two kingdoms.

At this time the attention of the Portuguese queen and the people generally was attracted towards Brazil. Enterprising colonists, venturesome explorers and wealth seekers of all classes saw in this South American district a new Cathay. Thousands from among the patrician, as well as other thousands from more humble circles, rushed into that new land, necessarily causing large sums of money to follow in their wake. The enthusiasm with which this American opportunity was cultivated and the resultant drain from the royal treasury and from the coffers of the people caused Queen Catherine to receive with indifference all stories of African wealth. Thus obstacles were formed which prevented Nmbea from carrying out his plans until several years had passed, when the growing demands for slaves, needed to supply labor in Brazilian mines and on East Indian coffee farms, had become a matter of great importance. Then the request of Angola’s king was considered, and a party of Portuguese were landed at a place in his kingdom which they called St. Paul de Loanda.

In the selection of this place these adventurers were most fortunate, for it was not long before trade, in ever-increasing volume, flowed towards the sea coast at this point. The growth of the city was rapid and, despite wars with native tribes and trouble with marauding Dutch, it grew wealthy and powerful. Large and beautiful cathedrals were built, imposing palaces were erected as were many important public buildings, and dotted here and there about the suburbs, were fruitful farms and valuable plantations. So with the moving years the city waxed strong and mighty, thriving on its traffic in human flesh. But a time came when this trade was shaken to its base and the prosperity of its citizens brought to a temporary end.

The inhabitants of the civilized world began to look with disfavor upon the slave traffic, and were induced to attempt its suppression. This, for Loanda, was the writing on the wall, for it meant the placing of an embargo upon the trade which was the only source from which the city derived revenue for its support. Philanthropy succeeded, and as a consequence Loanda’s glory faded. The palaces passed away, the stately cathedrals crumbled into ruins and the large and costly slave barracoons became useless except as fuel for the poor.

Then for years death-like quiet reigned in the city, and all signs of commerce ceased. But this stagnation was not to last forever. England and other commercial nations of Europe, in their efforts to find markets for the sale of the products of their mills and workshops, had established depots for trade at almost every important place in the world. The eyes of European merchants were turned towards the prolific field of southwest Africa.

Stories which told how great wealth was to be gained in African trade began to be chronicled in the exchanges of all the great commercial centres, and a wave of commercial endeavor was put in motion, which carried with it many richly freighted barks to again fill the harbor of the African city of St. Paul de Loanda. Since then Loanda has improved beyond all expectation, and now the vessels of four lines of steamers as well as many sailing craft are constantly in the harbor loading and discharging their cargoes. Many large public buildings have been built. Acres of flat and swampy shore have been reclaimed and are now utilized for docks and wharfs. Ruins of churches and monasteries have been cleared away and walks and squares have been laid out and planted. There are many shops supplied with all kinds of European goods. Pipes have been laid, through which flows into the city sweet water from the river Bengo, nine miles away, and when the railway, now in course of construction, is in operation to bring the products of the farms, plantations and rich forests of the interior to the city, Loanda will have become a fair specimen of a thriving tropical town.

The city is situated on the shore of a large and beautiful bay and is divided into a lower and an upper town. The “Cidade Buixa,” or lower town, which is built on the flat shore which fringes the water of the bay, nestles at the base of a hill and straggles up its rising sides until it joins the “Cidade Alto.” The upper town stretches along the brow of the elevation and sweeps outward towards the ocean until it ends at a bold and rocky precipice where Fort St. Miguels, a frowning sentinel, watches over the safety of the port.

The harbor is a bay where a thousand ships might at one time ride at anchor and find secure protection from the severest storm. A long, low and narrow neck of land, called Isle of Palms, leaves the mainland about twelve miles to the south and runs north until it reaches a point opposite the city, where it flattens out its surface of sunlit sands to give protection to the harbor of which it forms the southern boundary.

This spit of land is partly covered with groves of cocoa palms, among which the residents of the city have erected many small houses where they visit daily to enjoy surf bathing. On other parts of this sandy breakwater are numerous villages occupied by native fishermen, who make an easy living.

Loanda contains a population of nearly 20,000 people, about one-third of whom are white. The houses, as a rule, are built of stone and roofed with tile, and are large and commodious. The houses all have spacious yards attached, in which are situated the stores, kitchens, wells and habitations of the slaves and servants. Arranged in this manner, and with wide and spacious streets, the city is very open and comparatively healthy. It covers a large expanse of ground. The principal business street contains a number of fine structures. On it are situated the buildings of the Banco da Ultra Marenho, the barracks of the military police, the custom-house and the offices of the foreign consuls. There are also three hotels, many stores and warerooms, several billiard rooms and cafés. In the middle of the street rows of banyan trees have been planted, making a shady walk, where the natives gather to buy and sell.

These open-air sales, called in Bunda talk “Quitanda” market, are well patronized. Four uprights, a few “Loandas” mats for a shed, a stone-bowled pipe and a wooden pillow, are all the furnishings needed to make comfortable the colored women merchants. On the ground and all around the booths are laid out pieces of cotton, cheap calico, brilliantly colored handkerchiefs, native-made baskets containing balls and reels of cotton, beads, needles, pins, etc., cheap crockery and cutlery, empty bottles and balls of different colored clay. Suspended from the uprights and resting against the trees are stacks of native tobacco, plaited into rolls or wound about sticks and sold by inches. The venders at these open sales are always women, and as a rule are clean and comely. They are shrewd sellers and close buyers, and in a few years become, from a native’s point of view, quite wealthy. When conducting the business of the day, they squat or lie down upon the sand and indulge in quip and joke, and gossip with one another and their customers.

Covering a whole square in the center of the lower town is the general market. It is a large, square, uncovered enclosure made of terra cotta and brick, built in excellent taste. All the public buildings of Loanda are under the direct control of the military police and are well conducted.

At break of day one hears the loud sound of many horns, trumpets and beating drums. Down through the flower scented streets, in soldierly order moving, with burnished guns and glistening bayonets, 100 blacks, all dressed in spotless white, come marching until they reach the market gates. Here good Father Anselmo, of the Ursulines, pours out a benediction upon the market and the awaiting people. When the gates are opened the police take their stations and the market is ready to receive the buyers and sellers of the day. Through the open portals into the market flows a stream of laughing, singing men and women. One carries upon her head a large basket, from whose open top protrudes the heads of cackling geese and scolding hens. Another has a pot of neichineas (water oil). Some bring meat and others vegetables. Millions of fleas and “jiggers” are always present, and in and out among the wares run countless naked and dirty children. The buyers and sellers shout aloud in boisterous tone.

Besides this market there is another given up entirely to the sale of fish. In the haze of early morning, far out upon the ocean, hundreds of black spots are seen bobbing up and down upon the water. They are the canoes of the fishermen who are hastening towards the land with the fruit of their night’s labor. In a little time they reach the shore and their scaly cargoes are tumbled out upon the sands. The women and children at once proceed to clean the fish. In one spot they arrange the fish for drying, while others salt and pack them in barrels for shipment. Others, again, fry, boil and roast the fish and all are eating raw or half-cooked fish, interspersing everything with shouting, singing, dancing and grunts of satisfaction.

During the period when the city’s prosperity was interrupted, its streets were left uncared for and their beautiful pavements became covered with a bed of loose red sand, which was washed by the rain down from the surrounding hills. This drifting still continues, rendering walking so very difficult that it is indulged in only by the convicts and natives. The better classes have resource to the “maxilla.” The “maxilla” is a flat frame of canework with one or two arms at the side and a low back provided with a cushion. This frame is hung by cords to a hook on a palm pole, about eighteen feet long, and is carried upon the shoulders of two blacks, who travel with it easily at the rate of three or four miles an hour. It is covered with an awning of oiled cloth and has silk curtains hung all around it.

Loanda is a convict settlement, but, contrary to what might be expected, its people are remarkably law-abiding. This may arise from the fact that discovered law-breakers are punished most severely, often dying under the lash. The convicts, as a rule, are store-keepers and farmers. They are prosperous, and soon become contented with their lot and rarely return to Europe. Ignorant and unrefined, they assimilate readily with the native classes, and take part in all their pleasures.

The “batuco,” country dance, is the popular form of amusement. A “batuco” is danced in the following fashion: A large ring is formed of men and women. On the outside several fires are kept burning, near which are assembled the musicians with horns, drums and the twanging “maremba.” Others clap their hands and sing a kind of chorus. Two dancers, a man and a woman, jump with a yell into the ring, shuffle their feet with great rapidity, passing backwards and forwards. Then facing one another, suddenly advance and bring their breasts together with a whack. These dances are not in great favor with the better class of free blacks, but this does not prevent them from occurring every night. Although the abolition of slavery is supposed to have taken place in 1878, almost all servants are slaves. They are well treated, however, as public opinion condemns harshness and quite a rivalry exists in having household slaves well dressed and happy looking.

The city has no places of public amusement except a theatre, but this for some time has not been used on account of a social war between the married women and those who do not consider the marriage ceremony essential to their welfare. There is a fair military band, however, which plays twice a week in the park in the upper town, and there is hardly a night that there is not something going on at some of the private homes. A dance at the Governor’s palace is certain to be given once a mouth.

The aborigines of Loanda owe much to the Catholic Church. Its priests have taught the natives many trades and industries. There are four newspapers published in the city, but they deal mainly in unpleasant personalities.

Even more important than Angola, in a commercial and political sense, is the Portuguese province to the south, known as Benguella, with Benguella as the capital. The town is an old one and has not shared the decay incident to the early Portuguese settlements on the western coast. The harbor is excellent, and is the entrepôt to the celebrated Bihé section, through a series of tribes which Pinto visited and which he describes as of superior physique and intelligence. Benguella was once the seat of an active slave trade, and Monteiro says, in his volume published in 1875, that he has seen caravans of 3,000 blacks coming into Benguella from Bihé, fully 1,000 of which were slaves. The white settlers cleared many fine plantations about Benguella, which they stocked with slaves and upon which large crops of cotton were formerly raised. The contiguous tribe is the Mundombe, wild and roving, dirty and selfish, little clothed and living in low round-roofed huts. Cattle are their principal riches, yet they seldom partake of their flesh, except upon feast days, when the whole tribe assembles, and as many as 300 head of fine cattle are dispatched in a single day.

It is only within the last few years that this region has been entered by the Protestant missionaries. In 1880 the American Board sent out three missionaries to Benguella, the port of the Bihé country. They were Rev. Walter W. Bagster, grandson of Samuel Bagster, publisher of the Polyglot Bible, and the leader of the expedition; the Rev. Wm. H. Sanders, son of a missionary in Ceylon; and Mr. Samuel T. Miller, both of whose parents were slaves. The kings of Bailunda and Bihé showed themselves friendly, and the missionaries, since reinforced, entered hopefully upon their work. On February 22, 1882, Mr. Bagster died from malarial fever. Bishop Taylor has opened up a number of stations in Angola, of which mention will be made when we come to speak of his work in establishing self-supporting missions in Africa.

A wonderful field has been opened up along the mighty Congo for missionary effort. Ten years ago the king of Belgium entered upon the development of the Congo region and the establishment of a new African State. An official report of the progress attained has just been rendered, giving these facts: The Lower Congo has been opened up to navigation by large vessels as far as Boma, soundings having been made and the course marked out by buoys; a cadastral survey of the Lower Congo has been made as a step towards the preparation of a general map of the entire region; justice is regularly administered in the Lower Congo, and a trustworthy and cheap postal service has been established. At Banana, Boma, and Leopoldville medical establishments, under the direction of Belgian doctors, have been founded, and a considerable armed force of blacks, officered by Europeans, has been called into existence. The caravan route between Matadi and Leopoldville is as free from danger as a European road, and a complete service of porterage by natives has been established. A railway has been projected and the route almost entirely surveyed. The state has established herds of cattle at various stations, and in the very heart of Africa; on the waters of the Upper Congo there is a fleet of steamers every year increasing in number. A loan of 150,000,000 francs has been authorized and the first issue subscribed. Many of the more intelligent natives from the country drained by the Upper Congo have taken service with the State, and numerous trading factories have been established as far up the river as Bangala and Leuebo. In addition several private companies have been formed for developing the country, and finally geographical discoveries of the greatest importance have been made, either by the officers of the State or by travelers who received great assistance in their work from the State.

Speaking of the Congo Mission Dr. Pierson in the Missionary Review says: “A grand open door is that which God has set before our Baptist brethren in the Congo basin! a million square miles in the heart of equatorial Africa, made accessible by the great Congo and its tributaries.

“The great lakes, Nyassa, Victoria, Tanganyika, are comparatively isolated; but the Congo and its branches present from 4,000 to 6,000 miles of river roadway, needing only steamers or canoes to give access to these teeming millions. One starts at the mouth of this imperial stream and ascends 125 miles of navigable river, then for 185 miles encounters rapids and cataracts; but beyond that for over 1,000 miles, from Stanley Pool to Stanley Falls, is one grand stretch of navigable river, with branches running each way navigable from 100 to 800 miles, and leading into the heart of this rich and populous territory.

“The people from the river-mouth up to Stanley Pool and the Equator line are being civilized by contact with white traders, and their pagan customs largely modified. They speak one language, musical, of large capacity of expression and easy of acquisition, and along this line the seven Congo stations are already planted. Beyond the point where the Congo crosses the Equator, lies another vast population, more degraded, less civilized, and needing at once the full array of Christian institutions, but yet entirely destitute.

“Their moral and spiritual state is hardly conceivable without contact with them. With no idea of God or immortality, they worship fetish charms; sickness is not brought about by natural causes, but is the result of enchantment; hence the medicine-man must trace disease and death to some unhappy human victim or victims, who must suffer the witch’s penalty. One death therefore means another——it may be a dozen. Here runaway slaves are crucified, robbers buried alive, young men cruelly decapitated, and human beings are even devoured for meat.

“And yet this people, after centuries of virtual seclusion, are now both literally and morally accessible. They welcome missionaries, come to the chapels, and prove teachable. Even now cruel customs and superstitious notions are giving way before patient, humble, scriptural instruction. The walls are down, and the hosts of God have but to march straight on and take what Dr. Sims calls ‘the last stronghold of Paganism,’

“Wonderfully indeed has God linked Protestant, Greek, Roman Catholic, and even Moslem nations in the administration of the Congo Free State. Never was such a highway open for the Gospel since our Lord ascended.

“The Arabs from Zanzibar and the coast are moving toward Stanley Falls and the north country, establishing themselves in large villages to capture slaves and carry on nefarious traffic, while the Protestant forces slowly move upward from the west. The question is, Who is to occupy the Congo Basin? and the question is to be settled at once. This great highway of rivers means traffic and travel; this rich and splendid tropical country invites trade and settlement. Into whose hands shall such a heritage be surrendered? The Christian Church must give prompt answer by action, her reply must be a taking possession, and the old law is the new one: ‘Every place that the sole of your feet shall tread upon shall be yours,’ the resolutions of enthusiastic missionary conventions, the prayers of all Christendom, the planting of the banner of the cross at a few commanding points——all this will not do. We must send out enough Christian laborers to measure off that soil with their own feet.

“‘But it is unhealthy?’ So are all tropical and especially equatorial climes to those who are not accustomed to the intense and steady heat, and do not use common sense in adapting their clothing, eating and drinking, and habits of life, to these peculiar surroundings. One must not go from temperate to torrid zone, and wear the garments, eat the heating food, use the stimulating drinks, risk the exhausting labors, or even live in the same unventilated houses which are permissible in cooler latitudes. A trip to New Orleans or Florida has proved fatal to many a fool who would not take advice. Even the heroism of the Gospel does not demand needless exposure or careless venture.

“Here is a grand opportunity. It may be doubted whether there has been anything like it since the clarion voice of our Great Captain trumpeted forth the last commission. Ethiopia is stretching forth her hands unto God. On those hands are the marks of manacles which England and America helped to rivet there. There is but one atonement we can make for Africa’s wrongs——it is to lay down our lives, if need be, to redeem her sable sons from the captivity of sin.

“We ought to turn this Congo into a river of life, crowd its waters with a flotilla of Henry Reeds, line its banks with a thousand chapel spires, plant its villages with Christian schools, let the Congo Free State mark its very territory with the sign of Christian institutions, so that to cross its border will be to pass from darkness into light. Where is our Christian enterprise, that such a work, with such a field and such promise, should wait for workmen and for money! What do our converted young men want, as a chance to crowd life with heroic service, that the Congo Basin does not attract them! Here what a century ago would have taken fifty years to accomplish, may be done in five. The unexplored interior is open, the ‘Dark Continent’ waits to be illuminated. Nature has cast up her highway of waters, and there is no need to gather out the stones. Give us only the two-wheeled chariot, with steam as the steed to draw it, and the men and women to go in it bearing the Gospel, and from end to end of this highway we can scatter the leaves of that tree which are for the healing of the nations.

“Where are the successors of Moffatt and Livingstone! What a hero was he who dared forty attacks of fever and then died on his knees beside Lake Bangweolo, that he might open up the dark recesses of Africa to the missionary! Let us pour men and money at the feet of our Lord. We have not yet paid our debt to Simon the Cyrenean and the Eunuch of Ethiopia!”

The Baptist church has for years carried on energetic mission work in Africa. The English Baptist Missionary Society, working in co-operation with American Baptists, has pushed its way, by means of flourishing stations far up the Congo and into the interior. In 1885, it presented a steamer, on the Upper Congo, to the American missionaries, and then proceeded to build another for its own use. Dr. Guinness, the president of this large and prosperous society, on a visit to the United States in 1889, spoke thus of the missionary field in Africa: “Stanley was three years in discovering the source of the Congo, and though he met hundreds of strange tribes in that journey of 1000 miles, he never saw a mission station. He found difficulty in coming down this region, but our missionaries sent out to evangelize this country found their difficulty in going up. We found it comparatively easy to found a station near the mouth, and as far as a hundred miles up. After years of labor we reached Stanley Pool, which is the key to the interior, but not without the loss of hundreds of lives.

“The mission in Africa is in its infancy. Africa is a world in itself. The languages spoken would take more than ten hours to enumerate, as there are over 600. They are principally the great Soudanese groups. I gave a year to making the first grammar of the Congo language that was ever prepared. More than 1000 natives have been converted. In this work there is the stage of pure indifference, succeeded by one of inquiry, then hostility, and finally acquiescence. The natives themselves become in many cases messengers of the Gospel.

“I don’t know under Heaven, unless it be in China, a more hopeful mission than that Congo field, and here it is for you. You have now water-way to the whole of it. It is healthy, notwithstanding all statements to the contrary. The interior is healthy, because it is high land, well watered, richly wooded, moderate in its climate, and rich in population. The trouble with missionaries has been that they stick to the coast line, which is malarious. Instead of keeping up in the ordinary way in red-tape style a particular station with a few missionaries, you want to make an advance into this great interior parish. It is no use for your people in this country to say: ‘This is the colored men’s work, let them do it,’ They are not suited to be the explorers and controllers of such movements. White men must be the leaders and lay the foundation, when the colored men will be the helpers.”

Mr. Guinness is maturing plans for a grand advance of three columns of missionaries to go simultaneously up the three branches of the Congo——northern, central and southern. The central one may be considered as started a fortnight since, by the departure of eight missionaries from London, to work as an English auxiliary to the American Baptist Missionary Union.

Mr. Richards, of the American Baptist Missionary Union, reports that the work at Banza Manteke, the place where so many converts have been baptized, is still prospering. The young church has been greatly tried by persecution as well as by sickness and death. Not less than twenty of those baptized have died, and the fatality has been a great stumbling-block to the heathen, who have asserted that the sickness was sent by their gods because they have been neglected. This has prevented many from accepting the Christian faith. The heathen are bitterly opposed, and would take the lives of the Christians if they could. Recently 17 were baptized, and others are asking for the ordinance, and the knowledge of the truth is spreading far and wide.

Those who become intimately acquainted with the negro race as found in various parts of Africa bear testimony to its good qualities. The coast negro who has learned some of the vices of civilization is undoubtedly a sorry specimen of humanity; but where native tribes can be found uncontaminated by contact with foreigners, they exhibit sterling qualities. Rev. George Grenfell, who has visited all the tribes along the Congo, says that the negro would stand his ground before the white man. “There is a vitality of race and power about him that is going to make him take his place some day among the nations of earth.” In support of this opinion, he gives several incidents showing the vigor and fidelity of the natives, and especially mentioned an incident which he witnessed at Banza Manteka, the station at which the American Baptists have recently received so many converts. Three years ago their place was a stronghold of grossest superstitions, and there seemed no hope of a spiritual harvest; but as Mr. Grenfell was coming down the river, on his way to England, he met a band of native evangelists going forth on an evangelistic tour. They had set out of their own accord, without even the knowledge of the missionary, evidently taking upon themselves the Lord’s command to go and preach the Gospel. They had not only forsaken their own superstitions, but were vigorously seeking to propagate their new faith.

We have thus given in brief outline a sketch of the work done on the west coast of Africa and some of the countries in Central Africa which are reached through the west coast. In no part of the world has the Gospel achieved more signal triumphs than here, among this barbarous people. When the present century opened, the slave trade, with its untold horrors, held everywhere undisputed sway. Human sacrifices and other cruelties were fearfully prevalent. Revellings and abominable idolatries, with the other works of the flesh described in the fifth chapter of Galatians, were indulged in to a frightful extent and without the slightest restraint. There was then not one ray of light to relieve the dense darkness that universally prevailed. It is otherwise now. Though little has been done compared with what remains to be done, still the slave trade and many other cruel practices have received their death blow. The standard of the Cross has been planted all along the western shores, and even far into the interior of that great continent. In all West Africa, called “The White Man’s Grave,” from Senegambia on the north, where the Paris Society is laboring, to Benguella on the south, where the American Board has begun to work, there are more than a hundred stations and over 200 English, German, French and native missionaries, belonging to sixteen societies, with 120,000 converts. And were it not for the evils of civilization, which are so much easier for the poor barbarians to learn than the virtues, there would be nothing to prevent the universal spread of the Gospel in Western Africa, for the people there are willing to receive the simple proclamation of Divine truth, and the Christian church is awaking to the glorious privilege of making it known unto them.

Little mention has been made of the work of Bishop Taylor in this sketch of the missions of Western Africa. His work is of such recent date, and of so unique a character that we deemed it of sufficient importance to warrant a fuller treatment than could be given in connection with the other missions. By this method also we can give a much clearer idea of what he has done. As his mission stations are confined to Western Africa, and regions entered by way of the west coast, this is the proper place to speak of his enterprise.

Perhaps the most notable missionary movement of the age is that started by Bishop Wm. Taylor of the Methodist Episcopal Church, on the continent of Africa. Bishop Taylor is of Scotch-Irish parentage, his grand parents having immigrated from County Armah, Ireland, to Virginia about 130 years ago. They were Revolutionary patriots and so hostile to slavery that they set all slaves free, belonging to the family. His father, Stuart Taylor, married Martha A. Hickman, and they settled in Rockbridge County in 1819. They were Presbyterians, but eventually became converts to Methodism. The son, William, was born May 21, 1821. In 1843 he was attached to the Baltimore Conference. He came into notice as a Methodist street preacher, of extraordinary power, in San Francisco, in 1849. He established a church there and continued to preach till 1856. Being a natural pioneer in the mission field, full of pluck and original ideas, he visited other parts of the United States and went into Canada and England. Then he went to the West Indies and into British Guiana, preaching and founding churches. Next, he visited Australia, where he met with a success which may well be called phenomenal. The same success attended his trip to Tasmania and New Zealand. With a foot that never tired, he went to South Africa and then to the Island of Ceylon, awakening the people by his eloquence and earnestness. He returned through India, arousing the sleeping nations, and leaving as a permanent monument to his fame the fully organized South India Methodist Conference.

He was now in the midst of his powers, and with well defined aims as to the plan and scope of mission establishments. As to himself, personal work was what was required; as to the missions, a sense of independence which would conduce to their growth and perpetuity. No mission was to be an asylum for lazy, superannuated men and women, drawing on a home fund for support, but each was to be self-supporting as far as possible, after its period of juvenility was over. Full of this impression he entered the Brazilian country, or for that matter, South America at large, and began a work of founding missions which astounded his church and the world by its success. Schools and churches sprang up as if by magic, right in the midst of populations wedded to the old Catholic creeds and forms, and the effect of his evangelism is as far reaching as time.

After this he turned his attention to Africa, as a field calling most loudly for civilization and Christianity; and more, as the field best suited to his evangelizing methods. He was elected Bishop of Africa by the General Conference of the Methodist Church, in May, 1884, and sailed for his new and limitless parish in December, 1884. After four years of heroic struggle, with successes which in every way justified his labors and plans, he returned to the United States in April, 1888, and sailed again for Africa in December of the same year, having equipped and sent in advance, November 13, 1888, twenty new missionaries.

His Transit and Building Fund bore the expense, and it was well supplied for the emergency by voluntary contributions from the United States and Canada. Fifteen homes in Africa became a requisite for these Christian workers, together with at least a year’s sustenance. Still the fund failed not, but had to spare for the Bishop’s personal comfort. Thus at one end of the Christian line work inured to the supply of necessities which should lead up to self-support in the missionary field, and at the other end it shaped for the development of those indigenous resources which should establish independence.

The characteristics of his work, aside from his individual energy, wonderful ingenuity, and magnetic power, are:

(1) Self-supporting Missions. Missionaries are provided with a suitable outfit, have their passage paid, are provided with a home and seeds for planting. They are expected to do the best with the first year’s equipment, and to take such steps as will put them on an independent footing by the second year. This is not more a test of their own industry and efficiency, than an example to the natives to live in peace and adopt civilized means of obtaining a livelihood. It is an invitation to heroic spirits to enter the mission field, and is an earnest of tact and endurance which must prove of infinite value to those with whom they are in contact. It is the nearest approach any church has ever made to the thought, that a spiritual avenue to the heathen, and especially the shrewd African heathen, is most direct when it leads up through his business and work-a-day instincts to his heart.

(2) Native Coöperation. This is best assured by appearing to be on an equality with them. The missionary who is backed by a home exchequer and who is not compelled to resort to ordinary means of subsistence, is apt to grow exclusive and become a source of envy and suspicion. He is far more potential when he is as much one of his people as circumstances will allow, and like them dependent on the ordinary laws of industry for subsistence. There is but little risk in this to the man of energy, skill and health, where climate and soil are favorable for production, and all nature conspires to reward industry. It attracts the natives, secures their confidence and coöperation, and adapts them for the almost unconscious receipt of enlightenment and Christianity. Nothing so disarms them of suspicion, or serves better to silence controversy, than this quiet show of permanent settlement in their midst and the atmosphere of thrifty contentment which surrounds a newly-made mission home and vegetable garden.

(3) Elements of a Pure Civilization. The school goes with the mission, the garden and field with the school. Sermons there are, but not to the neglect of school work. School-hours there are, but not to the neglect of soil cultivation. Practical education is paramount. The seeds, the trees, the plants, which are fitted for the climate, are planted and tended, and the natives are asked to come and work by the side of the missionary and to learn the art of turning the earth to account. Thus a primitive Industrial School is started in every mission, and the laws of thrift and self-dependence go hand in hand with those of morality and spirituality. As things have gone, it is surely a novel, and perhaps a hard, life for a missionary, but in that it is an effective means of conversion and enlightenment, the sacrifice does not seem too great. After all, does it not entirely meet the objections of those who so vehemently urge that the only way to make missionary work successful among African natives is to wait until commerce has reconciled them to contact with the outer world?

(4) Not Confined to the Ordinary Ministry. It opens the field of missionary endeavor to earnest, moral men of every occupation. Teachers, artisans, laborers in every branch of industry, become invaluable servants of the Lord, under this system. Children as well as parents may share the honors of introducing Christ in this practical way, the key to which is example. What so inspiring as the confidence of equality and co-labor! To be like a teacher in what appertains to material welfare, is father to a wish to be like him or her in what appertains to spiritual welfare.

(5) Coast-Line Missions. These are practicable and necessary at first. But they are only evangelical bases for the more numerous and grander structures soon to be erected within the continent.

In support of his system the Bishop brings to bear an experience wider than that of any living missionary, to which must be added a special study of the African natives and the entire African situation.

He says that the untutored heathen of Africa have no vain philosophy by which to explain away their perception of God as a great personal being. They have their “greegrees,” “charms” and “armulets,” but they never pray to them, they cry to God in the day of trouble. In the extreme south God’s name is “Dahlah,” “Tixo” and “Enkosi.” In south central Africa His name is “En Zambe.” The Zambesi river is called after God. On the west coast his name is “Niswah.” All these words express clear perceptions of one great God of heaven and earth.

He further relates that one day he was preaching to King Damassi of the Ama Pondo nation, about the resurrection. One of the king’s counsellors expressed dissent from the Bishop’s doctrine. The king, a giant in physique, frowned at him and said: “Hold your tongue you scoundrel! You know well our fathers believed in the resurrection of the dead, and so do we.”

When a Kaffirman dies they dig a grave about two feet wide and five deep and let the corpse down in a squatting position. But before it is lowered they seat him beside the grave, to allow anyone who wishes to talk with it. This is consequence of their belief that though the spirit has left the body it still lingers near for a last communication with friend or foe. If any present has an unadjusted quarrel with the hovering spirit, he approaches and makes his peace, and then begs that the shade will not return to bewitch his children or cattle. Others come and send messages of peace to their fathers by means of the departing spirit, and still others send word very much as if the departure of a spirit were a sure means of communication between this and the final home of good people. When analyzed, their belief is supreme that the body returns to dust at death, but that the spirit is immortal; that the spirit retains all its faculties and forces, and has independent senses corresponding with the bodily senses; that good spirits dwell with God in happiness and that those who follow will commune with them. These things they have never learned from books, nor teachers. They are intuitions.

In February, 1888, Bishop Taylor visited a dead chief, near Tataka on the Cavalla river. He had been a prominent man, a giant in size, and had given leave to found a mission in his tribe. But he knew no language but his own and had never heard the Gospel preached. He was found sleeping tranquilly in death, and inquiry revealed the fact that he had talked all through the night of his death with “Niswah”——God——and had called on Him repeatedly——“Niswah I am your man!” “Niswah, I trust you!” “Niswah, I accept you!” Belief, even unto salvation, could not have been seemingly stronger.

To translate the Christian Bible into the languages spoken by those among whom missionary effort is put forth, has always been regarded as a necessary step to successful apostolic work. It would be an herculean, if not impossible task in a country where languages are so numerous and dialects so diverse as in Africa. Even if not so, the task requires scholarship of a high order, patience such as few mortals possess, time which might count for much if otherwise employed, and an exchequer which can be drawn upon indefinitely. Bishop Taylor has reversed the old procedure in his missionary contact with the African natives. Still recognizing the necessity for learning their languages in order to facilitate communication, he, however, insists that they shall learn ours, as a means of fuller expression of ideas, and especially of those ideas which represent newly acquired knowledge and quickened spiritual emotions. But how should he overcome the formidable obstacle our language presents, in its complicated grammar and orthography, to all foreigners? Especially, how should the African boy and girl, in the mission school, be taught what our own more favored boys and girls find so appallingly difficult? The Bishop’s way out of it was to introduce the phonetic, or natural sound, element into his mission schools. It proved, in common parlance, a hit from the start. Here is a sample of his English, as phonetically adapted for his African pupils:

“Bishop Taylor findz our English mod ov speling wun ov the gratest drabaksin teching the nativz; and also wun ov the gratist obstiklz in redusing the nativ languajez to riting. Mishunarez evri whar hav kompland ov thez dificultez. Bishop Taylor haz kut the Gordian not; or at lest haz so far swung los from komun uzaj az to adopt Pitman’z fonetik stil ov reding, riting and teching.

“Just rit a fu pajz, speling az we do her; and then, ‘just for the fun ov it,’ rit a few letrz to frendz in the sam stil. Bi the tim u hav dun so, u wil be enamrd with its ez, and son will pronouns it butiful az wel az ezi. Tech it to sum children and se how qikli tha wil mastr it.”

Probably no better description can be given of what has already been accomplished, than that found in his report to the Missionary Committee, which we give in full, and in extracts from his recent letters.

BISHOP TAYLOR’S REPORT TO THE MISSIONARY COMMITTEE.

“Dear Brethren and Fellow-laborers in the work of the Lord:

“I respectfully submit the following report of our new missions in Africa. The report of the African Conference I sent, as usual, to the missionary secretaries immediately after its adjournment last February. I might repeat the same here, but did not retain a copy, and leaving Liberia in April, and ever since moving on, I have not received a copy of the printed minutes.

“I will, in this report, note the stations in the order in which I visited them this year, and not in the order of time in which they were founded.

“West Coast Stations.——Most of these stations commenced, with mission-houses erected on them, two years ago, when a portion of them were supplied with missionaries, a portion not till March of this year; and two or three remain to be supplied. Miss Dingman and Miss Bates have gone out since I left Liberia, and I have not heard where Brother Kephart has stationed them. It was understood from the beginning that we could not take boarding-scholars, nor open our school-work regularly till we could produce from the soil plenty of native food for their sustenance, and build school-houses. I arranged for building fourteen houses in our missions on the west coast this year for chapel and school purposes. I have received no general report since I left in April; hence, I cannot say how many of these houses have been completed. They were to be good frame and weather-boarded and shingle-roofed houses, 18×25 feet, and will, I doubt not, be all finished before the end of this year.

“Cavalla River District.——B. F. Kephart, P. E.

“(1) Wissikah Station, about forty miles up from the mouth of the river. Its king, chiefs and people received a missionary, built him a good native house and supported him for several months, when he was removed to supply a larger station vacated by one who withdrew from our work; so Wissikah remains to be supplied. Probable value of our land and improvements on Wissikah Station, $500.

“(2) Yubloky, ascending the stream, also on the west bank of Cavalla river. Missionary, J. R. Ellery. A good basis of self-sustentation already laid. Probable value, $1,000.

“(3) Yorkey.——Andrew Ortlip, missionary. Regular preaching in both of these stations, and some progress in teaching. Probable value, $1,000.

“(4) Tataka, on the east bank of the river, Miss Rose Bowers and Miss Annie Whitfield, missionaries. These are very earnest missionaries, and have done an immense amount of hard work, teaching, talking of God and salvation to the people in their own houses and growing most of their own food. Probable value of land improvements, $1,000.

“(5) Beabo.——H. Garwood, missionary. Brother Garwood was appointed to Beabo last March, and will, I trust, make a success, which was but limited under the administration of his predecessor, who is a good man but not a self-supporting success, and has hence returned home. Beabo is on the west bank of the river, and has adequate resources of self-support, and of opportunities for usefulness. Probable value, $900.

“(6) Bararobo, on the east bank. Chas. Owens and E. O. Harris, missionaries. This station, with two energetic young men to develop its capabilities, will, I hope, in the near future prove a success. Probable value, $900.

“(7) Gerribo, west bank. A mission-house built two years ago, but the station remains to be supplied. Probable value, $800.

“(8) Wallaky is the big town of the Gerribo tribe, twelve miles west of Gerribo town, on west bank of the river. Our missionary at Wallaky is Wm. Schneidmiller, a zealous young man from Baltimore. Having been brought up in a city, he has much to learn to become an effective backwoods pioneer; but he has faith, love, push, and patience and is succeeding. Probable value, $900.

“We have traveled nearly a hundred miles up the river, almost equal to the Hudson, and then west twelve miles to Wallaky. Now we go south by a narrow path over rugged mountain, hills and dales, a distance of about forty miles to——

“(9) Plebo.——Wm. Yancey and wife, missionaries. A hopeful young station of good possibilities. Probable value, $900.

“Nine miles walking westerly we reach

“(10) Barreky.——Wm. Warner and wife, missionaries. They are hard workers, and are bound to make self-support. Brother Warner is mastering the native language, and when ready to preach in it, will have open to him a circuit of eleven towns belonging to the Barreky tribe. Probable value, $900.

“On eight of the ten stations just named, we have frame, weather-boarded, shingle-roofed houses, the floors elevated about six feet above ground; the whole set on pillars of native logs from the forest. In all these places, also, school-houses, as before intimated, are being built. Each station is in a tribe entirely distinct and separate from every other tribe, and each river town represents a larger population far back in the interior of the wild country.

“Cape Palmas District.——B. F. Kephart, P. E. Brother Kephart is Presiding Elder of Mt. Scott and Tubmantown Circuit. Sister Kephart is a grand helper. They are teaching the people the blessedness of giving adequately to support their pastors. These people are confronted by two formidable difficulties, their old-established habits of being helped, and their poverty and lack of ability to help themselves; but they are being blest in giving like the Widow of Serepta, and will, I hope, work their way out.

“Clarence Gunnison, our missionary carpenter, and Prof. E. H. Greely. B. A., to be principal of our academy and missionary training-school in Cape Palmas, as soon as we shall get the seminary repaired, have their headquarters at Cape Palmas, but are engaged in building school-houses, and will then (D.V.) repair the seminary buildings, both in Cape Palmas and in Monrovia. We had unexpected detention in getting suitable lumber for repairs, but can now get the best Norway pine delivered on the ground at a cheap rate.

“(11) Pluky, across Hoffman River, from Cape Palmas, is the beginning of our Kru coast line of stations. Miss Lizzie McNeal is the missionary. Though two years in the station, we have not yet built a mission-house in Pluky. Miss McNeal teaches school in a native house in the midst of the town, and preaches on Sabbath days under the shade of a bread-fruit tree. Her school-house is crowded, and she has six of her boys and three girls converted to God, who testify for Jesus in her meetings, and help her in her soul-saving work. Probable value, $800, in land. Miss Barbara Miller assists her temporarily, but her specialties are kindergarten and music, awaiting the opening of the academy.

“(12) Garaway, twenty miles northwest of Cape Palmas. Miss Agnes McAllister is in charge of the station, and Miss Clara Binkley has special charge of our educational department, both working successfully as missionaries. Aunt Rachel, a Liberian widow woman, runs the farm, and produces indigenous food enough to feed two or three stations. This is a station of great promise. Probable value, $1,200. We have a precious deposit in a little cemetery on the plain, in sight of the mission-house, of the consecrated blood and bones of dear Brother Gardner and dear Sister Meeker.

“(13) Piquinini Ses.——Miss Anna Beynon is in special charge of the household department. Miss Georgianna Dean has charge of the school-work, and Victor Hugo, a young German missionary, has charge of the school farm. Mrs. Nelson, a Liberian widow, is chief cook. They are succeeding hopefully for beginners. This station is about thirty miles northwest of Cape Palmas. Probable value, $1,100.

“(14) Grand Ses.——Jas. B. Robertson, assisted by Mr. Hanse, a Congo young man, who was saved at a series of meetings I conducted in Cape Palmas, in 1885. They are just getting started in their work, but already see signs of awakening among the people. Probable value, $1,100.

“(15) Sas Town.——Missionaries, K. Valentine Eckman, R. C. Griffith. I spent a month in Sas Town last spring, and we have there a church organization of probationers, numbering twenty-five Krumen. Probable value, $1,400.

“(16) Niffu. To be supplied. Probable value, $1,000.

“(17) Nanna Kru.——Henry Wright appointed last April, not heard from since. Probable value, $1,000.

“(18) Settra Kru.——B. J. Turner and wife. A fair promise of success in farming, teaching and preaching. Probable value, $1,100.

“On each of these Kru stations named, except Pluky, we have a mission-house of frame, elevated on pillars, six feet above ground; floors of boards from the saw-pits of Liberia, siding and roofing of galvanized iron; each house measuring in length thirty-six feet, breadth twenty-two feet, beside veranda, providing space for a central hall, 12x22 feet, and two rooms at each end, 11x12 feet. There is not a Liberian or foreigner of any sort in any of the stations named on Cavalla River or Kru Coast, except our missionaries, all heathens, as nude as any on the Congo, except a few men of them who ‘follow the sea,’ hence, our houses, which would not be admired in New York City, are considered to be ‘houses of big America for true.’

“(19) Ebenezer, west side of Sinou River, nearly twenty miles from Sinou. New house just completed. Z. Roberts in charge. A school of over twenty scholars opened. The king of the tribe has proclaimed Sunday as God’s, and ordered his people not to work on God’s day, but go to his house and hear his Word. This mission supersedes Jacktown, on the east bank of Sinou River, where we proposed last spring to found a mission, but did not. Ebenezer is worth to us $800 at least.

“(20) Benson River.——Missionary, Dr. Dan Williams. This is in Grand Bassa Country, difficult of access; hence, in my hasty voyages along the coast I have not yet been able to visit the Doctor, and cannot report definitely. He is holding on, and will, I hope, hold out and make a success in all his departments of work. The station ought to be worth $800.

“The Benson River Station is in the bounds of Grand Bassa District. We arranged for building on two other stations in Grand Bassa Country at the same time that I provided for Benson River; namely, King Kie Peter’s big town, and Jo Benson’s town; but at last account the houses were not built, so for the time we drop them off our list. They are on a great caravan trail to the populous interior. We will take them up or better ones by and by.

“From the west coast we proceed by steamer to the great Congo country. Two days above Congo mouth we land at Mayumba, and proceed in boats seventeen miles up an inland lake to Mamby, where Miss Martha E. Kah is stationed, and where our Brother A. I. Sortore sleeps in Christ. When we settled there it was in the bounds of the ‘Free State of Congo,’ but later the published decrees of the Berlin Conference put it under the wing of the French Government. The French authorities have recognized and registered our native title to 100 acres of good land, and are not unfriendly to us by any means, but ‘by law’ forbid us to teach any language but French. Good has been done at Mamby, and is being done. Owing to this disability we have proposed to abandon it, but Martha Kah is entirely unwilling to leave, and as it is our only footing in French territory, and as they hold a vast region, peopled by numerous nations of African heathen, we have thought it best thus far to hold on to Mamby. Probable value, $1,000.

“(21) Kabinda, near the Congo mouth. I never have had time to make the acquaintance of any person at Kabinda. Having full confidence in J. L. Judson as a man of superior ability and integrity, I gave him letters to the Portuguese governor of Kabinda, requesting the consent and co-operation of his excellency, to enable Judson to found a mission there. His excellency received him most cordially, gave him a public dinner, the merchants of the place being guests. For a year he reported extraordinary success in every department of his work. He went in by a dash, and went out like a flash——by sudden death.

“I called at Kabinda last May, and learned from a merchant there that King Frank, of whom Judson bought our mission premises, held the property for nonpayment, which Judson had reported all settled, conveyed, and deed recorded. King Frank, at the time of my call, was absent away up the coast, so that I could not reach the exact facts. I have written to the merchant whom I met, requesting him to find out the facts, but have as yet received no reply. So things at Kabinda are in a tangle at present. I have not yet found time to go and unravel it. To recover it or lose it will neither make nor break us, but we shall regret to lose it.

“Passing the mouth of the Congo River, we proceed by steamer over 300 miles to the beautiful land-locked harbor of St. Paul de Loanda. This Portuguese town has many massive buildings, including churches in ruins, dating back over 300 years. It has an estimated population of 5,000, a few hundred of whom are Portuguese (one English house of business), the rest being negroes. From the beginning we have had adequate self-supporting resources in Loanda from the Portuguese patronage of our schools, and have now, but at present we lack the teaching corps requisite.

“Wm. P. Dodson, who succeeded C. M. McLean, who returned home last May on account of sickness, is our minister at Loanda. He is a holy young man, a good linguist in Portuguese and Kimbundu, and is doing a good work. He has one fine young native man saved, whom I baptized during my recent visit. I learn since that he is leading a new life, and becoming a valuable helper in our work. Our mission property in Loanda is worth at least $10,000. It is quite unnecessary for Loanda or for any other station we have in Africa to add ‘and no debts,’ for we have none.

“We are trying to find just the right man and wife for our school in Loanda, but would rather wait for years than to get unsuitable persons.

“From Loanda we proceed by steamer sixty miles south by sea, and cross the bar into the mouth of Coanza River, as large as the Hudson, and ascend 180 miles to Dondo, at the head of steamboat navigation. Dondo is a noted trading centre, and has a population of about 5,000, mostly negroes.

“We had good property in Dondo, worth about $5,000. A great deal of hard work, successful preparatory work, has been done in Dondo. Its school-work and machine-shop were self-supporting when manned, but is now in the same position as Loanda, awaiting good workers to man it.

“Our Presiding Elder, E. A. Withey, of Angola District, and his daughter Stella, a rare linguist in Portuguese and Kimbundu, and of great missionary promise, were holding the fort at Dondo when I recently visited that region. Their home was at Pungo Andongo, eighty-nine miles distant. Stella and I walked a mile or more to visit the graves of Sister Cooper, and of our grandest Dondo worker, Mrs. Mary Myers Davenport, M.D., in the cemetery, which is inclosed by a high stone wall. Her last words are inscribed on her tombstone. They were addressed to Him who was nearest and dearest to her in that lone hour——to Jesus: ‘I die for Thee, here in Africa.’ She would have died for Jesus anywhere, but had consecrated her all to him ‘for Africa.’ In about a month from that time our dear Stella, so ripe for heaven, but so greatly needed in Africa, was laid by her side. So that three of our missionary heroines sleep in Jesus at Dondo. Their ashes are among the guarantees of our ultimate success in giving life to millions in Africa, who are ‘dead in trespasses and sins.’

“From Dondo, we ‘take it afoot’ fifty-one miles over hills, mountains and vales, by the old caravan trail of the ages to Nhanguepepo Mission Station. Our property there is worth about $6,000. It was designed to be a receiving station, in which our new-comers might be acclimatized, taught native languages and prepared for advance work. Under the superintendency of Brother Withey a great preparatory work has been done at this station. It has, however, become specially a training school for native agency, under the leadership of one young man of our first party from America, Carl Rudolph. We already have an organized Methodist Episcopal Church at this station, composed of thirteen converted native men and boys, who are giving good proof of the genuineness of the change wrought in them by the Holy Spirit. From 5 to 6 o’clock every morning they have a meeting for worship, Scripture reading and exposition by Carl, singing, prayers and testimony for Jesus by all in English, Portuguese and Kimbundu, intermingled with hallelujah shouts of praise to N’Zambi the God of their fathers and of our fathers.

“The forenoon is devoted to manual labor by all hands, then school and religious exercises in the afternoon. The work of each day is distributed; two of our boys, called “pastors,” have the care of about 100 head of cattle belonging to the mission. Several boys are taught to yoke and work oxen in sled or plow; several boys have learned to be stone-masons, and when I was there last were engaged in building a stone wall round the cattle corral. One boy is trained to business in the little store belonging to the mission. One very trusty fellow is the man-of-all work about the house and the cook. All these varieties of work are done by our own converted people, and not by heathen hirelings. This station yields ample sustentation for all these workers. The brethren are making improvements continually, and paying for them out of their net profits. In building a chapel next summer they may need a little help, but probably not.

“Dear Nellie Mead, one of ‘our children’ of 1885, natural musician and lovely Christian, died at the age of about 16 at this station. A tomb of rude masonry marks the sacred spot, near the caravan trail, where Nellie and baby Willie Hicks will wait till Jesus comes.

“A march of thirty-eight miles easterly along the same old path brings us to Pungo Andongo, a great place for trade, a town of probably 1,200 or 1,500 population. It is wedged in between stupendous mountains, in solid blocks of conglomerate of small stones of basalt and flint, perpendicular for a thousand feet on all sides. We have a large adobe-house, including chapel and store-room, and nearly an acre of ground with fruit-bearing trees in the town, and a good farm of about 300 acres a mile out, worth probably altogether about $4,000.

“That is the residence of A. E. Withey and Mrs. Withey. Their son Bertie, in his seventeenth year, tall and commanding, speaks fluently the languages of the country and has in him the making of a grand missionary. His two little sisters, Lottie and Flossie, are among the Lord’s chosen ones. The developed stand-by of this station is Charles A. Gordon. He is a young man of marvelous ability, adapted to every variety of our work. In preaching power in all the languages of that region he is second to none. Withey and Gordon are our principal merchants, and while doing a good business, in the meantime, by truth, honesty and holy living and faithful testimony for Jesus in different languages are bringing the Gospel into contact with a large class of traders from the far interior, who could not be reached by ordinary methods.

“Pungo Andongo Station has crossed the lines of sustentation and of absolute self-support, and is making money to open new stations in the regions beyond. We have two missionary graves at Pungo Andongo, one of Henry Kelley, a noble missionary apprentice from the Vey Tribe of Liberia, and the other of dear Sister Dodson (formerly Miss Brannon, from Boston). They both ‘sleep in Jesus,’ and will rise quickly to his call in the morning.

“An onward march of sixty-two miles brings us to Malange, a town of probably 2,000 population, and noted for its merchandise. Our people there are Samuel J. Mead, P. E., his wife Ardella, refined, well educated and a fine musician, at the head of our school-work. Willie Mead is head of the mechanical department; his wife is especially engaged in teaching missionaries. They are all noble specimens of vigorous minds, holy hearts, healthy bodies and superior linguists and workers. Robert Shields, a young missionary from Ireland, who was brought up at home for a merchant, runs a small mission store at Malange, preaches in the Kimbundu, and has a growing circuit extending among the villages of the surrounding country. Our Kimbundu teacher in the school was Bertha Mead, niece of Samuel J. Mead. She was one of ‘our children’ in 1855. She was wholly devoted to God and his work. On the first Sabbath of my visit to Malange, last June, she was united in marriage to Robert Shields. Immediately after her marriage she put my sermon for the occasion into Kimbundu, without hesitation, in distinct utterances, full of unction, which stirred a crowded audience, a number of whom were from the kingdom of Lunda, about 600 miles further east. In Sunday-school of the afternoon of that memorable day I heard Bertha put forty-one questions from the No. 1 Catechism of our church, and the school together answered the whole of them promptly; first in English and then in Kimbundu. The native people of that country are known by the name of the Umbunda people. Kimbundu is the name of their language. An interesting episode occurred while the forty-one questions were being asked and answered. The old king, who lived nineteen miles distant from Malange, was present, and manifested great interest in the proceedings, and interjected a question, of course, in his own language, which was: ‘Why did not the first man and his wife go right to God, and confess their sins, and get forgiveness?’ Bertha answered him, of course, in his own language, to this effect: ‘They were not guilty simply of a private offense against their Father, but a crime against the government of the great King of all worlds. The penalty involved was death and eternal banishment to a dreadful place prepared for the devil and all his followers, called ‘Inferno.’ God had to break his own word, dishonor his government, and destroy the legal safeguards he had established to protect the rights of his true and loyal subjects, or execute the penalty of law on that guilty man and his wife. Moreover, the devil-nature had struck clear through that man and his wife. They had become so full of lies and deceit that they had no desire to repent, so that all the Judge could righteously do was to pass sentence on them and turn them over to the executioners of justice.’ The heathen king leaned over and listened with great attention, and his countenance was like that of a man awaiting his sentence to be hung. Bertha went on and pictured the guilty pair standing at the bar of justice, each holding the saswood cup of death in hand, awaiting the order to drink it and die. ‘Then the Son of God was very sorry for the man and his woman, and talked with his Father about them, and made a covenant with his Father to redeem them. He would at a day agreed on unite himself with a son descended from the guilty woman, and drink their cup of death, and provide for them his ‘cup of salvation,’ and would protect God’s truth, righteousness and government, and provide deliverance, purity and everlasting happiness for the guilty man and his wife, and for all their family——the whole race of mankind.’ As Bertha went on to describe how Jesus did, according to his covenant, come into the world and teach all people the right way for them to walk in, and did die for man the most awful of all deaths——‘even the death of the cross’——and did arise from the dead and is now our law-giver in God’s Court, and our doctor to heal and purify us, and invites all to come to him, ‘and he will give them rest,’ the old chief seemed to take it all in through open eyes, ears and mouth till he could no longer restrain his feelings, and broke out and cried and laughed immoderately, and yelled at the top of his voice, and clapt his hands for joy. He had never heard the ‘good news’ before. I, meantime, quietly wept and prayed, and then thanked God. I remember how Bertha and our other dear missionary children used to ramble with me over the hills of Loanda. I was the only big playmate they had, and they used to wait anxiously for the shades of evening in which to have a stroll with their big brother; and now to see my tall, modest Bertha with perfect ease breaking the bread of life to the heathen fathers, I have no remembrance of ever before quietly weeping so much in one day as I did that day.

“Brother Samuel Mead has adopted eight native boys and girls, and is bringing them up in the way they should go. His hour for morning family worship is from 4 to 5 o’clock. The alarm clock rouses them all at 4 A.M. In fifteen minutes they are all washed and dressed. The services vary and are full of life and interest: Scripture reading and explanation, singing of a number of different hymns in three different languages. None are called on to pray, but voluntarily they all lead in turn, some in English, some in Portuguese and some in Kimbundu. I kept account one morning and found that sixteen different ones led in prayer at that meeting. From 11 A.M. to 12 M., Sam Mead joins Willie’s family in a similar service. No family worship in the evenings, as many of them are taken up by public meetings in the chapel.

“Our church, organized at Malange at the time of my visit, contained twenty-one natives, all probationers, of course, but baptized and saved. The tide is rising.

“Our property at Malange is worth probably $6,000. Samuel J. Mead has charge of a big farm and is making it pay. Brother Willie trained four native men to run two pit-saws, and in the last year has turned out $1,500 worth of lumber, which sells for cash at the saw-pits. These men are also preachers, and preach several times each week in the Portuguese language. In labor, money and building material they have recently completed a new two-story mission-house and other mission improvements, amounting to an aggregate cost of $1,200, without any help from home. Men who are making money and attending to all their duties as missionaries have a legal right, under the Decalogue and Discipline, to a fair compensation from their net earnings; but all the missionaries we have still abiding in our Angola Missions, go in with the self-sacrificing, suffering Jesus under the ‘new Commandment.’ They invest their lives with all they possess, including all the money they have or can make in his soul-saving work in Africa, and have no separate purse which they call their own. If on this line of life they should suffer lack, or bring the Lord in debt to them, it would indeed be ‘a new thing under the sun.’

“We have graves at Malange also. Mrs. Dr. Smith, an estimable Christian lady, sleeps there. Dear Edna Mead, one of ‘our children’ of 1885, a lovely Christian, perhaps of 12 years, sleeps in our own cemetery on our mission farm. While I was there last June, we buried a Libolo young man——brought up and saved in our mission——in our cemetery; and six weeks after her marriage, our dear Bertha, our grand missionary Bertha, was smitten down and laid there to rest.

“A great many good people in the Church on earth do not believe in my missions, but God means that the Church above all shall think well of us: hence, he has not taken from us a single dwarfish, shabby specimen, but from the beginning has selected from the front ranks of the very best we had, so that we are not ashamed of our representative missionaries in heaven. Nearly all of our present force in Angola have made a marvelous achievement in the mastery of the Portuguese and Kimbundu languages. Prof. H. Chatelain has printed them in the form of a grammar, beside a primer and the Gospel by John in the Kimbundu. The rest of our people there, the same as himself, learned the vernacular by direct and daily contact with the natives, but Brother Chatelain’s books are of great value to them, both in advance study and in teaching.

“Our Angola Missions were commenced a little over four years ago. They have furnished many useful lessons from the school of experience, and demonstrated the possibilities of success in the three great departments of our work, educational, industrial and evangelical, and of early self-sustentation later, absolute self-support and then self-propagation——founding new missions without help from home. Our work has to be run mainly along the lines of human impossibilities, combining rare human adaptabilities with Divine power and special providences under the immediate administration of the Holy Spirit. Hence, our greatest difficulty is to find young men and women possessing these rare adaptabilities. We have them now in Angola, and also on the Congo and west coast, but the sifting at the front required to get them is too big a contract for me. I can only do the best I can, and commit and intrust all the issues to God. He works out his will patiently and kindly. The people he sends home are good Christians, but on account of personal disabilities, or family relationship and responsibilities, find themselves disqualified for this peculiar style of work and not able to make self-support, and hence quietly leave for home. Many of such would gladly stay if we would pay them a salary, which we cannot do, though we don’t question their natural rights. Thus we lose numbers and gain unity and strength.

“From Malange, a tramp of 1,000 miles northeast will bring us to Luluaburg, in the Bashalange Country, discovered by Dr. Pogge and Lieut. Wissmann, in 1883. The Governor-General of the Independent State of Congo, at my request, gave to Dr. Summers, one of our men from Malange, permission to found a station for our mission at Luluaburg, which he did, and built two houses on it, and was making good progress when he became worn out by disease and died. I hope soon to send a successor to dear Dr. Summers.

“I have arranged at the land office in Boma for the completion of their conveyance of title by deed to our mission property at Luluaburg, on my return to Boma in April next (D.V.). Those vast countries of the Upper Kasai and Sankuru Rivers are immensely populous. By the will of God we shall hold our footing and a few years hence shall (D.V.) plant a conference in that county.

“From Luluaburg, a week of foot traveling northwest will bring us to Lueba, at the junction of the Lulua and Kasai Rivers. Thence, in a little steamer descending the Kasai River about 800 miles, we sweep through ‘Qua mouth’ into the Congo, descending which seventy miles we will tie up at Kimpoko, near the northeast angle of Stanley Pool. We opened this station in 1886, designed as a way-station for our transportation to the countries of the Upper Kasai. The Lord is by delay preparing us the better to go up and possess the land in his set time. He meantime approves of our good intentions. We have now stationed at Kimpoko, Bradley L. Burr, Dr. Harrison, Hiram Elkins and his wife Roxy. At Kimpoko, we made an irrigating ditch a mile long, drawing from a bold mountain creek an abundant supply of water to insure good crops at all seasons. We have there about ten acres under cultivation, and grow in profusion all the indigenous food that we can use. To provide good beef in abundance and ready money, Brother Burr goes out for a few hours and kills a hippopotamus or two. They are in demand among the traders and the natives for food. Brother Burr recently sold three in Kimpoko for $80. Brother Burr, who is our Presiding Elder at Kimpoko, writes that the station has been nearly self-sustaining from the beginning, but entirely so since the beginning of this year. They are building a new mission-house this dry season, about 15x80 feet. In this work they may require a little help——a few bales of cloth from home. At a low estimate, our property in Kimpoko is worth at least $1,000.

“From Kimpoko we go by oars or steamer twenty miles to the lower end of Stanley Pool——Leopoldville. Thence by foot 100 miles to South Manyanga (which is called the North Bank route; by the south route we walk from Leopoldville 231 miles to Matadi or Lower Congo). From Manyanga we go by a launch of three or four tons capacity, propelled by oars and sails and currents, eighty-eight miles to Isangala. We have had a station at Isangala for over two years, on which we have built good native houses, but had not bought the site of the Government till my last visit to the land office at Boma. The site, containing seven and one-half acres, cost us nearly $80. A good garden spot. Our brethren dug a yam from their garden in Isangala when I was there, a few weeks ago, which weighed twenty-two pounds——more wholesome and delicious, if possible, than Irish potatoes. Our paying industry there will be in the transport line of business. As our Vivi Station is at the highest point of small steamer navigation, so Isangala is the lowest point of the middle passage of the Congo from Isangala, eighty-eight miles to Manyanga. Our site at Isangala, with improvements, is worth $300. We would refuse the offer of five times that amount on account of prospective value.

“Our missionaries at Isangala are Wm. O. White and Wm. Rasmussen. Both have made good progress in the mastery of the Fiot or Congo language; but Rasmussen is a prodigy in language. He interpreted for me with great fluency and force and is preaching in many contiguous villages. He has been out two and a half years, and (D.V.) will soon be an able envangelist to go forth among the native nations and receive from them a support. A journey over the mountains and vales of fifty-five miles will bring us to Vivi Mission Station. We bought this site——the seat of government before it was settled at Boma——over two years ago, for $768. We have there but twelve acres of land, but can procure more if needed. It is a high plateau and seems so dry that I did not think we could farm to advantage. We needed the place for a receiving and transport station; but to my agreeable surprise on my recent visit, I find that J. C. Teter, our Preacher-in-Charge and transport agent, has near the end of the dry season an acre and a half of green growing manioc, an orchard of young palm and mango trees, and plantains and yams growing in a profusion of life and fruitfulness. In the way of live-stock he has twenty-five goats, eight sheep, two head of young cattle, half a dozen muscovy-ducks and 100 chickens, and when short of meat he takes his gun and goes out and kills a deer or a buffalo. While I was with him, a few weeks ago, he killed two koko bucks. The koko is a species of deer, but as big as a donkey. So in every place we settle, we find that God has resources of self-support of some kind waiting to be developed. Vivi will be self-supporting in the near future, and the most beautiful station on the Congo. At any rate, J. C. Teter and Mary Lindsay, his wife, can make it such if the Lord shall continue to them life and health. Probable value, $2,000.

“One hundred miles by steamer down the Congo to Banana brings us within an hour and a half by oars of our mission-station at Matumba. Miss Mary Kildare, a superior teacher, linguist and missionary, is our sole occupant of the station at Matumba. I bought of the Government nearly ten acres of good ground there for nearly $120, having previously bought the native title. We have a comfortable little house of galvanized iron, 22x24 feet, set on pillars six feet above ground. The house is divided into two rooms, 12x12 feet, and a veranda, 12x124 feet, inclosed by a balustrading and a gate, and is used for a school-room. She has now a school of twenty scholars. She does her preaching mostly in the village; the house is in an inclosure of nearly an acre, surrounded by a high fence, with strong gate, which is locked up at 9 P.M. daily. So Mary, the dear lady, is perfectly contented, and is doing good work for God. She is an Irish lady, and paid her own passage to go to Africa to work for nothing. I took her recently a box of Liberian coffee-seed, which she has in a nursery growing beautifully, and she has a fruit orchard coming on.

“Our property at Matumba is worth $1,000. Two years ago, we started three stations between Vivi and Isangala——Vumtomby Vivi, Sadi Kabanza and Matamba. We built pretty good houses at a total cost of $30, not counting our labor. One of the noblest young missionaries we had, John A. Newth, of London, sleeps all alone in his station at Sadi Kabanza. Dear Brother Newth!——I was with him much and under a great variety of circumstances, and highly prized his lovable character and great versatility of practical talent. He loved his field of labor and would have made a success if the Master had not called him from labor to reward. This was in 1888, but belongs to this chapter of unreported history. The people I appointed to work Vumtomby Vivi and Matumba Stations became dissatisfied with their work and huddled together at Vivi with others of kindred spirit and worked against us.

“‘Then they went out from us, but were not of us; for if they had been of us they would no doubt have continued with us,’

“‘This is the same old breed, Of which we read. I do not think They become extinct, But expose them to the weather, Give them time and tether, And they leave us altogether, And peace abides.’

“Since that, Brother Reed and wife and Brother Bullikist, very good people, sent out by Dr. Simpson, of New York, have opened a station nearly midway between Vumtomby Vivi and Sadi Kabanza, so when we get ready to go out to found new stations we shall prefer, instead of resuming work at those vacated, to go into the more populous regions of the interior. The Congo State has a strip of country densely populated, 100 miles from the north bank of the Congo and extending from Banana 250 miles to Manyanga, all unoccupied and open to us, except a few new stations near the Congo. So God is opening a vast field for us on the Lower Congo, as well as on the Upper Congo and Kasai. I did not set out to found any new stations this year, and have not, except to consent to the birth of Ebenezer Station on Sinou River. Our business this year was to find out or to put in the guarantees of self-support for each station. We have found out that most of those founded in the short period of the work are self-supporting in the main. In our new Liberian stations, beside abundance of fruit and vegetables for food, our principal or most reliable resource in marketable value is coffee. So I provided, before leaving Liberia last April, that every station having men who can utilize oxen and plow, should be furnished with a plow and a yoke of cattle and that every occupied station should be supplied with as many coffee scions as they can plant and cultivate up to 1,000 plants for each station and provided each station with a bushel of coffee-seed to be planted in nursery, from which to enlarge each coffee orchard as fast as the ground can be cleared and the coffee scions set out up to 5,000 or 6,000 trees. Coffee means money, and it is only a question of industry, patience and time. It requires about five years to make a coffee orchard productive, but with a little attention it will yield a plentiful annual crop——two crops in Liberia——for fifty years without resetting. We ought to give all the stations a good start in cattle, (say) a dozen head for each one. God is manifestly with us along the lines of our work, and success is certain, and the glory will be wholly his.

“The teaching force of all the facts in the case, as we now see them, leads us clearly to the conclusion that we need our steamer on the Lower Congo much more than on the Upper. So, the Lord permitting, we will put her together at the base of the hill on which Vivi Mission is located, during the next dry season. She will carry goods from the side of ocean steamers at Banana 100 miles up to her berth, in the mouth of a little creek in which she will be constructed, the highest point of steamer navigation. This will save us exorbitant rates of freight up the river and land our goods where we want them, and give other missions a chance to reduce their heavy leakage of the same sort. The price for carrying to Stanley Pool is twice as large now as two years ago. We can’t pay such prices and found the stations in the Upper Kasai. That we feel (D.V.) bound to do; but with our steamer on the Lower Congo and a steel boat of our own, of three or four tons, to be worked by oars and sails on the middle passage, to carry freights from Isangala to Manyanga, will give us the inside track of the freight business to those upper countries, and cut down our expenses more than a half of the present rate, and do work for other missions as well. Except in leadership and superintendency, all this heavy work will be done by natives, whom we wish to employ and train to habits of industry——one of the auxiliaries of our mission work.

“The steamers on the Upper Congo water-ways have multiplied from four or five to a dozen in the past three years, so that we can get passage for the few missionaries we want to put in to hold our Kasai pre-emption claim till we can work up from our lease, and by and by send up a small steamer of our own for our enlarged Kasai work. I am on my way now to make final arrangements with the builder of our steamer to put her up and launch her at the earliest practicable moment, and will, the Lord permitting, be back to Liberia in December. I will ask Richard Grant to furnish a statement of the total expenditures.

“In regard to appropriations, I remark: (1) That if the Committee wish to enlarge the appropriation to the African (Liberia) Conference, I make no objection, but I ask at least for the continuance of the usual amount of $2,500, sent altogether as it was last year, and have the distribution at Conference for the whole year.

“(2) If the Committee are pleased to order $500 subject to my call, all right. I did not draw it last year, because I had not time to use it for the purpose I had in mind.

“(3) If the Committee will appropriate $10,000 or $5,000 for the establishment of self-supporting schools for the principal countries of Liberian population, for the education alike of the Liberian and the heathen children, I will administer it as carefully as possible and report progress. It would take five or six years to grow marketable values adequate to self-support, but quantities of food can be produced from the first or second year.——October 4, 1889.”

Writing in June 1889, Bishop Taylor speaks as follows concerning his Angola Missions:

MARCH FROM DONDO TO NHANGUEPEPO.

“NHANGUEPEPO, Monday, June 3, 1889.

“I left Dondo last Thursday morning. Brother Withey walked with me about a mile. Four carriers——who brought cargoes from Nhanguepepo, arriving in Dondo on Tuesday, and taking a day for rest——were ready to start on their return trip on Thursday. I employed two of them, one to carry my bed and the other my food, and half a cargo for Brother Withey. We spent the first night at Mutamba, thirteen miles out, stopping about eight miles out for lunch, and four hours of rest.

“Four years ago, after waiting four or five days in Dondo trying in vain to get carriers, we depended on half-a-dozen Kabindas, whom we hired in Loanda, on good recommendations, as a standby in case we should fail. We were repeatedly told by men of long experience in Angola, that ‘it would be impossible for us, as strangers, especially as we would neither drink nor sell, nor give rum, gin nor wine, to get any carriers for the interior.’ ‘The traders, with their long and widely extended experience, facilities and free rations of grog, can’t get more than half the carriers required at this time.’ ‘One gentleman of my acquaintance,’ said, ‘I had 5,000 bags of coffee at Kazengo, thirty-six miles from Dondo, and could not put it into the market for want of carriers.’

“So, a part of our pioneer party, viz: myself, Willie Mead, W. P. Dodson, Joseph Wilks, Henry Kelley, the Vey boy from Liberia, determined to make a start on Friday night (about June 1, 1885,) even if we should have to do our own carrying, for the Kabindas whom he had hired refused to carry for us; and they had a lot of their own luggage, twice as much as regular carriers take with them.

“I learned from an old trader, who had thirty years of observation along our contemplated line of work in Angola, that Nhanguepepo was the best site for a mission between Dondo and Pungo Andongo. So we aimed to reach this first and best place. About 9 o’clock, on that night, we succeeded in getting six Kabindas to shoulder each a load of our luggage and food for the trip, leaving one Kabinda with Dr. Summers and C. M. McLean, in care of a large amount of our stuff at Dondo, stored in our tents, inside of a stone wall enclosure, said to have been a slave pen in the dark days of old. I and my little party of missionaries each took a load of stuff, and struggled up the mountain range four miles to Pambos, arriving about midnight. We spread our bed on the ground and got a little sleep. Before sunrise I had carried wood and made a fire, and had on the tea-kettle. The Kabindas looked grimly on, but declined to help with the camp work. Breakfast over, we made a move for our march, but the K.’s refused to pick up their loads. All my kind talk, and Brother M.’s scolding, failed to move them, so we ‘were stuck in the mud.’ We got the men through the English house in Loanda, and about 9 P.M. I saw Mr. N., the head of the English house, coming in his ‘tipoia,’ carried by men from his farm at Kazengo. So I went a little way from our camp, and met him, and explained to him the situation.

“He said: ‘The trouble is the Kabindas are not carriers. They are sailors and porters and gentlemen’s servants. They were represented to you as good for any service to which you might want to put them, but they have not been trained to work of this sort.’

“I replied: ‘Well, Mr. N., if you can prevail on the fellows to carry till we can reach an interior village we can pick up all the carriers we need.’

“‘Yes; I’ll try.’ He had a palaver with the men, and they agreed to carry till we could find natives who would do it. Then we cleared the camp and marched about four miles, and stopped at a small hamlet for our lunch, and there we hired half-a-dozen men to carry the loads of the K.’s to Nhanguepepo, and we transferred our knapsack to the K.’s.

“The price quoted in Dondo for carriers to Nhangue was ‘sixty-four makutas’ ($1.92) per man. We offered that, but could not get a man. The price asked by these country fellows was but ‘twenty-five makutas’ (seventy-five cents), confirming the theory I had advanced, ‘If we can get to the country villages inland, we can get all the carriers we may require.’ So with our new team we went on about five miles and camped at Mutamba, and rested on the Sabbath. Many villagers called to see the show, the sight of white men, and exhibited great interest in us. We had our worship and a good day of rest. On Monday morning the K.’s refused to carry unless we would hire another carrier, which we did, and soon found that they overloaded the carriers by tying their luggage to our cargoes. We could not speak their language, and they knew but little of ours, so it was of no avail to try to reason with them about their oppressions; but soon after I reached Nhanguepepo, I settled with them, and sent them back to the sea where they belonged.

“On my trip last week I had no trouble with carriers. I started from Mutamba at 6 A.M., walked twelve miles to Kasoki, took lunch and rested till 2.30 P.M.; marched seven miles further to Ndanji a Menia on the divide of a range of mountains, and camped without a tent, just where we pitched our tent four years ago, and I was reminded of the trouble we then had with our carriers. The villagers we had hired complained of the bad treatment they had received from the Kabindas, besides overloading them with their luggage, and refused, to go any further. I quietly offered to give them extra pay, and thus induced them to proceed with their big load to Nhanguepepo.

“I had a refreshing sleep at Ndanji a Menia last Friday night, took lunch on Saturday at Endumba, and reached Nhangue——nineteen miles——at 5 P.M., and was joyously received by our dear Brother Rudolph.

“I have tramped the fifty-one miles between this and Dondo, back and forth many times, but never with less fatigue than on my trip last week. I don’t purpose to give a history of all those journeys through the mountains, but simply note a few points of contrast between my first trip, and the one of last week. We arrived in the midst of drought and ‘famine’ four years ago. We came through from Dondo dry-shod, but last Friday I doffed my boots and waded the pools and streams seven times, and on Saturday five times, and I found it to be pleasant and healthful to my feet.

“Till railroads shall be built through this country, the best mode of traveling, and the most healthful, is to walk, and ‘wade.’ As for speed in a journey of a few hundred miles, a man on foot will out-travel a bull, or even a good horse. Persons who travel in a ‘tipoia,’ amid the rattle of sleigh bells, and the shouts of their carriers, are not in a position to receive my statement, but I base it, not on a theory, but on facts from the field of action.

“When we were here four years ago, we lived in tents near the Caravansary for about three months. We had been invited by the Governor-General, Sr. Amaral, to settle on Government land wherever we chose, and the Government would make us a grant of any amount required up to 2,400 acres. Having explored the Nhanguepepo region pretty thoroughly, we concluded that the Lord would have us open a mission here. Our families and a number of our young men were waiting——in Loanda at a heavy expense——for us to open fields for them; and the dry season was passing away, so we had to proceed as expeditiously as possible.

“I opened a mortar bed for making adobes (sun-dried brick) preparatory to the erection of a mission house near the Caravansary, where crowds of carriers, many of whom were from a distance of five or six hundred miles east of us, camped every night. Having made inquiry I believed the site I had selected was Government land, but was notified by the “Commandante,” before I had proceeded with my adobe-making, that all the land about the Caravansary was private property. He was very kind to us, but wanted to sell us the house in which he lived, a roomy, substantial building, with adjoining roofless walls of solid masonry of much larger extent. I saw on examination that the property would be suitable for our purposes of residence for our large families, and for a receiving and training station for new recruits from home in coming time, being a high, breezy, healthful region; but we had no money. However, firmly believing that the God of Abraham would lead us, and provide for us, I wrote to our people in Loanda to come on as quickly as they could. Owing to the continued illness of a large proportion of them, and the difficulty and delay in getting steamer passage up the Coanza on account of the drought and low state of the river, our people came in groups in July and August. I was notified at the time of their transit that our money in Loanda was all used up. As strangers, we could not ask for ‘credit,’ and as servants of God, doing business solely for Him, and not for ourselves, I did not think it necessary, nor feel at liberty to try to put His credit on the market, so I worked and waited.

“My people could not travel inland without money to pay their carriers, and we had no place in which to shelter them, even if they could get in. Our cloth was all of one kind——white cotton, which became popular and marketable months later, but at that time was declared to be entirely unsuitable for the market, and hence could not be passed off at any price. Money was the thing required, and without it our people in transit could neither travel beyond Dondo, nor stop and pay expenses. I did not doubt that I was working in the order of God’s providence, hence could not and did not doubt that He would lead us, and provide for these demands on us, outside of our abundant home supplies which He had already provided. The fact is, I brought into the country, in money, only the small sum of about $1,200, and $1,000 of that had been handed to me by dear Brother Critchlow to meet ’emergencies’ in Loanda. Heavy duties, house-rent for forty persons with high rates for wood, water, etc., soon swallowed that amount. But just in our extremity, Mr. J. T., a Church of England man in the City of London, gave us £250——over $1,200.

“The Lord thus tided us over that bar. So in our extremity of need, as before described, the God of ‘the Church of England’ as well as of our own, through His servant J. T. of London, gave us £250 more. With that we bought the Nhanguepepo property of the Commandante, and settled our people here, also at Pungo Andongo, and Malange.

“I proposed that our Nhangue Station should bear the name of our London brother, but when I spoke to him about it, he replied, ‘No, Bishop Taylor, no! that is an honor I do not deserve. I live at home in comfort. Call it after somebody who has suffered and done something for God among the heathen.’

“All the members of the families, and young men appointed to Nhanguepepo four years ago, are still at the front making a record for God and heaven, save Nellie and Edna Mead, who have gone to represent us in the home country of our King. Brother Carl Rudolph, however, is the only one who remains at Nhangue, and is at present in sole charge of the station, and is breaking in native workers, and is likely to make this a training station of native, rather than an American agency. If such should turn out to be in the line of God’s wisdom, and gracious leading, all the better. These are acclimatized, know the languages, and the life of the people, and have many advantages over foreign agency. The foreign missionary is sent by the Holy Spirit ‘to prepare the way of the Lord,’ but the sooner he can train and trust the native-born men and women whom God shall call to be heralds and witnesses of the truth, the better.

“The station buildings that were in good repair when we took possession, remain so; some portions not entirely furnished with ant-proof rafters, need repairs. Many of the walled rooms have been roofed and utilized.

“A walled room we have, 18x40 feet, would answer for a chapel and school-room. We hope to have it covered and fitted up this dry season. We are also building this season a new stone wall around our corral, and must have a shed for milking the cows.

“A new house, 18x40 feet, of adobe bricks, has been put up near our main building, and a farm house of adobe brick, 20x40 feet, a mile distant, at the mission farm.

“A great deal of material work has thus been done in the four years. I provided for putting in a herd of cattle here before I left, nearly four years ago. The herd increased and went up to a total of 144 head, including calves. To protect them from thieves and from wolves they have to be carefully guarded by two boys by day and secured within heavy stone walls by night. One night, about two years ago, the herd got out of the ‘corral’ and went to their grazing ground, and a pack of wolves killed and partly devoured one of the cows. Later, a couple of wolves managed to get hold of a calf that seemed to have laid near the gate. Some natives heard their barking and raised an alarm, which frightened the wolves away. Brothers Withey and Rudolph went out with a light, and found the calf outside the gate, and one of its legs broken. It appeared to have been dragged through an opening in the gate, caused by a broken bar, and thus got its leg broken. It was midnight, but Brother Rudolph at once slaughtered and dressed the calf for food. Meantime he preached to the crowd of natives thus drawn together about the devil-wolves which were in pursuit of them, and said their only refuge is in the fold of Jesus; that they should not go outside, nor lie down to sleep too near the gate.

“The crowding together of so large a herd of cattle proved to be unwholesome for them, especially in the wet season, when they could not keep the corral clean. Many of them became afflicted with an itchy, festering skin disease, though otherwise healthy and fat. Such were separated from the main herd to prevent possible contagion, and were gradually slaughtered and used to meet the demand for beef, fresh or dried; others proved to be ‘lean kine,’ which greatly ran down in weight during the dry season, when the grass was short; some milk cows were poor in the quantity and quality of their milk; others would not yield to kind treatment; all these varieties, noted as unprofitable stock to keep, were sold or slaughtered, so that now of ‘the survival of the fittest’ we have left a herd of eighty-four head, including calves; beside selected seed for a herd at our Pungo Andongo Mission, which now numbers twenty head, old and young.

“Brothers Withey and Gordon were both merchants for years at home; hence very proficient in that line, but not so well adapted to farming or mechanics; so the Lord is giving them success in establishing a commercial business, both at Nhanguepepo, and at Pungo Andongo. It was contemplated from the start that when such men should be put down by the Lord in a good place, and shall so be led by His Spirit and Providence, that trading posts should constitute one branch of our school industries. These give ample support now to the two stations named, but are still assisted from home in taxes, repairs and new additions to church properties.

“The foundation industry, however, is farming, fruit, coffee-growing, etc., (1) because of its intrinsic value, present and future. (2) That we may thus train boys and girls for industrial pursuits, by which, when grown, they may secure good homes of their own and form Christian communities as a basis of self-supporting churches and schools.

“The soil of Nhangue is abundant, rich and ready for the plow, but thus far, owing to the great attention given to building, to the stock, and to merchandizing, and the departure of so many who ran well for a season, our farming interest has suffered; but Brother Rudolph will give the farming and industrial school-boys and girls to help and to be helped, a fair trial, as soon as we supply him with an assistant, and, by the blessing of God, he will, I am sure, make a success which will demonstrate grand possibilities on that line. This is essential, even if the stores should far exceed absolute self-support, which they will do if kept solely in charge of such men as we have named; but all the boys we train can’t be merchants. The school work commenced with promise nearly four years ago, has not made decided progress, for the same reasons named in regard to farming, but good results are manifest from the educational work, especially in some of the boys trained by our good brother, Wm. P. Dodson, who give evidence of their genuine conversion to God. In spite of all discouragements, which, among ourselves, have not been small nor few, God is at the front and will lead all who abide there with Him to early and glorious successes on all the lines of our movement, especially in the salvation of the heathen around us. I am so assured of this that I am praising Him now for the coming work of salvation among the heathen. Glory to God! Glory to God! WM. TAYLOR.”

NHANGUEPEPO.

“Arrived in Nhanguepepo by a walk of fifty-one miles from Dondo, on Saturday, June 1, 1889. At present we have but one missionary on this station, Brother Carl Rudolph, but he is doing the work of two or three by breaking in the native boys. He has a self-supporting store of varieties, a large herd of cattle, is building a stone wall for enlarged corral for the cattle, teaching and preaching daily, and preparing to put in a large crop of corn, beans, manioc, sweet potatoes, sugar cane, etc.

“This was designed for a receiving and training station for our newly arriving recruits from America, but instead it has become a training station for native boys who are acclimatized, who know the language of the country and the life of the people, and have many points of adaptability which a foreigner must spend years to acquire, and meantime is likely to get sick——home sick, and skip out. Yet native agency can’t be trained without competent men of God to train them. God has developed such from our first force whom we settled in Angola four years ago, who will do a wonderful and widely extended work, even if no more should come. If we can get more from home, who, like these, will stick, and do and die for Jesus in Africa, well; but otherwise, Angola, already self-supporting, except some help in repairing and enlarging our mission properties, will be worked by our present force of Americans and the natives themselves. We have the nucleus of a Methodist Episcopal Church in Nhanguepepo, now consisting of half-a-dozen saved boys, and others are seeking.

“On Sabbath, the 2d inst., I was late in rising from bed, just off a journey; indeed, I wished, at any rate, to spend part of the day in Sabbatic rest in that way. But, I was going to say, as I lay in bed, a blind man, whom I met here four years ago, came to see me. He is a native of Dondo, and learned there to read and write in Portuguese, and speaks that language as well as his own Kimbundu, but for years he has been blind, and lives alone in a hut not far from our house. His name is Esessah. He expressed great pleasure in meeting me again, and Brother Rudolph gave him a seat by my bedside, and sat down near him. After the compliments of the occasion I said to myself: ‘This is my chance for Sunday morning preaching, which has been the habit of my life for the last forty-seven years. If the Holy Spirit will use me this morning we can get this poor man saved. He has groped in the dark a long time; to walk in the light for the remaining time of his pilgrimage, and then leap into the joyous brightness of eternal day, will be a blessed gain for this poor man.’ So I said: ‘Brother Ruldolph, I want to preach to this man, and have you put it in plain Portuguese or Kimbundu.’ Brother Carl is perfect in love to God and man, and his whole soul and life are devoted to such work, and he is well up in those languages. So I gave him my Gospel Short Cut to the mind, conscience and heart of the heathen. The Spirit of God put Divine electric fire into it, which broke us down with weeping again and again. At the close of the discourse, the three of us went on our knees. I was led to pray that the Divine Spirit would make his repentance so deep and expressive, and his conversion to God so clear and distinctive, as to leave no ground for doubt in his mind, nor ours, and which would give point and force to his testimony to his heathen neighbors. So I and Carl led in prayer, then the blind heathen broke out in audible prayer, and wept, prayed and wept, till finally he submitted to treatment and received the Lord Jesus, the Great Physician, and was straightway pardoned and healed, and gave a clear testimony to the facts in his case.

“We did not call to see him on Monday. I thought it was well to leave him alone with God for a season, but on Tuesday, yesterday, Brother Carl and I went to his hut, and he received us joyfully. He is not at all a noisy man, but courteous, unobtrusive and very sensible, and in low, distinct articulation, he is a fluent talker. We had a long teaching talk with him, and heard his most clear and distinct testimony to the saving power of God in his head and heart. I led in vocal prayer, Carl followed and then Esessah prayed intelligently and earnestly. As we were leaving, Carl and he embraced each other and wept, and held each other and wept on for some time: meantime, I was waiting in the path, and tearfully thanking God for such a sight in the midst of heathendom. Glory to God! The big rain drops are falling on us. A thunder-gust of glory will sweep through these mountains, soon followed by the regular ‘former and latter rains’ in this season. Glory to God! My eyes shall not dim much with age till I shall see these things. Let all the people who have been praying for us, praise God for the glory to be revealed. WM. TAYLOR.”

FROM NHANGUEPEPO TO PUNGO ANDONGO.

“Thursday, June 6, 1889.——I left Nhangue at 6.30 this morning, with my two carriers, whom I seldom see on the path, being usually ahead of them. Two miles out I called to see the Assistant Commandante. He and the Commandante called to see me the other day, and of course I returned their call. A Commandante, appointed by the Portuguese Provincial Government, has charge of a detachment of soldiers, and is also a magistrate of a certain district of the Province. Some of them are Portuguese. The others, probably the larger proportion, are Africans, who have had some advantages of education. They have been courteous and kind to me and to my missionaries almost invariably, and we reciprocate cordially.

“Three miles on my way I called to pay my respects to Sr. Jacintho, a Portuguese trader, whom we used to call ‘the honeyman,’ because he occasionally, when we were strangers in a strange land, presented us with a bottle of honey to sweeten us up a bit. We bought of him some of our best cattle in starting to form our herd.

“In the forenoon I walked fourteen miles to Sangue. On my first trip over this path, to settle Joseph Wilks in Pungo Andongo, we spent a night at the house of the Commandante at Sangue.

“I had been overworked at Nhangue, and was not in good condition for walking that day, and, on reaching Sangue, soon found a corduroy bedstead in a private room, and laid me down to rest. I heard Brother Wilks say to our host, “Bispo doente, muito doente”——Bishop sick, very sick. I said to myself: “If my kind Father will give me a refreshing night’s rest across these rough irregular poles, we will see before to-morrow night who will be the delicate brother.”

“In due time our host sent me a basin of delicious native soup, which refreshed me very much, and though I spent much of the night in turning over, I slept well in the intervals, and was up with the day-dawn and ready for a march of twenty-four miles. We waded through long reaches of sand in the path, which made wearisome walking for us. Wilks was good for a long pull, but he had no more to say about “Bisbo doente,” as the walk that day put him up for all he could do to keep up, and to hold out till we reached Pungo Andongo, a little before sunset. We were kindly received and entertained at the trading ‘factory’ of Sanza Laurie & Co.

“Marcus Zagury, a member of this firm, had visited us at Nhangue a few days before, and gave us full information and encouragement in regard to Pungo Andongo, as the place for planting a mission, and tendered us the hospitality of their house. The evening of our arrival had been set for an entertainment——a big dinner——for the Government officials and traders of the town at this house; so we made somewhat the acquaintance of those gentlemen, also of a Catholic priest, who was an East Indian. All spoke encouraging words to us, but of course did not engage to paddle our canoe for us. Next day we rented from Sr. Zagury, at a cheap rate, a pretty good house for a school and for residence of the mission family, and I left Brother Wilks in charge and returned to Nhangue.

“These are some of the remembrances that crowd on me today, as I lay down on the leaves for noon rest and lunch at Sangue. In the afternoon of to-day I walked nine miles further to ‘Queongwa’ (Kaongwa), not a town, but a camping-ground for carriers and travelers, and a house for upper-class natives, with some villages contiguous and a running stream of water the year round, which is of great utility in this country. Brother Withy, our Superintendent, has bought a sight here for planting a mission school for the towns of this vicinity.

“A resident here, who has always shown kindness to my missionaries, Sr. Candanga, met me in the path and gave me a welcome to his house of ‘wattle and daub.’ It is 60x18 feet, divides into two large end rooms and a central hall.

“One of these seemed to be reserved for strangers, furnished with a table, two or three chairs, and a European double bedstead with mattress and spread, which he put at my disposal. I had a good portable bed which I preferred to any other, but to honor his hospitality I spread my bedding on his bedstead and enjoyed a night of balmy sleep.

“I had walked twenty-three miles during the day, waded the waters eight times, and verified the truth——the ‘rest of a laboring man is sweet.’

“On Friday, June 7th, I was up at peep ‘o day, rolled up my bedding, took my lunch in my hand, and was on the path long before the sunshine struck the tops of the mountains, and walked to Pungo, about fourteen miles distant, by 11 A.M.

“My second tramp over this path was in company with Sister Wilks and Agnes, in August, 1889, on their way to join Brother Wilks at Pungo. Such was the immense avoirdupois of Sister W. that at Dondo we spent a week in trying to get carriers to take her thence to Nhangue. All our men travel on foot, but the ladies are carried by a couple of strong men——two also as alternates——in a hammock suspended from a long pole. We could find no carriers for her at Nhangue, so she walked fourteen miles to Sangue. On the way that day, we met Brother Wilks coming to meet wife and daughter. Agnes was carried and took a fever; the mother walking, and perspiring freely and sluicing the sewerage of her system, was in no danger of fever. When we reached Sangue, I hired a native to get four strong men to carry her next day to Pungo. He succeeded, but it was 8 A.M. before we could get them on to the path. We stopped at Queongwa for lunch. At 2 P.M., when we were ready and anxious to proceed on our journey, we found our carriers had just hung on the pot for boiling their breakfast. It was Saturday, and fourteen weary miles between us and Pongo, so Brother Wilks ordered them to their burdens: ‘No time now for cooking. You should have done that an hour ago, and we can’t wait any longer. We must be off now.’ The carriers replied: ‘We can’t go any further to-day; we will camp right here, and rest till tomorrow.’

“I waited till their temper abated, and went to them, and said: ‘You have had a heavy load, boys, and I know you must be very tired and hungry; so, cook away, and eat a good breakfast, and then come on. I and this lady whom you have engaged to carry through to Pungo Andongo to-day, will walk on till you overtake us,’ Then without waiting for a reply, we took the path, and in about an hour afterward they overtook us and shouldered the ‘mulker grande’——woman large——and struggled on. We reached the mission house about 10 P.M., when the poor fellows were relieved of a heavy load from their shoulders, and I from my mind.

“On this day, June 7, 1889, when about a mile short of our mission house in Pungo, I was met by Bertie Withey, a wholly consecrated lad of sixteen and one half years. He was a boy of twelve when he, with his parents and three sisters younger than himself, enlisted for this work. These children, like their parents, walk humbly before God on the line of supreme loyalty and love. They are well up in the use of the Portuguese language, and in the Kimbundu. The native people here bear the name of ‘Umbunda’ plural, Mubunda singular. Kimbundu with them means language. So with them it would be tautology to say Kimbundu language.

“Our missionary occupants here at present are Chas. W. Gordon, Sister Withey, Bertie, Lottie and Flossie; the eldest sister, Stella, being with her father at Dondo. Sister Withey is quite unwell just now. She has passed through the fiery ordeal of bilious fever in this country a number of times, but lives in the light and love of holiness, and carries no anxious care of any sort a bit longer than the casting of ‘all her cares on Jesus who careth for her.’ Her husband and she came to this work under a conscious call from God, and consecrated themselves and their children to it for life. One of the stipulations was that, if either should be struck down by the hand of Death, the other should remain in the work and train the children to stick to it to the end of their lives.

“Now, while I write I hear Lottie and Flossie quietly conversing with each other in the Kimbundu, seemingly oblivious of the English language.

“Brother Gordon is one of the forty who came with me four years and four months ago. He is slender but symmetrical in his build, blue eyes, pleasant countenance, gentle and courteous, firmly adhering to the principles of truth and righteousness. He was rather delicate in health at first, but has grown strong and healthy by all sorts of hard work in the radius of our mission industries. He has a clear head, is a good school-teacher, a good wayside preacher of the Gospel to a crowd, or to one poor native, or to any dignitary of the Provincial Government, and walks in love, perfect love to God, and is in profound sympathy with men. Brother Withey and he, from years of experience in Massachusetts, are our trained merchants. With the surplus of their earnings, in that line during the past year, above self-support of this station, they have bought and paid for the new mission property, before mentioned, at Queongwa, and a mission farm of probably three hundred acres of good land, bounded on one side by an ever-running stream of water, with many valuable fruit trees and a substantial adobe house, 55x18 feet, divided into three rooms. They are this dry season putting on a new roof, and will put the whole premises under good repair. This is the industrial school farm of the Pungo Andongo mission, and is sixty yards short of a mile west of it.

“In competent hands, suitably located, a store, like the one here, constitutes an important branch of our industries. Conducted, as it is, on strict principles of truth and honesty, it sheds light into the commercial sphere of this country, and brings our missionary traders into personal contact with native carriers and merchants from a radius east and south, covering the countries of the Lundas, Kiokos, Bilundas, Libolas and still others, 500 or 600 miles distant from this place.

“The traders are of different European nationalities, and, in the main, are smooth and gentlemanly in their bearing toward their neighbors, and we always get on pleasantly with them; but they are free to say our ‘principles are entirely impracticable in this country and can’t succeed.’

“The popular method of business here is: On the arrival of a caravan, laden with rubber, beeswax, ivory, etc., (1) to serve its traders and carriers with free rations of rum; (2) free rations of food. With that they usually pass the first night in a large, well-covered shed built for their accommodation. Camp-fires, cooking, eating and drinking is the order in every direction. After the feasting, comes the dancing, with clapping of hands, and singing and shouting at the top of their stentorian voices. This is kept up through most of the night. (3) From the traders further, a free distribution of cheap fancy goods, dressing up the head men of the caravan in broadcloth coats and pants, highly-colored silk sashes and umbrellas, and in a display of these, with music, they march through the town and back to the camp.

“Then (4) comes the weighing of the rubber, wax, ivory, etc., and payment in cloth of various kinds and colors, flint-lock guns, powder, beads, knives and fancy goods in variety, and rum in huge bottles encased in willow wicker-work. In the ‘Mohamba’ of the carriers——a kind of long basket——five of these demijohns are placed, weighing from seventy to eighty pounds, to be carried often 500 or 600 miles.

“(5) ‘The dispatch,’ just before the departure of the caravan, which consists of throwing out into the crowd, caps, hats and toys in variety for a grab game of the carriers. I once saw two fellows grab a cap, who pulled and hauled and quarreled till a third fellow ran up with his knife and cut the cap in two, and stopt the strife.

“Our Christian traders provide some accommodations for shelter and comfort for native carriers and traders. Those who come for the first time call for rum.

“‘We don’t sell rum; don’t use, nor keep it in the store.’ Some fellows here, the other day, disputed Brother Gordon’s statement, saying, ‘Don’t I see it there,’ pointing to some cans of kerosene.

“‘Well, do you want to try some of that?’

“‘Yes; that is what we want.’

“So he drew some and passed it to them, saying, ‘Now, you had better put it to your nose first.’ One or two of them smelled it, and passed it back with a look of surprise and horror.

“‘Well, we want some tobacco.’

“‘We don’t use tobacco; don’t sell it; don’t keep it to sell.’

“‘Do you want to buy rubber?’

“‘Yes, I am ready to buy your rubber,’

“‘What will you give us in exchange for our rubber?’

“‘I will give you money, if you like; or give you cloth, rice, fish, sugar, soap, anything you want, except rum, tobacco, beads and trinkets——such things as can do you no good. We sell nothing but what will be useful to you.’

“‘How much you give us for our rubber?’

“‘When I examine to see its quality I will show you whatever you want, and how much I will give you for each ‘arroba’ (thirty-two pounds). We give you no ‘matebeesh’——gifts——like other traders, and can afford to give you a good price for your rubber. If you, then, think that you can do better elsewhere, you can take your rubber away to the best market you can find. We want you to do the best you can for yourselves; remember, the men who give you things so freely, cannot afford to do it out of their own pockets; they must therefore take it out of you in their prices of purchase or sale.’

“Some leave us quietly, but many remain, and see, and confess to a fair deal. Then comes a free friendly talk about their country, and their people, and a Gospel talk about ‘Nzambi’——God.

“The people who thus trade with us go away in every direction, telling their friends they have become acquainted with ‘another people,’

“Thus our holy brethren are making more than a missionary self-support, and business increasing daily, and not only have their regular Sabbath services in the Kimbundu, but are talking six days a week beside; from morning till night they are talking in the Kimbundu of Jesus and Salvation to people who listen attentively, and repeat with great accuracy and earnestness any new thing that comes into their ears.

“All this talk, which I have indicated through the English language, transpired in the Kimbundu, so that our missionary traders are daily learning the vernacular of the country much more rapidly and accurately than they could if confined to their libraries, especially as there was but a single fragmentary grammar, till one of our missionaries, Hèli Chatelain, learned from the people who speak accurately, and has since printed a grammar and the Gospel by John; but as these are just from the press, our people have become familiar with the Kimbundu by direct and daily contact with the people without the aid of books.

“On Saturday, June 8th, Brother Gordon and Bertie slept alternately night after night at the farm-house, and in the morning see that the hired men get early to work, and look after the cattle and send them out to pasture, and then return in time for breakfast.

“I went to the farm-house early this morning and found Brother Gordon reading and explaining Scripture truth to the hired men in their own Kimbundu. When one grasped a new thought, he repeated it to the rest, with a glowing face.

“Our cattle herd here is not large, but growing, and of choice stock. They require daily attention. Any fresh wounds on any of them will soon mortify if not properly attended to. I saw Brother Gordon lasso a couple of young bullocks this morning, almost as dexterously as I used to see the Spaniards do it in California. It took him about a minute to lasso one, throw him, tie his legs, and put a bar across his neck, so that the animal was entirely helpless. The object was, daily to clean and dress a wound till fully healed.

“A wild plant grows plentifully in this country, called by the natives ‘Lukange,’ a decoction of which applied hot——not to scald——appears to be more effective than carbolic acid. First, a cleansing of the wound with soap and warm water; second, an application of the lukange by means of a syringe. Then, to prevent ‘flyblow’ and its consequences, a preparation of salt and baked tobacco, pulverized, is applied. The nicotine of tobacco, boiled out, is the great remedy used by Australian sheep growers for killing a bad breed of lice, which would otherwise destroy their flocks. Tobacco is certainly a very poisonous, destructive weed, and death to vermin.

“On Sabbath, 9th, Brother Gordon had a teaching and preaching meeting in the chapel at 10 A.M., then I preached a short discourse, and he interpreted into the Kimbundu. We had first and last about thirty native hearers. Some of them were greatly interested, and repeated to the rest the new thought that had just struck him.

“At the close, a soldier, who was among the most attentive of the hearers, said, ‘I want to turn to God, and receive Jesus and be saved.’

“Brother Gordon questioned him about giving up all his sins, and let Jesus take them all away.

“He said, ‘Yes, I’ll give up everything that is wrong, and let Jesus save me,’

“Then Brother Gordon asked if he had more than one wife?

“‘Yes, I have two; but I am willing to give up either the one or the other; but I want you to tell me which one I should give up?’ Then, just as we were hoping to help him to come to Jesus, he had to respond to a call to duty as a soldier, and left, and we have not seen him since. Brother Gordon knows him, and will seek opportunity to help him.

“Our mission house here, of solid adobe walls, 3 feet thick, is about 100 feet front by 20 wide, for 82 feet, and the remaining 18 feet forms an L extension back about 50 feet, which is the chapel; the 82 feet being divided into four apartments, one of which is the room for trade. Back of the house is an abundant supply of oranges, mangoes in their season, and some other varieties, the whole covering about half an acre of ground; ‘the best site in town’ for all our purposes. Our committee bought it, and paid for it over three years ago.

“On Monday, 10th, I again visited Brother Gordon at the farm this morning, and visited on the premises, near a large tree, the grave of dear Sister Dodson——Miss Brannon. They had been united in marriage but about six months. She had on her wedding garment when called by the Master, and went quickly into the royal guest chamber of the King. Her short and sure way from Boston to heaven was through Angola in Africa.

“To-day Brother Gordon and I took breakfast with Sr. Coimbra——“Costa & Coimbra,” the largest business firm in Pungo Andongo. We took breakfast with Sr. Coimbra, seven miles this side of Malange, nearly four years ago. He is a kind, social man of the world.

“On Tuesday, 11th, preparing for an early start to-morrow morning for Malange. Will go alone, of course, except the occasional sight of my two carriers, yet in ‘blessed fellowship divine,’ never alone nor lonely. WM. TAYLOR.”

FROM PUNGO ANDONGO TO MALANGE.

“On Wednesday, 7 A.M., June 12th, I started from Pungo. My two carriers, engaged yesterday, had not reported at 7 A.M., so I started on my journey, leaving orders for them to join me at Korima, ten miles out.

“I waited at Korima nearly an hour when they arrived, so we lunched and rested till 1.30 P.M. I walked that P.M. fifteen miles, and lodged at Kalunda Quartel. Quartel is not a hotel, but nevertheless a lodging place for travelers who carry their own bed and provisions. It is a rude barracks, for a small detachment of soldiers, under a Commandante, who lives in his own residence contiguous. I meant to stop at the house of the Commandante, who attended our preaching at Pungo last Sabbath, and dined with us, and who expressed a strong desire to have us establish a mission at Kalunda. It was, however, an hour after dark when I arrived at the Quartel, and the soldiers said it was a long distance to the house of the Commandante, so I waited about an hour for my carriers, and then took my cold lunch, put up my bed in a room without doors, and slept well. Was up and off at 6.15 in the morning, having rolled up my bedstead and bedding, and taken my breakfast in the early dawn. I walked thirteen miles, and waited three hours for my carriers, which put my dinner off till 3, so I walked but six miles that evening, and lodged in a rude construction of poles, with roof, but sides not covered with mortar or grass. It gave shelter from dew and afforded fresh outdoor air, which is always my preference in this country. I found several native travelers, with a camp-fire blazing when I arrived, among whom was a woman, husband and little girl of about 6 years. I spoke kindly to the naked little thing, and the parents were delighted. After I retired I was entertained till I lost consciousness in sleep, by the singing of the little six-year-old, who never heard a Christian hymn or tune in her life. She sang the words and tunes of about half-a-dozen native songs, and when she seemed to run out of words she sang on, ‘La, la, la, la,’ I thought of the countless millions of little children in Africa, all heirs of ‘the free gift which is unto the justification of life,’ and as susceptible of being ‘trained up in the way they should go,’ as the children of England or America; but, I said, with tears, Where are the trainers? O thou Creator and Redeemer of mankind, how long, how long?

“Friday, 14th, I walked thirteen miles, lunched and rested a couple of hours, and six miles farther landed me in Malange. Just as I crossed the Malange River, I met Brothers Samuel J. and William H. Mead, and Robert Shields, accompanied by Mrs. Ardella and Miss Bertha Mead, mounted on bull backs, with portable organ, base viol, cornet, etc., on their way to Kolamosheeta, where I had lunched that day, to hold religious services.

“The people of that town are hungry for the truth of God. I begged them not to stop for me, but to go on to their appointment, but they replied that the people would not assemble till their arrival was announced, and said they ‘were going out at this time, thinking they might meet me there.’ So they returned and I accompanied them to the mission-house in Malange. Malange is sixty-two miles distant from Pungo Andongo.

“The fifty-one miles of travel from Dondo to Nhanguepepo is mainly through a region of rugged mountains and precipitous cliffs of solid rock, opening out into the long and widening grassy plateaus of Nhanguepepo. The thirty-eight miles from Nhangue to Pungo extend through and mainly across a series of ridges and hollows sparsely covered with scrubby timber. The soil not so rich, hence grass not so heavy and grass fires not so hot; therefore there is half a chance for trees to grow, with no chance at all from Dondo to Nhangue, except some very sappy varieties of but little value.

“From Pungo on for twenty miles the ridges are much broader and not so high as those described; there is more sand, less grass and heavier, but still scrub-timber. Then for eight or ten miles we cross low, beautifully rounded grassy ridges, with a little streams of water near the surface, about half a mile apart between the ridges. Then, for most of the way to Malange we cross ridges less fertile, much higher, with an ascent of from two to four miles. The whole line of march bears southeasterly. All appears to be a good grazing country, with many herds of cattle, but not a tithe of the number required to keep the grass down, and thus keep up good short grass pasturage the year round, and preclude the great ‘prairie fires,’ which destroy the young timber and prevent the growth of forests. For many miles around Malange, there is a fair supply of good hard-wood timber in variety.

“Sam Mead, Ardella his wife, and Bertha his niece, and I came together to Malange, nearly four years ago. Sr. J. Preitas was then in charge of the long established business house of Sanza Laurie & Co., in Malange, and gave us the temporary use of a house for our missionaries. After a day or two here, he informed me that Sanza Laurie & Co. intended soon to close out their business in Malange, and that I had better buy their house and town lot on which it stood, containing an acre of land and some banana trees. The house was an extension of house added to house joined into solid walls, about one-third of wattle and earth, and the rest of adobe brick. The last one added, forty feet in length, was new, consisting simply of walls with no roof. The frontage of the whole was about 165 feet, by a width of 18 feet. I inquired: ‘What is the price of the whole property, house and land?’

“He replied: ‘You can have it for two hundred milreis, $214.’

“I said: ‘I’ll give that amount,’ and the bargain was closed in about as few words as I have written. It is worth four times that amount now. The plates, girders and timbers are nearly all of ant-proof, and almost everlasting hard-wood, most of which are as solid to-day apparently as when new. One of them has a fire-proof covering by means of a double roof. On the lower is a heavy layer of cement of adobe clay, precluding rats, rain and fire. Over this is a thatch roof of long native grass. On the sunny side it has kept dry and sound, but on the north side our brethren have put on new thatch, cleaned and whitewashed the rooms, and finished the new forty-foot room, and fitted it up for a school-room and chapel, which is the seventh room in the building.

“In the few days I was here, four years ago, Brother Sam and I selected and stept off a mission-farm adjoining our mission-house. He and Brother Gordon fenced, cleared and planted several acres in corn, beans, manioc, sweet potatoes, etc., and everything grew beautifully, but the brethren were kept indoors by illness for a few days, and just what an old Portuguese settler predicted came to pass, their fencing was all stolen for firewood, and the cattle and hogs devoured every green thing from the premises. Bad outlook for self-support. It was in the midst of a ‘three years’ drought,’ which precluded the growth of supplies at our other Angola stations, but our farm was not far from the ‘laguna,’ a lake, a few hundred yards wide, and perhaps a mile long, occasioned by the spread of the Malange River over a plain, which gave moisture to the soil for a considerable distance from its shore. We did not seek to get nearer to the lake for fear of malaria, being warned of that peril by old residents.

“A fair share of the supplies for the first year of food, tools, and a little money, came to Malange for six missionaries, including Bertha, in her thirteenth year, with fresh supplies for the second year, and seven new missionaries to help to use them up, but all that was but to keep the wolf away, and afford means for the development of self-support. Sister Ardella’s health was so far gone, for months, that it was believed her life depended on her having apartments in a second story. But there were none in town, so a two-story house must be built. In the changes that were one way and another rapidly occurring, for the most part by attacks of home-sickness, that carried them off and clear out of the country, most of the work devolved on Brother Sam Mead, till two years ago his cousin, Brother Willie H. Mead and family moved hither from Nhangue, preceded by Brother Robert Shields, sent out by our Committee from Ireland. These have all stuck to the work here to which God called them, except that Edna Mead, a ripe Christian of about 12 years of age, at the call of God went up to join her sister, Nellie, in their heavenly home.

“The results of this unpromising attempt at self-support I will sketch in my next letter. WM. TAYLOR.”

MISSIONARY SELF-SUPPORT AT MALANGE.

“Malange Station received, at the beginning, its proportion of cloth, provisions, tools and a little money to tide a small band of workers——Sam Mead, Ardella his wife, and Bertha Mead, of 13, his niece, and two young men——through the first year, which proved to be the second of a ‘three years’ drought and famine.’

“So a partial supply was sent for the ensuing year to prevent suffering from want. Meantime, the ‘tent-making’ by the missionaries, to ‘make ends meet,’ would have sufficed in a pinch, but the subsidy was salutary and safe, for they were not of the sort to be surfeited and suffocated even by an excess of supplies if they had had them, taking real pleasure in ‘scratching’ for themselves. Two years were required for apprenticeship, experimenting in many things, with everything to learn essential to self-support.

“About the beginning of the third year, after various changes by the coming and going of new workers, the coming of Willie H. Mead, with his family from Nhanguepepo, to join his cousin, Sam——about the beginning of the third year, marked the period when self-support really began to abound.

“Minnie Mead, Willie’s wife, turned in $40 by her sewing machine. Hèli Chatelain an equal sum by teaching languages to some traders. Robert Shields, from his private purse, put in $22. Willie has put in $80 per year from the rents of some property he has in Vermont, his old home, and, within a few months after arrival, put in $200 from pit-sawing and selling lumber. Most of these sums, with about $100 worth of goods sent as a present from Ireland to Brother Shields, were used to stock a little store for a small commercial business, as one branch of industry which was felt to be specially needful.

“Most of the business of the labor market of Angola is transacted through copper coin currency. It is so difficult to procure and keep a supply of it on hand that to purchase it, even with gold, ten per cent. premium has to be paid. The patrons of a variety shop bring in for the purchase of things they require a good supply of the copper coin.

“Robert Shields, having served a regular apprenticeship to the grocery business in Ireland, with an additional experience in it of a year and a half, was appointed to take charge of this industry, and work it in connection with his studies, and special evangelizing among the villagers adjacent to Malange.

“The farm selected at the beginning was found to be too near the town, and the whole work of ‘a season’ on it having been destroyed in a night, there was no ground of hope for anything better by a repetition of the experiment of fencing and farming there. So Sam Mead, in a state of semi-desperation, mounted one of his bulls and managed to struggle through grass as high as his head to explore the lake shore, along which he found a neglected farm, on which were growing many valuable fruit trees; he also discovered that the farm, save its lake-side boundary, was enclosed by a strong growing hedge, and contained a body of about 300 acres of black clay and loam of the most productive quality. He immediately sought for the owner——the heir to the man deceased, who had spent so much time, toil and money on it, and he bought and paid for it with money belonging to Ardella, his wife. He then went to work with a will, under a new inspiration of hope, assisted for a time by Brothers Rudolph and Gordon, and produced abundantly a variety of tropical and temperate zone products for food.

“The mechanical industries were under the special charge of Wm. H. Mead. His sons——Johnnie and Sammy, the former about 12, and the latter nearly 11——out of school-hours are valuable helpers in each department, alternating where needed most.

“Willie’s two pit-saws, in the two years he has been in Malange, have turned out $1,500 worth of planks and scantling, about half of which he sold, and used up the other half on improvements of mission property. To haul the logs from the forest, Sam had the oxen and Willie bought a huge Portuguese cart, with wheels of hard-wood, about four feet in diameter, and a hard-wood frame to match, all very strong and durable.

“The outlay of the earnings of these workers, for the past two years, over and above self-supporting subsistence, may be seen in the following exhibit:

“(1) The roofing and fitting up for school and chapel purposes of the unfinished hall, 18x40 feet, belonging to the block of buildings first bought for the mission. The girders, plates, rafters and collar beams are all of enduring hard-wood. The roof is double; the nether is covered with fire-proof clay; the upper with thatch grass. The shutters and doors, and frames for both, are of sawn hard-wood. Its slab benches, without backs, give quite a ‘rise’ to people always accustomed to sit on the ground. The cost of these improvements in material, labor and money is estimated to have been $300.

“(2) The farm-house, 15x20 feet; corn crib, about 6x11 feet, set on posts, capt with inverted tin-pans, to prevent the rats from getting up; and two out-houses, about 10x10 feet, and a corral of heavy logs for the cattle, cost a total of $100.

“(3) Willie Mead’s saw-pits, a shed, workshop and appliances, located in the mission yard, cost about $100.

“(4) A new mission-house on the same lot on which stands the old one. It is 24x30 feet, two stories high. The lower story is built of dressed stone, the upper of adobe brick, solid walls, below and above, three and one-half feet thick, with a second-story, veranda front and rear of the building. Double fire-proof roof——as the chapel roof before described. Doors, window shutters, and frames of both, together with the verandas and upper-story floors, are all sawn hard-wood. The lower floor and walks outside are of flag-stones. It is the only two-story house in Malange, and believed to be the only house in Angola furnished with a chimney and fireplace, which adds greatly to its comfort in the really cold weather of Malange at this season of the year. The upper story is used by Sam and Ardella, and about half a dozen of their adopted native children. The lower story has also sleeping accommodations, but is the dining-room for Sam, Ardella, Robert Shields and Bertha, and the school ‘internoes.’ The house is not large, but most symmetrical and substantial, and is prophetic of progress, and bears from the veranda facing the street a tall flag-staff from which floats the flag of our home country——the stars and stripes.

“The brethren estimate the cost of this building, in materials, money and labor, at $800. To buy all the materials, and depend on hiring workmen, it could not be done for that amount. It will be observed that the aggregate outlay for these improvements amounts to $1,300, not a dollar of which was furnished by our Transit and Building Fund Society; the brethren preferring to do it themselves than to ask for or receive aid from home. They are now engaged in building a wall round our Malange Mission premises 1,000 feet long.

“(5) The farm Brother Sam bought, with its field of sugar cane, so thickly set as to defy anything short of an elephant a passage through it; its fruit orchard; its live stock of twenty herd of cattle, including three yoke of oxen; and eleven breeding sows and male, and chickens, is worth in the market one thousand dollars.

“As soon as Sam began to inquire for the owner, others began to compete with him as bidders for it, so, to avoid the peril of delay, he bought it at the earliest possible moment, and had it deeded to himself, and has held it in good faith for the mission. During my recent visit to Malange, I offered to refund Ardella’s money with interest.

“Sam and Ardella laid the subject before the Lord, and returned answer, that, having given themselves and all they have to God for his self-supporting missions in Africa, they refuse a refund; but will immediately deed the farm and all the appurtenances thereunto belonging to the Transit and Building Fund Society, to be held in trust for the self-supporting missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church. I put the matter into the hands of Brother C. W. Gordon, our legal attorney, and the conveyance will be made, no doubt, before this MS. can be printed.

“The building of the new house has absorbed a large proportion of the stock in trade of their little store. They were quite disinclined to allow me to help them stock it up a bit, but I prevailed on them to accept the small amount of $214.

“As Willie Mead is a noted mechanical genius, on the short-cut-cheap-line, adapted to a country like this, and as Malange has greatly the advantage of any of our other Angola missions in timber supply, and the farthest inland, he should have an outfit of tools and machinery for a few branches of industry well adapted to that locality. This need has been in part provided for. Our Committee has sent a new supply of farming implements and carpenter’s tools for Malange, soon to arrive.

“I have, on my return trip to the sea, ordered them a turning lathe from Nhangue; also a farmer’s outfit, the gift of Thomas Walker & Sons, of England; and have sent from Dondo a blacksmith’s anvil, vice, tongs, etc. What Malange yet needs is a small steam-engine, of four or five horse-power, with ‘arbor’ and belting, and other appliances, and a thousand feet of small piping for pumping water, to run by steam, (1) their sugar cane crushing mill; (2) their corn meal grinding mill; (3) their turning lathe; (4) a small circular saw of eighteen or twenty inches diameter, also a small circular cross-cut saw, the saw to be sent from home with the engine, belting, and water-piping. We don’t want for Malange a saw mill, big engine, or anything costly or too heavy for easy transport on the heads of natives 150 miles from Dondo to Malange. Willie Mead did not ask for these things, but needs them for mission industrial teaching, in connection with his powerful preaching in the Portuguese language. He was proposing to sell his little property in Vermont, to use the money derivable from the sale of his homestead, to buy the engine, etc., as above, for Malange Mission, but I protest against that. Such men as the Meads are just the men we can afford to help with certainty of broad self-supporting missionary independency and wide-spread efficiency, without danger of dependency. WM. TAYLOR.”

RETURN FROM MALANGE TO DONDO.

“I was planning to leave Malange, Monday, 24th of June, but ‘Magady was dying,’ so I yielded to the request of our brethren and sisters, and postponed till Wednesday, the 26th. Magady was a ‘Labola boy,’ who, as a little fellow, gave himself to Sam and Arda, nearly four years ago. He was very black, but pronounced by some as ‘the most beautiful boy they ever saw.’ The people on the south side of the Coanza, from its mouth up for 250 miles, are called Kasamas; thence on for 200 or 300 miles, a similar people are called the Libólos. Neither will allow the Portuguese people to travel through their country.

“Magady’s story was that his parents were dead, and that his uncle treated him so badly he ran away from his country, and became cook for the Malange mission. He was taught to know, to fear and to love the Lord, and to sing our hymns. For about two years he was a consistent Christian. Then, through the intrigues of an influential, designing, bad man, he was enticed into bad company, and forsook the Lord. Then he was visited by a disease of his head. He would be walking along, and fall as suddenly as if shot by a Remington rifle, and lie some time in a state of insensibility, but that was as nothing compared with severe and sudden pains in his head that caused him to scream aloud at all hours, day and night. None but himself attempted to diagnose his case. He said ‘Gan N’Zambi’ sent it on him for his wicked departure from Him, and would destroy his body, but had forgiven him, and washed his spirit, and that he was sure he would soon go to live with God, and was anxiously waiting for the call of the King. About 2 P. M. Monday, June 24th, he died. Willie Mead made him a hard-wood coffin, and lined and covered it with white cotton cloth, and he was laid in a grave six feet deep in our own mission burial-ground, where dear Edna Mead sleeps. I conducted the funeral service, about thirty persons being present——a ‘brand snatched from the burning,’ our first Angola representative in heaven.

“During my sojourn in Malange, this trip, I slept in my own bed, as usual, set up in the second-story veranda of our new house, overlooking the street. The nights were very cold and the winds very high, but I rested sweetly, and improved the tone of my health. For two years I had endured an unmitigated high pressure of care and anxiety, on account of the combinations against the success of my work, within and without, front and rear, threatening the life of my missions. But for the great kindness and care of my gracious God and Father it would have killed me. Viewing the blessed harmony and efficiency of our workers from Loanda, and on for 390 miles to Malange, I set up my Ebenezer, and wept, wept, and praised God softly, softly. Then I rested my weary spirit on the bosom of Jesus, and resigned my way-worn body to sleep. There, in the breezes of the high veranda, days and nights together, I slept and slept, and waked, only to say ‘thank God,’ and slept again. Then I got up feeling as fresh as the morning. I bade adieu to my kindred dear in Malange, and left at a quarter to eight Wednesday morning, June 26th, and Friday P.M. reached Pungo Andongo, and had a blessed two days’ sojourn with Brother Gordon, Sisters Withey, Bertha, Lottie and Flossie——holy, lovely people. Brother Gordon is a master in the Portuguese and Kimbundu. We preached an hour Sunday A.M. I knew his rendering into Kimbundu was clear and forcible, by its manifest effect on the hearers. It was their regular chapel service for each Sabbath. The soldier who was awakened on my way out has been called away on duty, so that we can’t report progress in his case, but half-a-dozen men, or more, came forward on this occasion as seekers of pardon, and prayed audibly, but did not appear to enter into life.

“I left for Nhangue, Monday morning, July 1st. Brother Gordon accompanied me fourteen miles to Queongwa, to show me a mission farm Brother Withey recently bought there, of probably 250 acres. We went through it that afternoon, from end to end. It is bounded on the west by a bold running stream, and on the north by the caravan path, stretching across a ridge of fertile soil over 200 rods wide. The former owner was with us, and wanted to sell us the lower end of the same ridge, extending from this path about 200 rods to the hollow, northward, where it is bounded by another little river, till it flows into the one that bounds the whole tract on the west side, and has another shallow stream flowing through the addition near its eastern boundary. So, as this new survey, of about 200 acres, was offered to us at a very small figure, we bought it. The former purchase from self-supporting earnings, has already been conveyed to the T. and B. F. Soc. for the M. E. Church, and this will be, or is by this time.

“Brother Gordon is a symmetrical, lovely character, and efficient in everything he takes hold of. When Brother Withey and he took hold of our little store in Pungo a little over a year ago, its assets were $200, now over $1,000, and the preaching done across the counter in all holy conversation and honest dealing, is a power for God in that centre of far-reaching influence.

“I reached Nhangue on Tuesday P.M., and rested Wednesday till 4 P.M. We had a preaching and baptismal service. Brother Rudolph has had several young natives converted during my absence. Here, as at Malange, many candidates for baptism we had to put off for better preparation. We baptized none of responsible years who were not well recommended by missionaries who had been training them for many months, and who were assured, from their profession and lives, of real conversion to God, and declined to baptize any children whose parents were not prepared publicly to pledge themselves to teach or have their children taught their baptismal relation and obligations to God, and to trust Him for His baptismal pledges to them. Those rejected were disappointed. However, on Wednesday P.M., I baptized twenty-one little children, and several converted lads, and five new probationers were added to our native church, making thirteen natives at Nhanguepepo, and twenty-one at Malange.

“On Thursday morning, Brother Karl accompanied me as far as Nellie Mead’s grave, under a shade tree, about two rods from the caravan trail. A construction of solid masonry, about 5x8 feet, and two feet high, covers her consecrated bones, all given to God before she left America, and laid at the front, according to her covenant, to live and die for Jesus in Africa. She was a natural musician, and has gone to take lessons where ‘the new song’ is attuned to the ‘harpers’ of the melody of heaven. She was one of our children, of the same age, but less stature, of Bertha Mead. Dear little Willie Hicks sleeps beside her, and will, with her, wake up at the first call, early in the morning.

“I bade dear Karl adieu, and walked that day twenty-six miles, and camped at Kasoki, and next day, July 5th, walked twenty-five miles, and put up with dear Brother Withey and Stella, at our mission-house at Dondo. I thus completed my walk of 300 miles with less weariness than the same route cost me nearly four years ago. Glory to God, my patient loving Father in heaven and here in the mountains and vales in Africa! WM. TAYLOR.”

Writing in September, 1889, Bishop Taylor says of his Congo missions:

“Vivi is about 100 miles from the ocean, on the north side of the Congo River.

“Old Vivi, founded by Mr. Stanley, is reached by climbing a steep ascent of half a mile or more from the steamboat landing and Government warehouses at the river-side. It is now entirely deserted. Proceeding by the same road along the slope of the ridge on which old Vivi stands, and thence across a deep glen and up another steep hill, we reach ‘Vivi Top,’ the site of the first capital of the State. It is located on a broad and beautiful plateau, commanding a full view of several miles of the river with its whirlpools and sweeping currents. The villages of Matadi, Tundua, the site of Underhill Mission of the English Baptists, and several trading stations, all dressed in white paint and lime, stand out and grace the scene on the south bank of the great river.

“The Government imported and built several large houses of wood and iron at Vivi. One of the houses, I was informed, cost the Governor-General $17,000. We could have bought it for $9,000, but had to decline the generous offer for lack of means.

“The large houses were taken down and shipt to Boma, the present capital, about fifty miles below Vivi, and were reconstructed on Boma plateau.

“We bought the site of the old capital, comprising about twelve acres of land and a few small buildings, sufficiently capacious for our needs for a few years, for $768.

“The plateau being so high and dry, I did not apply for much land, considering it unsuitable for profitable cultivation. We require the site for a receiving station for the transport of supplies for our contemplated industrial stations in the interior north of the Congo, and the great Upper Congo, and Kasai countries.

“I now perceive that under the judicious management of my Preacher-in-Charge, J. C. Teter, Vivi will become, in the near future, a self-supporting station, and the most beautiful mission premises on either bank of the river. On my recent arrival in Vivi, about the 8th of August, with the dry season far advanced, I was delighted to find, on the high and dry soil of Vivi, a field of manioc, beautifully green and growing. The mango and palm trees on the place when we came into possession have made a remarkable growth during my absence, and are full of fruit; a young orchard of choice varieties of tropical fruits are getting a fine start, and in the garden plenty of yams as large as my head. I also find a promising start in the production of live stock. We already have at Vivi eight choice African sheep; twenty-five goats, which multiply like rabbits; 100 chickens, and a male and a female calf. Brother Teter built a house for the sheep, another for the goats, and a corral for the calves. These are not in care of keepers or dogs during the day, and they return to their houses in the evenings and are shut in from the leopards. One of those dangerous customers reached his paw in through a slight opening in the wall of the goat house, and tore a fine female goat so that it was necessary to kill her. The morning after my arrival I went with Brother Teter to see the goats come out of their fortress. As they came rushing through the door, I was surprised and amused to see three monkeys mounted on the backs of goats, as pompously riding out to the grazing grounds as if the flock belonged to them. They lodge with the goats by night, and spend most of their time with them through the day, and are often seen riding as erect as a drill sergeant of cavalry. They spend many of their leisure hours in picking bugs and burrs off the goats, and playing with the kids. Their indescribable antics are enough to make a dog laugh, and to relieve a confirmed dyspeptic of the blues.

“Brother Teter is building of stone a snake-proof chicken-house. A lesson of sad experience led him to build of solid masonry. Some months ago, Sister Teter went into the chicken-house, then in use, to look after a sitting hen. While stooping over the nest, which she thought was occupied by the hen, she felt something like a jet of spray come into her face, and this was quickly repeated two or three times, filling her eyes with the poison of a “spitting snake,” which lay coiled in the nest. All that night she suffered, in total blindness, indescribable agony of pain. By the prompt application of powerful remedies her life was saved, and her sight restored, but her health was injured by the poison. The dear woman was quite unwell on my recent arrival, but seemed quite restored before I left.

“I have furnished a glimpse of the sunny side of Vivi, produced by the genius and industry of our faithful Preacher-in-Charge. Our Vivi Station and our cause have suffered temporarily by the disaffection and departure of those who were numbered with us; but their departure has left us in peace and harmony, with the possibility and certainty of success in the work to which God has called us. ‘They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us,’ There are many not very good, and many who are very good, who are ‘not of us’ and not ‘with us’ in our Self-Supporting Mission movement. When such of either class, by mistake, get into our list of workers, the best thing for all concerned is for them to get out, as quietly and as quickly as possible. We are sorry for them, and cease not to love them and to pray for them.

“On Wednesday afternoon, the 14th of August, accompanied by Lutete, a native man, employed to carry my blankets and food, I took the path for Isangala; distant, ’tis said, fifty-five miles from Vivi. We walked twelve miles, and put up for the night at a new mission just being opened by Mr. and Mrs. Reed and Mr. Bullikist, recently sent out as missionaries by Dr. Simpson, of New York.

“They seem to be earnest Christians, and will, I trust, make a soul-saving success. They are having three native houses built, each about 12x18 feet, which will give shelter for three or four years. Their faithful dog shared in their tent lodgings, till one night, a few weeks since, a leopard or panther scented him, took ‘a fancy to him,’ and carried him off. Brother Reed is expert in the use of a gun, and supplies his table with venison from the prairies. Soon after his arrival, he went out and killed a deer, and a native king and some of his people came and claimed and clamored for it. Reed got their attention, and, leveling his rifle at a tree, he put an explosive bullet into a knot and tore it to pieces. He then drew his revolver, and discharged it a few times in the air. His argument had its effect on their minds, and they quietly retired.

“At 7 o’clock next day, having disposed of a good breakfast, I took the trail, and walked seventeen miles, to Matamba Creek, by 3 P.M. I was quite disinclined to camp so early, but there being no available water for seven miles beyond, I made my pallet on the ground and turned in for the night. I usually have my very comfortable portable bedstead, but going only for a short stay at Isangala, I took but one carrier instead of two, my usual number.

“Passing through Bunde Valley to-day, I saw a herd of nine or ten koko——a huge deer as big as a donkey, with longer legs. They bounded away a few rods, and at the distance of about a hundred yards stood and looked at us till we passed out of sight. My Winchester would have brought one of them down if it had been with me, instead of at Vivi.

“Twice, later in the day, we were within easy shot of large red deer. On my return, in the same valley, which is about eight miles long, stretching between mountains or high hills north and south of it, and abounding in game, I was within easy shot of a koko, which stood and looked at me without moving. We also heard buffalo in a jungle of grass and bushes, not thirty yards from us. I saw plenty of game when I traveled this path over two years ago, but I don’t carry a gun in traveling, having enough to do to carry myself, and no time for curing and packing the meat, if taken.

“I went out from Vivi with Brother Teter, the other day, to get meat for use. Our hunting-ground was about ten miles from home. The first day we got no meat, but saw many koko and deer. The second day at noon, we had nothing, and were getting into a position to sympathize with a hungry hunter of the olden time who sold his birthright for a pot of soup with no venison in it. Teter was becoming desperate, for he is a noted hunter, hungry for meat, and withal had a reputation to sustain. As soon as we got our lunch of all we had, he took my Winchester and set off alone. When he had gone half a mile from camp, he ‘stalked’ a small herd of koko, and shot a young buck through the neck and killed him, and then emptied the gun-chamber of its dozen cartridges in trying to bring down another buck. He shot off its right fore leg, and shot off the sinews of the left one, and put a bullet into its hip, but he would not down. Teter, having no more cartridges, left the gun and pursued the wounded deer and stoned him to death. We had with us two Liberia boys. We camped near by for the night, and before the morning dawn, we had the larger buck cut into thin slices and cured by the fire. The younger one, about a year and a half old, was carried whole to Vivi, by a hired native. Our Liberia boys, with a good supply of fresh meat, were so refreshed in their minds that they sang the songs of Moody and Sankey, almost incessantly, for days. The deer of this section are smaller than the antelope and gemsbock varieties which we read of in other sections, and which offer such royal sport for those who go equipped for hunting.

“On Friday, we walked from Matamba Creek, twenty-three miles to Isangala. By my usual speed of three miles an hour, I made the distance from Vivi to Isangala, fifty-two miles instead of fifty-five, as per Mr. Stanley. I was, however, in fine condition for walking, and may have overstept my ordinary gait. Arriving at Isangala, I came first to the station of the State, and by invitation of Mons. C. La Jeune, the Government Chief of Isangala, I stopt for half an hour in pleasant conversation, and then proceeded a few hundred yards to our Isangala Mission Station.

“I found our faithful missionaries, Brothers White and Rasmussen, in good heath, and happy in the Lord.

“They have built a cheap but comfortable house, about 15x40 feet, also a kitchen and warehouse for storing our stuff. They have made a garden also, which yields a goodly portion of their support. A single yam, dug while I was there, weighed twenty-two pounds. Beside vegetables, they have a large flock of chickens. These brethren both belong to our transport corps, but have done this station work beside, and have made good progress toward the mastery of the Fiot or Congo language.

“Brother Rasmussen, though but two and a half years in this country, speaks the Fiot fluently, and preaches in it in the villages contiguous. I remained with those dear brethren from Friday evening till Tuesday, the 20th. We had Blessed Communion with the Holy Trinity and with each other. On Sabbath, I preached to a company of natives, and Brother Rasmussen interpreted without hitch or hesitation. In another year or two this dear brother, under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, can go forth as an apostle among the nations of Congo.

“One part of my business was to advise with these brethren on the possible solution of our steamer problem. I had talked up all the points with Brother Teter, and he was so sure these brethren would concur in our conclusions, he thought it quite sufficient for me to write them, and thus save myself the labor of a rough walk of over a hundred miles. I said: ‘Nay, brother, I will walk it, and get the unbiased decisions of their own judgment, and enlist the free good-will and effective co-operation of the brethren in the work before us under a new impulse which personal contact would communicate.’

“Before intimating the conclusions reached at Vivi, I drew out the candid opinions and judgment of these brethren, and found they were of exactly the same mind with us. When by mistake we take the ‘wrong road,’ and travel a long distance in it, it seems a grievance to us to face about and trudge our weary way back to the ‘cross-roads,’ but however much it may go against the grain, that is the thing to do. It seems to lighten the task a little, if some unfortunate fellow can be branded as ‘the scape-goat’ to bear the blame of the mistake, for we all are of kin to that dear lady we read about, who tried to make a scape-goat of the devil; and to the unmanly man, who had the honor to be her husband, and tried to make a scape-goat of his wife. But our well-intentioned mistake was not a sin and we have no need of a scape-goat.

“Well, without enumerating the sources of clearer light, and the new conditions and changes which have intervened in the last two years, our unanimous judgment is that the Lord wants our present steamer for the Lower Congo,——and a much lighter one for the Upper Congo and Kasai water-ways two or three years hence. We will, as soon as the Lord will help us, occupy our station at Luluaburg, vacant since the death of Dr. Summers, and hold our footing in that vast and populous region.

“I believe the Lord has a special providential purpose to fulfil in settling us on the north side of the Lower Congo. He wants us to occupy a densely populated, and utterly neglected region, so far as missionaries are concerned, belonging to the Free State of Congo, extending 230 miles, from Banana to Manyanga, and 100 miles wide. So that, while we shall, the Lord willing, carry out our plan of planting missions in the countries of the Upper Kasai and Sankuru Rivers, we will also provide for these vast regions so near us. Our steamer will be available for the supply of all these vast fields. Beside all this, if our time and space will permit, we can carry for our neighbors any variety of freights, except intoxicating liquors. Our plan, from the beginning, was in connection with books and Gospel preaching, to establish industries to employ the natives, and prepare them for usefulness. So, if it shall please the Lord to give us a money-saving and a money-making transport service, direct from Banana to the regions before-named, it will be in perfect accord with our plan of missionary work for this country, and furnish us means for its more rapid extension.

“Much of the work will be done by natives, whom we shall train, and our own missionaries engaged in it will not be throwing away either time or opportunity. Associating daily with the people, mastering their languages, visiting their homes, employing them in business, bettering their condition, exhibiting to them in all our words and ways the loving spirit of Christ, and unfolding to them the hidden treasures of Divine light and life is the kind of missionary work specially adapted to these nations. There is no personal money-making motive nor purpose in it. ‘We are workers together with God.’ We can trust Him for board and lodging while in His service, and trust Him for reward when the work is done.

“During my absence from Congo of over a year and a half, Brother Teter, in charge at Vivi, has had to stand firmly in defense of me, my Committee, and my cause of Self-Supporting Missions, and having a few sets of my books, he is continually lending them to the traders and State officials stationed along the river from Vivi to Banana. Among these was Mons. C. La Jeune, who became so interested in them, that at our recent meeting in Isangala, he asked me to allow him to translate and print some of them into the French language, for circulation in Belgium. He said he was soon going home for at least six months, and would in that time make the translations and arrangements for their sale. I had the pleasure of giving him a written permission to do as he desired.

“The officers of the Congo State, from the Governor-General down, are extremely polite and obliging, but the amount of Governmental tape that belongs essentially to the administration of an old European Government is a means of grace, especially the grace of patience to an American pioneer.

“On Sunday, 25th, I preached in the open to twenty-six seated, attentive English-speaking negroes from Liberia, Acra and Lagos, and a crowd that stood and looked on. There are many scores of such people employed at Boma, and their numbers are increasing. A great deal of missionary money has been expended in civilizing and Christianizing these people, especially those from the missions of the coast of Guinea, by the Lutheran, Church of England and Wesleyan Methodists. They are very anxious for a place of worship in Boma, it being the capital of the State in which, by the will of God, we will plant hundreds of mission stations in the near future. We ought to have a mission-school and church in Boma. To accomplish all this next year we really lack but one thing, and that is, the money. The cheap stations we establish in the wild regions of the heathen are not of the style required for Boma. A plain, substantial building for residence, school and preaching services would cost about $5,000. WM. TAYLOR.”

SOUTH AFRICAN MISSION FIELDS.

South Africa next engages our attention. Passing by its natural scenery, soil, productions, climate, its cities, towns and villages, manners and customs of its many native tribes, and the character of its colonists, we will confine ourselves strictly to what has been done for the moral and religious welfare of the inhabitants. And first of the Western Province of Cape Colony.

The Dutch Reformed church being that of the original colonists is the strongest religious denomination, and it is numerously represented in most of the towns and villages throughout the country. Formerly it was regarded as the church of the white people alone. It was not till the advent of the missionaries that the Dutch church awoke to the necessity of doing something for the natives. Lately they have nobly redeemed their character and in connection with many of their churches a large amount of missionary work is done. The same was true of the Church of England. Now, with the aid of funds from home, they have been erecting churches and school buildings in the towns and villages and appointing ministers and teachers to labor among all classes. Lutherans, Presbyterians and Baptists were also represented by churches in Cape Town but they did nothing for the masses of the people.

Cape Colony, in common with other parts of South Africa, is chiefly indebted to the missionary societies for the moral and religious instruction of the masses.

The Moravians had the honor of being the first in the field, the Rev. Geo. Schmidt having gone out to the Cape as early as 1737. A writer in the Missionary Review in 1889 says:

“Foremost in the fight with ignorance and evil in South Africa stands the figure of George Schmidt, prepared for the hardships of his missionary life by six years of imprisonment for conscience’ sake in Bohemia, during which his brother in tribulation, Melchior Nitschmann, died in his arms. Whence came the zeal which moved Schmidt to make his way alone to South Africa in 1737, and to dwell among his little colony of Hottentots in Bavianskloof, until in 1743 the persecutions of the Dutch settlers and clergy drove him from the country, and their intrigues prevented his return? Whence came the ardent heart’s desire, which led him day by day to a quiet spot near his German home, and there poured itself out in prayers for his orphaned flock far away, until, like Livingstone, he died on his knees pleading for Africa? Such burning love and such persistent prayer are not of man, they are of God. And though the answer tarried long——yes, fifty years——it came before this century commenced. George Schmidt was no longer on earth to hear the reports of the three men upon whom his mantle fell——how they found the spot which he had cultivated, the ruins of his hut yet visible, the whole valley a haunt of wild beasts; and, better, how they found one surviving member of that little congregation of 47 who had long waited and hoped for the return of the beloved teacher. This was an aged blind Hottentot woman, who welcomed them as Schmidt’s brothers with “Thanks be to God,” and unrolled from two sheep-skins her greatest treasure, a Dutch New Testament which he had given her. Soon this so-called Bavianskloof (i.e. Baboon’s Glen) was changed into “The Vale of Grace” (in Dutch, Genadendal), and where Schmidt’s poor hut stood there is now a large settlement, with a congregation of more than 3,000 members. From this center the work has spread over Cape Colony, and beyond its borders into independent Kaffaria. Now its two provinces include 16 stations with their filials, where 60 missionary agents have charge of 12,300 converts.”

The Evangelical French Missionary Society has stations at Wallington and Waggonmaker’s Valley, but its principal field is in the interior. The Berlin Missionary Society are also represented in the Riversdale district. The Rhenish Missionary Society also occupies many important stations. The London Missionary Society began its work in 1799, and has made its influence to be felt for good in various parts of the country. The Wesleyan Missionary Society commenced its labors in 1814. They were hindered for a few years by the government authorities, but in the course of time they made great progress in building churches and mission premises, and in organizing schools all over the Colony.

The Eastern Province of Cape Colony is also indebted to the missionary societies for religious instruction. Prosperous stations of the Moravian, Berlin, Rhenish, French Evangelical, Presbyterian, London, and Wesleyan Missionary Societies have been established in various places. The two societies last mentioned, however, have been most extensively engaged in purely missionary work. The London Society began in 1799 by sending out Dr. Vanderkemp and the Wesleyan in 1820, the Rev. William Shaw being the pioneer missionary. The temporal and spiritual benefits resulting from the labors of these two societies to the people of different tribes and languages in the Eastern Province of the Cape Colony were very marked.

In Kaffaria most of the religious denominations and missionary societies at work in the Eastern Province of Cape Colony are at work here also.

In Natal, the Church of England has been unfortunate in the part it has taken in the work there. As early as 1838 a missionary, a teacher and a doctor, were sent out by the Church Missionary Society. Soon afterwards others were sent to evangelize the natives, but war breaking out the work was entirely relinquished. In 1853 Natal was constituted a diocese and Dr. Colenso was consecrated the first bishop; but, according to his own confession, instead of converting the natives to Christianity, he was himself converted by a Zulu Kaffir, and proceeded at once to encourage polygamy and other heathen practices. Another bishop was appointed, but Dr. Colenso determined not to be superseded, and a scene of wrangling and litigation ensued, painful to contemplate. Churches have been built in several towns for the benefit of the settlers, but not much has been done for the religious instruction of the natives by the Church of England.

The American Board of Foreign Missions sent out missionaries in 1834. They were men of superior learning and intelligence. They have labored chiefly among the natives. By their literary ability and persevering efforts they have rendered good service to the cause of God by the part they have taken in the translation of the Scriptures and their remonstrances with Bishop Colenso. The Berlin, Hermannsburg, Swedish, Norwegian, London and Wesleyan Missionary Societies have representatives in Natal. The Dutch Reformed Church and the Scotch Presbyterians have a few ministers and churches as have also the Free Church of Scotland and the Independents.

The Rev. James Scott of Impolweni, Natal, writes to the Free Church Monthly in reference to an interesting work among the Dutch Boers, and extending to the Zulus in the northern portion of Natal about Greytown. Most of the Boers belong to the Dutch Reformed Church, and while they have attended outwardly to Christian ordinances, they have heretofore cared little for the native population. Three years ago a religious awakening began among these Boers, and the genuineness of this interest was shown by their desire to reach the Zulus, whom they had regarded as little better than animals. There are now fifteen preaching places where the Gospel is proclaimed, and which Mr. Scott says are simply the farmhouses of the Boers. He speaks of seeing eighty Boers and three or four hundred Zulus gather together for worship. The Zulus come from kraals and villages, both old and young, some clothed, but most of them heathen in their blankets. Over one hundred in Greytown have been formed into a native church in connection with the Dutch church. This work is now being carried forward under the direction of a committee of the Dutch farmers, employing three native Evangelists. One of these evangelists is the son of the Zulu warrior who in 1836, at the signal from Dingaan, the cruel tyrant, fell upon the Dutch leader Retief and his party of about seventy men, murdering them all in cold blood. This father still lives, and is a member of the Christian church and listens gladly to his son as he preaches the gospel of peace.

The Orange Free State is an independent Dutch republic. The whites, Dutch, English, and other Europeans greatly outnumber the colored persons, who are of different tribes, but chiefly half-castes. The religious instruction of these people is fairly provided for by the different agencies now at work among them. The Dutch Reformed church of course takes the lead, and they have erected places of worship, appointed ministers, and gathered congregations in all the towns and villages and in many of the rural districts. The Berlin and Wesleyan Missionary Societies are also doing a good work especially among the wandering tribes of Bechuanas, Baralongs, and Korannas. In Zululand, previous to the war in 1879, the Propagation Society of the Church of England, and the Hermannsburg and Norwegian Missionary Societies, had established stations, and attempted the evangelization of the natives, but with very slender results. On the breaking out of hostilities, all the missionaries and teachers had to leave the country. They have since returned and gone to work under more favorable auspices.

It is stated that a nephew of the late King Cetewayo, after six years in Sweden in theological and other studies has gone back to carry on mission work in his native land.

No people in South Africa have benefited more by missionary labor than those in Basutoland. The agents of the French Evangelical Society have taken the lead in the work, having entered the field in 1833. They have many flourishing stations, and their efforts have been very successful in converting the heathen and in diffusing among the people general knowledge calculated to promote their civilization and social elevation. The Wesleyan missionaries have also established important and prosperous stations. By the presence and influence of the missionaries, industrious habits have become the distinctive characteristics of the Christian Basutos. The commercial relations of the country have been facilitated. A great impulse has been given to agriculture, in so much that the general aspect of the country, even in those parts that have not come under the influence of the Gospel, has been transformed. This has been strongly testified to by Mr. Griffiths, the British commissioner.

One of the most pleasing incidents in Pinto’s narrative is his meeting with the Coillard missionary family at Luchuma, on the Cuando. They were French missionaries, and the family was composed of Mr. and Mrs. Coillard and a niece, Elise. At the time of the meeting, Mr. Coillard was on his way to King Lobossi, to receive his reply to a request to enter his country for missionary purposes——a request which, by the way, was denied. This failure made it necessary for Mr. Coillard to return to Bamanguato, so the family and Pinto joined resources and took up the line of march together.

More than fifty years ago the land of the Basutos, whose boundaries touch the colonies of the Cape and of Natal on the south and of the Orange Free State on the west, became the abode of numerous French Protestant missionaries. They worked so faithfully that the native sense of savagery disappeared and the Basutos came to be the most civilized of the South African tribes. Now the Christian schools of Basuto number thousands of pupils. After a time the missionaries extended their field of work, but were finally headed off by the Boers and forced back to Pretoria. It was then that François Coillard was placed in charge of the Leribe Mission. He pushed his way north amid hardships and danger, till made a prisoner by the Matebelis and dragged before their chief, Lo-Bengula. What the missionary and the ladies of his family suffered during the time they remained in the power of that terrible chief is a sad and painful story. They were at length released and ordered to leave the country. On reaching Shoshong, the capital of Bamanguato, Coillard determined to renew his efforts in another direction. So he struck out for the Baroze region, having first sent a request to King Lobossi for admission and countenance. It was while on this mission to the Upper Zambesi that Pinto met him and his family. Pinto says of him: “He and his wife had resided in Africa for twenty years. He is warmly attached to the aborigines, to whose civilization he has devoted his life. He is the best and kindest man I ever came across. To a superior intelligence he unites an indomitable will and the necessary firmness to carry out any enterprise, however difficult.”

On the south side of the Zambesi and north of latitude 24°, Africa is divided from sea to sea into three distinct races. On the east are the Vatuas; between are the Matebelis, or Zulus; westward are the Bamanguatos. They are all sworn enemies. The king of the latter, at the time of Pinto’s visit was Khama, a Christian convert, educated by the English, a civilized man of intelligence and superior good sense. True, he usurped the throne, but he treated his family with leniency, and became the idol of his people. Unlike every other native governor in Africa, Khama was unselfish. He spent his wealth for his people, and encouraged all to labor, that they might grow rich in herds and flocks. And they were not only rich in cattle, but were fine agriculturists; fond, too, of out-door sports, being experts in the hunting of game, as the antelope, ostrich, giraffe, elephant, etc. Though a Portuguese and influenced by the Latin church, Pinto gives this account of missionary work in South Central Africa: “How is it that in the midst of so many barbarous peoples there should be one so different from the others? It is due, I firmly believe, to the English missionaries. If I do not hesitate to aver that the labors of many missionaries, and especially of many African missionaries, are sterile, or even worse, I am just as ready to admit, from the evidence of my own senses, that others yield favorable, or apparently favorable results.

“Man is but fallible, and it is easy to conceive that when far removed from the social influences by which he has been surrounded from his infancy, lost, so to speak, amid the ignorant peoples of Africa, and inhabiting an inhospitable clime, his mind should undergo a remarkable change. This must be the general rule, which has, of course, its exceptions. The exceptions are the men who rest their faith on those ‘blossoms of the soul’ which give comfort to the wrecked mariner and aid the monk to suffer martyrdom at the hands of those to whom he brings the blessings of civilization. They who possess these inestimable treasures may, if left to themselves, pursue their way and attain to a sublime end, but such are veritable exceptions. Flesh is weak, and weaker still is human spirit. Were it otherwise, we might dispense with laws and governments, and society would be organized on a different basis. The ‘blossoms of the soul’ would suffice to govern the world.

“The passions to which man is subject will often lead the missionary——but a man and with all a man’s weakness——to pursue a wrong course. The strife between Catholics and Protestants in the African missions is an example of this. The Protestant missionaries (I mean, of course, the bad ones) say to the negro. ‘The Catholic missionary is so poor he cannot even afford to buy a wife,’ and thus seek to injure him, for it is as great a crime to be poor in Africa as in Europe. On the other hand the Catholics leave no stone unturned to throw discredit on the Protestants. From this strife springs revolt, the real cause of mission barrenness, where so many beliefs are struggling for mastery. To the south of the tropics the country swarms with missionaries, and to the south of the tropics England is engaged in perpetual war with the native populations. It is because the evil labors of many undo the good labors of some.

“Let us however, put aside the evil ones and speak only of the good. I have spoken of King Khama and his Bamanguato people. The king’s work was well done, but those who made it possible deserve more credit. The first workman in that field was Rev. Mr. Price, recently charged with the mission at Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika. The second was Rev. Mr. Mackenzie, the Kuruman missionary. The third was the Rev. Mr. Eburn, now among these people. It is with the utmost pleasure I cite these worthy names, and put them forward as noble examples to all workers in the fields of African civilization.”

The above named Rev. Mr. Mackenzie took charge of the Kuruman mission in the Crown Colony of Bechuanaland in 1876, and his first work was to found and build a memorial institution to his predecessor, the lamented Dr. Moffat, for the education of native ministers. A fund of $100,000 was subscribed in England for this purpose and soon a substantial set of structures arose as a witness to Dr. Wm. Mackenzie’s zeal and the profound respect in which Dr. Moffat was held.

Says the Rev. A. Boegner: “Basutoland has frequently been saved from the destruction of its nationality by the intervention of the missionaries, and the natives blessed their name. The result in respect to education is that we have 80 elementary schools, having together 4,666 pupils, besides the normal school and the higher girls’ school, with 30 or 40 pupils, and 15 industrial, biblical, and theological school stations, 94 out-stations, 19 missionaries, 176 native workers, 6,029 communicants and 3,412 catechumens.”

In Bechuanaland many of the tribes, especially the Batlapins and the Baralongs, have for several years past been favored with the means of religious instruction by the agents of the London and Wesleyan Missionary Societies. It was among these people that the celebrated Dr. Moffat achieved his greatest success, and it was into their language that he succeeded in translating the Scriptures. And it was from a station among them that Dr. Livingstone started on his first adventurous journey of discovery. Thousands of these people have been to a considerable extent civilized, evangelized, and many have been taught to read the word of God for themselves. The earliest attempt to carry the Gospel to the Bechuanas was made in 1800 by Messrs. Edwards and Kok, agents of the Dutch Missionary Society in Cape Town. It proved unsuccessful. They were succeeded by the travellers Lichenstein in 1805, and Burchell in 1812, and during the latter year by the well-known Rev. John Campbell, who may be regarded as the earliest pioneer missionary to the Bechuanas, the two agents of the Cape Town Society being known among the Batlapins rather as traders than missionaries. In accordance with a request made to Mr. Campbell by the chief Mothibi, who said, “Send missionaries, I will be a father to them,” the London Missionary Society appointed Messrs. Evans and Hamilton to Lallakoo, which they reached in 1816. Their hopes of a welcome were, however, doomed to disappointment. The Bechuanas, with Mothibi’s, consent, reyoked the wagons of the missionaries and sent them away, hooting after them in genuine heathen fashion. They did not want “the teaching,” fearing it would be with them as with the people of Griqua Town, “who” they said “once wore a ‘kaross’ but now wear clothes; once had two wives but now only one.” Mr. Robert Moffat made the next attempt to introduce the Gospel among these people and was more successful. We have not space to give even an outline of the career of this wonderful man. One illustration, however, will suffice to show at once his character and that of the people among whom he labored so long and well. During a time of severe drought when the heavens were as brass and the earth as iron, the cattle were dying rapidly, and the emaciated people were living on roots and reptiles. The rainmakers were consulted. They attributed the cause of the drought to the prayers of the missionaries, and to the bell of the chapel, which they said frightened the clouds! The chief soon appeared at the missionaries’ door, spear in hand, with twelve attendants, and ordered them to leave the country, threatening violent measures if they refused. Mrs. Moffat stood at her cottage door with a baby in her arms watching the result at this crisis. Looking the chief straight in the face, Moffat calmly replied: “We were unwilling to leave you. We are now resolved to stay at our post. As for your threats we pity you; for you know not what you do. But although we have suffered much, we do not consider that it amounts to persecution, and are prepared to expect it from those who know no better. If resolved to get rid of us you must take stronger measures to succeed, for our hearts are with you. You may shed my blood, or you may burn our dwelling; but I know you will not touch my wife and children. As for me, my decision is made. I do not leave your country.” Then throwing open his coat, he stood erect and fearless. “Now then,” he proceeded, “if you will, drive your spears to my heart; and when you have slain me, my companions will know that the hour is come for them to depart.” Turning to his attendants the chief said, “These men must have ten lives. When they are so fearless of death, there must be something of immortality.” All danger was now past. The intrepid missionary had got access to their hearts, and they were, for the time at least, subdued.

The country long known as Griqualand is situated beyond the Orange river, and around its junction with the Vaal.

The Griquas are a mixed race, of which there are several clans vulgarly called “Bastards,” being the descendants of Dutch Boers and their Hottentot slaves. They are a tall, athletic, good looking race, of light olive complexion. They speak a debased patois of the Dutch language, as do most of the colored inhabitants of South Africa. About the year 1833 the Griquas began to collect and settle in the country which bears their name, and to rally round a leader or chief named Adam Kok, who displayed considerable tact and skill in governing the people who acknowledged his chieftainship. Some time after, a part of the clan separated themselves from the rest, and gathered round a man named Waterboer, who became their captain or chief. Both of these chiefs, for many years, received annual grants from the Colonial Government on condition of their loyalty and good conduct. They and their people were ultimately removed by an arrangement with the government authorities to a region known as “No Man’s Land;” and of late years have become scattered. In all their locations they are generally now regarded as British subjects, and they have gradually advanced to a pleasing state of civilization and general knowledge. They are largely indebted to the missionaries for the respectable position to which they have attained among the native tribes. The honored instruments in their moral and social elevation have chiefly been the agents of the London Missionary Society who have labored among them for many years with remarkable energy, zeal and success. The Wesleyan Missionary Society have also some prosperous stations in some of the Griqua settlements where no other agencies are at work, and the results of their labors have been very encouraging.

In Namaqualand, under circumstances of peculiar trial and privation the Wesleyan and Rhenish Societies have labored with commendable zeal and diligence. Some time ago the Wesleyan stations were by a mutual arrangement transferred to the German missionaries.

In Damaraland missionaries have labored earnestly for many years, but the results thus far have been meagre.

What has been the sum total accomplished by the missionary societies in South Africa?

The Wesleyan Missionary Society began work there in 1814. Extending its operations by degrees from the Cape Colony to Kaffaria, Natal, and the Bechuana regions, it now numbers forty stations, sixty missionaries, and more than 6,000 members. The Rhenish Society which commenced operations in this field in 1829, now numbers more than 10,000 members; and the Berlin, which commenced in 1833 and has 8,000 members. The American Board which entered the field in 1834, has grown into three missions, the Zulu, the East African and the West African, and now numbers 30 stations, 48 laborers from America, more than 40 native assistants, about 2,000 under instruction and 7,000 adherents. Besides these the French Society is doing a great work among the Bechuana and other tribes. The Norwegians are laboring among the Zulus, the Scotch among the Kafirs, the Hanoverians and the Church of England in Natal and Zululand.

These with a few other organizations make more than a dozen societies at work in South Africa, occupying more than 200 stations, and employing about 500 foreign laborers, besides a much larger force of native helpers. Of the success and value of these labors we get some idea when we find it estimated that not less than 40,000 souls have been brought in this way into Christ’s kingdom, 50,000 children gathered into Christian schools, and 100,000 men and women blessed with the direct teaching of the Gospel.

EAST AFRICAN MISSIONS.

Leaving South Africa we will now consider briefly what has been done by the missionaries in Eastern Africa and that part of Central Africa reached by way of the east coast. Here there seemed to be less opposition to the entrance of the Gospel than in some other parts of Africa. Dominant superstitions do not stand so much in the way of its reception. There is less idolatry or fetish worship, such as is found on the western coast, and there are fewer barbarous or unnatural rites. The greatest hindrance has been the Arab slave trade, which, driven from the west coast had established itself on the east coast. The unwise course of the Germans who established a commercial enterprise there in 1889 has led to Arab hostilities that appear disastrous in the extreme to missionary work for the present, especially among the Ugandas.

There are very extensive missionary interests in East Africa. No less than thirteen societies are at work on the coast or in the interior. It will be more convenient, in considering what has been accomplished, to note the work done by each society separately, rather than to follow our usual order of treatment by tribe or locality.

As the Church Missionary Society was first in the field we will notice its efforts first.

The first missionary was Dr. Krapff, a zealous and devoted German. He had previously labored for several years among the Lari and Madi natives of the province of Shoa, and when the Abyssinian government prohibited his longer residence there he removed to Mombasa, where he laid the foundation of a new station under promising circumstances. When the way appeared to open up for usefulness among the Gallas and other important tribes, Dr. Krapff was joined by four additional laborers who were sent out by the society to aid him in his work. Their headquarters were at Kisulidini and the mission had every promise of success. But death soon thinned the ranks and disappointed many hopes. Only one of the missionary band, Mr. Rebmann, had strength to hold out against the climate. He remained at his solitary post of duty several years after the Doctor had been obliged to embark for Europe; but in 1856 he was driven by the hostile incursions of savage native tribes to take refuge in the island of Mombasa, and for two years the mission on the mainland seemed to be at an end. Mr. Rebmann resolved not to lose sight of its ruins, however, and employed his waiting time in preparing a translation of the Bible into the language of the people among whom he labored. At length the desire of the lonely missionary was gratified by a cordial invitation to return to Kisulidini, and the hearty welcome he received on going there proved that there was further work for him to do among this people. For years he labored single-handed among this people and managed to keep alive the spark of light which Dr. Krapff had been the means of kindling. After long and patient waiting relief came. The deep interest called forth by Dr. Livingstone’s last despatches and death, stirred up the church at home to fresh efforts on behalf of the African race, and a much needed reinforcement was sent out to strengthen the mission on the eastern coast, including Mr. Price and Jacob Wainwright, Livingstone’s faithful negro servant. When they arrived at Kisulidini they found Mr. Rebmann aged and feeble, and almost blind, but still the centre of a little band of native converts at the old mission premises. This mission now comprises eight stations with Mombasa as its base. The constituency at these stations is composed chiefly of liberated slaves, who are rescued by British cruisers from slave dhows and handed over to the mission, now living in comfort as free men, cultivating their own little plots of ground, building their own little huts on the society’s land, enjoying the rest of the Lord’s day, seeing their children taught to read and write like the white man, and having access at all times for counsel and guidance to patient and sympathizing Englishmen.

Recently, their former masters combined and threatened to destroy the stations if their slaves were not given up. How this catastrophy was averted by the tact and generosity of Mr. Mackenzie the following will tell: “At Mombasa, Frere Town and Rabai, on the east coast of Africa, the English Church Missionary Society has for some time been carrying on a work similar to that which has been so greatly blessed at Sierra Leone and other places on the west coast. The natives who have been rescued from the Arab slave vessels by the British cruisers have been taken to the first-named towns, where they have been cared for and instructed by the missionaries of the society, and a large number of them have become new creatures in Christ Jesus, and are now diligent in tilling the soil or in following other industrial pursuits.

“For several years fugitive slaves from the adjoining country have sought refuge at the mission stations from the oppressions of their Mohammedan masters. Every effort has been made by the missions to prevent mere runaways from settling around the stations; but it has lately been found that many who came and placed themselves under Christian teaching, and who were supposed to be free natives, were really fugitive slaves. Many of them have embraced Christianity, been baptized, and are leading ‘quiet and peaceable lives in all godliness and honesty.’

“Suddenly the former Mohammedan masters of the fugitives combined and threatened destruction to the missions unless they were given up again to slavery. It has been a time of great anxiety to the missionaries, and in this crisis they could only commit all to the Lord. Happily the danger has been averted by the wise and timely action of Mr. Mackenzie, the chief agent of the new Imperial British East Africa Company, whose headquarters are at Mombasa. Mr. Mackenzie saw that if the régime of this politico-commercial company began with the restoration of a thousand escaped slaves to the slave owners, its influence would be seriously injured. He has, therefore, undertaken to compensate the Arab slave-owners, on condition that the whole of this fugitive slave population, a large portion of which is Christian, are declared free forever. This arrangement has delighted all parties. A grand feast has been given by the Mohammedans to Mr. Mackenzie, while the slaves are set free and the missions are saved.”

This society had also a line of stations stretching from Zanzibar to Uganda. They were nine in number, beginning with Mambola and Mpwapwa, nearly due west from Zanzibar, and including Usambiro, Msalala and Nasa, south of Victoria Nyanza, and Rubaga, in Uganda, north of the great lake. The origin of the mission in Uganda was on this wise: “When Stanley went away from Uganda, Mtesa, the king, said to him, ‘Stamee, say to the white people, when you write to them, that I am like a man sitting in darkness, or born blind, and that all I ask is that I may be taught how to see, then I shall continue a Christian while I live.’ Mtesa’s appeal, through Stanley, to English Christians, had its response. The Church Missionary Society sent several missionaries, who were heartily welcomed by Mtesa, and protected as long as he lived.”

As public attention has recently, and for different reasons, been very generally directed to Uganda, it may not be amiss to give a more detailed account of the situation and prospects there.

Near the shores of those majestic lakes——Albert and Victoria Nyanza——which give rise to the Nile, are large tribes, akin to one another in speech and habit, and quite advanced in civilization, as things go in Africa. They are the Baganda, Luganda and Uganda, all of which have been visited and described by Stanley and other well-known travellers. Of these, the Uganda are the most numerous and advanced. This region was for a long time looked upon as a fair field for missionary enterprise, irrespective of the fact that it had been an old and favorite stamping ground for Arab traders and slave dealers, whose influence would naturally be against Christian intervention. But in 1876, missionaries went out from England, and founded several missions, mostly in the Uganda country. They proved to be prosperous, and fast became the centres of Christian communities, whose influence was felt from one lake to the other. But after over ten years of prosperity, a civil war broke out, instigated by the Arabs, which resulted in the enthronement of Mwanga, who was hostile to the missionaries and their Christian converts. He signalized the first year of his reign by the murder of Bishop Hannington and the massacre of many of his Christian subjects. By 1889, all but one of this missionary band had perished either through disease or royal cruelty, and their converts were forced to become refugees. The survivor, Mr. Mackay, after being held as a hostage for months, was finally released, and made his escape to Usambiro, where he took up work with the hope that at no distant day he might be able to extend it back into the abandoned lake regions.

In his “Emin Pasha in Central Africa,” Mr. R. W. Felkin thus sketches the character of the two great Uganda kings, Mtesa and Mwanga:

“Mtesa was first heard of in Europe from Speke and Grant, who visited Uganda in 1862. He professed to trace back his descent to Kintu (or Ham) the founder of the dynasty. When I visited him in 1879 he was about 45 years of age, a splendid man, some six feet high, well formed and strongly built. He had an oval face, and his features were well cut.

“He had large, mild eyes, but if roused by anger or mirth they were lit up by a dangerous fire. He had lost the pure Mhuma features through admixture of Negro blood, but still retained sufficient characteristics of that tribe to prevent all doubt as to his origin. All his movements were very graceful; his hands were slender, well formed, and supple; he was generally dressed in a simple white Arab kaftan. It is somewhat difficult to describe his character; he was intensely proud, very egotistical, and, until near the end of his life, he thought himself to be the greatest king on earth. In his youth, and in fact until 1878, there is no doubt that he was cruel, but an illness from which he suffered certainly softened him.

“His chiefs often said to me, ‘Oh, if Mtesa were well, there would be plenty of executions.’ It has been said that he was extremely changeable and fickle, and to superficial observers he was so; that is to say, as far as his intercourse with Europeans went. If, however, one looks a little deeper into his character, he finds that his apparent vacillation was overruled by a fixed idea, which was to benefit his people, increase his own importance, and to get as much as possible out of the strangers who visited his court. This explains his being one day a friend to the Arabs, on another to the Protestants, and on a third to the Catholics. A newcomer, especially if he had a large caravan, was always the favorite of the hour. It is not difficult for any one to enter Uganda, but to get away again is no easy task, unless he is going for a fresh supply of goods. Mtesa liked Europeans and Arabs to be present at his court; it gave him prestige, and he also wished his people to learn as much as they could from the white men, for he well knew and appreciated their superior knowledge. In manners he was courteous and gentlemanly, and he could order any one off to execution with a smile on his countenance. His mental capacity was of a very high order. He was shrewd and intelligent; he could read and write Arabic, and could speak several native languages. He had a splendid memory, and enjoyed a good argument very keenly. If he could only get Protestants, Catholics and Arabs to join in a discussion before him, he was in his element, and although apparently siding with one or other, who might happen to be at the time his especial favor, he took care to maintain his own ground, and I do not believe that he ever really gave up the least bit of belief in his old Pagan ideas. While too shrewd and intelligent to believe in the grosser superstitions which find credit among his people, he was yet so superstitious that if he dreamt of any of the gods of his country he believed it to be an ill omen, and offered human sacrifices to appease the anger of the offended deity. Shortly after I left Uganda, he dreamt of his father, and in consequence had 500 people put to death. He also believed that if he dreamt of any living person it was a sign that they meditated treachery, and he condemned them forthwith to death. This supposed power of divination is said to be hereditary in the royal race. In concluding my remarks about Mtesa, I may say that he denied his Wahuma origin; not only, however, did his features betray him, but many of the traditions he held regarding his ancestors, especially his descent from Ham, point conclusively to an origin in the old Christianity of Abyssinia.

“When I was in Uganda, Mtesa had 200 or 300 women always residing at his court. He did not know exactly how many wives he had, but said that they certainly numbered 700. He had seventy sons and eighty-eight daughters.

“Mwanga is the present king of Uganda, having been chosen by the three hereditary chiefs at the death of his father, Mtesa, and it is certainly to be attributed to the influence of the missionaries in Uganda, that the usual bloodshed which attends the succession to the throne in Uganda, did not take place. On ascending the throne he was about 16 years of age, and up to that time had been a simple, harmless youth, but his high position soon turned his head, and he became suspicious, abominably cruel and really brutal. He began to drink and to smoke bang, and up to the present time his rule has been characterized by tyranny and bloodshed, far surpassing anything that happened in his father’s time. Nor does he appear to possess those good characteristics which certainly caused his father to deserve some respect. A number of Christians, Protestants and Catholics have been tortured and burned at the stake by his orders, and Bishop Hannington was murdered by his command at Lubwa, on the borders of Uganda.”

A writer in the N. Y. Evangelist observes further:

“Of course, Mwanga was a coward as well as a cruel and bloodstained despot. Because he made Uganda impenetrable, no direct news from Wadelai about the movements of Stanley or Emin Pasha could reach Zanzibar. Very naturally he was obliged to face an insurrection. To save his worthless life he fled from his kingdom, and his older brother, Kiwewa, succeeded him. Because under his rule the missionaries were again in favor, Kiwewa was soon forced to abdicate before an insurrection incited by the Arabs, whom the policy of his brother had brought into the kingdom, and in which such of his own subjects who opposed the missionaries cheerfully participated. While about a score of missionaries escaped unharmed, all missionary property was destroyed, many native missionaries were murdered, the Arabs became dominant in Uganda, and the kingdom, it may be for several years, is closed against Christianity. The living missionaries have quite recently been ransomed.

“What is to be the influence of this new Arab kingdom in Central Africa? This, with many, is a pressing question. In answering it we must remember that these so-called Arabs really have in their veins no Arab blood. They are coast Arabs of the lowest classes, and the proud and strong Uganda chiefs will not submit for any considerable length of time to the rule of any such men. They may use such men; they will never become their slaves. The country is more likely to be broken up into hostile sections. These may wear themselves out in wars against each other, and thus may be realized the hope that the British East African Company, from their new territory between Victoria Nyanza and the coast, would push its influence and its operations over Uganda, and the whole lake region of Central Africa. These Arab slave-traders are certainly not the men to construct or reconstruct an empire. Those who know them best see no prospect that they will be able by intrigue, which is their only agency, to sustain themselves in Uganda.

“The character and habits of the Uganda people seem to forbid their enslavement. They are the only people in Central Africa that clothe themselves from head to foot. Besides their own ingenious utensils for housekeeping, the chase and war, thousands of European weapons and implements are found in their possession, and being ready workers in iron, they immediately imitate what they import. They are apt linguists, and their children have rapidly acquired the French and English languages from the missionaries. They have neither idols nor fetishes. They have no affiliations with Mohammedanism, and are not likely to become its subjects for any considerable time. There is still good reason to hope for a better future for Uganda.”

The London Missionary Society has ever been forward to enter new fields of labor. On Livingstone’s return to England, after his great journey across the continent of Africa in 1856, he urged this society, in whose service he had previously been engaged, to establish a mission on the banks of the Zambesi, with a tribe of natives known as the Makololo, with the view of reaching other tribes in the interior through them. A mission was organized accordingly, which was to start from the Cape of Good Hope direct for the interior. This journey was to be made in the usual South African style, namely, in wagons drawn by long teams of oxen. Livingstone himself went round by the eastern coast, purposing to meet the missionaries in the valley of the Zambesi, and to introduce them to the chiefs with whom he was personally acquainted. The missionaries selected for this purpose were Revs. Helmore and Price, the first of whom was a middle-aged minister, with a wife and family, and had labored in South Africa for several years previously, whilst Mr. Price was a young man recently married, and was entering upon mission work for the first time. The incidents of the journey, as well as the issue of this mission were the most afflictive and distressing. The mission wagons had scarcely passed the boundary of the Cape Colony when water and grass for the oxen became scarce, and their progress was accordingly slow and dreary. Many of their oxen died and their places were supplied with difficulty by cattle purchased from the natives. When they came to cross the outskirts of the desert of Kalahara their sufferings were terrible. They at length reached the valley of the Zambesi where they had an ample supply of grass and water; but they soon found themselves in a low, swampy, unhealthy country, and when they reached their destination in the Makololo country, they did not meet with the cordial reception from the chief and his people which they expected. Dr. Livingstone, who was engaged in exploring the lower branches of the Zambesi was moreover unable to meet them as he intended. They naturally became discouraged; and before they got anything done of consequence in the way of teaching the people, the chief still withholding his consent to their movements, the country fever broke out among them with fearful violence. Mr. Helmore’s four children, who suffered so much from thirst in the desert, were smitten down one after another and died. They were buried but a short time when graves were made beside them for both their parents. Mr. and Mrs. Price began to think of retracing their steps to the Cape Colony, and at length with heavy hearts they yoked the oxen to the wagons and started toward civilization. But in crossing the desert Mrs. Price also died, so that Mr. Price was left to return alone.

In 1877 in response to an application made by the son and successor of the chief in Makololo, the Rev. J. D. Hepburn, of Shoshong, and outpost of the Bechuana mission, commenced a mission on Lake Ngami, two native evangelists who had completed their studies at Kuruman were settled there and are doing good work.

The London Society goes further west than any of the other societies and plants two stations on Lake Tanganyika, and one at Urambo in the Unyamwezi, south of the Victoria Nyanza and near the stations of the Church Missionary Society.

The Universities’ Mission has twelve stations, one in Zanzibar, four in the Usambara country north of Zanzibar, four on or near the river Rovuma and three on the east shore of Lake Nyassa.

The mission of the Free Church of Scotland on the shores of Lake Nyassa was founded in 1861 by Rev. Dr. James Stewart. Reinforcements were sent out in 1875. They took with them the steam launch Llala to be used upon the waters of Lake Nyassa. In 1876 Dr. Wm. Black, an ordained medical missionary, an agriculturist, an engineer, and a weaver, joined them. In 1879 Miss Watterston joined the staff, as female medical missionary and superintendent of the girls’ boarding and training school. In 1880 they met with a great loss in the death of their agriculturist, John Gunn, who had proved himself helpful in every department of work.

The Free Church of Scotland has recently opened a new mission at Malinda, on the high plain north of Lake Nyassa. The station is surrounded by seventeen villages, embosomed in gardens of magnificent bananas. At Karonga two services are held every Sabbath, and the congregation numbers 600 natives. Dr. Cross attempted to push his work into the highlands, but was driven back, and compelled to rely on Capt. Lugard’s armed force of 150 natives. These aggressive movements against the missions in Nyassaland, as elsewhere, are attributable to Arab slave traders, who are the worst enemies Christianity has to contend with in Africa. They now have five stations on Lake Nyassa.

The Established Church of Scotland Mission was founded in 1875 by Mr. Henry Henderson. The staff comprised a medical missionary, an agriculturist, a blacksmith, a carpenter, a joiner and a seaman and boatbuilder. To Mr. Henderson belongs the credit of having selected an incomparable site. It was originally intended that the mission should be planted in the neighborhood of Lake Nyassa; but he found a more suitable locality in the highlands above the Shiré, east of the cataracts, and midway between Magomero and Mount Soché. The ground rises from the river in a succession of terraces. It is about 3,000 feet above the sea, and extends from twelve to fifteen miles in breadth. Gushing springs and flowing streams abound. The scenery is beautiful and picturesque. The soil is fertile. There is abundance of good timber and iron ore. The chiefs are friendly and the people are willing to receive instruction. And, what is an essential requisite, the climate is in a high degree salubrious. In the words of Livingstone, “it needs no quinine.”

The settlement, which is named Blantyre, after Livingstone’s birth-place, was planned and laid out under the superintendence of Dr. Stewart and Mr. James Stewart. On the farm and gardens surrounding, over 500 natives of both sexes are employed. Mr. Henderson having returned, on the completion of the special work for which he was appointed, Rev. Duff Macdonald and wife were sent out in 1878. They were soon after recalled on account of difficulties arising from the mission’s claim to exercise civil jurisdiction over the settlement. Rev. David Clement Scott was appointed to take their place.

One of the most important works in connection with Livingstonia, the name of the Free Church of Scotland’s Mission, and Blantyre Mission, was the formation of a road, projected by Dr. Stewart and surveyed by Mr. J. Stewart. It varies from six to ten feet in width, and extends from the Upper Shiré, at the head of the cataracts, for a distance of about thirty-five miles to Blantyre, and thence for nearly an equal distance through a steep and rugged country to Ramakukan’s, at the foot of the cataract. Facilities are thus afforded for communication with the coast. The expense of its construction was borne equally by the two missions. A traveller who has frequently visited this region writes as follows:

“The outlet for the waters of Lake Nyassa is the river Shiré which flows into the Zambesi. Except for a short distance in one part, this river is navigable throughout its course; and at about sixty or seventy miles after it leaves the lake it takes a bend westward, and here below Matope, a station of the African Lakes Company, it becomes unnavigable by reason of the Murchison Cataracts. Below these is another station of the African Lakes Company at Katunga’s, and from here there is no further difficulty in navigating the river. All goods, therefore, and passengers bound for Nyassa, are landed from the African Lakes Company’s steamer at Katunga’s, and after a journey of some seventy miles across a ridge of high ground are put on the river again at Matope. About half-way between Katunga’s and Matope is the African Lakes Company’s store and settlement at Mandala, and little more than a mile from it the flourishing mission village of Blantyre of the Established Church of Scotland. It is wonderful to see this village, with its gardens, schools, and houses, in the midst of Africa. The writer has twice, within the last three years, when visiting Nyassa, experienced the generous hospitality of Mandala and Blantyre, and so can speak from his own personal observation. Being situated on such high ground, the climate is much more favorable to Europeans than at most mission stations in that region. It is easier also, for the same reason, to grow fruits and vegetables imported from Europe. It is difficult to overestimate the effect of such a settlement as a civilizing agency in the country. Mr. Hetherwick, who was in charge of the station for some time in Mr. Scott’s absence, has mastered the language of the great Yao tribe, and has lately published a translation of St. Matthew’s Gospel, which shows a wonderful grasp of the genius of the language. Mr. Hetherwick has now returned to his mission station, some fifty miles to the northeast, under Mount Zomba. Mr. Scott is said to be equally a master of Chinyanja, the language of the Nyassa tribes. The English government have recognized the important influence these settlements are likely to have by appointing a consul on Nyassa, who has lately built a house close to the flourishing coffee and sugar plantations of Mr. Buchanan under Mount Zomba, about forty miles from Blantyre, and near Lake Kilwa or Shirwa. Mr. Buchanan is also a good Yao scholar, and takes care to teach the people, who come to him in considerable numbers for employment. Situated high up on the slope of Mount Zomba, which rises precipitously above it, the streams which rush down from its summit are diverted and distributed so as to form a system of irrigation. Mr. Buchanan’s plantation is a picture of beauty and prosperity, and offers every prospect of health and permanence.

“When we come to Lake Nyassa, we find missions established on each side of the lake. On the west side are the stations at Cape Maclear and Bandawe, while connected with the latter are sub-stations, among which is an important mission to the Angoni, a marauding tribe of Zulu origin. Dr. Laws, at Bandawe, has been a long time in the country, and has thoroughly won the confidence of the people. On one occasion, when the writer visited him, some five or six hundred people assembled in his schools, in which large numbers of children are taught daily. The Universities’ Missions are on the east side of the lake.”

The United Methodist Free Churches in 1863 began a mission at Ribé, about eighteen miles north of Mombasa. The ministers selected for this service were the Revs. New and Wakefield. For several years they were engaged in preparatory work, erecting buildings, cultivating garden grounds, exploring the country, learning the native language, preparing translations, teaching school, and preaching as they had opportunity. Their difficulties were numerous and their progress slow. The unhealthy character of the climate here, as on the western coast, is the greatest hindrance to the progress of the work. Rev. C. New fell a sacrifice to its fatal influence in 1876, and Mrs. Wakefield died later, but others have taken their places. They now have two stations in the Mombasa District, Ribé and Joursee and one in Gallaland.

Several German societies are also represented in East Africa. The New Kirchen Society has had since 1887 a station at Ngao, on the Tana in the Suabali country, with two missionaries. The Evangelical Lutheran Missionary Society of Bavaria has stations at Junba, and at Mbangu among the Wakamba, six hours inland, with three missionaries. The Berlin Society have stations at Zanzibar and Dar-es-Salam where one of the massacres took place.

The Roman Catholics——French and German——have several stations in East Africa. The French have three stations on or near Lake Victoria Nyanza, the most important of which is the one in Uganda under Pere Lourdel; two at Lake Tanganyika; one at Bagamoya, west of Zanzibar, and one or two others. The Jesuits have also a few stations, and the German Catholics have one at Dar-es-Salam. These are all the societies at work in East Africa. As we look at their achievements, to human ken they do not appear commensurate with what they have cost. We do not mean of course in money, though that has been great, one society alone having spent $500,000, but in the sacrifice of human health and human lives. Four bishops, Mackenzie, Steere, Hannington, Parker, and a great army of missionaries, some of them nobly and highly-gifted men, have given up their lives for East Africa. We can but reverence the heroism which has led them forth to die in a strange land. The apparent results are meagre and even some of these seem likely to be destroyed; but we dare not say their lives have been needlessly wasted. In human warfare when a fortress has to be stormed, does the knowledge of the fact that many of the flower of his army will perish in the attempt, cause the general to hesitate? Do the soldiers refuse to obey the command, because the undertaking is fraught with danger? Were they to do so they would be branded as cowards. East Africa is a part of the world and Christ’s command surely includes the taking of such almost impregnable fortresses as frown upon his soldiers in that dark region. Then, too, the time has been short; great results may follow in the future the work that has already been done.

We have not written anything concerning missionary work in the Soudan simply because nothing has been done in that vast region. Dr. Guinness says of it: “The Soudan is the true home of the negro, a vaster region than the Congo, which is 4,000 miles across, with its twelve nations, and not a mission station. It is the last region of any magnitude unpenetrated by the Gospel.” Through Dr. Guinness’ influence a number of the most active workers in the Y. M. C. A., in Kansas, Nebraska and Minnesota have decided to be pioneers in this densely populated part of Africa. They propose to enter, by the way of Liberia and the Kong mountains, the Soudan of the Niger and Lake Tchad, where are nearly 100,000,000 of people without a missionary. They mean to form a living tie between that region and their associations and churches at home.

We have followed the footsteps of the missionaries over all the Dark Continent only stopping to note the most important of their achievements. Their sacrifices have been recorded and will not be forgotten. Though their sufferings have been great, they have been of short duration, for Africa seems to be the “short cut” to the skies.

We close our account of missionary work in Africa with the following from Mr. Grant: “The successes of the past, the openings of the present, and the demand for the future, should awaken a redoubled devotion to the blessed work. In no age of the world, in no history of continents, can anything be found so surprising as the discoveries and developments made in Africa since the days of those pioneer missionaries, Schmidt and Vanderkemp. It would take long to tell how her bays have been sounded since their time, how her plains have been spanned, her mountains scaled, her rivers threaded, lakes discovered, diamonds found, and a goodly number of grand highways projected into even the remotest parts of that, till of late little known, yet most marvelous land of the sun; and all under the gracious ordering of the Lord, that men freighted with the blessings of the Gospel of God’s own dear Son might enter and occupy. Ethiopia, all Africa, is on tiptoe of expectancy, only waiting to know who God is, that she may stretch out her hands to Him, and be lifted into His truth and grace.”

AFRIC’S LIGHTS AND SHADOWS.

ARNOT IN CENTRAL AFRICA.

“My idea of Africa had been that of a land very much desert, or else marshy and almost uninhabitable. But here was a region rich, fertile and beautiful, well watered, and, better still, with many people living all along the banks of the rivers. Of course, we had varied kinds of receptions. At one place, among the Bakuti, it was very remarkable how the people seemed to open their ears and hearts and gave their time. I spent ten days among them. The first five I went among their villages, having large meetings. As I could speak a dialect which many of them understood, I could explain myself quite freely to them. They became very much interested in what they heard me say, and they said among themselves: ‘We are only tiring the white man out by coming day after day to our villages; we will go to him.’ So, for the last five days they gathered together, and we had all-day meetings——a most extraordinary time, I might say, for Africa. They kept up the discussions among themselves, and before I left at least two of the men stood up in the midst of their tribe and declared for Jesus before all their friends, in their own simple language.

“We had to leave these people, and went on traveling from day to day. At one point we had rather a different reception. We had pitched our camp in the midst of long grass. Toward evening, as we were getting things in order, we found the grass round our camp was on fire. As soon as the men succeeded in extinguishing the flames eight of them were missing. Then we understood an enemy had surrounded us, set the grass on fire, and carried off all the stragglers. There was nothing to do but to find their trail and follow them up. After a ten-miles’ journey we reached a little village in the forest where they were resting. They thought we had come to fight with them, and they rushed out with their guns, bows and arrows, and spears, to receive us. My men, thirty or forty in number, being only Africans, got into fighting order and began to load their guns for action. I was a little way behind, and did not take in the situation at once. Seeing how things were going, I ran forward, seized a little stool, and held it up in the air as a signal of peace. This arrested the enemy, and at last two of them came forward to hear what I had to say. After a little talk it turned out that the whole thing was a mistake. They thought we had come to their country to rob and plunder them, and quite naturally, in self-defense, they wished to have the first hit at us. Next day we spent the time in receiving presents and telling them of the things we had been speaking to the people all along the road.

“At another point on the journey there was a chief who had heard about the things of God. He was intensely interested in the reports, and he came himself, to see me. Before we had time to settle down to speak, he said: ‘All the huntsmen have been called in; the women are in from the fields; we are all here, and we want you at once to begin your conversation with us about the Great Spirit and those things you have been talking of along the road.’ After talking with them for some hours, the chief asked me to go with him to their village. He said there were some old people there who could not come down to hear me with the others, he wanted me very much to go and see them. I went up to the village and conversed with these poor old broken-down people, one after another, and it was most touching. They shook hands with me and looked me in the face with such a look! Some of them were too old to understand the things I had been telling to the younger people; they could only look wistfully at me and shake me by the hand. It reminded me of an old man I had spoken with on the upper Zambesi. After leaving my hut he came back to the door and said: ‘It is so strange for me to hear these things for the first time, and I so old.’ Truly, it must strike them strangely. There are many physical difficulties connected with travel in Africa, and I would be the last to urge any particular individual to go out there. But there are no difficulties in the preaching of the Word. As soon as you learn a little of the language you can have all the attention of the people and all their time. I may say, in going among them, it is important to get some standing at their native courts. I have always taken the place of an ambassador from another country, and have demanded from them a hearing. This is the surest way of getting the attention, not only of the chief, but of all the people.”

KILLED BY AN ELEPHANT.

“A sad termination of an heroic defender of a righteous cause, was the death of Mr. Deane, the recent chief of Stanley Falls Station, Congo State. Capt. Coquilhat, one of Mr. Stanley’s faithful coadjutors in founding the State of Congo, gives, in his official report, the following statement: ‘In August last (1887), a female slave escaped from the Arab camp at Stanley Falls, and sought refuge in the Congo State Station there. Her surrender was demanded and refused. The Arabs were very angry, and made threats of war, which Mr. Deane disregarded. The slave-hunters had about 2,000 troops, while the garrison of the station numbered about fifty. The steamer Stanley then arrived, and the Arabs kept quiet till she left; but, the day after her departure, they attacked the station without warning, and, in course of three days, made four attacks, which were repulsed, the garrison losing two men and the Arabs sixty. At the end of the third day, the Haussa soldiers and the Bangalas refused to fight longer, as their rifle ammunition was spent.’ [The Haussas are native soldiers hired by the Congo State. They come from near Acra, on the Gulf of Guinea. The Bangalas belong to a desperate and warlike tribe, that fought Stanley on his first trip down the Congo.] ‘So these native soldiers took to their canoes at nightfall on the 26th of August, and went down the river. Mr. Deane and Mr. Dubois, the only white men in the garrison, remained behind with eight men to fire the buildings and destroy the stores. This they did, blowing up the two cannon and the remaining gunpowder, and then escaped themselves from the island, on which the station was located, to the north bank of the Congo, and made their way along its bank on foot, in the dark. On their way, the banks being very steep, Dubois fell into the river. Mr. Deane jumped in after him, and succeeded in getting him on to a rock; but poor Dubois was drowned in attempting to get from the rock to the mainland. Deane sought refuge among the natives, and found them most friendly. They showed him great devotion, taking him from one place of shelter to another, hiding him from the Arabs, supplying him with food, and keeping him till he was rescued.’ The Haussas and Bangalas arrived in their canoes at Bangala Station, where Capt. Coquilhat was stationed as Commander-in-Chief of that department, on September 7th. The captain at once went up in the steamer Henry Reed, then in the service of the Congo Government, and, finding the Stanley Falls Station in ruins and in the hands of the Arabs, he went in search of Mr. Deane, and after three days of diligent inquiry, found him, and rescued him from the fury of the Arabs.

“It is sad to relate, as I learn from Bradley L. Burr, our chief missionary at Kimpoko, Stanley Pool, that recently Mr. Deane, in an elephant hunt, was charged and killed by an Upper Congo elephant.

“Those who brave the perils of Africa ought always to be prepared to die. The destruction of the Arab slave trade, and the redemption of Africa, will cost the lives of more than 1,000 missionary heroes and heroines. People who want to run home from Africa before they see the elephant had better go to Barnum’s show and stay at home.” WM. TAYLOR.

THE AFRICAN PUFF ADDER.

“It is essentially a forest animal, its true habitat being among the fallen leaves in the deep shade of the trees by the banks of streams. Now, in such a position, at the distance of a foot or two, its appearance so exactly resembling the forest bed as to be almost indistinguishable from it. I was once just throwing myself under a tree to rest, when stooping to clear the spot, I noticed a peculiar pattern among the leaves. I started back in horror to find a puff adder of the largest size, its thick back only visible and its fangs only a few inches from my face as I stooped. It was lying concealed among fallen leaves so like itself that but for the exceptional caution which in African travel becomes a habit, I should certainly have sat down on it, and to sit down on a puff adder is to sit down for the last time. I think this semi-somnolent attitude is not always the mere attitude of repose. This reptile lay lengthwise concealed, all but a few inches, among the withered leaves. Now, the peculiarity of the puff adder is that he strikes backward. Lying on the ground, therefore, it commands as it were, its whole rear, and the moment any part is touched the head doubles backward with inconceivable swiftness, and the poison fangs close on their victim. The puff adder in this way forms a sort of horrid trap set in the woods, which may be altogether unperceived till it shuts with a sudden spring on its prey.” HENRY DRUMMOND.

THE KASAI REGION.

“I have been here a month, and I am far from regretting my new residence. Luluaburg resembles none of the other State stations. This is the country of plantations, of cattle, of large undulated hills covered with short grass. We lead here rather the life of the Boers (farmers) than that of the Congo.

“We break bulls to ride, and they are as valuable as horses. They are sometimes vicious enough, but one becomes accustomed to that. Nevertheless, a horse could never do what a bull does: swim the rivers, climb the most rugged hills, and descend the steepest slopes with an admirable surety of foot and peerless vigor.

“I have broken for my service a huge chestnut bull; he travels very well, and you would be astonished to see me on that beast overleap obstacle at a gallop, as easily as the best horse of the course.

“We have already thirty animals at the station. Every day we have butter and cheese. Mr. Puissant has charge of the dairy, and he performs his work well.

“As to the natives of the region, they are much the best negroes I know. In short, I am greatly pleased here, and am never sick.”

Mr. Legat, who sends this news, is the veteran of the Congo State agents. He was of the party of 1881, and has not left the country since that epoch.

A LITTLE CONGO HERO.

On the Congo, near the equator, live the Bengala, with whom the explorer, Stanley, had his hardest battle when he floated down the great river. They are the most powerful and intelligent of the Upper Congo natives, and since Capt. Coquilhat, four years ago, established a station in their country they have become good friends of the whites. A while ago an exciting event occurred in one of their many villages, and Essalaka, the chief, went to Capt. Coquilhat to tell him about it.

“You know the big island near my town,” he said. “Well, yesterday, soon after the sun came up, one of my women and our little boy started for the island in a canoe. The boy is some dozen of moons old. (Capt. Coquilhat says about twelve years old.) He said that while his mother was paddling she saw something in the water, and leaned over to look at it. Then he saw a crocodile seize his mother and drag her out of the canoe. Then the crocodile and the woman sank out of sight.

“The paddle was lying in the canoe. The boy picked it up to paddle back to the village. Then he thought, ‘Oh, if I could only scare the crocodile and get mother back!’ He could tell by the moving water where the crocodile was. He was swimming under the surface toward the island. Then the boy followed the crocodile just as fast as he could paddle. Very soon the crocodile reached the island and went out on land. He laid the woman’s body on the ground. Then he went back into the river and swam away. You know why he did this. He wanted his mate and started out to find her.

“Then the little boy paddled fast to where his mother was lying. He jumped out of the boat and ran to her. There was a big wound in her breast. Her eyes were shut. He felt sure she was dead. He is strong, but he could not lift her. He dragged her to the canoe. He knew the crocodile might come back at any moment and kill him, too. He used all his strength. Little by little he got his mother’s body into the canoe. Then he pushed away from the shore and started home.

“We had not seen the boy and his mother at all. Suddenly we heard shouting on the river, and we saw the boy paddling as hard as he could. Every two or three strokes he would look behind. Then we saw a crocodile swimming fast toward the canoe. If he reached it you know what he would do. He would upset it with a blow, and both the boy and his mother would be lost.

“Eight or nine of us jumped into canoes and started for the boy. The crocodile had nearly overtaken the canoe, but we reached it in time. We scared the crocodile away, and brought the canoe to the shore. The boy stepped out on the ground and fell down. He was so frightened and tired. We carried him into one of my huts, and took his mother’s body in there, too. We thought she was dead.

“But after a little while she opened her eyes. She could whisper only two or three words. She asked for the boy. We laid him beside her on her arm. She stroked him two or three times with her hand. But she was hurt so badly. Then she shut her eyes and did not open them or speak again. Oh! how the little boy cried. But he had saved his mother’s body from the crocodile.”

As Essalake told this story the tears coursed down his cheek. “I have seen in this savage tribe,” writes Capt. Coquilhat, “men and their wives who really love each other, and veritable honeymoons among young couples. The child feels for his father the fear and respect which his authority inspires, but he truly loves his mother and has a tender interest in her even after he becomes a man.”

FORMER OBSTACLES REMOVED.

“Missionaries who go to Africa now, may think they have a hard time, but they can know but little of the obstacles in the way of the pioneers, and it will be profitable to notice a few of the things which hindered the marked success of missionaries fifty years ago, that are now largely removed.

“(1) The terrible slave trade prevailed all along the western coast, from the Gambia to Loanda. These foreign traders hated the missionary and did all they could to keep him out, well knowing that the two could not dwell together. They said to the kings where I labored, respecting my predecessor who began the mission in a nest of slave traders: ‘If you do not drive that man from the country, we will have to leave,’

“They prejudiced the natives against the missionary, by lies and misrepresentation; they demoralized them by the rum, guns and powder, which they paid for slaves. They induced and encouraged internal wars for the purpose of securing prisoners to be sold as slaves.

“By these means, large districts of the country were devastated (as I have seen), a disregard of human rights and life fostered, and a prevailing desire for rum and self-indulgence generally created.

“Thus, when the missionaries came they did not appreciate them, or their work. They only cared for what slave-traders brought them.

“And as they held the coasts, the missionaries could not reach the interior. They must begin on the low, sickly coasts, amid such unfavorable surroundings, or do nothing. My predecessor desired and planned to locate in the interior, but the way was thus blockaded. And so all along the coast.

“But now that obstacle is removed; the country is open, and missionaries can go where they chose a field, and find a people ready to receive them.

“(2) The ignorance of the people was a bar to progress. They did not understand the objects of the missionary, nor the difference between missionaries and traders. So, when missionaries went to Ujiji, the people began to bring them slaves to sell, knowing of no other motive they could have in coming to their country.

“And, in other places, they have welcomed a mission because it brought trade to their country. And, looking upon missionaries as traders, they once had to pay rent for the privilege of living in the country as traders. Thus my predecessor had to agree to pay $100 a year (in gold) that he might have a place to preach and teach their children. And he had to feed, clothe and provide everything for the children. And this I did for six years after him. We were willing to do this till they learned the value of education and the Gospel, and that we might prepare native teachers. And, besides, we had to make many presents, because we had their children!

“So it was forty years ago; but not now. They have learned that the missionaries bring only blessings to their country, and they are anxious to have their children ‘learn books,’ and be ‘taught white man’s way.’ They also wish to learn about God and how to be saved. And to obtain these blessings they are willing to give something——willing to give land for missionaries to build school-houses, and help the missionary build his house, and pay tuition for the children, and help the preacher.

“In very many places they are begging for a missionary. At a point on the Niger, where the steamers landed, the people ran to the wharf to meet every boat, saying, ‘Has the teacher come?’ (No one had promised a teacher.) ‘If the teacher will come, and teach us white man’s book, we will give him plenty to eat and take good care of him!’

“Another king said: ‘I do not wish to die till I can see a school house built, where my children can be taught; and a church, where my people may learn about God.’

“Another king came from the country to Liberia to obtain a missionary for his people.

“I have had chiefs come from the interior to beg for a mission, and after giving them one, I have seen them become followers of Jesus.

“Thus from many places they cry: ‘Come over and help us!’ Very different from fifty years ago!

“(3) The lack of written languages and books was a great obstacle. While the nations had regular languages (nearly 700 in Africa), they were all unwritten, and, of course, they had no books and no knowledge of the world or the way of salvation through Christ. This universal ignorance was the mother of gross superstition and horrible cruelties.

“To learn the language and prepare school books, and translate the Bible, was a slow process.

“To-day, over fifty of these languages are reduced to writing. The Bible is printed in ten of them, and portions of it in over thirty more. And many of them have school books, papers, and some literature.

“Here is a great advance, the benefit of which modern laborers can take advantage.

“And this same work is widely and continually going on. Light is spreading and desire increasing.

“Along the western coast, English is extensively taught, as also the French, German and Portuguese, where these nations have colonies and trading posts.

“(4) Lack of native help, at first, made progress slow. The white man was alone amid millions. His ways were all strange and inimitable. He was dressed, while they were naked. He read books, while they had none. He worshiped God, while they trusted in idols and charms. He seemed far above them and the idea of reaching his plane, hopeless.

“But, with great patience and unwearied perseverance, the pioneers toiled on, teaching, preaching, learning languages, writing elementary books, instructing children and youth, to prepare native helpers.

“To-day, there are about 8,000 ordained and unordained native preachers, and thousands of teachers and hundreds of thousands of pupils who are being prepared for future helpers——an army of native workers——and many are running to and fro and knowledge is being increased.

“Modern missionaries can now obtain interpreters for almost all parts of Africa, and this is a great help, which calls for heartfelt thanksgiving and praise to God who has wrought these favorable changes.

“I will mention but one more obstacle: (5) The sickly climate. During the first fifty years of missionary life in West and East Africa, the mortality was fearful. Probably 500 missionaries have died in the missions on the west coast. Nearly twenty died in the Mendi Mission where I labored. The Church Missionary Society lost fifty-three in the first twenty years. Three English Bishops died within eight years.

“In the Basle Mission, on the Gold Coast, in fifty-eight years, ninety-one missionaries died. And so it has been in Liberia, in Lagos, Gaboon, and in many other places. All societies have lost many, so that a book written by an Englishman was entitled “The White Man’s Grave.” The last three years I was in Africa I buried four white missionaries.

“But, thank God, it is different now. They have better houses and more comforts and have learned better how to take care of their health, so that the mortality in these same places is not half so much as it used to be.

“And missionaries can now reach the healthy high lands where they can live as well as here. So we will ‘Thank God and take courage.’

“In the same line more might be mentioned, but enough has been noted to show that there is no good cause for discouragement in the glorious work of saving Africa, to whom we owe such an unspeakable debt.

“With so many obstacles removed, and so many helps now prepared to our hand, while vast fields are opening and loud calls are wafted to us on every breeze, we may well be encouraged to put forth more vigorous efforts to give the Gospel to that people in this generation.” REV. GEO. THOMPSON.

STANLEY ON THE GOMBE.

On his way to Ujiji to rescue Livingstone, Stanley passed through the lands of the Manyara, which are plains stretching for a distance of 135 miles, well cultivated, thickly strewn with villages, and abounding in game, which finds a haunt amid the tall grasses. He had never seen such a hunter’s paradise as that on the river Gombe, which waters the country. Buffaloes, zebras, giraffes and antelope, roamed through the magnificent parks of the section, affording excellent sport for the natives, and inviting the traveler to halt for a time in order to enjoy the thrill of a hunt.

The antelope of this section is large and powerful. It goes by name of “springbock,” because it takes tremendous leaps of ten to twelve feet when running. When pursued, it is pleasing and curious to see the whole herd leaping over each other’s heads, and looking back while they are in the air. They are exceedingly swift, and cannot be overtaken by a horse. They migrate annually from the interior toward the coast, and after remaining in the lowlands for two to three months, begin a gradual journey toward the interior. During these inward journeys their gregarious instincts are in full sway, and herds of hundreds may be seen on the grassy plains.

When travelling thus in large herds, they are the victims of beasts of prey, as lions, leopards and hyenas, which attack them at every favorable opportunity and seldom fail to secure rich feasts. Their flesh is excellent eating, and the springbock, together with other varieties of the antelope species, furnishes the venison of the African continent.

As he continued his way along the course of the Gombe, feasting his vision upon the beautiful scenes before him, he came suddenly upon a scene which he says “delighted the innermost recesses” of his soul. Just before him were “ten zebras switching their beautiful striped bodies, and biting one another.” Of these he succeeded in killing one, and then, content with the result of the hunt, he retired to camp. Before doing so, however, he thought he would take a bath in the placid waters of the river. He says: “I sought out the most shady spot under a wide-spreading mimosa, from which the ground sloped, smooth as a lawn, to the still, clear water. I ventured to undress, and had already stepped to my ankles in the water and had brought my hands together for a glorious dive, when my attention was attracted by an enormously long body which shot into view, occupying the spot beneath the surface which I was about to explore by a ‘header.’ Great heavens! it was a crocodile! I sprang back instinctively, and this proved my salvation, for the monster turned away with a disappointed look, and I was left to congratulate myself upon my narrow escape from his jaws, and to register a vow never to be tempted again by the treacherous calm of an African river.”

CHRISTIAN HEROES IN AFRICA.

“My subject is not so much Africa, its people, its customs and its misfortunes, as the Christian pioneers and their work. The United Moravian brethren at Herrnhut in Germany, more than a century and a half ago, were stirred up to send out a missionary to the poor Hottentots, who were treated as dogs by the Dutch colonists. George Schmidt at once offered himself to go out, and suffered hardship with a persecuted race, and, having been blessed by the conversion of a few, was forbidden to baptize them, and summarily sent back to Europe by men who called themselves Protestants, and who were jealous of their own liberty. Fifty years later (1792), the United Brethren sent out three more missionaries, who founded the illustrious mission of Genádendál, or Vale of Grace, on the very walls of the ruined house of George Schmidt, seven years after the great patriarch of African missions had been called to his reward, dying, like Livingstone and Krapf, on his knees.

“The London and Wesleyan societies, the Established Church of England, the Free Church of Scotland, and the American Board of Foreign Missions, took up a share in the blessed work amidst other races of South Africa, and out of their ranks by faith Moffat undertook to translate the Bible into the language of the Be-Chuána, Wilder into the language of the Zulu, and Boyce, Appleyard, and others, into the language of the Ama-Xosa, or Káfir——languages deemed at the time to be incapable of expressing simple ideas, but which, deftly handled, proved to be apt exponents of every variety of human thought, with an unlimited vocabulary, and an unsurpassed symmetry of structure.

“Moffat’s son-in-law, Livingstone, abandoned his home, his chapel, and his school, and started off on his great missionary progress, which was destined to illuminate all Africa south of the Equator. By faith he bore up under the perils, the fatigues, the opposition and the bereavement of his dear wife, who sleeps on the shore of the Zambesi. He worked his way to Benguéla, on the west coast, Kilimáni on the east, and Nyangwé on the River Congo to the north, discovering new rivers, new lakes, new tribes, and new languages. From the drops of sweat which fell from his limbs in those great travels have sprung up, like flowers, Christian missions, founded by men of different denominations and different views of church government, but united in the fear of God, love of Africa, and veneration for Livingstone. To the impulse, given by this great apostle, must be attributed the missions of the Established Church of Scotland at Blantyre, the Free Church of Scotland at Livingstonia, the London Society on Lake Tangányika, and the Universities Mission at Zanzibar. But to this servant of God it was not conceded to see one single fruit of his labors. He saw no mission spring up; like Moses, he only beheld the promised land from Pisgah; he died without knowing of the secret of the source of the Nile and the Congo.

“Krapf and Rebman sat year after year at the watch-tower of Mombása, waiting till the day should dawn, calling to each other: ‘Watchman, what of the night?’ writing home descriptions of vast lakes, and snow-capped mountains on the Equator, causing themselves to be derided, both as missionaries and geographers; yet they lived to be honored in both capacities, they lived to see the day dawn at last, to hear of Frere-Town being established as a station for released slaves at Mombása, to hear of those internal seas being navigated, and that snow-capped mountain being visited. In his old age Krapf in tearful gratitude read Henry Stanley’s challenge, which rang with trumpet-sound from the capital of Uganda, and was gallantly answered by the Church Missionary Society, and he lived to hear of the great Apostle’s Street, which by faith he had suggested, being carried out from Zanzibar to the Great Lakes, to be extended westward down the Congo, until hands are shaken with the Baptist missionaries working up that river from the west.

“The good Baptist Society established themselves in the island of Fernando Po, and, driven thence by the intolerance of the Spaniards, they crossed over to the mainland, and found what seemed once, but, alas! is no longer, a more enduring inheritance in the Kamerún Mountains. By faith here Saker lived, labored and died, translating the Holy Scriptures into the language of the Dualla, but leaving his work to be revised by his young daughter, opening out a new field for the talent and zeal of women. Hence in fullness of time by faith Comber started to conquer new kingdoms of the Congo, making, alas! the heavy sacrifice of the life of his wife at San Salvador, before he reached Stanley Pool, with the great heart of Africa open to his assault; for in their hands the Baptist missionaries had carried gentle peace, and their vessel with that name still carries them onward on their blessed and peaceful enterprise.

“Our good brethren in North America were among the first to send out their agents to West and South Africa, to pay back the debt which they owed, and to atone for the wrong which their forefathers had inflicted. The sun was thus taken back to the east, to lighten those sitting in darkness. Each and every one of their churches have vied in the desire to found strong missions, translate the Holy Scriptures, and to press forward the work of freedom, education, civilization and evangelization.

“The holy and humble-hearted Protestant churches on the continent of Europe, less amply endowed in material resources, but more richly in intellect, industry and self-consecration, have sent forth a golden stream of missionaries from the centers of Basle and Canton de Vaud in Switzerland; of Barmen, Breman, Berlin, Herrnhut and Hermannsburg in Germany; from Norway, Sweden, Finland and France, to hold the fort in the most exposed situations, to suffer imprisonment, to achieve great literary works, to found living churches, and attract to themselves the affections of the African.

“Samuel Crowther was rescued from the captivity into which he, like Joseph, had been sold by his brethren, was restored to his country, to be no longer a slave, but a teacher, a leader, a benefactor, and an example; he was set apart to give the lie to the enemies of the African, to stultify the idle taunt, that a negro is incapable, by his nature, of culture, piety, honesty, and social virtues; he was raised up to mark an epoch in the sad chronicle of his persecuted race, and to be the first fruit of the coming harvest of African pastors and evangelists. His son Dandison, Henry Johnson and James Johnson were blessed with the great grace of being allowed to tread in his footsteps.

“If any of my readers desire to know the real worth of the African missionary, let them read the lives of Mrs. Hinderer at Ibadán, and Mrs. Wakefield at Ribé, and of many other noble men and women, of whom this self-seeking world was not worthy, who left comforts at home to labor among the Africans; who, in spite of overpowering maladies, have been, like Hannington, unwilling to leave the country of their choice, and determined to return in spite of the warning voice of their doctor, or who, like him, have died as good confessors.

“Time would fail me to tell of Schlenker, and Reichardt, and Schön; of Goldie and Edgerley; of Casálls, Mabille and Coillard; of James Stewart, of Lovedale, and his namesake on the Nyassa; of Grant and Wilson; of Ramseyer and Christaller; of Mackensie, the Bishop who died on the River Shiré; and of Steere the Bishop who sealed up the translation of the last chapter of Isaiah ready for the printer, and then fell asleep at Zanzibar; of Parker, the Bishop, wise and gentle, holy and self-restrained, who was called to his rest on the southern shores of Victoria Nyanza; of Wakefield and New; of Stern, Mayer and Flad; of Southon, the medical missionary, who died at Urambo; of dear Mullens, who could not hold himself back from the fight, and who sleeps in Usagára; of many a gentle ladies’ grave——for women have never been found wanting to share the honor and the danger of the Cross.” ROBERT N. CUST, L. L. D.

THE BOILING POT ORDEAL.

Mr. Arnot says of the Zambesi Valley: “A small company gathered in front of my hut, and began an animated discussion, which grew hotter and hotter, and shortly a large fire was kindled, and a pot of water set on it. I was told that this was a trial for witchcraft, and that the two persons charged had to wash their hands in the water, and if after twenty-four hours the skin came off, the victims were to be burnt alive. First one, then the other, dipt his hands into the fiercely-boiling water, lifting some up and pouring it over the wrist. Twenty-four hours told its tale, and I saw the poor fellows marched off to be burned before a howling, cursing crowd. Such scenes, I afterward found, were almost of daily occurrence.

“I proposed to the king to require both the accuser and the accused to put their hands into the boiling water. The king is strongly in favor of this proposal, and would try any means to stop this fearful system of murder, which is thinning out many of his best men, but the nation is so strongly in favor of the practice that he can do nothing. An old friend of mine, Wizini, who took quite a fatherly care and interest in me, was charged with witchcraft. He pleaded earnestly to be spared the terrible trial, and was reprieved because of his years, but he was banished from his people and country for life, for no other reason than that a neighbor had an ill-feeling against him. Had he been first to the king with his complaint, he might have seen his neighbor burned or banished instead of himself. I much missed this old man.

“When manners and customs are referred to, the particular district must be borne in mind. Africa is an immense continent, and there is as much variety in the customs of the different tribes as in their languages. Certain tribes take delight in cruelty and bloodshed; others have a religious fear of shedding human blood, and treat aged people with every kindness to secure their good-will after death. By other tribes the aged would be cast out as mere food for wild animals.”

THE ADVENTURES OF A SLAVE.

A lad who was recently baptized at the Baptist mission on the Congo, relates a strange story of his adventures. His name is Kayembe. When he was 10 years old an Arab caravan passed through the district in which he lived with his parents. His people lived in terror for nearly two months, part of the time in the jungle. One morning, the slavers came with drums and singing. Kayembe’s father, after throwing a spear at an assailant, was shot dead, and his hand cut off as a trophy. Kayembe fled to the jungle, but was caught by some Nyangwe men, who took him with them and went from town to town killing men and little children and catching the women. Children who tried to follow their mothers were beaten back. Finally Kayembe was taken to Stanley Falls, where he was sold to a state soldier, a Zanzibari. This man, when he was taken sick, sold him to a Hausa soldier, who, when his time was up, took him to Leopoldville, at Stanley Pool, and the lad fell into the hands of the mission as the personal boy of Mr. Biggs. After Mr. Biggs died, Kayembe manifested great grief and came under Mr. Bentley’s care, and a year ago professed to have given his heart to the Savior. He was not more than thirteen years old then, and his baptism was delayed, but both by his words and his life he has shown himself to be a Christian, and in March last he was baptized. His capture and the death of his father are a terrible memory to him, though he is full of thankfulness that he has come to learn of the Savior. He has chosen a small town, about an hour from Wathen, which he regards as his field for Christian work; thither he often goes to find an audience of fifteen or twenty.

ARAB CRUELTIES IN AFRICA.

Letters to the secretary of the Free Church Missionary Society, from East Central Africa show that the power of the Arabs in the region is rather decreasing, but they still continue formidable. Many of the native supporters of the Arabs are deserting to the missionaries. These latter and the agents of the African Lakes Company, with the assistance of friendly negroes, have been successful in keeping the Arabs somewhat in check, but the Arabs still destroy a number of the negroes. Many instances are recorded of the Arabs lying in ambush and shooting down natives as they make their way to and from their gardens. About three months ago the slavers, assisted by the Chief Merere, made a raid and destroyed a number of native villages at Ukume, killing, burning and plundering wherever they went. Many of the inhabitants escaped to the hills. Some thirty young women were taken captive, and afterward sold, the children crying for their murdered parents. Some of them were clubbed and others thrown into the flames from the burning huts. Much anxiety is felt regarding the fate of the white men on the shores of Lake Tanganyika.

A LION HUNT.

Col. Baker thus describes a lion hunt in the Shooli country: “The grass had been set on fire by the natives, but as the wind was light the game advanced at an easy pace. Presently I saw a splendid buck antelope advancing toward me. Just as I was going to fire, a long yellow tail suddenly rose, and an instant later a fine lion flashed into view, disturbed by the approaching flames. The lion and antelope crossed paths. Both seemed startled, but soon the antelope bounded away, leaving the lion with his head toward my position.

“Not wishing a closer acquaintance, I aimed directly at his chest and fired. The lion rolled completely over, roared tremendously, and turned three successive somersaults, but to my astonishment appeared to recover. I immediately fired my left-hand barrel. Quick as a flash he bounded toward me, and charged on my two native companions. I quickly snatched one of their guns and stepped out from behind the ant-hill which I had used for a cover. The beast appeared to be diverted from his charge by the suddenness of my movement, and turned as if to retreat. I let him have a full charge of back-shot in his hind-quarters, and he continued his retreat into the high grass.

“Groans now issued from the grass, and the natives proposed to attack the beast with spears if I would back them up with my rifle. We approached the spot and soon found the beast within the grass. I would not let the natives approach near enough to use their spears, but fired the right barrel of my rifle, at a distance of twenty yards. The immediate reply was a determined charge, and the infuriated beast came bounding toward us with mouth agape and roaring furiously. The natives threw their spears, but missed. I fired my left-hand barrel, but nothing was equal to the task of stopping that deadly charge. We all had to run for our lives, back to the protection of the ant-hill, where our reserve fire arms were. Snatching up a rifle, I fired directly into his heart, just as he had one of the natives fairly within reach. This sent him reeling backwards, and he beat a retreat to his original cover.

“I now quickly reloaded, and, ordering every one to keep out of the way, I walked cautiously toward his cover. There I saw him sitting on his haunches, and glaring savagely in a direction opposite to the one in which I was approaching. I aimed directly for his neck, at a distance of twelve yards, and must have broken it, for the beast fell over stone dead. It was a fine specimen, and had certainly afforded enough excitement for one day’s hunt. On cutting the beast open we discovered in its stomach the freshly eaten remains of an antelope calf, simply torn into lumps of two or three pounds each. The natives regarded this as too dainty a morsel to let escape, and so divided it among themselves for supper.”

MOHAMMEDAN INFLUENCE.

Lieutenant Wissmann’s contribution to the “Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society,” throws light on the question of Mohammedanism and missions in West Central Africa. The writer’s experience of Mohammedan influences upon the native populations is in direct contrast with the assertion that the creed of Islam is that best suited to their needs. He gives a graphic account of two visits to Bagna Pesihi, and certain villages of the Bene Ki, a division of the Basonge, in Central Africa, before and after the arrival of a gang of Arab traders on the scene.

On the first occasion, he was welcomed by a prosperous and contented tribe, whose condition and occupations bore ample evidence to the existence of its villages for decades in peace and security, free from the disturbing elements of war and slave-hunts, pestilence and superstition. The huts of the natives were roomy and clean, fitted with shady porches, and surrounded by carefully kept fields and gardens, in which were grown all manner of useful plants and fruits including hemp, sugar, tobacco, sweet potatoes, maize, manioc and millet. A thicket of bananas and plantains occupied the back of each homestead, and shady palm groves supplied their owners with nuts, oils, fibers and wine. Goats, sheep and fowls abounded, and no one seemed afraid of thieves. The people all had a well-fed air, and were anxious to trade, their supplies being plentiful and extremely cheap. A fowl could be purchased for a large cowrie shell, and a goat for a yard of calico. Everywhere the visitors found a cheerful, courteous and contented population, uncontaminated by the vices of civilization, and yet not wholly ignorant of its arts.

Four years later Lieutenant Wissmann chanced to be in the same district, and after the privations of a toilsome march through dense, inhospitable forests, rejoiced as he drew near to the palm groves of the Bagna Pesihi. A dense growth of grass covered the formerly well-trimmed paths.

“As we approach the skirt of the groves we are struck by the dead silence which reigns. No laughter is to be heard, no sign of a welcome from our old friends. The silence of death breathes over the lofty crowns of the palms, slowly waving in the wind. We enter, and it is in vain we look to the right and left for the happy homesteads and the happy old scenes. Tall grass covers everything, and a charred pole here and there, and a few banana trees are the only evidences that a man once dwelt here. Bleached skulls by the roadside, and the skeletons of human hands attached to poles tell the story of what has happened here since our last visit.”

It appeared that the notorious Tippoo Tib had been there to “trade,” and in the course of that process had killed all who offered resistance, carried off the women, and devastated the fields, gardens and banana groves. Bands of destroyers from the same gang had returned again and again, and those who escaped the sword perished by the small-pox and famine, which the marauders left in their train. The whole tribe of the Bene Ki ceased to exist, and only a few remnants found refuge in a neighboring state.

Such must be counted amongst the results of Arab “trading” in Africa, and if it is at such cost that the blessings of Mohammedan civilization are purchased by the native races, it is no wonder that they are not considered a desirable acquisition. Even if it be true that Christianity is sometimes tardy of operation in its beneficent effects upon the blacks, Christian missionaries and Christian traders can at least boast that they have not wittingly acted otherwise than beneficently towards them.

A VICTIM OF SUPERSTITION.

The following incident is related by Bishop Crowther: “A slave who lived at Alenso was decoyed to a neighboring village under the pretence that he was appointed to offer a goat as a sacrifice to a dead man. On arrival at the house where the corpse was laid out, the goat was taken from the slave, and he was at once pounced on by two stalwart men and bound fast in chains. The poor man saw at once that he himself, not the goat, was to be the victim. He calmly addressed the people around, saying he was quite willing to die and need not be put in chains. A pipe was brought to him, which he smoked, a new cloth replaced his rags, and while he was having his last smoke the daughter of the deceased chief stood before him and began to eulogize her dead father, telling of his former greatness and achievements. The address was directed to the victim, that he might repeat the same to the inhabitants of the spirit world when he arrived there.

“The news of the intended sacrifice was soon circulated. It reached the ears of the missionary, Rev. J. Buck, who, with some Sierra Leone friends, hastened to the spot. A large hole had been already dug; the poor man was led into it, and ordered to lie on his back with his arms spread out. The missionary and his friends used all possible arguments, entreaties, and pleadings for his release, but in vain. They offered to give bullocks for sacrifice instead of the man, but these were flatly refused; and while they stood entreating, the corpse was brought and placed on the poor slave. He was then ordered to embrace it, and obeyed. The missionary and his friends turned away from the horrible sight as the grave was being filled, burying the living as a sacrifice with the dead.”

HEROIC WOMEN.

While great praise has been bestowed on certain heroic missionaries and explorers who have braved the dangers of Africa, little has been said concerning the women who have endured equal hardships amid the same hostile tribes and inhospitable climates. Mrs. Livingstone laid down her life while accompanying her husband on his second great tour in Africa. Mrs. Hore made her home for several years on an island in Lake Tanganyika. Mrs. Holub was with her husband when he was attacked by the natives and robbed of everything, and endured with him the hunger and fatigue of which they both well-nigh perished. Mrs. Pringle traveled in a canoe several hundred miles up the Zambesi and Shiré rivers to Lake Nyassa. Lady Baker was travelling companion to her husband when he discovered Albert Nyanza. And now we are told that three ladies will accompany Mr. Arnot and his wife as missionaries to Garenganze, and to accomplish the journey they will have to be carried in hammocks for hundreds of miles. Women who accompanied Bishop Taylor have shown a degree of courage in venturing into the perils of Africa which promise well for their heroic enterprise. “White women have certainly had their full share of the hardships and sufferings of pioneer work in Africa.”

MARY MOFFAT’S FAITH.

In the life of Robert Moffatt, first edited by their son, we are reminded that for ten years the early mission in Bechuana Land was carried on without one ray of encouragement for the faithful workers. No convert was made. The directors at home, to the great grief of the devoted missionaries, began to question the wisdom of continuing the mission. A year or two longer the darkness reigned. A friend from England sent word to Mrs. Moffat, asking what gift she should send out to her, and the brave woman wrote back: “Send a communion service, it will be sure to be needed.” At last the breath of the Lord moved on the hearts of the Bechuanas. A little group of six were united into the first Christian church, and that communion service from England, singularly delayed, reached Kuruman just the day before the appointed time for the administration of the Lord’s Supper.

TATAKA, LIBERIA.

“A word from Tataka Mission, this beautiful June day (June 6, 1889), may be interesting. A shower of rain has just fallen and everything looks refreshed, and as I sit on our veranda and look around I wish I could have some of my friends look at the fair picture. All nature is beautiful, but these darkened minds, as dark as their skins, can see no beauty in it. They never gather flowers, for their beauty; at times they bring in a few leaves and roots for medicine.

“At my right hand is a woman cutting wood. This is part of the women’s work, and they have learned the art of using their cutlasses so well, that, in a short time, they cut and carry on their heads more than I can raise from the ground.

“At this season the sounds of drum and dancing can be heard most every night in merry-making. After crops have been gathered, these poor creatures, to whom enough to eat is their all, spend their strength in dancing out their joy.

“The people recognize there is a God, but only in severe illness do they call on Him. Then their pitiful wail of ‘Oh, Niswa! Oh, Niswa!’ is touching. The devil is really their god and to him they pay rites and ceremonies and of him they are terribly afraid. We talk to them of God and heaven, of wrong and right, and they say: ‘Yes, it be good, but that be white man’s ‘fash,’ we be devil-men.’ They haven’t a desire beside their pot of rice and palm butter and mat to sleep on.

“Our little farm looks nicely now; 500 coffee trees just set out, a new lot of edoes and sweet potatoes and yams coming on, with plenty of rice in the house. Meat we seldom see, fish occasionally can be bought from the natives, but they catch but few and want them for their own ‘chop.’

“The laws and customs of this land are very loose. A man has just done another a foul wrong. He found he was to be called to account, and ran to another town to beg some of the ‘big’ men to go to his town and beg him off. As they say in English: ‘Please, I beg you, do your heart good; I beg you let it pass.’ And they are so persistent with their ‘m-ba-ta’s’ (I beg you), that you are glad to let them go. Thus evil goes unpunished.

“Another custom, that of buying women, is the most dreadful to us. A girl is chosen for a boy when he is still a growing lad. When he is a man and she about 15 to 17 he wants to take her to his house as his woman. He has to pay the whole price settled on: usually two bullocks, two goats, with some cloth, pots, etc. Then if he does not have the means to pay he goes to any man in his family, that is a ‘head man,’ and demands pay for his woman. Just this week one of our big men had to sell his little five-year-old daughter to get money to give his nephew to pay for his wife. Sometimes this is very hard for the parents to do, but their country fash demands it. Some one had to do the same for them. A second or third woman is bought by their own earnings or comes to them by the death of their brothers. When a man dies his women are divided among the nearest relatives, and are their women thereafter. The first one is head woman, and occupies the big house; each of the others has a small house.

“Every day’s experience shows us how difficult it is to do any real good among this Taboo people. They will shake you by the hand and smile in your face, but behind your back do all they can to overthrow the mission. The green-eyed monster jealousy lives here. A man cannot come out and say, I will do this or that; if he did, he would soon die.

“They will tell you with a good deal of pride, ‘We be devil-men.’” ROSE A. BOWER.

A NATIVE WAR DANCE.

When Baker arrived in the Obbo country, he found the people in a great state of excitement owing to the presence of a marauding band of Arabs who had announced a raid on the neighboring Madi people. While it was plain that the proposed raid was wholly for booty in slaves and ivory, the Obbo people were easily influenced, and found in it an opportunity to revenge themselves for some old or imaginary grievance.

They are a fine, athletic people, and somewhat fantastic, as things go in Central Africa. As nothing is ever done among them without a grand palaver, the chief called the tribe into consultation, which turned out to be a very formal affair. The warriors all appeared fully armed with spear and shield, and their bodies painted in various patterns with red ochre and white pipe clay. Their heads were ornamented with really tasteful arrangements of cowrie shells and ostrich feathers, the latter often hanging down their backs in graceful folds.

The consultation proceeded for some time with due regard to forms and with an apparent desire to get at a majority sentiment, when of a sudden it ended with an outburst from the warriors, and then filing away into sets or lines, each line indulging in pantomimic charges upon an imaginary enemy, and going through all the manœuvers of a fierce contest. Their activity was simply wonderful, and if they could have brought that show of vigorous athleticism and that terrible determination of countenance to bear upon their Madi enemies they must have carried consternation into their ranks. The exhilarating and ostentatious ceremony proved to be the national war-dance of the tribe, which takes place as a ratification of the results of a tribal palaver, when the sentiment has been unanimous for war.

It was a pity to see these fine fellows so imposed upon by the wily Arabs, but they seemed to be wholly under their influence, for no sooner had the war-dance ended, which it did more through the exhaustion of the participants than through a desire to stop, than the chief arose and delivered a most voluble and vehement address, urging upon his warriors to assist the Arabs in their proposed raid and to beat the Madi people at all hazards. Several other speakers talked in a similar strain, with the effect of arousing the greatest enthusiasm. The result was that the Arab leader started on his raid with 120 of his own armed followers, surrounded and supported by the entire warlike force of the Obbos.

AFRICAN GAME LAWS.

Eastward of Lake Albert Nyanza is the Shooli country. In the midst of this tribe Col. Baker established Fort Fatiko. While awaiting reinforcements, he cultivated the friendship of the natives and soon found himself on excellent terms with them. The grass was fit to burn and the hunting season had fairly commenced. All the natives devote themselves to this important pursuit, for the chase supplies the Shooli with clothing. Though the women are naked, every man wears an antelope skin slung across his shoulders, so arranged as to be tolerably decent.

All the waste tracts of the Shooli and Unyoro country are claimed by individual proprietors who possess the right to hunt game therein by inheritance. Thus in Africa the principle of the English game preserve exists, though without definite metes and bounds. Yet a breach of their primitive game laws would be regarded by the public as a disgrace to the guilty individual, precisely as poaching is a disgrace in England.

The rights of game are among the first rudiments of property. Man in a primitive state is a hunter, depending for his clothing upon the skins of wild animals, and upon their flesh for his subsistence; therefore the beast that he kills upon the desert must be his property; and in a public hunt, should he be the first to wound a wild animal, he will have gained an increased interest or share in the flesh by having reduced the chance of its escape. Thus public opinion, which we must regard as the foundation of equity, rewards him with a distinct and special right, which becomes law.

It is impossible to trace the origin of game laws in Central Africa, but it is nevertheless interesting to find that such rights are generally acknowledged, and that large tracts of uninhabited country are possessed by individuals which are simply manorial. These rights are inherited, descending from father to the eldest son.

When the grass is sufficiently dry to burn, the whole thoughts of the community are centered upon sport. Baker, being a great hunter, associated with them. Their favorite method of hunting is with nets, each man being provided with a net, some 30 feet long and 11 feet deep. A council was called and it was decided that the hunt should take place on the manors of certain individuals whose property was contiguous.

At length the day of the hunt arrived, when several thousand people collected at a certain rendezvous, about nine miles distant from Fatiko, the best neighborhood for game. “At a little before 5 A.M.,” says Baker, “I started on my solitary but powerful horse, Jamoos. Descending the rocky terrace from the station at Fatiko, we were at once in the lovely, park-like glades, diversified by bold granite rocks, among which were scattered the graceful drooping acacias in clumps of dense foliage. Crossing the clear, rippling stream, we clambered up the steep bank on the opposite side, and, after a ride of about a mile and a half, we gained the water-shed, and commenced a gradual descent towards the west. We were now joined by numerous people, both men, women, and children, all of whom were bent upon the hunt. The men carried their nets and spears; the boys were also armed with lighter weapons, and the very little fellows carried tiny lances, all of which had been carefully sharpened for the expected game. The women were in great numbers, and upon that day the villages were quite deserted. Babies accompanied their mothers, strapped upon their backs with leathern bands, and protected from the weather by the usual tortoise-like coverings of gourd-shells. Thus it may be imagined that the Shooli tribe were born hunters, as they had accompanied the public hunts from their earliest infancy.

“As we proceeded, the number of natives increased, but there was no noise or loud talking. Every one appeared thoroughly to understand his duties. Having crossed the beautiful Un-y-Amé river, we entered the game country. A line of about a mile and a half was quickly protected by netting, and the natives were already in position.

“Each man had lashed his net to that of his neighbor and supported it with bamboos, which were secured with ropes fastened to twisted grass. Thus the entire net resembled a fence, that would be invisible to the game in the high grass, until, when driven, they should burst suddenly upon it.

“The grass was as dry as straw, and several thousand acres were to be fired up to windward, which would compel the animals to run before the flames, until they reached the netting placed a few paces in front, where the high grass had been purposely cleared to resist the advance of the fire. Before each section of net, a man was concealed both within and without, behind a screen, simply formed of the long grass tied together at the top.

“The rule of sport decided that the proprietor of each section of netting of twelve yards length would be entitled to all game that should be killed within these limits, but that the owners of the manors which formed the hunt upon that day should receive a hind-leg from every animal captured.

“This was fair play; but in such hunts a breach of the peace was of common occurrence, as a large animal might charge the net and receive a spear from the owner of the section, after which he might break back, and eventually be killed in the net of another hunter; which would cause a hot dispute.

“The nets had been arranged with perfect stillness, and the men having concealed themselves, we were placed in positions on the extreme flanks with the rifles.

“Everything was ready, and men had already been stationed at regular intervals about two miles to windward, where they waited with their fire-stick for the appointed signal. A shrill whistle disturbed the silence. This signal was repeated at intervals to windward. In a few minutes after the signal, a long line of separate thin pillars of smoke ascended into the blue sky, forming a band extending over about two miles of the horizon.

“The thin pillars rapidly thickened, and became dense volumes, until at length they united, and formed a long black cloud of smoke that drifted before the wind over the bright yellow surface of the high grass. The natives were so thoroughly concealed, that no one would have supposed that a human being besides ourselves was in the neighborhood. The wind was brisk, and the fire travelled at about four miles an hour. We could soon hear the distant roar, as the great volume of flame shot high through the centre of the smoke.

“Presently I saw a slate-colored mass trotting along the face of the opposite slope, about 250 yards distant. I quickly made out a rhinoceros, and I was in hopes that he was coming towards me. Suddenly he turned to my right, and continued along the face of the inclination.

“Some of the beautiful leucotis antelope, here known as gemsbock, being of a small variety, now appeared and centered towards me, but halted when they approached the stream, and listened. The game understood the hunting as well as the natives. In the same manner that the young children went out to hunt with their parents, so had the wild animals been hunted together with their parents ever since their birth.

“The leucotis now charged across the stream; at the same time a herd of hartebeest dashed past. I knocked over one, and with the left-hand barrel I wounded a leucotis. At this moment a lion and lioness, that had been disturbed by the fire in our rear, came bounding along. I was just going to take a shot, when, as my finger was on the trigger, I saw the head of a native rise out of the grass exactly in the line of fire; then another head popped up from a native who had been concealed, and rather than risk an accident I allowed the lions to pass. In one magnificent bound they cleared the stream, and disappeared in the high grass.

“The fire was advancing rapidly, and the game was coming up fast. A small herd of leucotis crossed the brook, and I killed another, but the smoke had become so thick that I was nearly blinded. It was at length impossible to see; the roar of the fire and the heat were terrific, as the blast swept before the advancing flames, and filled the air and eyes with fine black ashes. I literally had to turn and run hard into fresher atmosphere to get a gasp of cool air, and to wipe my streaming eyes. Just as I emerged from the smoke, a leucotis came past, and received both the right and left bullets in a good place, before it fell.

“The fire reached the stream and at once expired. The wind swept the smoke on before, and left in view the velvety black surface, that had been completely denuded by the flames.

“The natives had killed many antelopes, but the rhinoceros had gone through their nets like a cobweb. Several buffaloes had been seen, but they had broken out in a different direction. I had placed five antelopes to my credit in this day’s sport.”

VIVI, ON THE CONGO.

“Vivi could be made a beautiful place, if we only had water, but this is a big if, and yet I think not impossible. Last Sabbath I went to the villages and preached to one king and some of his people. He seemed interested and said I must come again. Then we went to another village, where they were having a palaver over a sick man. There were many men, women, boys, and even babies present.

“Their ngongo (or doctor) was seated in the midst, with the sick man near by. The doctor had a cloth spread out in front of him on the ground, that contained nearly everything——vegetable, mineral, animal, birds’ claws, chickens’ feet, goats’ feet and hides, teeth and claws of wild animals. There were also roots, nuts, dirt and many other things. There were some leaves lying on top of this collection, with something on them that reminded me of a cow’s cud, half-chewed, which he fixt up as a dose.

“He divided the cud in three parts, placing one part in a wooden dish with some leaves. Then he cut off bits of roots or something, and put in each of these three piles, taking at the same time a little of each in his mouth. After chewing it quite thoroughly, he spit several times on each pile. After water had been poured on it, the dish was surrounded by the women. Then he squeezed the juice out of the little heaps in the dish. At two different times the sick man took a swallow of the juice. Then the doctor took a sharp knife and cut his own tongue, till it bled freely. The blood ran down on a staff and a green leaf that lay in front of him; then he took up the leaf and staff and rubbed the blood on different parts of his body. This, with much more nonsense, was carried on, when I tried to get a hearing, but nothing of this kind could be done till the palaver was over, and the sick man was finished.

“I like Vivi, and as we must have a receiving and transport station here, I am doing what I can to make it a success. In addition to repairing the buildings already here, I am going to put up some stone buildings. They will not be expensive, as stone is abundant, and much more durable than wood for building, being fire and ant-proof. I am also trying to do something in the way of self-support by getting around me some cattle, sheep, goats, ducks, chickens, pigeons, etc.; and growing such native fruits and produce as do well here at Vivi. This will be convenient in the event of war, smallpox or famine——I mean such famine as might occur from not being able to get supplies from home or here, at the time we need them. Mr. McKitrick, a gentleman of the A. B. M. U. Mission, called a few days ago, saying they could not buy a goat or chicken on the south side of the river. In the past few days the Baptists and traders have been over here buying chickens. Soon, unless some one turns his attention to raising these things, there will be none to buy. They bring now one piece and a half (thirty to fifty cents) for one fowl.

“The chief wanted to buy 100 fowls from me a few days ago. With a ready sale for all the sheep, goats, ducks, chickens, etc., can you not see self-support in the future for Vivi?

“Nearly every steamer brings many Europeans, State men, and missionaries, and they are paid salaries, and expect to buy their living instead of producing it. They cannot depend on the natives for supplies; they must be raised by some one else or be imported. Now these are my reasons why I think self-support should not be lost sight of.

“All our live stock is doing well, though this is the hard pull for them, if there is any; for we have had no rain for about four months, and will have none for about three months more. Sheep and goats do well here. This is no experiment. The calves, I may soon say cattle, are doing finely. If two will do well here, twenty or thirty will do the same, as there is an immense range for them to graze over.

“My father keeps a herd of nice wild cattle about a half day’s walk from here. He has already given me two whole bullocks since I came to Vivi, and also two large deer as big as mules, and a good deal better. I really think shipping meat from America or England will soon be a thing of the past.

“The buffalo and deer here are likely to last a good while, for though they are frequently shot at, few are killed. A buffalo I killed a few days ago had in it two slugs, shot by the natives, I suppose. They are a sturdy animal, willing to defend themselves and their young to the death, and desperate when at bay.

“This country will produce an abundance, but white men must show the natives how to do it. It is here now as it used to be in California. The last ten years of my life were spent on the Pacific Coast, when thousands of people returned from there, abusing the people and the country. I have met train after train of returning emigrants, who said: “Go back! go back! go back to God’s country! People are starving; all are lies about California and Oregon being good countries; on all the Pacific Coast there are no places for poor people.”

“But all this did not stop the emigration west, and the Pacific slope has proved a rich country. Persons come to Africa, and return giving bad reports; still they come, and will come, for this country has great advantages.” REV. J. C. TETER.

RUM ON THE CONGO.

Bishop Newman has presented to Congress a memorial from the World’s W. C. T. U. praying that immediate and decisive steps be taken to suppress the liquor traffic in the Congo Free State and the basin of the Niger. The memorial shows that during 1885 more than 10,000,000 gallons of the cheapest and vilest spirits ever manufactured were sent from the United States, Germany, Holland, England, France, and Portugal to the natives of Africa. The quantities contributed by the different nations were:

United States, 737,650 gallons; Germany, 7,823,000 gallons; the Netherlands, 1,099,146 gallons; France (“pure alcohol”), 406,000 gallons; England, 311,400 gallons; Portugal, 91,524 gallons.

The memorial, continuing, says that abundant evidence proves that this deadly rum has developed in the natives an alcoholic passion almost without parallel, and has sunk them into a state of degradation lower than they occupied before they had contact with our commerce and civilization. The march of commerce will soon place the rum traders in communication with over 50,000,000 of savages, and unless the traffic is totally suppressed, the result will be most disastrous to the cause of humanity, a reproach to the Christian nations who supply it, and an outrage second only to the slave trade itself.

The purposes of the memorial and of the arguments made by Bishop Newman and Mr. Hornady are to bring about such a revision of the General Act of the Berlin Conference as shall completely suppress the liquor traffic in the territory in question; to obtain a law from Congress prohibiting the exportation of liquor from this country to any part of Africa, and to persuade the United States Government to use its influence to induce other governments to co-operate.

PALAVERING.

The council, consultation, or palaver, is one of Africa’s fixed institutions. We have unfortunately, and unfairly, adopted the word “palaver” to express our notion of what the natives regard with all seriousness, and what is, in their polity, as necessary as an American deliberative body or a treaty-making power are to us. A “palaver” is an idle talk. An African palaver may appear to be very idle to us, and considering its length——sometimes days and even weeks——it is a terrible bore to white people who have to wait till it ends.

The palaver is universal in Africa. Every village has its council place, its assembly hut or its palaver tree. Palaver proceedings are always formal and deliberate. There must be a palaver in order to declare war and make peace. When one tribe, or chief, asks anything of another, it must be granted or refused, through a palaver. Visits of white people to a tribe, the right to remain, to trade, to build, to preach, and to go away again, are all subjects requiring a palaver. Bishop Taylor has found it to be a capital way of making a Christian impression on the minds of his African auditors, to call them together in sacred palaver, and he secures their assent to such doctrines as they accept, as results of a palaver rather than as individual professions.

When parties of native travelers meet in desert, plain or forest, there is always a consultation, or palaver. Notes are compared in this way, intentions are expressed, views are made known. The palaver, or council, is thus the parliament and newspaper of Africa. It runs all through the country, just as do the traveling paths, which extend from ocean to ocean. You meet it in Bechuanaland, on the Zambesi, at Bihè, on Nyassa, Tanganyika, Victoria Nyanza, the Nile, Congo, Niger, Gambia. Sekhomo of Kalihari, squats with his council on burning sands. Mtesa of Uganda, holds a council as lordly as the Shah of Persia. Iboko of the Congo, palavers for nine days over the landing of a little steamer.

Irksome as the palaver must prove to white people, it ought not to be forgotten that natives enjoy it, and its sessions are valves for the escape of passions which otherwise might result in great harm.

EMIN PASHA AT ZANZIBAR.

For weeks after the arrival of Stanley and his rescuing party at Zanzibar, the life of Emin Pasha, on account of his severe accident, was despaired of. Indeed, not until a very late period has he been able to communicate with any one. Meanwhile, rumors of difference between him and Stanley became current, and the opinion was entertained that Emin would not go to Europe at all, but only awaited an opportunity to return again to his abandoned provinces.

One of his first visitors, after his illness, was an American journalist, who secured the following points:

“The American people would very much like you to say, in plain language, Pasha, so that all may fully understand, why you left your post and came out with Mr. Stanley?”

“Well, you see,” replied Emin, “Mr. Stanley brought orders from the Khedive of Egypt for me to return with him. I am an Egyptian officer, and have no option but to obey the Khedive’s orders. I did not wish to leave, and if the Khedive should order me back again to-morrow, and would provide me with men and means to maintain my position, I would return with the greatest pleasure.”

“Do you wish the American public to understand, then, Pasha, that you could have maintained your position and were under no necessity of coming away with Mr. Stanley, had you not received orders from the Khedive to do so?”

“I think if Mr. Stanley would have consented to wait, much could have been done. Things had got to be very bad, however, and Mr. Stanley would not wait. He seemed only anxious that I and my people, the Egyptians, should go as quickly as we could with him to the coast.”

“Were you and your people in great need of assistance when Mr. Stanley reached you, Pasha?”

“We were very glad to have Mr. Stanley come to our relief, of course, and we all feel very grateful to the people of England for the great interest they have taken in us; but we were in no great need of anything but ammunition. Food was very plenty with us.

“The soldiers had gardens, cows, wives, and plenty of everything to eat. They were much better off than they ever had been in Egypt or the Soudan. They had come to regard the province as their home and had no wish to ever return to Egypt. They considered that they were fighting for their homes, and so fought well and bravely so long as there was a chance of success and the hope of assistance from our friends without. It was only when there was no longer anything to hope for, and when we read to them the message that they must leave with Mr. Stanley or never expect any more assistance from the Egyptian Government, that they began to waver in their allegiance to me. Poor fellows, what could they do? They didn’t wish to leave; the Khalifa’s forces were advancing up the Nile, they now had everything to gain and nothing to lose by turning against me. I do not blame them; they are but Africans, and nothing else was to be expected of them.

“Mr. Stanley was in such haste to go, he would not wait. If Mr. Stanley had consented to wait we might have pushed forward stations to the northeast corner of the Victoria Nyanza, and there we could have met the English Company’s caravans. I do not know Mr. Stanley’s reasons for being in such a hurry to leave. Perhaps he himself will tell you this.” (Mr. Stanley had already said that after getting Emin and as many of his people who wanted to go, together, at Kavalis, his great concern was to get them safely to the coast. As for attempting to open new roads with a crowd of helpless women and children in his charge, he couldn’t think of such a thing, etc.)

“It was rumored that you had vast stores of ivory in hand, Pasha; what of that?”

“Ivory! I had collected for the Government more than 6,000 fine large tusks since our communication had been cut off. I had ivory enough, if I could have got it to market, to have paid off all the back salaries of my people, and have had a handsome surplus besides.” (Six thousand fine large tusks would weigh in the neighborhood of 200 American tons, worth in Zanzibar about $6,000 per ton. The value in Emin’s stations would, of course, in no wise approach this great sum of value——$1,200,000. Emin told the writer that he valued his stores of ivory, as they lay in his stations, at about £70,000.)

“We couldn’t bring it with us,” the Pasha continued, “so I threw most of it into the Nile to prevent the enemy from getting it. Some, however, in outlying stations I intrusted to the care of friendly native chiefs, not knowing what chances and what opportunities time might bring.”

THE SAS TOWN TRIBE OF WEST AFRICA.

“The officers of this tribe are as follows:

“The ‘town master’ is really emperor, as in him is vested the power of life and death. If the tribe wishes to disobey a town master’s commands, they must kill him first. This is done in so many instances that few town masters die a natural death.

“The ‘ground king’ is their weather prophet, and he is supposed to manufacture the weather. He may be king for only a month or two, seldom long, as the weather he makes may not suit.

“Their ‘soldier king’ answers to our general in the army.

“They have three ‘butchers,’ who do all the killing for the feasts.

“Their ‘town lawyer’ answers to our attorney-general.

“The duty of their ‘peace-maker’ is what his name indicates.

“They have thirty old men or chiefs, whose duties are to watch the town and people, and to act as the king’s cabinet.

“The laws of the tribe are made by the king and his cabinet. Some of them are curious, and sometimes severe. For instance, one law forbids the town master and the butchers from ever leaving the town, on pain of death. Another is that when a person is accused of witchery, he or she must drink the deadly saswood, or have their brains knocked out. This tea is a potion from the saswood tree, which grows all over this country and is a deadly poison. To make sure of its full effect, the suspected person is made to drink a copious draft. As this is likely to produce emesis, the large quantity is often their salvation.

“These people are so superstitious that they will not leave a hole in their house open at night for fear of being witched.

“Here polygamy has all the evils of that life. If a wife is dissatisfied with her husband, she can run away to any man she chooses, and he must receive her, and pay to her former husband the price he paid for her. This may put the second man to quite a disadvantage, often giving him more wives than he can pay for. The lot of a wife is very hard. She must make the farm, grow all the rice, carry all the wood, seven or eight miles, on her head, and do all the cooking. Besides this she must stand all the ill-temper of her jealous husband, and this, perhaps, with a baby strapped on her back.

“When a man thinks one of his wives is unchaste, he gets a pan of palm-oil, and heating it as hot as he can, he makes the wife put her hand in and pick up a stone from the bottom of the pan; his theory being, that, if his charge be true, the oil will catch fire and burn her hand. If this does not satisfy him, the poisonous draught of the saswood is resorted to.

“These people eat nearly everything that grows, animal or vegetable. I have seen them eat elephant lungs, green ants, chicken heads and intestines. When they kill a bullock, they eat all of him, even cooking the hide with the hair on. As I said, everything goes for food, even rotten bananas. But with all of their rotten chop, they are healthy, strong and vigorous men, women and children.

“Their only garment is about four feet of cloth, for all those above sixteen years of age; those younger go entirely naked.

“They all sleep on the bare ground with a stick for a pillow, and of course, skin diseases are quite prevalent.

“They are a kind people to one another. I have stood at the spring, when the women were coming after water, which they carry in four-gallon pots on the top of their head, and one always helps the other to lift her load up, and so it is in everything. If a party of natives are together, and you give them a banana, it is divided between every one of them. I very seldom hear a baby cry; and I must say that here babies have a chance to live, as they are not weaned for two years, and are humored in every way.

“The Sas-Town tribes work hard for the white man, for very little pay. I have seen a woman carry a box, weighing 120 pounds, two and a half miles for two leaves of tobacco, worth one and one-eighth cents.

“These people are ignorant, but willing and quick to learn. They have some natural orators among them, as I have seen at their ‘palavers.’” C. E. GUNNISON.

AN INTERRUPTED JOURNEY.

When Livingstone was marching down the valley of the Zambezi, and had crossed its great northern affluent, the Loangwe, he found himself and party of carriers in the midst of a dense forest. All of his riding oxen had been killed by the tsetse fly, except one, and this had been so reduced in strength as to be unable to carry the traveler more than half the time. Therefore such a thing as forced journeys were out of the question. There was nothing to do but to proceed leisurely, and this the party were doing,——pushing now through thick clumps of forest, and now through tangled bush, as best they might.

While thus threading their way through a forest clump, there was a rush and a roar off to the left, and almost instantly three huge buffaloes made their appearance, running as if they been badly frightened in the direction whence they came. As the bush was thick and high, they evidently did not see that their course was directly athwart that of the traveling party, and so they rushed right into the midst of the carriers, before they had time to clear the way. Livingstone’s ox, frightened at the unexpected dash, made a plunge forward, nearly throwing its rider off, but thereby escaping the fury of the charging buffaloes. When he turned, he saw one of his carriers flying through the air at a height of twenty feet, having been tossed by the foremost of the animals, whose fright seems to have been turned into rage at sight of human beings.

The buffaloes rushed by and Livingstone hastened to his carrier, expecting to find him dead or badly gored. But strange to say he was only bruised and frightened, and was quickly able to resume his load. On inquiry, Livingstone found that the carrier had drawn his misfortune on himself. Instead of doing as the others had done, making for a friendly tree, he had thrown down his load, and as the leading buffalo was dashing by, he had given it a vicious stab in the side, whereupon the beast had savagely turned upon him and sent him high into the air.

IN MONROVIA.

“The heathen that leap out of the vices and degradation and superstition and the deep darkness of their former lives, into active, working, intelligent Christians, are, I am inclined to think, the product of a facile pen from an overhopeful brain. It is not easy to shake off lifetime habits, customs hoary, and to them venerable, because their ancestors as far back as can be traced, have practiced them, and at once ascend into the region of a sublime faith, and from visible objects and ceremonies whereby wrath of the great demon power is averted, and his favor propitiated, turn to the King, invisible, immortal.

“The cerements of old superstition enwrap them. Neither can we ‘loose him and let him go’ the moment the new desires are born in him. His efforts are something like a child that is just learning to walk; he takes a step or two, wavers and drops back into some past habit, but like a child he is helped up and put on his feet again. I went down to Krutown last week to school. I heard tom-toms and saw the people on one street out for a gala day——all ‘dressed up,’ The women were painted with different kinds of clay, and had a great quantity of leopard teeth around their wrists and neck, plenty of brass anklets and armlets, and a towel or breakfast shawl thrown loosely and gracefully over one shoulder. Quite a number had on a cloth extending nearly to their feet, but all their bodies were bare to the hips; a great many held silk umbrellas over their heads, and all had a self-conscious air of being ‘well dressed.’ I went on and opened school. One of my Bible scholars was absent, a man of 40 or 45, who had learned to read, and showed such a meek and quiet spirit. I named him Fletcher. I asked where Fletcher was. ‘Him got a new wife, you no see that big play? Well that be him friends making for him.’ Next day he was in his place as usual. I asked why he took another wife. ‘Mammy, the woman done run away from him husband and come to me, and I no fittee send him back; I take him.’ That was all there was, no feeling of having done wrong. Polygamy is the greatest obstacle one meets in this part of Africa. The women are ashamed to belong——yes, belong, for the man buys her——to a man who is so poor he cannot buy more than one or two wives. It is not the patriarchal system some think, for the women are every now and then running away to some other man. Some never say a word, but let the man have his wife, others demand the amount the husband paid for her, others again make a big palaver. A court is called and after several hearings, which sometimes last two and three weeks, the wife is restored or returned to her husband, and both seem satisfied. It is almost impossible to do any teaching or evangelistic work when one man’s wife runs away to another man——the latter’s friends make merry by beating tom-toms, singing, dancing and drinking rum.

“These are some of the things that a missionary has to meet, and which greatly retard the work. Then time has no value to them. Plenty of chop, and not a desire and not an emotion beyond that. Like the prostrate figure in Peale’s Court of Death, the head and feet touch the waters of oblivion. So with the heathen here; the past and the future are alike impenetrable, incomprehensible.” MARY SHARP.

A SAMPLE SERMON.

The following is a sample sermon in Kru English which has been found well adapted for the comprehension of the Cavalla river natives:

Niswa make many worlds. Most of the stars are worlds much larger than this world, and I believe Niswa has plenty good people in all of them. The devils once had “their habitation” in one of those great worlds. They were good spirits then, and very strong, but they live for make bad and fight against Niswa, and were driven away from their home, and “fell like lightning from heaven,” and they hide away in the dark caves of our world. They be fit to live in this world till it finish. Then all the devils that come down from their great world, and all the bad people of this world will be condemned at Niswa’s judgment seat and be sent down to hell——“the place prepared for the devil” and all his followers. There they will all be locked in forever.

This world is one of the little worlds that Niswa made, and for people for this world he made one man and one woman, and join them together as man and wife. The man and his wife were clean and pure like Niswa.

One fine day the chief devil of all the army of them came and make palaver with the woman, and she make palaver with her husband, and the man and woman got bad, and join the devil in his rebellion against Niswa. As soon as they turned against Niswa and joined the devil’s army to fight against Him, the devil-nature struck right through them. Then they were called to answer at the bar of justice before the great King, and were found guilty and condemned to die. Their bodies be fit to rot in the ground, and their spirits to be turned with all the devils into hell forever. The Saswood cup of death and hell was put into the hands of the man and woman to drink. Niswa has one Son just like himself. Not a son born of a mother. Niswa no be born of a woman. He be Niswa without “beginning of days or end of life.” So His Beloved Son, just like Him, be without “beginning of days or end of life.” Niswa and his Son look at the man and woman and their cup of death and feel very sorry for them. Then the Son pray, “O Father, let me ransom this man and woman and all their seed.” Then Niswa and his Beloved Son have palaver, and make agreement about the man and woman. The Father agree to give His Son a ransom for them. The Son agree at a set time to join himself to a son born from “the seed of the woman” and live with her children, and show them the mind, the light, the love of Niswa; and teach them all Niswa’s good ways, and then drink their Saswood cup of death——to die for them, and the third day after to rise again from the dead, to be forever their living redeemer, their lawyer in Niswa’s court, and their doctor to heal them.

THE SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA.

The extent of European territorial annexation of Africa, provisional, protective or positive, is quite surprising even to those who have kept pretty close watch of it. Of the eleven millions of square miles in Africa, six and one-half millions are attached to some European power; and of the four and a half unattached parts, half lie within the desert of Sahara.

That, therefore, is to say that all the continent of Africa that is habitable, except about two million square miles, is under European domination. Europe has annexed Africa. The “British East African Company” is practically another European State in Africa, for it is granted full powers to levy taxes and customs and to maintain an armed force. Whether another generation will look upon all this as civilized brigandage, or whether it is any better than free-booting of any other type, does not materially affect the facts in the case. The British government, through its colonial or foreign office, nevertheless has authorized this company (new State) to carry on high piracy of much of the finest land in Central Africa filled with an industrious population, said to number about Lake Nyanza alone twelve millions of people. We are told that the company is composed of philanthropic gentlemen in London, and we have no doubt but that the ultimate result will be good——“the Earth will help the woman”——but it is nevertheless difficult to detect any under-lying moral principle above

“He may take who has the power And he may keep who can.”

And while the lion and the lamb in this millennial reign lie down together in peace, it is because the lamb is inside of the lion.

But Great Britain is not alone in this missionary zeal that “out of the eater shall come forth meat and out of the strong shall come forth sweetness,” though her “sphere of influence” is a million square miles of the Dark Continent. France exercises the sweet charities of modern politics over 700,000 square miles, and Germany seeks to convert, en bloc, if not to Christianity, at least to modern German trade-gain, 200,000 square miles, about which she now disputes, to add to the 740,000 she has without debate already. Meanwhile the king of Portugal takes “military occupation” of a tract of land north of Loanda and creates an “attachment” for it to the king of Portugal; and the British government “annexes” that part of the Gold Coast between Cape Coast Castle and the delta of the Niger; and what with treaties, “military operations” and “protectorates,” Africa becomes rapidly a sort of “country store” run by European merchants.

Barring the radical ethical question in the case, perhaps we may rejoice in the bare hope that all this is “casting up the highway for the progress of Christianity;” but if what with rum and gunpowder these races are to be “civilized off the face of the Earth,” as we have done with our native American races, it would seem that there must nevertheless be a great reckoning day with the Christian powers, that they could find no better way of developing Africa than by fertilizing her soil with the carcasses of her sons.

LIONS AND A GIRAFFE.

The lions of Africa are night prowlers. Very few have ever seen them seize their prey in the day-time. Capt. Anderson once witnessed such a scene. Late one evening he badly wounded a lion, and on the following morning set out with his attendants to track the game and complete the capture. “Presently,” he writes, “we came upon traces of a troop of lions and a giraffe. The tracks were thick and confusing, and while we were trying to pick out those of the wounded lion, I observed my native attendants suddenly rush forward, and the next instant the jungle resounded with their shouts of triumph.

“Thinking they had discovered the object of our search, I hurried forward; but imagine my surprise when, emerging into an opening in the jungle, I saw, not the dead lion, as I had expected, but five living lions——two males and three females——two of whom were engaged in pulling down a splendid giraffe, the other three watching close at hand, and with devouring look, the deadly strife.

“The scene was of so unusual and exciting a nature that for the moment I quite forgot I carried a gun. The natives, however, in expectation of a glorious feast, dashed madly forward with the most piercing shrieks, and their yells compelled the lions to beat a hasty retreat. When I reached the giraffe, now stretched at full length on the ground, it made a few ineffectual attempts to raise its head, fell over, heaving and quivering throughout its entire body, and at length straightened itself out in death. An examination showed several deep gashes about the breast and flanks, made by the claws of the fierce assailants. The strong and tough muscles of the elongated neck were also bitten through in many places. All thought of further pursuit of the wounded lion was now out of the question. The natives now gathered about the dead giraffe, and did not desist from feasting upon it till its entire carcass had been devoured. A day or two afterwards, however, I came upon the bloody tracks of my royal antagonist, and had the pleasure of finishing him with a well directed bullet from my rifle.”

KILIMANJARO.

In passing southward from Lake Albert Nyanza, Stanley and the rescued Emin, together with their large party, skirted a lofty range of mountains, whose highest peak is Kilimanjaro, which has lately been ascended for the distance of 16,500 feet, to the snow line, by two German scientists and explorers, thus giving it a distinct place in geography, and setting it forth as one of the most interesting of natural objects.

The region is south of the great Uganda and Unyoro tribes, and had, up to Stanley’s trip through it, never been visited by a traveler of note except Thomas Stevens and Dr. Abbott, who thus narrate what they saw:——

“First we determined to pay a visit to the chief of Machawe in order to make purchases of food, and besides, we anticipated much pleasure in visiting a chief who had never yet set eyes on a white man. Our way led through a very charming plain country, very African in its appearance. The gently undulating plains were dotted with small cones of a hundred feet, or thereabout, in height, so small, symmetrical and uniform in shape as to suggest bubbles floating on the green waves of the plain. Rhinoceri, giraffes, antelopes, buffalo and zebra abounded in great numbers, roaming over the free, broad plains like herds of cattle. Whenever we knocked over any of these, it was very refreshing and soothing to the spirits to see the very men who but yesterday had declared ‘the nyama was not food’ fling down their loads and quarrel violently over big chunks of that very article. As we neared the approaches to Machawe, we came upon a party of Masai women and donkeys, wending their way towards Sigarari with loads of vegetable food, which they had purchased at the former place or at Kibonoto. These were the first real Masai women we had seen. They were not such as to give us a very favorable idea of their sex in Sigarari. All were old and atrociously ugly, it being customary, for obvious reasons, to send the ancient dames of the clan on these food-purchasing expeditions, rather than the possessors of youth and beauty.

“Even though the Masai and their agricultural neighbors may be at war, and the men of either side would, if caught, be brutally speared, it is the custom to let the women pass back and forth unmolested to trade. Africans, even the Masai, who are supposed to be chiefly devoted to war and raiding for cattle, are above all else commercial in their instincts. It appears that, with all their savagery, choice scraps of wisdom are to be picked up among these people here and there. Who could imagine the armies of two European countries proceeding against each other while the trade across the frontier flourished unimpaired in the care of their women?

“We camped near a swamp, in which we found abundant signs of elephants, but saw none of them, and in the morning proceeded to Machawe. Machawe is the largest and most populous of the Kilimanjaro States, and, with its neighbor, Kibonoto, occupies the western extremity of the cultivatable plateau that distinguishes the mountain on its southern slopes. Though the largest, it is the least known to Europeans, and so we looked forward to a novel and interesting visit to its Sultan and people.

“The approaches to Machawe consist of the usual narrow, tortuous paths, leading through dense thickets of scrubby and thorny vegetation, and instead of gates the defenses by this route are deep, narrow ravines, which have been trimmed down and deepened into big trenches. A pole thrown across one of these ditches forms a bridge, which the natives, sure of foot as monkeys, cross over and, in times of war, remove.

“Crossing these obstacles with no little difficulty, we at once found ourselves in the proximity of banana groves, and objects of more than usual interest to swarms of bronze-skinned warriors who had in a remarkably short time collected on the adjacent ridges. We wondered where they had all come from so quickly. They were by no means certain of our intentions, and for some time held aloof, watching us with the keenest interest. At length we managed to make them understand that our intentions were commercial only, and a few of the more venturesome individuals came and pointed out a place for us to camp. After much talkee-talkee with an ancient and exceedingly peaceful-looking savage in a greasy goat-skin toga and anklets of the same material, we sent off a present to the Sultan and stated our intention of paying him a visit next day.

“Our delegation was hospitably entertained by the chief, with a goat and big jars of pombe, but the men were kept in the royal boma until our appearance next day; this as a guarantee, so we afterwards understood, that we would keep our promise and come to see him. He was most anxious to receive us, and particularly requested that the entire caravan might be brought to his residence.

“We had no idea how far it was nor how difficult might be the way. It turned out to be up hill and down dale for many trying miles, through banana plantations of astonishing area and across clear, cold mountain streams that nearly swept us off our feet.

“The country was lovely, a chaotic jumble of narrow hills and dales and the whole sloping gently up towards Kibo and clothed with luxuriant vegetation of every shade of green. Everywhere could be heard the music of mountain streams coursing over rocky beds at the bottom of the cañons or leaping and tumbling over cataracts or down rapids. Between the banana plantations stood little patches of primeval forest, and about them, so characteristic of Chaga, were the charming little parks we have noted in Marangu. The groves are believed to be peopled with the shades of their ancestors, and native offerings are placed before the trees. Troops of big reddish baboons also make the groves and the little parks their homes.

“Irrigating ditches were everywhere, and narrow lanes of dracæna hedges divided the plantations. At length we came to a halt on a strip of sward, at the brink of a formidable cañon several hundred feet deep, down which coursed one of the largest streams we had yet encountered. Our guides wanted to conduct us across this, but we had grown tired of the interminable slippery paths and the ascending and descending steep ravines, and so decided to form camp on this extremely interesting spot. No more charming situation could be imagined. Five hundred feet below us a torrent, clear as crystal, cold and fresh from the glaciers of Kibo, tumbled and foamed over the rocks or raced along with gurgling tones. Immediately beyond the chasm a broad table-land of parks and groves and banana plantations stretched away with a slope of one in twenty. The variegated shades of green in the irregular patchwork of forest, park and field, made a most delightful study in colors. Nor was this all nature had to show our wondering eyes in Machawe. Hundreds of warriors, with spear and shield, their naked forms the only dark objects in the landscape, showed out in bold contrast and picturesque relief against the green ground-work of their surroundings as they stood and squatted in dense groups or stretched in long, irregular lines along the opposite brink of the cañon. Beyond all this was a dense mass of cloud that rested on the farther reaches of the green table-land and hid almost the whole of Kilimanjaro. But not all, for the higher strata of the clouds sometimes broke and revealed the eternal wreath of snow on Kibo, at whose very base we now seemed to be standing. Some day an artist will come and paint this picture I have feebly attempted to describe and make himself famous.

“Our first impression of the Sultan, or chief, was not very favorable. He was a young man of medium stature, under thirty, but he looked like a drunkard and debauchee and a decided expression of brutishness marked his face. His voice was thick and husky, but whether from extreme indulgence in pombe, or from an attack of laryngitis, was not then apparent. There was, however, small room for doubt about his being a constant worshiper at the shrines of the twin deities, before which every chief in Chaga, and well-nigh everyone in Africa, bows the knee. But whatever he might ordinarily be, he seemed determined to make as good an impression as he knew how upon his rare visitors, and before we left Machawe we voted him, notwithstanding first impressions, a very good sort of a fellow.

“Knowing that we had visited Miljali and intended visiting Mandara, both of whom were to the native mind possessed of many wondrous things from Europe, the Sultan of Machawe, ashamed of his poverty, seemed reluctant to take us inside his boma. He seemed bewildered and over-awed by the importance of the occasion. Anxious to do anything he could think of to please his visitors, he and all his elders were too ignorant of the white man’s character and requirements to know just what to do. The whole assembly appeared to be in a profound puzzle. We, on our part, made him the customary present of cloth, beads and wire. We showed him his own bloated features for the first time in a mirror, and amazed him with the ticking of a Waterbury watch. After much discussion among themselves, he and his elders seemed to make up their minds that the proper thing would be to take us into the royal boma, poverty or no poverty. The boma itself was a poor affair. It consisted of a small stockade of planks set on end, which had been laboriously hewn from big logs with native tools. Inside the stockade were several houses of very neat construction and of a pattern that is peculiar to Machawe. Instead of the bee-hive houses of Marangu and Taveta, the Machawe hut is of an exaggerated bell-shape.

“Just outside this boma was an inclosure of quite another sort——the kraal in which were kept the royal cattle. This was a remarkable affair, and strong enough to be a pretty good sort of a fort. Young trees had been planted in a ring to form a fence. They were planted in such numbers, and so close together, that as they grew up, they formed a living wall of tree trunks several feet thick, and so compact that one could not see through it.

“To our astonishment the king’s boma seemed to contain no women, a most extraordinary state of affairs, and when we asked the question as to the number of wives he had——always a complimentary piece of curiosity at an African court——he smiled and shook his head.

“‘What, none!——why. Miljali, of Marangu, has fourteen, and Mandara, of Moschi, many more than that.’

“Our looks of surprise and incredulity set the chief and all his elders to laughing. There was evidently a ‘nigger in the fence’ somewhere. This full-blown, sensuous-faced young potentate without a harem? Impossible. And then one of us remembered that, contrary to our experience elsewhere in the country, the fair sex in Machawe had kept themselves well out of sight as our caravan passed their houses. They were too timid and superstitious to let themselves be seen by the white strangers, who might, for all they knew, take it into their heads to assail them with their mysterious powers of ichawi (black magic) which everybody knew they possessed to an alarming degree. The Sultan had wives, then——a goodly number, no doubt——but all had scampered off and hid themselves at our approach, fearful of ichawi.

“Bacchus seemed to have rather the upper hand at Ngamini’s primitive court. I doubt if anything weaker than millet pombe is ever drunk inside the royal boma. During our visit that beverage flowed as freely as beer in a brewery. A huge jar of it was lugged in and placed in the middle of the assembly, and men ladled it out and passed around the gourds continually.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us