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.
[Illustration: MUNDOMES AND HUTS.]
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.
[Illustration: NATIVE GRASS HOUSE ON THE CONGO.]
“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.
[Illustration: SOME OF BISHOP TAYLOR’S MISSIONARIES. 1: REV. B. F.
KEPHART, St. Paul, Minn. 2: MRS. KEPHART. 3: AGNES MCALLISTER, Troy,
Ohio. 4: BARBARA MILLARD, Hemmingford, Quebec. 5: EDDY H. GREELY,
Fostoria, Ohio. 6: GEORGINA DEAN, Des Moines, Iowa. 7: CLARA BINKLEY,
Bristol, Ontario. 8: K. VAL. ECKMAN, Fulda, Minn. 9: ROBT. C. GRIFFITH,
Gotland, Sweden.]
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.
[Illustration: GARAWAY MISSION HOUSE.]
“(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.
[Illustration: MAP OF ANGOLA.]
“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.
[Illustration: STEAM WAGONS FOR HAULING AT VIVI.]
“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.
[Illustration: REED DANCE BY MOONLIGHT.]
“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?