Stanley in Africa

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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