VIIIAFTER A YEAR
My progress in acquiring the language was greatly retarded by my long sickness, and by more than one prolonged stay at the coast. But the language is easy. At the end of a year I was conducting Sabbath services in Dr. Good’s absence and preaching in a stammering way. Mr. Kerr was speaking the language much better than I; and Dr. Good had actually translated the Gospels, though it was a tentative translation that he knew would soon need revision. We were also penetrating a little beneath the surface of native life, seeing with other eyes and beginning to realize its degradation and to feel deeply its misery and sadness.
When we three white men, on our way to Efulen, entered the first Bulu town, the old chief asked Dr. Good whether we were brothers. When Dr. Good replied that we were not, the old man, turning slowly towards his people, with an incredulous laugh exclaimed: “What a lie!” It seemed impossible that three men who were not brothers could travel together in the forest and not kill each other.
One day I heard a sudden outcry of great alarm from a village at the foot of our hill. Several men of that village were at our station at the time, and with a shout they started for home. I quickly followed them and saw as I entered the village that a tragedy had occurred. I afterwards learned that four of their prominent men had been shot. They were hunting in the forest and not suspectingdanger, when another party, who were really friendly, mistook them for enemies in the dark forest, and shot all four. This is a kind of mistake that occurs frequently. The native would rather kill ten friends than let one enemy escape; so they often kill first and investigate afterwards. The village was very small and the loss of four stalwart men left them insufficiently protected against their enemies. This day the four bodies had been found in the forest and the news had just reached the village. Instantly, all the wives of those men stripped off their scant clothing of leaves, smeared their bodies with clay and running into the garden of bananas threw themselves on the ground tearing their hair and screaming, while the other women of the village gathered around and tried to comfort them. There was more than one reason for this demonstration. In part it was probably genuine grief; but there was also a strong element of fear, the fear of every wife whose husband dies from any cause whatsoever, that she will be charged with having bewitched him and suffer the penalty of death, perhaps by being buried alive with the dead body of her husband. For in this instance of the four men, it would be said, that they wore upon their necks certain fetishes that would have made them invisible to any one attempting to do them harm, and that evidently the spell of witchcraft had broken the power of the fetish. The fact that a man’s wife, or wives, are the first to be charged with his death, implying that they would be more likely than others to desire it, throws a lurid light upon their social relations and incidentally upon polygamy. The African wife everywhere is an artist in the use of poison.
In that entire year at Efulen I do not remember that there was one natural death, though we never ceased to hear their mourning for the dead. In those tribes where no degree of civilization is yet established it is estimatedthat nineteen out of twenty Africans die by violence. And when one comes to know the people individually and by name, instead of by impersonal figures, one realizes something of the enormity of wrong and suffering covered by this record.
One of the friendliest of the natives who had been coming to see us almost every day, a young man of splendid physique, was dragged up the hill to our door, unconscious, a bullet from an enemy’s gun having penetrated his forehead, breaking the skull and laying bare the brain. With their coarse knives they had tried to dig the pieces of broken bone out of the wound. That war began with the stealing of a woman, or rather her elopement with a man of another town. The reason she gave was that her husband was so homely she could not live with him. The man probably had no wife and had no possible means of procuring the very large dowry necessary for her purchase. The town from which the woman was stolen, according to native custom, at the very first opportunity killed a person belonging to the town to which the woman was taken. Then the other town killed several of their people. During this war the people of the more distant town could not reach Efulen, and those of the nearer town brought their guns when they attended our service on Sunday and sat with them in their hands, ready for instant action. The war between the two towns continued until twelve persons had been killed, eight on one side and four on the other. Then another woman was stolen, and another war began and this first one was settled in a great palaver, which was called in a neutral town, the people of the two opposing towns being gathered together and sitting on opposite sides of the street. After endless oratory, some of it weak enough and some of it eloquent, it was agreed that one side, having killed four more than the enemy, should pay over to them fourwomen, and the town to which the man belonged who had first stolen the woman should collectively pay a proper dowry. Having thus agreed they returned to their respective towns and it remained only to name the four women who should be given over to the other town. Dr. Good and I were present when the old chief, after taking counsel with the elders, named the four women. The whole town was assembled. As he pronounced each name there was a shriek and a woman fled to the bush; but a number of men knowing the name beforehand, caught her, dragged her back into the street, while she struggled and threw herself on the ground as if she were trying to kill herself. But it was useless. They bound them with bush-rope and they were taken away. Upon reaching the other town, they would become the wives of the chief, or others upon whom he might magnanimously bestow them. My impression is that at first they are usually regarded with ill-will. Sometimes, when a woman seems not to be reconciled to her lot, her feet are put in stocks until she is brought into subjection; but in time she submits to the inevitable and makes the best of it. I have known instances among the Fang where such women were regarded as slaves.
Yet in all their degradation there was still something childlike about them. We found them always interesting and even lovable; and though so far below our own moral level, our sympathy was not repelled by their degradation. One upon the mountain top may seem far above his fellows; but, when he looks up, the infinite stars are equally above them all. The higher our ideals the more lowly our hearts, the more sane and broad our sympathies.
It ought not to be expected that we would accomplish any individual or social transformation in a brief year. Only with length of time can even a divine religion, solong as it leaves men free, transform the customs of ages, and in minds knowing only animal desires, create new and noble ideals. Without doubt the new truth that we taught had become more intelligible and above all, they grasped its practical import. We not only preached but practiced justice, honesty, truthfulness, and kindness (to their amazement), and they interpreted our creed by our practice. For they themselves were preachers of righteousness before they ever heard of the white man; but it was indoingthat they lacked. We felt at the end of the year that they understood us, and recognized our moral principles as right: and this was a great advance.
But the actual reforms among them were for the most part merely superficial and scarcely moral. Some of them developed a passion for clothes, which they regarded as mere ornamentation. It is sometimes said that we missionaries preach a “Gospel of cloth” mistaking clothes for morality. And a superficial observer at Efulen would probably have supposed that the ludicrous effort of the people to clothe themselves was the result of our teaching and advice. But it was due only to their ready habit of imitation; and as a matter of fact we were disposed to discourage it. For one of the first lessons that the white man learns in Africa is that clothes and morality are not so nearly related as he had supposed. It is preferable in this as in everything else that knowledge should precede practice: otherwise, the results will be at least grotesque and often injurious to health. One man is dressed in the crown or the brim of a hat; another wears a pair of cast-off shoes, or perhaps one shoe, while his friend wears the other; and even when they are new he is indifferent about shoe-strings. One man will wear as his entire outfit a ragged coat of inhuman proportions; another wears a pair of trousers that have outworn all the buttons, while his whole time and attention are occupiedin keeping them on, and with indifferent success. Such rags of clothing turn these fine and manly-looking fellows into low-down rowdies or even into the semblance of apes. Nor do they always know thegenderof the garments shown them in the trading-houses, and not all the traders will assist their taste. One may sometimes see a tall chief dressed in a pink or blue Mother Hubbard. At the coast I once saw a stalwart bushman, who had just disposed of an ivory, “dressed to kill” in a lady’s under-garment, fresh from the box, snow-white and trimmed with delicate embroidery. He was so proud as he strutted along that he could scarcely speak.
But clothes, until they have learned to take proper care of them, are often injurious to their health. They will keep these garments on night and day, wet or dry, and may not take them off till they fall off. It is worse with shoes. The feet of the native are shod with natural sole-leather; and if they were not, the bush-paths would be impassable for him. But he wears his shoes through mud and water, and keeps them on at night. The result is that they make his feet tender, besides injuring his health.
Shortly after we went to Efulen, such was the passion for clothes that if one should throw away an old pair of socks instead of burning them, no matter where they might be thrown, one might count on it that somebody, probably a boy, would soon appear in the yard wearing those socks, sometimes on his hands instead of his feet, thinking that they would last longer. One day when I decided that a certain pair of shoes were no longer fit to wear, I took them out into the yard and placing them on a block, took an axe, and proceeded to chop them into small pieces. All the natives in the yard, visitors and workmen, came running to me and loudly begged for the shoes with outstretched hands. But oblivious to theirclamorous entreaties, I kept swinging the axe and compelling them to stand back. When I had finished I asked them what they wanted, explaining that I could not swing an axe and listen to them at the same time, especially when they were all talking at once. They turned away with looks of disgust.
A certain chief at Efulen succeeded in procuring a suit of bright blue denim. The following Sunday the family came to our service with the suit divided between them, the women having divested themselves of the native attire. The old man wore the coat, his wife followed with the trousers, and a grown daughter brought up the rear with the vest. Of course they came late, and walked to a front seat. The missionaries were supposed to maintain their gravity. I was not there myself and am indebted to Mr. Kerr for the incident.
My visits to the coast were like coming back to civilization; such was the contrast of Batanga and Efulen. And, besides, there was a white child at the coast, little Frances, a dear little girl about a year old, whom I carried in my arms much of the time that I was there. For I have already told how one longs for the sight of a white child. During those visits to the coast I often preached in the Batanga Church and I became well acquainted with that congregation. By their progress of a few years and by the Christian character of many individuals known to me, I was accustomed to measure the possibilities of the Bulu and the prospect of our work.
THE OLD CHURCH AT BATANGA.The walls are of split bamboo and the roof of palm thatch. The triangular openings serve both for ventilation and expectoration.
THE OLD CHURCH AT BATANGA.The walls are of split bamboo and the roof of palm thatch. The triangular openings serve both for ventilation and expectoration.
THE OLD CHURCH AT BATANGA.
The walls are of split bamboo and the roof of palm thatch. The triangular openings serve both for ventilation and expectoration.
The first Sunday after my arrival in Africa I preached in the church at Batanga. I had carefully packed away every article of better clothing, including all starched linen, and all my shirts, and was wearing a suit which I had purchased at a trading-house for two dollars. I have reason to remember this from what Dr. Good said afterwards. He told me that when I landed from the steamerhe surveyed me with eager curiosity, and that I had somehow impressed him with a doubt as to whether I would be able to adapt myself to our bush-life. But when he entered the Batanga Church the following Sunday and saw me standing in the pulpit divested of collar, cuffs and shirt, and dressed in a suit that everybody knew had cost exactly two dollars, doubt was banished, and to a fellow missionary he expressed his changed mind in the emphatic words: “He’ll do.” But surely in Africa and everywhere else our dress should be that which is proper to our work and our surroundings.
The Batanga Church had a membership of four hundred, and the attendance was very large. The present edifice is a hideous and expensive structure of foreign material, altogether inappropriate to native conditions and a disfigurement in the landscape. But the old church of those days, while not sufficient in size, was admirable in other respects and picturesque—elevated on posts and with a board floor, bamboo walls, and roof of palm thatch. Along the base of the walls, at regular intervals, were large triangular openings for ventilation. But the people being accustomed to leave all matters of ventilation and sanitation to providence, evidently supposed that these openings were intended for their accommodation in expectorating. For the habit of expectoration is fixed and constant, and is as characteristic of Africa as noise. One does not object to it so much among bush people, who usually assemble outside, and in whose houses there are only ground floors. But when they begin to be civilized it is more noticeable and becomes offensive. The majority of the Batanga people, with the native instinct of good manners, were just sufficiently civilized to know that it is bad form to spit on the floor, butnotsufficiently civilized to break off the habit entirely. During the service they continually expectoratedthrough the openings in the walls, and especially the women. It seemed that the more interested they became in the sermon the more fluently they expectorated. My attention was arrested and almost diverted by the uncertainty and suspense whenever I saw an old woman on the inside end of a pew, lean forward, twist her head to one side, take deliberate aim, and fire past six persons. She never missed the hole—unless some one of those between her and the wall should happen to move or lean forward just at the wrong moment, which of course was not her fault. The appearance which this habit presented outside the church always recalled what Dickens said of this same habit in America—that the appearance outside the windows of a railway coach was as if some one inside were ripping open a feather tick.
The men and women sit on different sides of the church and I believe that in their stage of civilization it is best that they should thus be separated, though sometimes it is attended with inconvenience. For instance, a father may have charge of a baby that wants its mother; and if so it may be passed from one to another across the entire church, as I have seen, dangling by one little arm, and with no covering but that which nature has provided in its black skin. The large majority are dressed and there is nothing grotesque or foolish in their costumes. Most of the men wear a white undershirt and a large square robe of cotton, usually of bright colours, bound around the waist and falling almost to the feet. This is the most becoming male dress in Africa; and the black man in his own climate always looks best in bright colours. A few of the men, in too great haste to be civilized, wear shirts and trousers, the trousers a manifest misfit and the shirt outside the trousers. This mode of wearing the shirt, however, I would not criticise; it is charmingly naive, and rather sensible when one becomes accustomed to it.The women wear a similar square robe of bright cotton, or better material, bound around immediately below the arms, leaving the shoulders bare, and falling to their feet. But among them are many, both men and women, who wear a smaller cloth, bound around the waist and falling to the knees, with nothing on the upper body. Individuals have different costumes but these are the types; and the types are so established that anything eccentric or much out of style would occasion a smile. People of the bush sometimes straggle into the service so absurdly dressed that the gravity of the entire congregation is upset. It was so one Sunday when the following incident occurred.
While I had fever at Efulen, being obliged to change clothing frequently, I discarded pajamas for nightshirts. They were long ones that reached to my feet. These when taken off were usually hung near the fire to dry, where the smoke stained and discoloured them. When I was well I discarded them. Mr. Kerr, for some reason, presented one to a Bulu man. Soon afterwards the man visited the coast and of course took this wonderful garment with him. What is the use of having fine clothes if one is not to show them off? The Bulu man, looking very grand in my stained nightshirt, attended the service in the Batanga Church, came late, of course, and walked up the long aisle to a front seat, while the large congregation made an agonizing effort to “remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.” But there were a number of missionaries present and they had heard me speak of those garments and their extreme discolouration by the smoke; and when they saw the Bulu enter they immediately recognized the garment.
Some of the Batanga people had begun to wear shoes, though there is no need of them and they look better without them. They have a preference for heavy shoesthat will make a noise as they walk up the aisle, otherwise people might not know that they had them. But above all, they must have shoes with “squeaking” soles,—or, as the natives say, shoes that “talk”; and the first question a native asks when he would buy a pair of shoes is: “Do they talk proper loud?” They wear black shoe-strings when they cannot get pink or white. Some of them are so uncomfortable that they remove their shoes during the service.
The collection at the Batanga service was gathered only occasionally and was unique in quality and quantity—chickens, bananas, cassava, sweet potatoes, dried fish, pieces of cloth, shirts, hats, knives, boards, etc.
But I had occasion frequently to review the records of the session of the church, and of realizing the undercurrents of the lives of those people; and there I found nothing amusing. It was a sad, sad story of pathos and dire tragedy. There were confessions of weak failure; but there were other confessions of defeat only after long and brave fighting against temptations which those in Christian lands cannot conceive and which I cannot relate. There were stories of domestic sorrow. A Christian man tells the session that he did not partake of the communion because his heart was full of bitterness against his heathen wife for her unfaithfulness and immorality. A Christian woman declares that she refused to marry a man who had other wives. She was tied hands and feet and carried to his house. Another woman tells the wrongs she endured from a heathen husband. A broken-hearted father tells that he had not lately attended the services because the death of his only son had filled him with doubt of God’s goodness. A widowed mother also confesses doubt because God had taken away her only son. These are theweakChristians who have been called before the session; and these are the men and women at whose weaknessestravellers and other critics would laugh and point the finger of scorn, and because of them condemn the entire congregation of those who profess to be Christians. The majority of white men in Africa judge the native Christians without mercy, and they judge the whole native church by its weakest member. At Las Palmas, on Grand Canary Island, I tasted a fresh fig for the first time in my life and pronounced it “disgusting,” whereupon a native Spaniard, a judge of figs, looking at me, said: “O, sir, you are eating a bad one!” He was right. I was eating a bad fig and judging the whole species by that one. It is thus that many white men judge the native Christians of Africa.
Prominent in the Batanga Church, and always present at the service, was a woman, Bekalida, noted in her tribe for her good looks, but in these latter years smitten with a disease that had horribly disfigured her, and had eaten away her entire nose. When this calamity befell her she was so overwhelmed with grief and shame that for a long time she could not bear to be seen in public. But at last, with her face covered, she appeared in the little prayer-meeting of women conducted by her great friend, Miss Nassau, and there, in pathetic and eloquent words, she poured out her heart while they wept, and told them how that she had been vain and proud until the Lord in His love had smitten her; how that during the long weeks of her affliction faith forsook her. Her heart was hard and rebellious and she felt that she could not bear her shame; but she yearned for that comfort that only God could give; she came to Jesus again in penitence and He received her and her heart was filled with the peace of God; for it was better to be disfigured than to be vain and proud.
In that same congregation there was one Mbula, who afterwards became a minister; a young man of simplemanners and godly life. Growing up in the midst of African degradation, he was yet pure, strong and manly. He developed unusual gifts as a preacher, simplicity and force, fluency of speech and a charming grace of manner that many white ministers might envy. There was another young man, Eduma, who also became a minister and is to-day an influential leader among those who are striving to live in a higher and better way than they have hitherto known. Already from that congregation missionaries have gone to the Bulu, whom they formerly despised. At least one of those missionaries, Ndenga, has lived a life, and done a work, of faith and devotion that is fitted to surprise and to convince all those who have seriously doubted whether the African is capable of a high ideal and of patient performance.
Towards the end of our first year among the Bulu it was very plain that a change had taken place in our relations to them. They had become convinced that our persons were not inviolable as they had first thought and that we had no fetishes to serve us as a potent protection; while, on the other hand, though we had steadily gained their regard, it might be doubted whether their friendship was yet sufficient for our security. If there is ever any danger of violence it is in this period of transition. One or two incidents will illustrate the change of feeling.
In a certain town which Dr. Good and I once visited, much farther in the interior and where no white man had ever been before, a young Bulu man came to us at the close of the service and addressing us in English said: “I sabey English mouf.” Imagine our surprise! He gave us some account of himself.
PASTOR AND ELDERS OF THE BATANGA CHURCH.
PASTOR AND ELDERS OF THE BATANGA CHURCH.
PASTOR AND ELDERS OF THE BATANGA CHURCH.
His name was Keli. When a child he had been taken by his father on a visit to a neighbouring tribe. While there he was stolen from his father and taken to a distant village where he became a slave. Some time afterwardshe was taken to the coast and sold to a chief of the coast tribe. Finally the chief sold him to a white man, who in turn gave him to another white man and he was taken to Gaboon. His master was a Frenchman, and Keli was his personal attendant. The boy made himself so useful that when the Frenchman went on furlough to France he took him along. After living in Paris a considerable time the Frenchman concluded not to return to Africa; whereupon he sent Keli to England and gave him into the charge of an English trader who was expecting soon to sail for Africa. With this trader Keli returned to Africa. Not long after this the trader having occasion to visit Batanga took Keli with him. This was his opportunity. In the night he fled to the forest. Finally he fell in with a caravan going to the Bulu country, and at last reached his town, after an absence of seven years, during which his father and mother had died, and he had been long-forgotten. Keli had not been trained by his various masters in wisdom and judgment, and he made the mistake of telling the people all that he had seen in Paris and London—all about the big buildings and multitudes of people, all about the clothes they wore and the very cold season of snow and ice, all about horses and carriages and railway trains—quite overtaxing their credulity, and earning the reputation of a notorious liar and incorrigible fool. Missionaries sometimes make the same mistake and pay the same penalty.
Meantime Keli had become accomplished to the extent of knowing French and English and five native dialects. But, alas! how destitute of moral power is civilization alone! Keli did not seem to have any moral ideas. The restraining fear of his former fetishism had been expelled, and no moral motive implanted. His morality was much below that of the average Bulu, except in the shedding of blood. Nothing but long familiarity can make that anindifferent matter to any man however degraded; and Keli had a horror of blood. We took him home with us to Efulen and made him cook and houseboy, for we were in our usual strait at the time. He knew his work well and was unapproached in service for the short time that he behaved. But at the first opportunity, one Sunday during the service, Keli captured and stole a chicken, the mother of a young brood. He strewed feathers along a bush-path to make believe that a wild animal had taken it. Of course it will be remembered that among a people who have so little, a chicken is one of the high values. The theft was not insignificant in the mind of the Bulu. But for us the really serious import of the matter was that it raised the question as to whether they could steal from us with impunity, or with any possibility of not being detected. They had never attempted it before, being restrained by the dread of our supposed fetishes, which Keli knew to be a delusion. I need not say that we had never fostered the delusion, yet it had served a providential use. It was now likely to be dispelled and we were not certain as to the consequences. Keli immediately killed the chicken and gave it to a Bulu man, his accomplice, who wrapped it in a loin-cloth and took it to his town while Keli himself came running to me in great distress, as soon as the service was concluded, telling a most interesting story of a bushcat that he had seen just as it was disappearing with the chicken, and how he had given chase and had tried to rescue it. Of course I suspected himself, but I said nothing until, by a chain of evidence that I have forgotten, I traced it to him. We made him a prisoner, and Dr. Good soon wrung a confession from him. He said he would find the chicken—which, however, having lost its head, could never be the same chicken again. I took him to town still a prisoner, a workman walking behind him with a rope around hiswaist. He led me through the town to the house of his accomplice. Entering the house he proceeded directly to the bed and from underneath it produced the chicken, wrapped in the cloth of the other thief.
I took the chicken and the cloth and started back to the station, still accompanied by Keli, and a long procession of natives. I had gone but a short distance when the owner of the cloth with a number of men following, came running from behind, and dashing past me with a shout, immediately turned about, placed himself in the narrow path before me, and with his long knife in his raised arm demanded his cloth. It may have been mere bluff on his part, one cannot tell. The chief danger, if there was any, was not their natural brutality so much as their excitement. Of course I could not yield to a demand that was really a threat and so bring us into contempt. But I was far from comfortable and I would gladly have made a present of the entire incident to my worst enemy. My resources were, in the first place, straight bluff, and second, the moral prestige of the white man. Keeping my eye fixed upon him I ordered him out of the path, and as he did not obey, I suddenly struck him as heavy a blow as I could,—so suddenly that he was taken completely off his guard and was thrown headlong into the thicket, while I passed on. Surprised more than hurt, it took him some time to recover himself and to take counsel with his fellows. Meantime, wishing to avoid an ugly palaver, and still to retain personal authority, I unfolded the cloth, discovered before the eyes of the people that it was very dirty and full of holes, laughed at it and got them to laugh, and finally threw it aside, saying: “Tell him that this cloth is not fit for a white man to take.” As I moved on I heard the man and his friends coming again, running and yelling; but as he came up the people shoutedthat they had his cloth, and the sight of it appeased his anger.
That night we kept Keli a prisoner in our house. Dr. Good thought that in our peculiar situation we could not afford to let him go unpunished. With great reluctance he advised that he ought to be flogged in the presence of the people. He was always kind and considerate towards the natives, but he was not a man who would shirk a duty because it was disagreeable. For myself, my mind was not quite clear that flogging was a moral necessity. But I knew Dr. Good well and had learned to trust him, so I consented that he should do as he thought best. The next morning, therefore, he and I took Keli down to the principal town, and having called all the people together, Dr. Good told them, in native fashion, the story of Keli’s wrong. And he added that in view of Keli’s youth and the hard circumstances of his life he had decided that he would only flog him and dismiss him. Thereupon, with a rod prepared for the purpose, he began to administer the flogging.
Now, if I were relating fiction and not reality, I should certainly proceed to have Keli properly flogged and the mind of the community deeply impressed in consequence. But as reality never quite attains the ideal, and as I may not substitute imagination for history in this sober narrative, I must tell of “the slip twixt the cup and the lip.” Prominent among Keli’s moral discrepancies was cowardice; and even before the rod descended for the first time he uttered a scream that evidently startled Dr. Good, for he let go his hold and Keli bounded from him. Dr. Good chased him and could easily have caught him but it had been raining and the clay surface of the street was smooth and slippery, giving Keli’s bare feet a decided advantage. They both resembled amateur performers on roller skates. The chase that followed seemedto appeal peculiarly to the humour of the natives, which was the more excessive because of the strong reaction from fear and apprehension. They laughed wildly. Keli led the way around the palaver-house once or twice, then down the street, Dr. Good following him close and reaching after him, while he administered what would have been a severe flogging but that the strokes persistently fell about twelve inches behind Keli’s shoulders, affording him, I imagine, an acute realization of the old adage, “A miss is as good as a mile.” Soon they reached a steep slope in the street, and Keli, steadily gaining, at last made his escape. I, looking on, maintained an exterior of stern gravity that was the very antithesis of my feeling. But deeper than outward gravity and inward laughter I was praying that nothing might happen to impede Keli’s steady progress; for this flogging in pantomime served to impress a moral lesson, while it left no marks on poor Keli’s skin, whom seven tribes and nations had helped to degrade. I should not wonder if Dr. Good himself felt somewhat as I did.
On our way home Dr. Good intimated to me the moral propriety of not mentioning the incident to Mr. Kerr or any of the missionaries at the coast, for I was soon going to the coast.
“Indeed,” said I, “you could not possibly bribe me to silence regarding the episode of this morning. It would be a great wrong, in this weary land, to deprive my fellow missionaries of such an entertainment, and I am really thinking of going to the coast a day earlier than I had expected.”
No man could yield to the inevitable with better grace than Dr. Good. Before we reached home he was laughing; and he was even disposed to anticipate me in telling the story, which he did with dramatic effects and graphic touches inimitable.
It was not long after this that the Bulu conceived the idea of wresting from us a higher price for all articles of native food. When we refused their demand they all joined together in a boycott. Our position was serious enough; for we had a number of workmen from the coast whose entire food we purchased from the Bulu. We happened to have rice on hand which for the time we gave the men and which was sufficient to last several days. Meantime, it happened that there was more sickness than usual. Some of the principal chief’s wives had bad ulcers and were coming daily for treatment. But one day when our rice was nearly exhausted, Dr. Good turned them all away, saying that he would treat them when the people would bring food. This was a possibility that had never occurred to them. A few days later they decided to bring food and end the boycott. But now that they had once attempted it there was need that we should always be prepared by having on hand a supply of rice.
About this time I went to the coast expecting to remain only a few days and return with a large caravan; for we were in need of many things. It was on this journey that the incident occurred which I have related, when my carriers lost their way with my bed and clothing and I suffered extreme exposure. The result was a fever immediately upon reaching the coast, and a second fever before I had sufficiently recovered from the first to set out for the interior, and then a third fever, the worst that I had had. If I could have reached Efulen I would probably have recovered; for the climate of Batanga is dreadful. But the wet season, which had been coming on gradually was now at its worst, and cut off the possibility of a retreat to the interior, in my greatly reduced health. The last fever had been so serious that I could not risk another. There was only one thing to do. So, with the advice of all the missionaries at Batanga, I took the firststeamer that came, and fled from the coast, having been in Africa a year and a half. Nor did my health permit of my return to Africa for four full years. As I put out from the Batanga beach in a surf-boat and stood looking back at the receding shore while we rose and fell with the heavy waves of the evening sea, the last one that I saw was Mrs. Laffin, who again came out and waved her handkerchief. She was very well then; but only a few weeks later she died.
A month after Mrs. Laffin’s death came the dreadful news that Dr. Good had died. He was a man of iron constitution and such amazing vitality of body and mind that it seemed impossible to associate death with him. The unnaturalness of his death impressed me as might some great convulsion in nature; as if a mountain had been uprooted and cast into the depths of the sea.
Mr. Kerr was at Efulen when Dr. Good died and several other missionaries had arrived.
While I was still there Dr. Good had planned a trip of three weeks into the interior further than he had yet gone with a view to choosing a site for another mission station; but circumstances at Efulen led him to postpone the journey. At that time he received a message from a notorious and dreaded chief of the interior near the present Elat, warning him not to dare to come into his country, for that he would surely kill him. Dr. Good, however, continued his preparations for the journey. In the course of a long and serious conversation as to what it would be best to do in case that interior chief or any other should do him violence or should capture and detain him, he urged and exacted from me a promise that in any event the German government should not be called to his assistance, even to save his life. Not that he denied his right to protection but he knew the severity of the government, having recently witnessed it in a war upon aneighbouring tribe. And indeed I myself had arrived in Africa in time to see something of the desolation of that war in the silent and smoking remains of towns from which the people (all who had escaped from the sword) had fled into the depths of the forest. For instance, two little boys who had just been taken into our school at Batanga had been found alone in the forest, and crying beside the dead body of their mother. I yielded to Dr. Good a reluctant promise as he desired; for I could not controvert the moral principle which actuated this strong, brave-hearted man.
For other reasons he did not go at that time; but not long after I left Africa, and upon the arrival of others, he set out upon this hard and uncertain journey. Perhaps he erred on the side of economy and indifference to comfort, not providing himself with everything procurable that could conserve his strength and vitality. He made extensive explorations of the interior, chose the site for a new station, returned to Efulen exhausted, and the next day was stricken with fever. The third day afterwards he died, having been delirious most of the time. He was only thirty-seven years old. His last conscious words were a message to the church at home, “See that I have not laboured in vain.”
Great man and great missionary! There was something about Dr. Good that always reminded one of Livingstone. Six years later, standing at his grave on Efulen hill, where every tree and every foot of ground were associated with his memory, I recalled the inscription in the crypt of St. Paul’s Cathedral, over the tomb of Sir Christopher Wren, its great architect. “If you ask a monument look around you.” The Church of Efulen, the growth of which has since been marvellous, no costly pile of stone or marble, but of more precious human souls upon whose darkness the light of heavenhas dawned, the large congregation that gathers there to worship the true God, and the many changes in the community near and far—these are the lasting monuments of Dr. Good.