Iye.Iye.
Another day there was a great uproar. Twins had come to a slave woman, called Iye, about five miles off. Ma met her in the forest carrying the infants in a box on her head, a howling mob of men and women hounding her on. They had destroyed all her property and torn up her clothes. Ma took the box, because no one would touch it, and helped the poor mother along to the Mission House. They could not go by the usual path, as the villagers would not have used it afterwards, so they hadto wait in the hot sun until another lane was cut.
The boy twin was dead, but the girl was alive, and with care became plump and strong. She was a bonnie child with a fair skin and sweet ways, and she became the pet of the household. Ma called her Susie, after her elder sister, and loved her as much as if she had been her own. Even the mother, after she got well and went away, sometimes came back to see her, and was proud of her good looks.
Fourteen months passed. One day Janie went upstairs to put a child to sleep, and asked Mana, one of the girls, to look after Susie, as she was full of play and mischief. Mana took her, and while getting the tea ready, placed a jug of boiling water on the floor for a moment. Susie, babylike, seized it and spilt the water over her bare body. She was dreadfully scalded. Ma was frantic, and for a fortnight scarcely let her out of her arms. Often the child smiled up in her face and held up her wee hand to be kissed. Ma at last carried her down to Creek Town, and woke up the doctor there at midnight in the hope that something more could be done. But the shock and wounds had been too severe, and when Ma got back the bright life of the queen of the household flickered and went out.
Ma's grief was pitiful, and made even the people wonder. "See how she loved her," they said one to another. They came and mourned with her,and stood by at the burial. Susie was robed in white, with her own string of beads round her neck, and a white flower in her hand.
It was very lonesome for Ma afterwards. "My heart aches for my darling," she wrote. "Oh, the empty place and the silence and the vain longing for the sweet voice and the soft caress and the funny ways. Oh, Susie! Susie!"
Her heart went out towards Iye, the slave mother, and by and by she bought her for £10 and made her free, and she remained in the Mission House, a faithful worker, and a great help to Ma and those who came after her.
All the stories of Ma's adventures with twins cannot be told, because she had to do with hundreds of them, but this is one which shows what she had often to go through.
One afternoon when she was busy teaching in the school, a message was thrown suddenly at her from the door.
"Ma! come, twins."
"Where?" she asked.
"Twelve miles away in the bush, and the mother is very ill."
Ma went to the door and looked up. "There is going to be a storm," she said, "and I have a sickly baby to look after and night will soon be here, but—come along, Janie, we'll go."
Darkness fell ere they reached the spot, and thestars were hidden behind clouds, and they could hardly see a yard in front.
They found the woman lying unconscious on the ground. One of the infants was dead, and Janie dug a hole and buried it. Ma ordered the husband and his slave to make a stretcher, which they did very unwillingly. Then she placed the woman on it and bade them carry her. Still more unwillingly, and grumbling all the time—for they dreaded to touch a twin-mother—they obeyed. Janie lifted the living twin, and all set forth by the light of a piece of fire-stick glowing at the end. This went out, and they stumbled along in the dense darkness. At last they stopped. They had lost themselves. The men laid down their burden and went off to grope for a trail, and Ma and Janie were alone in the eerie forest with the moaning form at their feet.
"Oh, Ma, they may not come back," cried Janie.
"Well, my lassie, we'll just bide where we are until morning."
A shining ghostly thing leapt about in the darkness. Janie's heart went to her mouth. But it was only the men back with a torch made of palm tassel and oil which they had got from a hut. They went on again.
When the Mission yard was reached the men were so tired that they fell down and went to sleep at once. Ma, too, was tired, but her work was notdone. She got a hammer and nails and some sheets of iron and knocked up a little lean-to, in which she put the woman and nursed her back to consciousness, and fed and comforted her. Then, utterly worn out, she just lay down where she was in her soiled and damp clothes, and fell sound asleep.
The baby died next day, and the mother grew worse, and there was no hope. She was sore in spirit as well as in body, and sorrowed for her fate and the loss of her husband's love. Ma soothed her, and told her she was going to a better world, where no one would be angry with her for being a twin-mother.
When she passed away the people would not touch or come near her, and so Ma did all that was needful herself, and placed her in a coffin, and then the husband and his slave bore her away and buried her in a lonely spot in the bush.
Poor twin-mothers of Africa!
Though Ma did not save very many of the twin-children that passed through her hands, she did a great work by making the people realise how foolish and sinful a thing it was to be afraid of them and kill them.
The household had grown and grown. We know about Janie and Mary, both trickified and bright little maidens. Then there was Mana, a faithful and affectionate lassie. One day, in her owncountry, she had gone to the spring for water, and was seized by two men and brought to Okoyong and sold to Eme Ete, who gave her to Ma. Wee Annie was there also, very shy and timid, but a good nurse. Her parents had stolen and eaten a dog in the bush, and there was much trouble, and the mother died, and Annie would have been buried in the grave had not Ma taken her. Six other boys and girls with sad stories also lived in the Mission House, so that Ma often felt she was like the old woman who lived in a shoe, and who had so many children she didn't know what to do.
It was not easy for her to keep in stock the food and medicine and clothes that were needed for the family, and sometimes she would run out of things. Once, when she was short of tins of milk, she strapped a baby on her back and tramped down the forest trail to Creek Town, got what she wanted, and patiently tramped back again.
Another time she was watching some women who were imprisoned within a stockade and were going to be killed, and as she could not leave the place Janie handed her cups of tea through the fence. Suddenly a tornado came on and flooded the Mission House and soaked all the clothes. Ma herself was wet to the skin. To add to her trouble Janie came and said, "Ma, we have no milk, and the baby is crying for some."
"Well, Janie, I'll just have to trot to CreekTown for it. I'll get some dry clothes too. Put the baby in a basket."
Slipping out in the darkness, and taking a woman to help to carry the baby, she set forth. They lost their way in the rain, and wandered hither and thither, and only reached the town at the dawning of the day. Ma roused one of the ladies of the Mission, obtained the milk and a change of clothes, and lay down for a little sleep. Hearing that she had come, King Eyo got his canoe ready, and sent her back by the river. Her absence from the stockade had not been noticed, and she was able later to settle the trouble without bloodshed.
There were plenty of merry days in the home-life of Ekenge. Wherever girls are gathered together there is sure to be fun and laughter, and Ma had always the heart and will of a girl for jokes and mischief. She could not take her bairns into lighted streets or gay shops, or to places of amusement, for there was none of these things in the bush, but sometimes she gave them a holiday, and a special tea, and gifts. Perhaps, however, the most delightful treat they had was when a box arrived from across the sea.
All over Scotland loving hearts were thinking of Ma, and loving hands were working for her; and clothing, books, pictures, and knick-knacks were being collected and packed in boxes and sent out addressed to her in Okoyong. The Sunday Schoolchildren also had their thoughts on the Mission, and gave their pennies and halfpennies to it just as Ma herself had done when a little girl. About this time they gathered up enough money to build a steel steamer for use on the inland rivers and creeks, and it was now plying up and down, carrying mails and parcels and missionaries. It was called theDavid Williamson, after a minister of the Church who visited Calabar, but the natives named it theSmoking Canoe.
The David Williamson.TheDavid Williamson.
You can imagine the excitement at the Mission House at Ekenge when a half-naked messenger, his dark body perspiring and glistening in the sun, appeared, and cried:
"Ma, theSmoking Canoeis at the beach."
"Ho-ho! gifts from Makara land," sang half a dozen throats. "Oh, Ma, when can we go? Let us go now."
Ma was as excited as the rest, so off went men, women, and children, streaming along the path to the river, where theDavid Williamsonlay.
As the boxes were usually too heavy to be carried, they were opened up on the beach and the contents made into parcels. These the natives balanced on their heads and went off, a long file of them, through the forest to Ekenge.
Sometimes it needed a second and a third journey before all the goods were together again.
What a delight it was to Ma to open the packages! What cries of rapture came from the children and the people looking on as they saw all the things that were to them so wonderful and beautiful.
There were print garments by the dozens, woollen articles, caps, scarves, handkerchiefs, towels, ribbons and braids, thimbles, needles and pins, beads, buttons, reels, spoons, knives, scrap-books, picture-books and cards, texts, pens, and a host of other things. It was almost with awe that the women touched the pretty baby-clothes, and the men clapped their hands as Ma held up a blue or scarlet gown or jacket.
The dolls were looked upon as gods, and Ma would not give them away in case they were worshipped: she kept the prettily dressed ones to teach the women and girls how clothes were made and how they were worn. Some common things, which children at home would not value, they treasured. When Janie was handed a penwiper, "Oh, Ma," she said reproachfully, "wipe a dirty pen with that? No, no." And she put it up on the wall as an ornament!
One old woman was given a copy of the picture "The Light of the World." "Oh," she cried in joy, "I shall never be lonely any more!"
If you had watched Ma closely when she was opening the packages, you would have seen that she was seeking for something with a quick and impatient eye. When at last she found what she wanted she gave a shout of triumph. Tins of home-made toffee and chocolate! They were always there, for every one knew she liked sweets. When at home she used to ask that these might be sent out, because the bush bairns were fond of them, but her friends just laughed in her face. "Miss Slessor," they would say, "you can eat as many as the bairns!" "Of course I can," she confessed.
After the children had looked at all the gifts Ma would tell them where they came from, and would kneel down and thank Jesus for putting it into the hearts of the givers in Scotland to care for His forlorn black folk in Africa.
Then Ma said, "Away to bed, bairns. But oh, hasn't it been grand? It's just been like a birthday. Many happy returns!"
Ma did not give all the things away. A brilliant gown might go to the chief as a gift—and he would sit proudly in Court with it and be admired and envied by all,—or a flannelette garment to some poor and aged woman to keep her warm during the shivery fog season; but as a rule Ma liked the people to work for what they got, or to pay something for them. Thus she taught them to want clothesand other things, and showed them how to get them, and in this way she was a real Empire builder. She used to say that there was no truer or more successful Empire maker than the missionary.
Opening one of the Boxes from Scotland.Opening one of the Boxes from Scotland.
Ma's House at Akpap.Ma's House at Akpap.
How the Queen of Okoyong brought a high British official to talk to the people; how she left her nice home and went to live in a little shed; how she buried a chief at midnight; how she took four black girls to Scotland, and afterwards spent three very lonely years in the forest.
How the Queen of Okoyong brought a high British official to talk to the people; how she left her nice home and went to live in a little shed; how she buried a chief at midnight; how she took four black girls to Scotland, and afterwards spent three very lonely years in the forest.
The tribes in some of the out-of-the-way places were apt to forget that British law was now the law of the land, and go back to the old habits that were so deep-rooted in their nature. Ma often threatened that she would have to make them feel the power that stood behind her. Once, when the land of a widow was stolen, she asked the people whether they would have the case judged by God's law or by the Consul and a gun? After a while they said, "Iko Abasi—God's word."
Ma opened her Bible and read: "Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour's landmark—that is God's law"; and the land was returned to the woman.
Then a chief died, and the blame was laid on one who was innocent. As a tornado was blowing, Ma could not visit the district, but she sent a message:
"I'll come and see about it when the rain goes off."
"Oh, yes," the people grumbled, "and when she comes she won't allow us to give the prisoners the bean. Let us take away the man and hide him."
And they hurried him to a spot deep in the forest beyond her reach.
Ma was vexed, and she was ill and tired. "I am not going to hunt for them this time," she said quietly. "They must learn to obey the law, and I will give them a lesson."
So she wrote to the Government at Duke Town, asking them to send up some one to deal with the matter, and she took the letter herself to the beach, and dispatched it by a special canoe.
Nothing can be hidden in negroland, and the news of what she had done soon reached the disobedient people. They came out of the forest in as great a hurry as they went in, and rushed to the Mission House.
"Where is Ma? We want Ma."
"Ma," said Janie crossly, "is away for the Consul. I hope he will bring a big gun with him. It's time. You are killing her with your silly ways."
They went back sorrowful and alarmed, for abig gun meant ruined homes and crops, and many arrests, and imprisonment down at the coast. When they saw Ma later, they begged her to ask the Consul to come with thoughts of peace and not of war.
"Good," she replied, "and we shall have a proper big palaver about all your bad customs."
When the Government official with his guard of soldiers arrived, he was amused to find the Queen of Okoyong sitting bareheaded on the roof of her house repairing a leak. She came down, and they had a palaver with the chiefs and people, who promised not to do any more killing at funerals, and not to murder twins.
Ma shrugged her shoulders. "They will promise anything," she told the officials. "I'll have to keep a close eye on them all the same."
She did; and as they broke their word she brought up the Consul-General himself, Sir Claude Macdonald. He spoke kindly, but firmly, to the chiefs.
"The laws are made for your good and safety and peace, and if you do not obey them you will be punished."
They agreed to all he said. "Sir, when words are spoken once, we don't mind them; but when they are spoken twice, we obey."
Ma also addressed them, telling of the blessings that would follow obedience, and of the quiet andhappy days they would enjoy long after she had gone.
"Ma! Ma!" they cried in alarm, "you must not leave us! You are our Mother, and we are your children. God must not take you from us until we are able to walk by ourselves."
After that things were better, though Ma's life did not grow less hard. Indeed, it was more stirring than ever. For various reasons her people were leaving their huts and building new ones at a place called Akpap, and Ma had to shut up the Mission and go with them.
The only house she could find to live in was a little shed like a two-stalled stable, or one of the sheep-houses you see on the Scottish hills, with a mud floor and no windows. But she did not mind. She always thought of her Master, who had not a place to lay His head. So she put her boxes in one end, and in the other she lived and slept with the children.
It was a grand play-ground for rats, lizards, ants, beetles, and other jumping and creeping things. At night the rats ran over Ma, and played hide-and-seek in the roof. Once, when Mr. Ovens arrived to do some carpentry work, he went to wash himself in the shed. In the dimness he felt what he thought was a sponge floating in the basin, and saying Ma was surely getting dainty, he used it for his face, only to find that it was a drowned rat!
From this lowly hut, as from a palace, Ma continued to rule Okoyong.
Soon a strange disease seized her new lot of babies, and four died from it. Then smallpox, that dreadful scourge, swept through the land, and so many of her people were carried off that they lay unburied in their huts. Ma was busy from dawn till dark, and often from dark again till dawn, vaccinating the well ones, and nursing the ill and the dying.
To her great grief her old friend, Chief Edem, caught the disease. In spite of his faults, which, after all, were the faults of his African upbringing, he had been very good to her, and she was grateful for all he had done. When she reached his hut at Ekenge there was no one with him, for as soon as a man or a woman was stricken all others fled. She fought the disease through long weary hours, but was not able to save him, and he died in the middle of the night. Tired as she was, and weak from lack of sleep, and alone, she felt that she could not let him lie like that. Going out she got some wood and made a coffin. Then in the darkness she dug a grave and buried him. There was no dancing and drinking and killing as this chief of Okoyong entered the spirit-land, only the faint noises of the forest, and the stillness of the starry sky, and a woman's mute prayer. When all was done she dragged her wearied body back in the cool of the dewy dawn to Akpap.
Was it a wonder that she began to lose her strength? Fevers laid her low, and illnesses, due to lack of good food, weakened her. She could scarcely crawl about. Yet she would not give in, and bravely drudged away at her work. At last the other missionaries said, "Ma, if you don't go home, you will die." She did not want to die: she wanted to live, and do much more for Jesus. "If," she said, "a holiday will help me, I will go. But what shall I do with my girls? I cannot leave Janie, Mary, Alice, and Maggie here. If I go I must take them with me."
Her friends were astonished.
"How can you take four black girls to Scotland, and you so ill, Ma? It is impossible."
"God can do impossible things," she replied in simple faith. "He will keep me and take care of them."
"What about your clothes?" they asked.
"We have none but the old things we have on: the ants have eaten up the rest. But God will provide what we need."
Sure enough, when they went to Duke Town a box arrived from a Glasgow church, and in it was all the nice warm clothing they required.
It was the same everywhere. Kindness fell on her like sunshine. At Liverpool she handed her purse to a railway porter, and he bought the tickets and fixed them up in a carriage. And at Edinburghthere was a faithful friend, Mrs. M'Crindle, on the platform, waiting to take the whole family to her home in Joppa.
"Isn't God good to me?" she often said, with a happy smile.
Alice, Mary, Maggie, Janie.Alice, Mary, Maggie, Janie.
The four African foundlings were stared at by the rosy-cheeked boys and girls, who, however, were kind to them when they heard their sad stories. None except Janie knew a word of English, but they were all clever, and soon picked it up, and Mary even went to school in Portobello.
After a happy time Ma took a house of her own at Seton Mill, where she got a glimpse of the sea, and here they all lived as in Africa, Janie being cook, and Ma going about often bare of foot and bare of head. But life in Scotland is not like what it is in the wilds of the Tropics, and Ma was sometimes found shivering over the fire. So a fairy godmother, in the shape of Miss Adam, a lady of the Church who loved her, carried them off to a lovely village in the south called Bowden, where they stayed all July and August.
A little girl named Happy Gray, who was staying with Miss Adam, grew very friendly with thechildren, and together they wandered through the fields and woods, gathering flowers and raspberries, or climbed the Eildon Hills. They taught Happy how to burst "cape gooseberries" on the back of her hand, and showed her that when they gathered nettles they did not feel any sting. With her they drove to Stitchel Manse, where they ate apple tarts in the summer-house, and also went to St. Mary's Loch, the four black faces being a wonder to all the people in the countryside.
After a time Ma left this haunt of peace to go and speak at meetings, for she was a famous person now, and every one was eager to see and hear the wonderful pioneer who lived alone amongst savages. She was very shy, and would not open her mouth if men were listening, and if any one began to praise her she would run away. It was always the work she spoke about, and the need for more women and girls to go out and help.
Once in Edinburgh she was coaxed to address a meeting in the Synod Hall. "I dinna ken how I'm to do it," she said to a friend. "You'll pray for me? Where will you sit?" Her friend said, "In the gallery." "I'll look for you, and ken you are praying, and that will help."
And, as usual, she spoke well. By and by many students of the Church College came creeping in under the gallery and listened, and she did not seem to mind, but appealed to them too, saying, "Thereare many students who are ready, and making ready, to serve Jesus, and to tell about Him, and they will be running after fine churches and good manses, but there are multitudes who have never heard of Jesus out yonder. And for His sake will they not come out and work for Him there?"
Sometimes she spoke of the good of prayer. "If you are ever inclined to pray for a missionary, do it at once, wherever you are," she said; "perhaps she may be in great peril at the moment. Once I had to deal with a crowd of warlike men in the compound, and I got strength to face them because I felt that some one was praying for me just then."
At another meeting, when Mary with her bright happy face was with her, she told the young people how to be real ladies and gentlemen. "It is not," she said, "the wearing of fine clothes, or the possession of great wealth, but having gentle manners and kind consideration for the feelings and happiness of others—not the giving of our money or the denying of ourselves of small luxuries to help the coming of the Kingdom, but the cheerful daily giving of ourselves for the good of others at home and abroad."
She was most at home with children, and at her best at the tea-table, or when she curled herself up on the rug in front of the fire. Then came fearsome stories that made them tremble—true stories of what she had seen and done in dark Okoyong.
"Oh, mother," the children would say when being tucked in bed, "how can Miss Slessor live alone like that with wild men and wild beasts and everything?"
"Ah," was the soft reply, "she does it because she loves Jesus, and wants to help Him. I wonder, now, if you could love Him as much as that?"
And the little minds in the little heads that were snuggling down amongst the comfy pillows also wondered.
Ma was a puzzle to the grown-ups, too, for they saw that she was not only very shy but very timid. Some small girls had more courage than she. She would not cross a field that had a cow in it: she was nervous in the streets, and usually got some one to take her across from side to side. She had not even the nerve to put up her hand to stop a car: she would take one only if it were standing. She shook when in a boat or sitting behind a fast horse.
Why was she afraid in this way? Just because these things happened to herself. In big things, where the cause of Jesus was in danger, or others were to be protected and saved from hurt, she forgot her own feelings, and thought only what was to be done, and was braver and stronger even than men. Her heart was so loving that she was willing to die in the service of Jesus. You remember what He said, "Greater love hath no man than this, thata man lay down his life for his friends." That was her kind of love—the kind which Jesus Himself had for the world, which made Him do so much for us, and which led Him at last to His awful agony on the Cross.
She should have stayed a year, but when the winter came on with grey, cold, weeping skies, she and the bairns missed the sunshine and heat. Ah! and she was always thinking of the work to be done in Africa. To her friends who pressed her to stay, she said, "If ye dinna send me back, I'll swim back. Do you no ken that away out there they're dying without Jesus?" So they set sail and spent Christmas Day at sea.
What a reception they got at Akpap! "Everything will be right now," the people said, "Ma is back." And once more she became the sovereign lady of Okoyong.
The next three years were the loneliest and worst she ever spent in the forest. She was never once down in Calabar, few white persons came to see her, and she had a big battle to fight with ill-health. There was not a day that she did not suffer weakness and pain: for whole nights she never slept, for months she was low with fever, and at times she believed she was going to die. Think what it must have been for her to lie there alone, tended only by her black girls. But she was never in the dumps. Somehow her spirit always managed to conquerher body, and she would struggle up and with a droll smile and a stout heart go on with her work. Nobody knew all she did in those years, for the story is hidden behind a veil of silence; only now and again we get a glimpse of her, lit up for a moment, as by a flash of lightning, and she is always bravely fighting for Jesus and the right, now hurrying to rescue twins and orphans, now sallying out to some village to put down the drinking, now travelling far to save life.
Ma mending the Roof on Sunday.Ma mending the Roof on Sunday.
When she was not doing these things she was busy about her own doors. She had now a new house with a room underneath, and here she taught the day-school and held services and Bible classes and preached on Sundays. And there were always the Court and the palavers and the dispensary and the building and repairing and cooking and digging and a hundred and one other duties. So absorbed, indeed, did she get in what she was doingthat often, as in the early days at home, she lost count of time. Sometimes she did not know what day of the week it was. Sundays had a habit of getting mixed up with other days. Once she was found holding her services on a Monday thinking it was Sunday, and again on a Sunday she was discovered on the roof hammering away in the belief that it was Monday.
She ruled with a firm but kindly hand. The hard and terrible times she had come through had changed her a little. She had still the old sweetness, but she could be stern, and even rough, with the people, and she often spoke to them in a way which a white man would not have dared to do. Those who were brought up to Court for harming women she punished severely. If any chief challenged what she said, she would take off the slipper she had put on as part of her simple Court dress, and slap him over the bare shoulder with it.
Yet she was never afraid. She went about alone by day and night, and never carried a weapon. She had no locks on her doors. Once a murderer was caught and nearly torn to pieces by the mob before he was chained and brought to Ma to be judged. She heard the evidence, and ordered him to be sent down to Duke Town for trial. Then she took off his irons, and sent away the guard, and bade him come into the house, where she sat down andtalked to him earnestly for a long time. He was a big man, violent and sullen, and he could easily have knocked her down and escaped into the woods. But he listened quietly, and allowed her to lead him to the room below, where she fastened him in for the night.
Only once in all the years she spent in Okoyong was she struck, and that was by accident. There was a quarrel and a fight, and she went into the press of excited men to stop them. One of the sticks hit her. A cry of horror arose:
"Ma is hurt! Our Ma is hurt!"
Both sides at once fell on the wretched man who held the stick, and began to beat him to death.
"Stop, stop!" Ma cried. "He did not mean to do it."
And it was only by using all her strength and forcing them back that she saved his life.
And so the years wore on, and the new century came. "A new century," said Ma, sitting dreaming in her lonely little house. "What will it hold? It will at least hold His loving kindness and care all the way through, and that is enough."
For fifteen long patient years Ma gave her life to Okoyong, and she had her reward, for it became a land of peace and order and good will, the bad old customs died away, and the people were slowly but surely becoming the disciples of Jesus.
It was a wonderful thing for a white woman tohave done alone, but Ma would not take any credit for it; she said it was no power of her own that had won her such a place in the heart of the wild people: it was the power of Jesus working in her and through her.Hewas the King of Okoyong, and she was only His humble servant-maid.
Janie.Janie.
The Lily-covered Enyong Creek.The Lily-covered Enyong Creek.
Tells of a country of mystery and a clever tribe who were slave-hunters and cannibals, and how they were fought and defeated by Government soldiers; how Ma went amongst them, sailing through fairyland, and how she began to bring them to the feet of Jesus.
Tells of a country of mystery and a clever tribe who were slave-hunters and cannibals, and how they were fought and defeated by Government soldiers; how Ma went amongst them, sailing through fairyland, and how she began to bring them to the feet of Jesus.
On some quiet summer day you may have been wandering through a country lane when you suddenly felt a whiff of perfume, fresh and sweet, and wondered where it could have come from. You looked about, but there was nothing save a tangle of green wood. You searched the hedges, and went down to the brown stream below the bridge and along its banks. The fragrance was still scenting the air, now strong, now faint, but you could not find its source. Then suddenly you came upon it—a sweetbriar bush, hidden away in a lonely and lowly spot.
Ma Slessor was like this modest briar bush. The influence of her goodness spread far and near, and the fame of her doings reached peoples who lived hundreds of miles away. They said to one another, "Let us go and see this wonderful White Mother"; and they left their villages and travelled through forests and across wide rivers and creeks, risking capture and death at the hands of hostile tribes, to seek her advice and help. Some of these visitors spoke languages Ma did not understand, and they had to talk to one another in signs. Chiefs in districts she had never heard of sent her messages: "Oh, Great White Mother, come and dwell with us, and we will be God-men." Escaped slaves from cannibal regions, who had been doomed to be eaten, fled to her for refuge. All received from her a kind welcome and food, and, best of all, had a talk about the Divine Chief who was to be the real Saviour of Africa.
There were other visitors to Okoyong she liked less, slave-dealers from beyond the Cross River, who brought women and girls to sell. A slow fire of rage had long been burning in Ma's heart against this cruel system, and sometimes it burst into fierce flame. She would hear a sound of bitter sobbing, and go out to see a string of naked little girls being driven forwards by a man carrying brass rods on his head—the money which the natives use. She would be so angry that she would shake her fist atthe trader and storm at him, but he would only grin and ask her which girl she wanted, and would then describe their good points just as if they had been so many fowls or goats. Sometimes there would be sick ones, or ones suffering from ill-treatment, and these the dealers would leave, and she would nurse them back to health, though she was always very unwilling to let them go again into the awful whirlpool of slave-life.
Map illustrating the Ibo, Okoyong, Ibibio and Efik regions and their relation to the Cross River
She knew many of the dealers quite well, and often had long talks with them about the mysterious country from which they came. Whitemen had not yet entered into the heart of it, but Ma learnt enough to be sure that it was a far more wicked place even than Okoyong had been. It was called Iboland, and one of the tribes, the Aros, were so cunning and clever that they had become a power over a vast region. It was they who were the slave-stealers, seeking their victims everywhere, and selling them in markets to the traders. One of their best hunting-grounds was Ibibio, the country to thesouth, where the natives were poor and naked and miserable, and lived in little settlements deep in the forest, because of their fear of the slave raiders.
The Way into the Juju Glen.The Way into the Juju Glen.
The Aros believed that they had a wonderfulchukuor juju—which means the god of the Aros—in a rocky gorge down which a stream flowed. At one spot there was a dark ravine and a pool overhung by trees and creepers. Here, amongst the white lilies, swam ugly cat-fish, with fierce-looking eyes, that were held to be sacred, and which it was death to catch. On a little island was a hut, guarded by priests, in which the juju was supposed to live. The people thought it could aid them in time of trouble, and came in great numbers to the shrine to ask advice and get their quarrels made up. Though the priests helped many in this way, they were cunning and greedy, and often acted very cruelly. They took the food and money whichthe visitors brought, and then said the juju wanted a living offering. So some poor man or woman was taken into the glen blindfolded, and the friends of the victim knew that the sacrifice was made by seeing the blood flowing past lower down.
Others who entered never came out again. The priests said they had been seized by the juju, and the blood-red river seemed to show this, but a dye had been thrown in to colour the water. These persons were taken far away in secret, and sold into slavery. Any that were not of much value were slain and eaten in the cannibal feasts.
Now that Ma's dream of conquering Okoyong had come true, she was dreaming other dreams, and the most fascinating of these was to go to this terrible cannibal country and put down the evil doings of the natives. She told the slave-dealers about it.
"All right, Ma," they said, for they liked her, and admired her courage. "We, who know you, will be glad to welcome you; but we are not sure about the priests—they may kill you."
"I will risk that," she said; "as soon as I can get away from here you will see me."
In order to find out more about the tribes, she sometimes went far up the Cross River in a canoe, stopping wherever she could get shelter. On one of her journeys, when she had some of the house-childrenwith her, the canoe was attacked by a huge hippopotamus. It rushed at the canoe, and tried to overthrow it. The men thrust their paddles down its throat and beat it, but it kept savagely nosing and gripping the frail vessel. Great was the excitement. Its jaws were snapping, the water was in a whirl of foam, the men were shouting and laying about them with their paddles, the girls were screaming, Ma was sometimes praying and sometimes giving orders. At last the canoe was swung clear, and paddled swiftly away.
The story of this adventure is still told in Calabar, and if you ask Dan, one of Ma's children, about it, he will say, "Once, when Ma was travelling in a canoe, she was attacked by hippopotamuses, but when they looked inside the canoe and saw her, they all ran away!"
What Ma saw and heard made her all a-quiver to go into these strange lands, but she would not leave the Okoyong people until some one came to take her place. The Mission had no other lady to send, and so she could only watch and pray and wait.
Matters became worse. The Aros hated the white rule, and would not submit to it. They tried to prevent the Government opening up their country to order and justice and peace, and would not allow the officials to enter it; they blocked the river so that no white vessel, or native one either,could pass; they went on with their slave-hunting and cannibalism. At last the Government lost patience. "We must teach them a lesson," they said. So a warning went to all the missionaries along the banks of the river to come down to Calabar at once. Ma Slessor did not like the order. "Everything is peaceful in Okoyong," she said. "My people won't fight." The Government said they knew that, but her life was too precious to risk, and they sent a special steamer for her and the children.
When she came she found several companies of soldiers, with many quick-firing guns, already moving up the river. They landed in the Aro country, and marched through swamps and attacked the hosts of natives who had gathered to bar their way, and defeated them. Still, the bushmen would not give in, and the soldiers had many a weary time in the trackless forests. At Arochuku they went down the gorge to the juju house, at the door of which they found a white goat starving to death. Many human skulls and cooking-pots lying about told a gruesome tale. The place continued to be the scene of wicked ceremonies, and was at last blown up with dynamite.
Ma was sorry she had not gone to Iboland before the soldiers, because she felt that if she had done so she might have saved all the fighting and bloodshed. Now that a way had been blazed into thecountry, she was more than ever eager and impatient to go.
"The Gospel should have been the first to enter," she said; "but since the sword and gun are before us, we must follow at once."
Map illustrating the Creek Town, Itu and Arouchuku and the surrounding rivers
So while carrying on the work at Akpap, she began to explore and look out for some place that would do for an outpost. One day she left Akpap, taking with her the slave-girl Mana, who now knew English and her Bible well, and a bright boy called Esien, and tramped to the Cross River, where she boarded a canoe and paddled slowly upstream. By and by she came to another smaller river on the west, which seemed to run far into the interior between Ibo and Ibibio, and there she landed on a beach at the foot of a hill. This was Itu, a famous place, for it was here that one of the greatest slave-markets in West Africa used to be held, and it was down this side river, the Enyong Creek, that the slaves were brought in canoes, to be sold and sent over the country, or shipped abroad to the West Indies or America.
"A good place to begin," Ma said; and she landed and climbed up the steep bank to the top, where she had a beautiful view over the shining river and the green land. "Oh, yes," she repeated, "a bonnie place to begin."
Once more she lived the gipsy life. She opened a school, made Mana and Esien the teachers, and started to build a church. The people, who had so long trembled in the shadow of slavery, were so pleased that they did all they could to help her, and the children of the village tumbled over one another in their eagerness to "learn book."
When she left for Akpap again the chiefs gave her the gift of a black goat, and she tied a piece of string to it and led it to the beach, where the Mission boat picked her up and took her down to the landing-place for Okoyong. She was bareheaded and barefooted, but in high spirits at the success of her trip, and she went away gaily into the forest, leading her goat and singing: