SpainClaimsMorocco.France“Morocco.Spain“Opposite the Canaries.France“French Senegambia.Britain“British Senegambia.Portugal“Portuguese Senegambia.Britain“Sierra Leone.Liberia“A Republic.France“The Gold Coast.England“The Gold Coast.France“Dahomey.England“Niger.Germany“Cameroons.France“French Congo.Portugal“Portuguese Congo.InternationalCommissionPortuguese The Congo Free State.Portugal“Angola.Portugal“Benguela.Germany“Angra Pequena.England“Walvisch Bay.Germany“Orange River.England“Cape of Good Hope.
Some of these claims are old, some new; some are confirmed, some vapid; some are direct political claims, some indirect, as where a protectorate only exists, and the real power is vested in a trading company, as in the British West African Company, with powers to occupy and develop the Niger country.
Passing to the east coast of Africa we find the entanglement still worse. There are pretty well defined ownerships beyond the Trans-vaal, then comes Portugal’s general claim of the Zambesi, Mozambique and Delagoa Bay, interfered with and overlapped by England and Germany. North of this, the Sultan of Zanzibar, who claimed sovereignty indefinitely north, south and west, has been cramped into a few island spaces along the coast, and graciously permitted to retain the Island of Zanzibar, because no person can live on it except Arabs and natives. Germany extends a protectorate and the country back of Zanzibar, and inland indefinitely, though England is by her side with a similar claim, and taking care that such protectorate shall be as nominal as possible and shall not interfere with her claims upon the lake sections. Italy claims all between the German possessions and Abyssinia and has even invaded that State. These claims are made under the veneering of trading companies, whose acquired rights, vague as they may be, the parent country is bound to back up. Not one of them have well defined metes and bounds for operations. All are confused and confusing, and liable to provoke misunderstanding and blood-shed atany moment, and the consequent disgrace of our boasted civilization, in the eyes of all simple minded Africans at least.
As a sample of the latest methods of land acquisition in Africa, and the consequences, one has but to study the recent bout between England and Portugal. The latter country claims the Delagoa Bay section, Mozambique and the Zambesi, indefinitely inland, and this though her rule has been limited to two or three isolated spots. On the Zambesi she established two or three trading and missionary stations which were used for a long time, but gradually fell into disuse. There is no dispute about her claims to the Zambesi section, though the Zulus south of the river do not recognize allegiance to her. The Zambesi, to a point five miles above the mouth of the Shiré, was declared a free river by the Berlin conference, so that there can be no dispute about that. So, there is no disposition to interfere with her claims to Mozambique or Delagoa, except as to their western boundary. To permit her to extend her claim to these territories westward till they met the boundaries of the Congo Free State, would be to give her possession of the Shiré River, Lake Shirwah and Lake Nyassa. Now starting at the Ruo affluent of the Shiré, England claims the entire Nyassa section, both by right of discovery—Livingstone discovered the lake—and occupation. Its non-native people are British subjects. She may not have taken the precaution to acquire rights of the natives by treaties, but neither has Portugal. Portugal never expanded, so to speak, beyond the coast on the line of the Zambesi, never did anything for the natives, and is charged with conniving with the slave trade. On the contrary, the established church of Scotland has many missionaries, teachers and agents in the Shiré Highlands. The Free Church of Scotland has several missionaries, teachers and artisans on Lake Nyassa. The Universities Mission has a steamer on the lake and several missionary agents. The African Lakes Company, chartered in England, has steamers on the Shiré river and Lake Nyassa, with twelve trading stations, manned by twenty-five agents. British capital invested in Nyassaland will equal $1,000,000. In his “Title Deeds to Nyassaland,” Rev. Horace Waller says: “Dotted here and there, from the mangrove swamps of the Kongone mouth of the Zambesi to the farthest extremity ofLake Nyassa, we pass the graves of naval officers, of brave ladies, of a missionary bishop, of clergymen, of foreign representatives, doctors, scientific men, engineers and mechanics. All these were our countrymen. They lie in glorious graves. Their careers have been foundation stones, and already the edifice rises. British mission stations are working at high pressure on the Shiré Highlands and upon the shores of Nyassa. Numbers of native Christians owe their knowledge of the common faith to their efforts. Scores of future chiefs are being instructed in schools spread over hundreds of miles. Commerce is developing by sure and steady steps. A vigorous company is showing to the tribes and nations that there are more valuable commodities in their country than their sons and daughters.”
In view of all these things, and perhaps spurred to activity by them, Portugal, following the fashion of England, organized a South African Company with the intention of consolidating her African possessions, by operating from the east coast, with a base at Delagoa Bay, Mozambique and the mouth of the Zambesi. The announcement, lately made, that Mapoonda, chief of the natives in the Shiré River District—the Shiré River flows into the Zambesi from the north, and is the outlet of Lake Nyassa—had accepted Portuguese sovereignty, was a distinctive victory for the Portuguese in their contest with the British for the control of that section of the Dark Continent. In July, 1889, Mr. H. H. Johnston, an experienced African traveller and naturalist, and British consul at Mozambique, took passage with several British naval officers on a gunboat, which went up the Chinde mouth of the Zambesi and entered the Shiré river. At a point 100 miles north of its mouth, where the Ruo enters the Shiré, Consul Johnston on the 12th of August “performed the significant act of hoisting the British flag at the Ruo station, henceforth marking the limit of Portuguese authority.” This was intended to close Portugal out of Lake Nyassa, the extreme southern point of which is 150 miles north of Ruo. By securing Mapoonda, however, Portugal took actual possession of the territory immediately to the south of Lake Nyassa. The English expedition in going up the river passed Major Serpa Pinto, the Portuguese leader, with a force of about 700 Zulus underhis command. Serpa Pinto was on his way to take possession of Nyassaland. Consul Johnston protested, and assured him that, if he persisted in his purpose, he would bring about a rupture between Portugal and England. Serpa Pinto finally promised to turn back, but as soon as Consul Johnston had moved forward the Portuguese commander resumed his march to Lake Nyassa, and when he reached Mapoonda, which commands the southern entrance to the lake, threw up fortifications there and began preparations for a battle with the neighboring Makololo, in which the latter were routed with great slaughter. This battle appears to have been decisive, and to have led the native chiefs to transfer their nominal allegiance from the British to the Portuguese with alarming rapidity. By securing Mapoonda as an ally, the Portuguese cut off England’s communications with Lake Nyassa via the Zambesi and Shiré rivers, and precipitated the crisis which was threatened by the recent Portuguese proclamation which assumed to annex the whole Zambesi region.
This controversy which has already ended in the defeat of Portuguese designs, and which could have ended in no other way, because England is the stronger and more rapacious power, brings into play all the old arguments respecting colonial ambitions and enterprises. It will be remembered that for nearly two hundred years after the discovery of America, the European powers were a unit over the doctrine that first discovery gave a title to the discoverer. But when Great Britain awoke to the fact that this doctrine, if rigidly applied, would virtually dispossess her of American soil, notwithstanding the additional fact that she was proving to be the best permanent colonizer in Europe, she originated the new doctrine that actual possession of and settlement in a newly discovered country created a higher title than that of first discovery. This was a safe doctrine to adopt respecting America, for even then the English grip was now so strong as to be unshakable, and it was equally safe as to any other British claim, for the ocean supremacy of France, Spain and Portugal, her real rivals, was on the wane and hers was on the increase.
So now, notwithstanding the claim of Portugal to her territory on both the African coasts, by right of discovery, England does nothesitate to enter the Nyassa and Shiré region, hoist her flag and claim the rights of sovereignty, on the ground that she is the first permanent occupant. The fact that she has tangible interests to protect—invested property, missions etc., serves to strengthen her attitude with other European powers. But aside from this she does not intend to let Portugal establish a permanent possession clear across Africa from the Atlantic, at Angola and Benguella, to the mouth of the Zambesi. Such a possession would simply cut the continent in two, and erect a barrier on the east coast to that union of the British African possessions which her foreign diplomacy designs. Moreover, it is fully settled in the mind of Great Britain that the Nile water-way and its extensions through Lakes Albert and Edward Nyanza, Tanganyika, Nyassa, and the Shiré and Zambesi rivers, are hers, even if force has to be applied to make them actually hers.
But it must be said on behalf of Portugal, that she is not resting her rights on the ancient fiction of discovery alone. Her occupancy of the Zambesi region has, of late, become quite distinct and her vested rights have assumed impressive proportions. The management of her affairs are in the hands of Major Alberto da Rocha Serpa Pinto, whose exertions have greatly strengthened the Portuguese claims. His achievements in the way of African exploration give him high rank as a traveler, explorer, scientist and organizer. He was born in 1845 and educated for the Portuguese military service. In 1869 he first went to Africa, where he took part in the campaign against the rebellious chief Bonga, in the region of the Zambesi. He acquitted himself with distinction on the field of battle, and acquired wide repute as an explorer, by ascending the river as far as the Victoria Falls, making many important discoveries on the way, and crossing the African continent from one side to the other.
Upon his return to Portugal, Serpa Pinto was received personally by the King, who was first to greet him when entering the harbor; Lisbon and Oporto were brilliantly illuminated in his honor, and he received many honors and marks of distinction from the sovereign and public bodies.
In November, 1877, Serpa Pinto was again sent to Africa by thePortuguese Government and the Lisbon Geographical Society in conjunction. He organized a force of fourteen soldiers and fifty-seven carriers, and, starting from Benguella, he penetrated to the interior, traversing the districts of Dombe, Guillenguez, and Caconda, reaching Bihé in March of the following year. He was finally laid low with fever and carried by his faithful followers to the coast. Two of his subordinates, Brito Capello and Ivens, who have since become eminent as explorers, left the expedition in the interior, journeying to the northward to explore the river Quanza, while Serpa Pinto went to the eastward. On his return to Lisbon he was received with evidences of great esteem by the King, and was the object of popular adulation in all quarters. He described the sources of four great rivers heretofore unknown. His discovery of the river Coando, navigable for 600 miles and flowing into the Zambesi, alone placed Major Pinto in the rank of the great African explorers. After remaining in Portugal a few years, Serpa Pinto again returned to Africa, where he has since remained. In 1884, he made another extended journey of exploration, the results of which fully entitled him to the title of the Portuguese Stanley.
Following his discoveries the Portuguese have built a short railroad inland from Delagoa, and have established a system of steam navigation on the Zambesi and Shiré rivers, and opened a large and prosperous trading establishment. The activity recently displayed by the British in southeast Africa has led them to push forward their advantages and seize everything they can lay their hands on while the opportunity offers.
Commenting on this situation the LondonTimescalls it “Major Serpa Pinto’s gross outrage on humanity and intolerable affront to England,” to which an American paper very appropriately replies:—
“Nothing would suit the English better than to have some excuse for wrenching away from little Portugal her possessions on the Dark Continent. England has played the cuckoo so many times with impunity that now it is believed a quickened public conscience will call a halt.
“The merits of this particular case will hardly exert much influence in determining the fate of Portugal in Africa. Left to themselves, England would dispossess Portugal in the twinkling of aneye, for if Turkey is the sick man of Eastern Europe, Portugal is the national personification of senility in the West. Four or five hundred years ago it was the foremost nation of Europe in point of commercial enterprise. The ships of Portugal were the most adventuresome of any that ploughed the ocean. As long ago as 1419 a bold Portuguese tar, Zarco, skirted along Western Africa, far below the Equator, and later, Vasco de Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope. Like Columbus, he sought the most direct route to India, and what the Genoese missed he found. The country which England is now impatiently eager to steal from Portugal is a part of the reward of that enterprise which revolutionized Oriental trade, and was second in importance to the world only to the discovery of America. It was as if both sought a silver mine, and the one who failed to find what they were after came upon a gold mine. Portugal may not have made very much use of her discovery for herself and her people, but mankind has been immeasurably benefited, and England incalculably enriched. For the latter to now turn around and rob Portugal of her African possessions, in whole or in part, would be poetic injustice. It would be the old fable over again of the farmer who warmed a snake in his bosom only to be bitten by it.”
AFRICAN METHODIST CONFERENCE, 1888.1: Bishop Wm. Taylor. 2: Chas. A. Pitman. 3: Jas. H. Deputie. 4: H. B. Capeheart. 5: Jas. W. Draper. 6: Riding Boyce. 7: A. L. Sims. 8: Gabriel W. Parker. 9: J. E. Clarke. 10: Anthony H. Watson. 11: Edwd. Brumskine. 12: Jno. W. Early. 13: J. Wood (L. P.). 14: Josiah Artis. 15: A. S. Norton (?) L. P. 16: Dan’l Ware. 17: C. B. McLain. 18: Jos. W. Bonner. 19: Wm. P. Kennedy, Jr. 20: Benj. K. McKeever. 21: Benj. J. Turner. 22: Frank C. Holderness. 23: Wm. T. Hagar. 24: Jas. W. Cooper. 25: Thos. A. Sims.Larger.
It is not alone as a commercial, scientific and political field that Africa attracts attention. No country presents stronger claims on the attention of Christian philanthropists. The Arabs entered Africa as propagandists of Islamism. The Portuguese advent was signalized by the founding of Catholic missions. When they arrived off the mouth of the Congo, in 1490, the native king, “seated on a chair of ivory, raised on a platform, dressed in glossy, highly colored skins and feathers, with a fine head-dress made of palm fibre, gave permission to the strangers to settle in his dominions, to build a church, and to propagate the Christian religion. The King himself and all his Chiefs were forthwith baptised, and the fullest scope was allowed to the Roman Catholic missionaries who accompanied the expedition to prosecute their appointed work.”
Thus runs an old chronicle. It is valuable as showing the antiquity of Christian interest in Africa, as well as showing the fine opportunity then presented for introducing the gospel into benighted lands. We say fine opportunity, because Portugal was then a power, able and willing to second every effort of the church, and the church itself was well equipped for missionary work. Its zeal was untiring. Its formula was calculated to impress the African mind. The regalia of its priesthood was captivating. Its music was pleasing and inspiring. But the sequel proved that something was wrong. The priesthood laboured arduously, establishing missions, baptizing the natives by the thousand, adapting their ceremonies and processions to heathen rites and superstitions. The process was not that of lifting pagan souls to a high Christian level, so much as alowering of Christian principles to a heathen level. Then the church was too dependent on, too intimate with, the state. Even Portuguese historians admit that physical force was frequently employed to bring the natives more completely under the will of the priests. The accounts given of some of the floggings which took place, both of males and female, would be alternately shocking and ludicrous, but for the fact that they were associated with the propagation of religion. Also, both church and state countenanced the crime of slavery, and fattened on the infernal traffic. The ultimate result of such a system might have been easily foreseen. After a long career of so-called missionary success, during which hundreds of mission stations were founded on the entire western and on a great part of the eastern coast of Africa, and many even far inland, the priests fell under the jealousy of the chiefs, clashed with them respecting polygamy and various other customs, and were finally forced back with the receding wave of European influence, when the power of Portugal began to wane. Within one hundred years of the above described arrival of the Portuguese missionaries off the mouth of the Congo, no trace of the labors of Catholic missionaries could be found and no tradition among the natives that they had ever been there. The finest mission stations elsewhere had fallen into ruins, and only those remained which were near ports of entry and fortified commercial points.
It may be truthfully said that missionary work in Africa lay as if dead till the spirit of African discovery was revived in England by the formation of the British African Association, in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Even its first pioneers were not missionaries, but rather explorers in a commercial and scientific sense. They were, however, philanthropic Christian men, and the problem of evangelizing Africa was ever present in their minds. Among them were Leyard, Major Houghton, Mungo Park who met his death on the Upper Niger, Frederic Horeman, Mr. Nicholls, Prof. Roentgen, Mr. James Riley, Captain Tuckey who manned the first Congo expedition in 1816, Captain Gray and Major Laing, Richie and Lyon, Denham and Clapperton who pierced Bornou and visited Lake Tchad, Laing and Caillié whose glowing descriptions of Timbuctoo were read with delight.
These were followed at a later period by Richard and John Lander who really solved the problem of the Niger, and by Laird and Oldfield and Coulthurst and Davidson. Now came a time, 1841, when broader sympathies were enlisted. An expedition was organized under the direction and at the expense of the British Government which was not merely to explore the interior of the vast Continent, promote the interests of art and science, but check the slave trade, introduce legitimate commerce, advance civilization and social improvement, and thus prepare the way for the introduction of Christianity. For this purpose, treaties were to be formed with native princes, agriculture was to be encouraged, and Christian missions were to be established. Two missionaries went along, Rev. Messrs. Muller and Schon. The expedition began the ascent of the river Niger, but was soon forced to return. Failure was written over the enterprise, and the cause was the deadly climate, which had been too little studied in advance. African enterprise in the north again fell back on pioneering exploits, and we have the splendid researches of Barth, Krapf and Rebman in 1849, and in 1857 those still more brilliant efforts of Burton and Speke, who entered the continent from Zanzibar, on the east, and brought to light the mystery of Victoria Nyanza and Tanganyika. Following these came Baker, and then the immortal Livingstone, who united the pioneer and the missionary.
Livingstone entered Africa in 1840, under the auspices of the London Missionary Society, and founded a missionary station at Kolobeng, South Africa, 200 miles north of the Moffat station at Kuruman. He married Rev. Robert Moffat’s daughter, and was thus doubly fortified for missionary work. He labored earnestly and faithfully in his field till driven by the hostility of the Boers to provide himself another mission further north and beyond the great Kalahari desert. After suffering untold hardships in his trip across the desert, he discovered Lake Ngami, decided that it would be a good base for further missionary work, and then returned for his wife. A third time he crossed the desert, which had been regarded as impassable, and this time with his family. It was the year 1851. He reached the river Chobe after a hard struggle, his animals having perished under the bites of the poisonous tsetse fly. Here he enteredthe kingdom of Sebituane, the renowned warrior, whose favor he had previously secured. But that chieftain had died, and his successor detained Livingstone for a time. When a permit was obtained to go where he pleased, he pushed on 130 miles to Sesheke, and thence to the Zambesi, in the center of the continent, in the country of the famed Macololos. But finding the country too unhealthy for a permanent mission, he returned to Cape Town, whence he planned and carried to success a journey back to the Zambezi, and westward, through the Macololos and other tribes, to Loanda in Angola, quite across the continent. This was in 1852. This journey came about because, when at Cape Town, he learned of the total destruction of his parent mission station at Kolobeng by the Boers. This left him without a pastoral charge, but it proved a turning point in his life. Henceforth the field of adventure and exploration was his, and he easily became the most noted of African travelers, till Stanley established for himself a greater fame. What the Church lost a whole world gained. His further travels, how he lost and buried his faithful wife on the banks of the Shiré, his own sad death in the swamps of Lake Bangweola, the return of his dead body to Zanzibar, borne by his faithful servants Chuma and Susi, have all been described elsewhere in this volume.
The recent advance of the Portuguese toward the head-waters of the Zambesi, and their reduction of the Macololo territory to a Portuguese possession, together with the complications with other ambitious nations of Europe, likely to grow out of it, bring that strange Central African people again into prominence. The region was made known, in olden times, by the Portuguese traveler, Silva Porto, who described it as fertile, and the people as of divided tribes. But Livingstone describes the section as the empire of the Macololos, and gives many glowing descriptions of the people, their rulers, products and possessions. He was well received by them, liked their country, and left a profound impression among them, for Major Serpa Pinto, in his visit many years afterwards, found Livingstone’s name mentioned everywhere among the then detached and demoralized tribes with respect.
CHUMA AND SUSI.
KING LOBOSSI.
According to Livingstone, the powerful Basuto tribe, south of the Zambesi, crossed to the north side under the lead of their chief,Chibitano, and reduced the numerous tribes who inhabited the vast stretches of country as far as the river Cuando. Chibitano gave to his army, formed of different elements, and to his conquered peoples, made up of a variety of origins, the name of Cololos, hence the word Macololos, so well known throughout Africa. This powerful warrior and legislator held his conquered tribes as brethren in one common interest till his death, when they began to set up independent empires. In this disintegration the Luinas, under King Lobossi, came to the front, and are yet the most powerful of the Macololos. Pinto says that the Macololo empire is now composed of a mongrel crew—Calabares, Luinas, Ganguellas, and Macalacas—all given to drunkenness and moral brutishness. They are polygamous and deep in the slave traffic. Their country—200 miles long and over 50 wide—is full of villages and fine plantations. The Luina herdscover the plains of the upper Zambesi, and no finer cattle are to be found in Africa. Lakes abound, and while they contribute to malarial diseases, they give a rich variety of fish. The men do not take readily to farming, but the women are wonderful milkmaids and vegetable raisers. As a people, they are skillful iron-workers and wood-carvers, and expert at pottery work. They cultivate tobacco for snuff, but smoke onlybangue. They dress fuller and better than most Central African people, and some of their garbs are quite fantastic.
Prof. Henry Drummond, of Glasgow, in a lecture on “The Heart of Africa,” gives a vivid description of the perils which beset missionary life in the Zambesi regions:
As his boat swept along the beautiful lake Nyassa, he noticed in the distance a few white objects on the shore. On closer inspection, they were found to be wattle and daub houses, built in English style and whitewashed. Heading his boat for the shore, he landed and began to examine what seemed to be the home of a little English colony. The first house he entered gave evidence of recent occupancy, everything being in excellent order; but no human form was to be seen or human voice to be heard. The stillness of death reigned. He entered the school-house. The benches and desks were there, as if school had been but recently dismissed; but neither teachers nor scholars were to be seen. In the blacksmith shop the anvil and hammer stood ready for service, and it seemed as if the fire had just gone out upon the hearth; but no blacksmith could be found. Pushing his investigations a little further, he came upon four or five graves. These little mounds told the whole story and explained the desolation he had seen. Within them reposed the precious dust of some of the missionaries of Livingstonia, who one by one had fallen at their post, victims of the terrible African fever. Livingstonia was Scotland’s answer in part to the challenge which Henry M. Stanley gave to the Christian world to send missionaries to eastern equatorial Africa. When that intrepid explorer, after untold hardship, had found David Livingstone, and during months of close companionship had felt the power of that consecrated life, he blew the trumpet with no uncertain sound to rouse the church to her privilege and responsibility in central Africa. But it was nottill the death of the great missionary explorer, that the land which gave him birth resolved to send a little army of occupation to the region which he had opened to the Christian world. On the 18th of January, 1875, at a public meeting held in the city of Glasgow, the Free, the Reformed, and the United Presbyterian churches of Scotland founded a mission, to be called Livingstonia, and which was to be located in the region of Lake Nyassa, the most southern of the three great lakes of central Africa, with a coast of eight hundred miles. Although founded by the churches just named, it was understood that it was to be regarded as a Free Church mission, the others co-operating with men and means as opportunity offered or necessity required.
The choice of location was most appropriate, not only because Dr. Livingstone had discovered that beautiful sheet of water, but because he had requested the Free Church to plant a mission on its shores. The first company of missionaries, which included also representatives of the Established Church, who were to found a separate mission in the lake region, after immense toil and severe hardship, reached the lake,viathe Zambesi and Shiré rivers, October 12th, 1875. They selected a site near Cape Maclear as their first settlement, and as soon as possible put into operation the various parts of the mission work they had been commissioned to prosecute—industrial, educational, medical and evangelistic. From the first the mission met with encouraging success, becoming not only a center of gospel light to that benighted region, but also a city of refuge to which the wretched natives fled to escape the inhuman cruelties of the slave traders. As the years rolled on, however, it was found necessary to remove the main work of the mission to a more healthful region on the lake—hence the desolation seen by Prof. Drummond—the work at Cape Maclear being now mainly evangelistic and carried on by native converts. The mission still lives and comprises four stations, one of which is situated on the Stevenson Road, a road constructed at a cost of $20,000 by an English philanthropist, and intended to promote communication between Lakes Nyassa and Tanganyika.
After this diversion, forced upon the reader by reason of Livingstone’s dual missionary and pioneering work, we turn again to thenorth of Africa, and to historic Egypt. Comparatively little has been done in this land by Christendom for the evangelization of its degraded population. Wesleyan missionaries were stationed at Alexandria in the early part of the century, but the field proved unpropitious and they were removed to a more promising sphere of labor. Even the Church of England, now most in favor there, has not achieved much in the way of Christianizing the people. Perhaps the American United Presbyterians have been most successful in this uninviting field. They have several missionaries there, numerous lay agents, over a score of stations and schools, and quite a following of converts and pupils. The Khedive has granted them toleration and valuable concessions. The Church of Scotland sustains one mission and several prosperous schools at Cairo, in Egypt.
In Nubia, the Mohammedan religion is so firmly fixed, that missionary effort has been almost entirely discouraged.
The Abyssinians boast of their relationship to King Solomon, resulting from the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Jerusalem. They also claim to have received their Christianity from its fountain head in Judæa, on the return of the Ethiopian eunuch to the Court of Queen Candace, after his conversion to the faith of the Gospel by Philip, the Evangelist. Whatever truth there may be in these traditions, it is a fact that the religion of the country is a species of Christianity, combined with certain Judaic observances, as circumcision, abstinence from meat, keeping of Saturday as the Sabbath, and also with many Catholic forms, as reverence for the Virgin, the calendar of saints, etc. As a missionary field the Catholics were the first to enter Abyssinia in 1620, and they succeeded in persuading the king to declare Catholicism to be the religion of the State. This bold step, however, occasioned civil wars which ended in their expulsion from the country. Jesuit missionaries from France came later, but they were also banished.
The Church of England Missionary Society in 1829 sent out two missionaries. Others followed, but little was accomplished. The well known German missionary, Herr Flad, has accomplished quite a work in recent times. The defeat and murder of the Abyssinian king was one of the sad events of 1888. It followed successfulinvasions of the country and the slaughter and enslavement of large numbers of Abyssinians in 1885 and 1886 by the Mahdists, and their defeat by King John in 1887. Herr Flad transmitted a letter to the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society from Christian Abyssinians, which is a most earnest and pathetic appeal for help from their fellow Christians and such help as will prevent their enslavement and the entire desolation of their country. Very pertinently these people, whose liberties and lives are in such imminent danger, inquire of Christians in other lands, after depicting the desolation of their own, the selling of thousands of people into slavery, and the cruel butchery of other thousands, “Why should fanatic and brutal Moslems be allowed to turn a Christian land like Abyssinia into a desert, and to extirpate Christianity from Ethiopia?” They close with this earnest plea: “For Christ’s sake make known our sad lot to our brethren and sisters in Christian lands, who fear God and love the brethren.” While Abyssinian Christianity may not be without spot, Abyssinians are God’s men and women.
Later missionary letters to the London Anti-Slavery Society say that the Mahdists have made Western Abyssinia a desert. Whole flocks and herds have been destroyed, thousands of Christians have been thrown into slavery, thousands of others have been butchered, and hundreds of the noblest inhabitants have been taken to Mecca as slaves in violation of treaties.
The English gunboat Osprey recently captured three cargoes of slaves off the island of Perim, which guards the Aden entrance to the Red Sea. When brought to the Admiralty Court at Aden they proved to be about 217 in number, chiefly Abyssinian boys and girls from 10 to 20 years of age, captured by the fierce Mohammedan Gallas, and run across to Mocha to be sold to the Mohammedans. The Foreign Missionary Committee in Scotland appeal for a special Rescued Slaves’ Fund for the support and Bible education of these captives.
In Barca, Tripoli, Fezzan, Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco, known as the Barbary States, owing to the exclusive character of the Moslem faith, all missionary effort for the evangelization of the general population has been precluded until recently. A note fromEdward H. Slenny, secretary of the North Africa Mission, says Jan. 26, 1889: “I have just returned from visiting most of the missionaries connected within the North Africa Mission in Morocco, Algeria and Tunis. The prospect among the Mohammedans is encouraging and we are hoping to send out more laborers. There are now forty-one on our staff, and two more leave us in a week. We are now proposing to take up work among the Europeans as well as the Mohammedans, and also establish a station in Tripoli, which is quite without the Gospel.”
Algeria was occupied in some measure in 1881, Morocco in 1884, Tunis in 1885 and in 1889. Mr. Michell, who has been working in Tunis, accompanied by Mr. Harding, who left England February 1, landed in Tripoli the 27th. Thus far they are getting on well. They find the people more bigoted than in Tunis. Besides the work they may be able to do in the city and neighborhood, they will be able to send some Scriptures by the caravans leaving for the Soudan which, with the blessing of God, will spread the light around Lake Tchad.
A correspondent ofThe Christian, (London) writing from Gibraltar, says: “We have had very cheering news from Morocco. A wonderful work has sprung up among the Spanish and Jewish people of Tangier. Meetings, commenced two or three months ago, have been held in Spanish, addressed through an interpreter by some brethren of the North African Mission, and there has been an intense eagerness to hear the truth. The Holy Spirit has carried home the Gospel message with conviction to many hearts, and a few days ago the brethren informed me that seventeen Jewish and Spanish converts were baptized, and others were waiting for baptism. The meetings have been crowded night after night, so much so that the friends in Tangier contemplate hiring a music-hall, at present used for midnight revelry and sin. This revival has aroused the enmity of both rabbi and priest, consequently bitter persecution has followed. Several Jewish inquirers have been beaten in the synagogue, converts have been dismissed from their employment, and the priests have offered bribes and made threats to the Spanish converts to induce them to cease attending the meetings, but so far the converts are holding firm.”
E. F. Baldwin is meeting with great success in Morocco. He writes from Tangier:
“We have had great encouragement in the work here. For some two months we have had nightly meetings for inquirers and young converts, attended by from ten to twenty. Many have received Christ as their personal Saviour and have been at once baptized. For some weeks most of my time was occupied from morning until night talking with interested ones who visited me, and daily there would be natives in my room much of the time. At times conversions occurred daily. All of them are brought out of Mohammedan darkness. They all renounce that false religion formally at their baptism. Almost all are young men, some of good position, but most of them from among the poor. There is not one who has not prayed and spoken in our meetings from the day of his conversion.
“Two of the earliest converts are in the mountains traveling on foot without purse, scrip or pay, preaching in both Arabic and Shillah. They have been away now several weeks. Others, whose faces we have never seen, have been converted in distant places through one from here, and write us of many others believing through their word. We have reason to believe the Gospel has taken root in several places in Southern Morocco within these few weeks. Two others of our number are arranging to start at once to preach in another direction. Mr. Martain and I are also leaving as soon as we can get away, and will travel also as Christ commanded, on foot and without purse or scrip.”
Later he writes from Mogador: “For upwards of a year new accessions have been constant, and every one baptized has renounced Mohammedanism. For a time the work was seemingly much hindered by severe persecution, imprisonment, beating, disowning, banishment—these are all too familiar to the converts here in Southern Morocco. But when it was impossible to work longer here in Mogador we travelled and preached, going literally on the methods laid down in MatthewX, which we hold with, we find, increasing numbers of God’s children, to be of perpetual obligation. We have found them to contain the deep and matchless wisdom of God for missionary effort. Several others besides myself, includingrecently converted natives, are so travelling. The natives knowing no other methods, have gone gladly forth, without purse or scrip, on foot, taking nothing, and marvellous blessing in the way of conversion has followed the step of their simple faith. They go with no thought of pay or salary. The Father makes their simple needs His care. My own position as an unattached missionary, dependent only on God for temporal supplies (which, blessed be His name, He ceaselessly supplies), enables one to consistently instruct these native Christians in the principles and methods of Mathew x, and encourage them to go forth upon them.
“It is to this return to these first principles of mission work I attribute the constant flow of blessing we are having, and which is so exceptional in Mohammedan fields. I earnestly recommend them to others who may have the faith and are so circumstanced as to practice them. I say this without any reflection upon the more ordinary and accepted lines of mission endeavor. The field is vast and the need great, and by all and every means let the Gospel be preached.
“Just now the vigilance of our persecutors and adversaries has somewhat relaxed, and our frequent meetings (sixteen in Arabic and eight in English per week,) are well attended and we are cheered by more conversions. Several are just presenting themselves for baptism. Last night one of the most intelligent and best educated Moors I have ever met, publicly confessed Christ for the first time—both speaking and praying (as all the native Christians do from the hour of their conversion) in our meeting before many witnesses. He is one of the few ‘honorable’ ones who have been won. We trust he may become a veritable Paul. He was some months since arrested and thrown into prison on the suspicion of being a Christian, which at that time he was not. His feet, like Joseph’s, ‘they hurt with fetters,’ the scars of which he will never cease to carry. Poor fellow! He was then without the comfort that comes to a child of God in affliction, and yet enduring reproach for Christ. But God blessed his dreary sojourn in prison to his soul, and it contributed to his conversion.
“Some from among the few resident Europeans and from amongthe Jews also have turned to the Lord and confessed Him in baptism.
“Tidings from different places in the interior, where the word of life has been carried from here, tell us of many turning from Mohammed’s cold, hard, false faith, to the love and light the Gospel brings them. May not all this encourage the zeal and faith of scattered workers toiling in these hard Moslem fields?
“Some new workers, all committed to MathewXlives, have just joined us. There are now six of us here, all men of course, with our lives given up to toil for Christ under his primitive instructions. A band is forming in Ayrshire, Scotland, of others who will come to us soon, we trust. Others in different places are greatly interested. We hope to have many natives together here in the summer months for training in the Word, that they may afterwards go forth two by two, without purse or scrip.”
Alfred S. Lamb writes as follows:
“Within four days’ journey of Britain one may land on African soil and find a large field—almost untouched—for Christian labor among the natives of Algeria, the Kabyles. Visiting recently among these people, and making known to them, for the first time, the glad tidings of salvation, I was much struck with the attention given to the message. Doubtless the novelty of an Englishman speaking to them in their own unwritten language, and delivering such a message as a free salvation without works, was sufficient of itself to call forth such attention. Seated one evening in a Kabyle house, I was greatly delighted with the readiness to listen to the Gospel. The wonderful story of the resurrection of Lazarus was being read, when my host announced that supper was ready, and when I liked I could have it brought up. Having expressed a desire to finish the narrative, the little company of Mohammedans continued to give the utmost attention to the words read and spoken. Supper ended, the conversation was renewed. One of our company, an honorable Marabout or religious Mohammedan, who, because of having made a pilgrimage to Mecca, was called Elhadj, entertained us while he read from an Arabian tract. The man showed us, with evident pride, a book in Arabic (I presume a portion of Scripture,) given him two years ago in Algiersby a Christian English lady who was distributing tracts among the people. Frequently during that evening’s conversation, my statements were met by the words, ‘You are right,’ ‘Truly.’ That night I had two sharing the sleeping apartment with me. Having seen me bow the knee in prayer, one of them asked me afterward if I had been praying. Replying that I had, he added, ‘May God answer your prayer!’”
The north of Africa, so long neglected by the missionaries, seems now to share in the interest that has been awakened in the whole continent.
WEST AFRICAN MUSSULMAN.
We come now to the west coast. Western Africa is divided into numerous petty States, in all of which the most degrading superstition and idolatry, with their usual concomitants of lawlessness and cruelty, are the outstanding features. The entire population was no doubt pagan at no very remote period; but in modern times the religion of Mohammed has extensively prevailed, having been jealously propagated with fire and sword by northern tribes of Arab descent. But there is not so much difference between the Mohammedanism and paganism of the negroes as many suppose. The distinction is rather nominal than real, so far as the moral conduct of the people is concerned. All profess to believe in the existence of God, if a confused notion of a higher power may be so designated; but all are entirely ignorant of the character and claims of the Divine Being, and exceedingly superstitious. The African Mussulman repeats the prayers, and observes the feasts and ceremonies prescribed in the Koran, but he has quite as much, if not more faith, in his charms and amulets, or greegrees.
Paganism in West Africa is known by the name of “fetishism.” It assumes different forms in the various tribes. It is to a large extent a system of devil worship, in connection with which the belief in witchcraft plays an important part. Not only are the deities themselves called “fetishes,” but the religious performances of acts of worship, and the offerings presented are also spoken of as “fetish,” or sacred, because they are performed and offered in honor of those deities. In the daily household worship, in every domestic and public emergency, in seasons of public calamity, when preparing for and engaged in war, in the taking of oaths, at births and deaths and funerals, and, indeed in connection with every event in life, the “fetish” superstition holds the people in the most slavish, degrading, and cruel bondage. When a death occurs a solemn assembly is held in a palaver house to inquire into its cause; and as witchcraft is the one often assigned it results in death to some unfortunate individual suspected of the crime.
To be suspected of witchcraft is the worst thing that can overtake a man or woman in Africa, and at every death it is the priests’ business to make out who has been the cause of the death. On such occasions a brother, sister, father, nay, in many cases even a mother, may be accused of the unnatural crime of having occasioned the death of their dearest. Against such a charge there exists no defense. Free room has been left to the priesthood for the execution of its malicious plottings and selfish designs, as they mostly are. It is hard to say which men dread the most, the effects of witchcraft or being themselves accused of practicing it. People avoid with the utmost carefulness and solicitude every look, every word, every act, which is in the slightest measure open to misinterpretation. If any one is seriously ill, care is taken not to be too cheerful, lest it should appear as if one was rejoicing over the expected decease. But, again, one does not dare to seem too solicitous, lest it should be surmised that he is concealing his guilt under a mantle of hypocrisy. And yet, with all these precautions, one is never secure. If such a suspicion has once been uttered against any one, neither age, nor rank, nor even known nobility of character defends him from the necessity of submitting to the ordeal of poison, the issue of which is held infallible.
The people through belief in this doctrine, are the victims of the priests and priestesses—the “fetish” men and women—who constitute a large class. The most incredible atrocities resulting from this belief form one of the darkest chapters in the history of this dark land.
Some of the superstitious rites and ceremonies of the negro race partake more of the nature of open idolatry than any of those which have yet been mentioned. For instance, they pay homage to certain lakes, rivers and mountains, which they regard as sacred, believing them to be the special dwelling places of the gods. They also adore various animals and reptiles, which they believe to be animated by the spirits of their departed ancestors. In some places large serpents are kept and fed, in houses set apart for the purpose, by the “fetish” priests. To these ugly creatures sacrifices are presented and divine homage is paid by the people at stated periods—a liberal present being always brought for the officiating priest on all such occasions.
The ruling people of the Niger delta, at Bross, New Calabar, Bonny and Opobo, are the Ijos. Every community of them had formerly its “totem,” or sacred animal, in whose species the ancestral Spirit of the tribe was supposed to dwell. So profound was this belief that the English traders in the Oil River region—the Oil Rivers embrace the tributaries of the Niger, and are so called in general because the commerce in palm-oil is large upon them—were forbidden to kill the sacred lizard of Bonny, and the more sacred python of Bross. One agent of a large trading firm at Bross found a python in his house and inconsiderately killed it. On learning of it, the Bross natives destroyed the firm’s factory and store, dragged the agent to the beach and inflicted indignities on him. The British consul considered the case, but such was the sentiment against the sacrilegious conduct of the agent, that the consul, as a matter of trade polity, was forced to decide that redress was impossible, in as much as he had brought the punishment on himself.
This “totem” worship made the monster lizard at Bonny a nuisance. They grew in number and impudence, till it was nothing unusual to see their six feet of slimy length stretched across paths and upon doorways, and to feel the lash of their serrated tailson your legs as you passed along. If one were wounded or killed, there was no end of trouble, for the irate natives were sure to carry the case to the consul on board ship, where they secured the judgment of a fine, or else taking the law into their own hands, they insulted, or assaulted the slayer till their anger was appeased.
In other parts of the delta, a shark became the tribe “totem,” or a crocodile, or water-bird, but in no part was Zoölatry—animal worship—carried to a greater extent than at Bonny and Bross, where the lizard and python were favorites. In 1884, the Church Missionary Society took the matter in hand, and finally succeeded in doing what consuls and the war-ships had failed to accomplish. The society screwed the courage of the native converts up to the sticking point and finally proclaimed the destruction of the lizards in Bonny on one Easter Sunday morning. Men and boys, armed with hatchets and sticks went about killing the ugly beasts, and so complete was their work that the day ended with their extermination. But the sickening smell which pervaded the air for days, came near producing a pestilence. It was a hard blow to native superstitions, but the riddance soon came to be acquiesced in. A change equally abrupt put an end to the python worship at Bross, and so there has been of late years, a gradual giving up of this “totem” observance among the Niger tribes, thanks to missionary rather than commercial enterprise.
Here, surely, if anywhere on the face of the earth, the Gospel, with its enlightening, purifying, and ennobling influence, was needed. What then has been done to carry it to these degraded people, and what have been the results of missionary labor among them? Take a glance first at Sierra Leone, as it was the earliest visited by the missionaries. It is situated in the southern part of Senegambia. It has an area of 319 square miles, and a population of over 80,000, nearly all blacks. Formerly it was one of the chief emporiums of the slave trade. In 1797 the British African Company purchased land from the native princes with the view of forming a settlement for the emancipated negroes who had served in British ships during the American Revolution, and who on the conclusion of peace were found in London in a most miserable condition. In 1808 this land was transferred to the British Crown, additional tracts of countrybeing subsequently acquired. The colony has since served as an asylum for the wretched victims rescued from the holds of slave ships.
The history of missionary enterprise, in this land of sickness and death, is a chequered one. Colonial chaplains were appointed at different times, from the beginning, to minister to the government functionaries and others; but owing to frequent deaths and absences from illness, the office was often vacant. The first effort of a purely missionary character for the benefit of West Africa was made by the Baptist Missionary Society in 1795. Efforts of other societies followed in rapid succession; but it was not until after the commencement of the present century, when the Church and Wesleyan Missionary Societies undertook the work of evangelization in Western Africa, that the cause took a permanent and progressive form.
The Church Missionary Society in 1804 sent out to Sierra Leone Mr. Renner, a German, and Mr. Hartwig, a Prussian, to instruct the people in a knowledge of Divine things. In 1806 Messrs. Nylander, Butscher, and Prasse—all of whom had been trained at the Berlin Missionary Seminary, and ordained according to the rites of the Lutheran church—embarked at Liverpool to strengthen the mission. In 1816 Wm. A. B. Johnson went out as a schoolmaster to this colony. “He was a plain German laborer, having but a very limited common-school education and no marked intellectual qualifications, but he was trained in the school of Christ and was a good man, full of faith and of the Holy Spirit. It became obvious that he was called of God to preach the Gospel, and he was ordained in Africa. His period of service was brief, but marvelous in interest and power, and he raised up a native church of great value. Into the midst of these indolent, vicious, violent savages he went. He found them devil worshipers, and at first was very much disheartened. But though William Johnson distrusted himself, he had faith in Christ and his Gospel. Like Paul, he resolved to preach the simple Gospel, holding up the cross, show them plainly what the Bible says of the guilt of sin, the need of holiness, and the awful account of the Judgment Day. He simply preached the Gospel and left results with God, confident that his Word would not return tohim void. For nearly a year he pursued this course. And he observed that over that apparently hopeless community a rapid and radical change was coming. Old and young began to show deep anxiety for their spiritual state and yearning for newness of life. If he went for a walk in the woods, he stumbled over little groups of awakened men and women and children, who had sought there a place to pour out their hearts to God in prayer; if he went abroad on moonlight evenings, he found the hills round about the settlement echoing with the praises of those who found salvation in Christ, and were singing hymns of deliverance. His record of the simple experiences of these converts has preserved their own crude, broken, but pathetically expressive story of the Lord’s dealings with them, and the very words in which they told of the work of grace within them. No reader could but be impressed with their deep sense of sin, their appreciation of grace, their distrust of themselves and their faith in God, their humble resolves, their tenderness of conscience, their love for the unsaved about them, and their insight into the vital truth of redemption.”
The improvement in the appearance and habits and social condition of the people that followed was nothing short of a transformation. Their chapel was five times enlarged to accommodate the ever increasing numbers who attended. “Seventy years ago, if you had gone to what was afterward known as the Regent’s Town, you would have found people, taken at different times from the holds of slave-ships, in the extreme of poverty and misery, destitution and degradation. They were as naked and as wild as beasts. They represented twenty-two hostile nations or tribes, strangers to each other’s language, and having no medium of communication, save a little broken English. They had no conception of a pure home, they were crowded together in the rudest and filthiest huts, and, in place of marriage, lived in a promiscuous intercourse that was worse than concubinage. Lazy, bestial, strangers to God, they had not only defaced his image, but well-nigh effaced even the image of humanity, and combined all the worst conditions of the most brutal, savage life, plundering and destroying one another. Here it pleased God to make a test of his grace in its uplifting and redeeming power.”
When Johnson was under the necessity of leaving for England, hundreds of both sexes accompanied him a distance of five miles to the ship and wept bitter tears at the thought of being separated from their best earthly friend. “Massa, suppose no water live here, we go with you all the way, till no feet more move.”
Similar success attended the work at other stations, so that we find Sir Charles M’Arthy, the governor, reporting in 1821 as follows in regard to the villages of these recaptured negroes: “They had all the appearance and regularity of the neatest village in England, with a church, a school, and a commodious residence for the missionaries and teachers, though in 1817 they had not been more than thought of.” In 1842 a committee of the House of Commons thus testified to the state of the colony. “To the invaluable exertions of the Church Missionary Society more especially—as also, to a considerable, as in all our African settlement, to the Wesleyan body—the highest praise is due. By their efforts nearly one-fifth of the whole population—a most unusually high proportion in any country—are at school; and the effects are visible in considerable intellectual, moral and religious improvement.”
The bishopric of Sierra Leone was founded in 1851, and some idea may be formed of the trying nature of the climate from the fact that no fewer than three bishops died within three years of their consecration. In 1862 the Native Church having been organized on an independent basis, undertook the support of its own pastors, churches, and schools, aided by a small grant from the society.
In a work entitled “The English Church in Other Lands,” it is stated that “in the first twenty years of the existence of the mission, 53 missionaries, men and women, died at their post;” but these losses seemed to draw out new zeal, and neither then, nor at any subsequent period, has there been much difficulty in filling up the ranks of the Sierra Leone Mission, or of the others established on the same coast. The first three bishops—Vidal, Weeks and Bowen—died within eight years of the creation of the See, and yet there has been no difficulty in keeping up the succession.
The present results are a sufficient reward for all the self-sacrificing devotion. There is now at Sierra Leone a self-sustaining andself-extending African church. The only white clergyman in the colony is Bishop Ingram; the whole of the pastoral work being in the hands of native clergymen. Many native missionaries, both clerical and lay, have been furnished for the Niger and Yoruba missions.
An outline of the proceedings of the Wesleyan Missionary Society in this part of the wide field may be compressed into a few sentences. Among the negroes who were conveyed from Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone in 1791, there were several who had become partially enlightened and otherwise benefited by attending services of the Methodist ministers in America. Some of these having made repeated applications to Dr. Coke for preachers of their own denomination to be sent from England, in the year 1811 the society responded to their request by the appointment of the Rev. G. Warren as their first missionary to Western Africa. He was accompanied by three English schoolmasters. They found about a hundred of the Nova Scotia settlers who called themselves “Methodists.” These simple minded people had built a rude chapel in which they were in the habit of meeting together to worship God from Sabbath to Sabbath, a few of the most intelligent among them conducting the services and instructing the rest according to the best of their ability. They received the missionary from England with the liveliest demonstrations of gratitude and joy; and to them, as well as to the poor afflicted liberated Africans, who were from time to time rescued from bondage by British cruisers and brought to Sierra Leone, his earnest ministrations were greatly blessed. But the missionary career of Mr. Warren was of short duration. He was smitten with fever and finished his course about eight months after his arrival—being the first of a large number of Wesleyan missionaries who have fallen a sacrifice to the climate of Western Africa since the commencement of the work. Other devoted missionaries followed who counted not their lives dear unto them if they could only be made instrumental in winning souls for Christ. No sooner did the intelligence arrive in England that missionaries and their wives had fallen in the holy strife, than others nobly volunteered their services, and went forth in the spirit of self-sacrifice—in many instances to share the same fate. This has been going on for threequarters of a century; and although the mortality among the agents of the society is appalling to contemplate, the social, moral, and spiritual results of the mission are grand beyond description. Congregations have been gathered, places of worship erected, native churches organized, and Christian schools established, not only in Free Town, but in most of the villages and towns in the colony. High schools have, moreover, been established for the training of native teachers and preachers, and to give a superior education to both males and females. The advancement of the people, most of whom have been rescued from slavery, in religious knowledge, general intelligence, moral conduct, and, indeed, in everything which goes to constitute genuine Christian civilization, is literally astonishing. In addition to the Church and Wesleyan Missionary Societies, who took the lead in the work of religious instruction in Sierra Leone, other agencies have been advantageously employed. The census of 1881 showed 39,000 evangelical Christians, about equally divided between the Wesleyans and the Church of England. Some reports give the nominal Christian population as high as 80,000.
In the Gambia district the inhabitants on both sides of the river are chiefly Mandingoes and Jalloffs, most of whom are Mohammedans, with a few pagans here and there. A large number of “liberated Africans,” as they are technically called, have, however, been brought to the Gambia from time to time, and located on St. Mary’s and McCarthy’s islands and in the neighboring districts, as thousands before had been taken to Sierra Leone. These are poor negro slaves of different nations and tribes who have been rescued from bondage, and landed from slave ships taken by British cruisers while in the act of pursuing their unlawful trade.