Stanley in Africa

“From Malange, a tramp of 1,000 miles northeast will bring us to Luluaburg, in the Bashalange Country, discovered by Dr. Pogge and Lieut. Wissmann, in 1883. The Governor-General of the Independent State of Congo, at my request, gave to Dr. Summers, one of our men from Malange, permission to found a station for our mission at Luluaburg, which he did, and built two houses on it, and was making good progress when he became worn out by disease and died. I hope soon to send a successor to dear Dr. Summers.

“I have arranged at the land office in Boma for the completion of their conveyance of title by deed to our mission property at Luluaburg, on my return to Boma in April next (D.V.). Those vast countries of the Upper Kasai and Sankuru Rivers are immensely populous. By the will of God we shall hold our footing and a few years hence shall (D.V.) plant a conference in that county.

“From Luluaburg, a week of foot traveling northwest will bring us to Lueba, at the junction of the Lulua and Kasai Rivers. Thence, in a little steamer descending the Kasai River about 800 miles, we sweep through ‘Qua mouth’ into the Congo, descending which seventy miles we will tie up at Kimpoko, near the northeast angle of Stanley Pool. We opened this station in 1886, designed as a way-station for our transportation to the countries of the Upper Kasai. The Lord is by delay preparing us the better to go up and possess the land in his set time. He meantime approves of our good intentions. We have now stationed at Kimpoko, Bradley L. Burr, Dr. Harrison, Hiram Elkins and his wife Roxy. At Kimpoko, we made an irrigating ditch a mile long, drawing from a bold mountain creek an abundant supply of water to insure good crops at all seasons. We have there about ten acres under cultivation, and grow in profusion all the indigenous food that we can use. To provide good beef in abundance and ready money, Brother Burr goes out for a few hours and kills a hippopotamus or two. They are in demand among the traders and the natives for food. Brother Burr recently sold three in Kimpoko for $80. Brother Burr, who is our Presiding Elder at Kimpoko, writes that the station has been nearly self-sustaining from the beginning, but entirely so since the beginning of this year. They are building a new mission-house this dry season, about 15x80 feet. In this work they may require a little help – a few bales of cloth from home. At a low estimate, our property in Kimpoko is worth at least $1,000.

“From Kimpoko we go by oars or steamer twenty miles to the lower end of Stanley Pool – Leopoldville. Thence by foot 100 miles to South Manyanga (which is called the North Bank route; by the south route we walk from Leopoldville 231 miles to Matadi or Lower Congo). From Manyanga we go by a launch of three or four tons capacity, propelled by oars and sails and currents, eighty-eight miles to Isangala. We have had a station at Isangala for over two years, on which we have built good native houses, but had not bought the site of the Government till my last visit to the land office at Boma. The site, containing seven and one-half acres, cost us nearly $80. A good garden spot. Our brethren dug a yam from their garden in Isangala when I was there, a few weeks ago, which weighed twenty-two pounds – more wholesome and delicious, if possible, than Irish potatoes. Our paying industry there will be in the transport line of business. As our Vivi Station is at the highest point of small steamer navigation, so Isangala is the lowest point of the middle passage of the Congo from Isangala, eighty-eight miles to Manyanga. Our site at Isangala, with improvements, is worth $300. We would refuse the offer of five times that amount on account of prospective value.

“Our missionaries at Isangala are Wm. O. White and Wm. Rasmussen. Both have made good progress in the mastery of the Fiot or Congo language; but Rasmussen is a prodigy in language. He interpreted for me with great fluency and force and is preaching in many contiguous villages. He has been out two and a half years, and (D.V.) will soon be an able envangelist to go forth among the native nations and receive from them a support. A journey over the mountains and vales of fifty-five miles will bring us to Vivi Mission Station. We bought this site – the seat of government before it was settled at Boma – over two years ago, for $768. We have there but twelve acres of land, but can procure more if needed. It is a high plateau and seems so dry that I did not think we could farm to advantage. We needed the place for a receiving and transport station; but to my agreeable surprise on my recent visit, I find that J. C. Teter, our Preacher-in-Charge and transport agent, has near the end of the dry season an acre and a half of green growing manioc, an orchard of young palm and mango trees, and plantains and yams growing in a profusion of life and fruitfulness. In the way of live-stock he has twenty-five goats, eight sheep, two head of young cattle, half a dozen muscovy-ducks and 100 chickens, and when short of meat he takes his gun and goes out and kills a deer or a buffalo. While I was with him, a few weeks ago, he killed two koko bucks. The koko is a species of deer, but as big as a donkey. So in every place we settle, we find that God has resources of self-support of some kind waiting to be developed. Vivi will be self-supporting in the near future, and the most beautiful station on the Congo. At any rate, J. C. Teter and Mary Lindsay, his wife, can make it such if the Lord shall continue to them life and health. Probable value, $2,000.

“One hundred miles by steamer down the Congo to Banana brings us within an hour and a half by oars of our mission-station at Matumba. Miss Mary Kildare, a superior teacher, linguist and missionary, is our sole occupant of the station at Matumba. I bought of the Government nearly ten acres of good ground there for nearly $120, having previously bought the native title. We have a comfortable little house of galvanized iron, 22x24 feet, set on pillars six feet above ground. The house is divided into two rooms, 12x12 feet, and a veranda, 12x124 feet, inclosed by a balustrading and a gate, and is used for a school-room. She has now a school of twenty scholars. She does her preaching mostly in the village; the house is in an inclosure of nearly an acre, surrounded by a high fence, with strong gate, which is locked up at 9 P.M. daily. So Mary, the dear lady, is perfectly contented, and is doing good work for God. She is an Irish lady, and paid her own passage to go to Africa to work for nothing. I took her recently a box of Liberian coffee-seed, which she has in a nursery growing beautifully, and she has a fruit orchard coming on.

“Our property at Matumba is worth $1,000. Two years ago, we started three stations between Vivi and Isangala – Vumtomby Vivi, Sadi Kabanza and Matamba. We built pretty good houses at a total cost of $30, not counting our labor. One of the noblest young missionaries we had, John A. Newth, of London, sleeps all alone in his station at Sadi Kabanza. Dear Brother Newth! – I was with him much and under a great variety of circumstances, and highly prized his lovable character and great versatility of practical talent. He loved his field of labor and would have made a success if the Master had not called him from labor to reward. This was in 1888, but belongs to this chapter of unreported history. The people I appointed to work Vumtomby Vivi and Matumba Stations became dissatisfied with their work and huddled together at Vivi with others of kindred spirit and worked against us.

“‘Then they went out from us, but were not of us; for if they had been of us they would no doubt have continued with us,’

“‘This is the same old breed,Of which we read.I do not thinkThey become extinct,But expose them to the weather,Give them time and tether,And they leave us altogether,And peace abides.’

“Since that, Brother Reed and wife and Brother Bullikist, very good people, sent out by Dr. Simpson, of New York, have opened a station nearly midway between Vumtomby Vivi and Sadi Kabanza, so when we get ready to go out to found new stations we shall prefer, instead of resuming work at those vacated, to go into the more populous regions of the interior. The Congo State has a strip of country densely populated, 100 miles from the north bank of the Congo and extending from Banana 250 miles to Manyanga, all unoccupied and open to us, except a few new stations near the Congo. So God is opening a vast field for us on the Lower Congo, as well as on the Upper Congo and Kasai. I did not set out to found any new stations this year, and have not, except to consent to the birth of Ebenezer Station on Sinou River. Our business this year was to find out or to put in the guarantees of self-support for each station. We have found out that most of those founded in the short period of the work are self-supporting in the main. In our new Liberian stations, beside abundance of fruit and vegetables for food, our principal or most reliable resource in marketable value is coffee. So I provided, before leaving Liberia last April, that every station having men who can utilize oxen and plow, should be furnished with a plow and a yoke of cattle and that every occupied station should be supplied with as many coffee scions as they can plant and cultivate up to 1,000 plants for each station and provided each station with a bushel of coffee-seed to be planted in nursery, from which to enlarge each coffee orchard as fast as the ground can be cleared and the coffee scions set out up to 5,000 or 6,000 trees. Coffee means money, and it is only a question of industry, patience and time. It requires about five years to make a coffee orchard productive, but with a little attention it will yield a plentiful annual crop – two crops in Liberia – for fifty years without resetting. We ought to give all the stations a good start in cattle, (say) a dozen head for each one. God is manifestly with us along the lines of our work, and success is certain, and the glory will be wholly his.

“The teaching force of all the facts in the case, as we now see them, leads us clearly to the conclusion that we need our steamer on the Lower Congo much more than on the Upper. So, the Lord permitting, we will put her together at the base of the hill on which Vivi Mission is located, during the next dry season. She will carry goods from the side of ocean steamers at Banana 100 miles up to her berth, in the mouth of a little creek in which she will be constructed, the highest point of steamer navigation. This will save us exorbitant rates of freight up the river and land our goods where we want them, and give other missions a chance to reduce their heavy leakage of the same sort. The price for carrying to Stanley Pool is twice as large now as two years ago. We can’t pay such prices and found the stations in the Upper Kasai. That we feel (D.V.) bound to do; but with our steamer on the Lower Congo and a steel boat of our own, of three or four tons, to be worked by oars and sails on the middle passage, to carry freights from Isangala to Manyanga, will give us the inside track of the freight business to those upper countries, and cut down our expenses more than a half of the present rate, and do work for other missions as well. Except in leadership and superintendency, all this heavy work will be done by natives, whom we wish to employ and train to habits of industry – one of the auxiliaries of our mission work.

“The steamers on the Upper Congo water-ways have multiplied from four or five to a dozen in the past three years, so that we can get passage for the few missionaries we want to put in to hold our Kasai pre-emption claim till we can work up from our lease, and by and by send up a small steamer of our own for our enlarged Kasai work. I am on my way now to make final arrangements with the builder of our steamer to put her up and launch her at the earliest practicable moment, and will, the Lord permitting, be back to Liberia in December. I will ask Richard Grant to furnish a statement of the total expenditures.

“In regard to appropriations, I remark: (1) That if the Committee wish to enlarge the appropriation to the African (Liberia) Conference, I make no objection, but I ask at least for the continuance of the usual amount of $2,500, sent altogether as it was last year, and have the distribution at Conference for the whole year.

“(2) If the Committee are pleased to order $500 subject to my call, all right. I did not draw it last year, because I had not time to use it for the purpose I had in mind.

“(3) If the Committee will appropriate $10,000 or $5,000 for the establishment of self-supporting schools for the principal countries of Liberian population, for the education alike of the Liberian and the heathen children, I will administer it as carefully as possible and report progress. It would take five or six years to grow marketable values adequate to self-support, but quantities of food can be produced from the first or second year. – October 4, 1889.”

Writing in June 1889, Bishop Taylor speaks as follows concerning his Angola Missions:

MARCH FROM DONDO TO NHANGUEPEPO“Nhanguepepo, Monday, June 3, 1889.

“I left Dondo last Thursday morning. Brother Withey walked with me about a mile. Four carriers – who brought cargoes from Nhanguepepo, arriving in Dondo on Tuesday, and taking a day for rest – were ready to start on their return trip on Thursday. I employed two of them, one to carry my bed and the other my food, and half a cargo for Brother Withey. We spent the first night at Mutamba, thirteen miles out, stopping about eight miles out for lunch, and four hours of rest.

“Four years ago, after waiting four or five days in Dondo trying in vain to get carriers, we depended on half-a-dozen Kabindas, whom we hired in Loanda, on good recommendations, as a standby in case we should fail. We were repeatedly told by men of long experience in Angola, that ‘it would be impossible for us, as strangers, especially as we would neither drink nor sell, nor give rum, gin nor wine, to get any carriers for the interior.’ ‘The traders, with their long and widely extended experience, facilities and free rations of grog, can’t get more than half the carriers required at this time.’ ‘One gentleman of my acquaintance,’ said, ‘I had 5,000 bags of coffee at Kazengo, thirty-six miles from Dondo, and could not put it into the market for want of carriers.’

“So, a part of our pioneer party, viz: myself, Willie Mead, W. P. Dodson, Joseph Wilks, Henry Kelley, the Vey boy from Liberia, determined to make a start on Friday night (about June 1, 1885,) even if we should have to do our own carrying, for the Kabindas whom he had hired refused to carry for us; and they had a lot of their own luggage, twice as much as regular carriers take with them.

“I learned from an old trader, who had thirty years of observation along our contemplated line of work in Angola, that Nhanguepepo was the best site for a mission between Dondo and Pungo Andongo. So we aimed to reach this first and best place. About 9 o’clock, on that night, we succeeded in getting six Kabindas to shoulder each a load of our luggage and food for the trip, leaving one Kabinda with Dr. Summers and C. M. McLean, in care of a large amount of our stuff at Dondo, stored in our tents, inside of a stone wall enclosure, said to have been a slave pen in the dark days of old. I and my little party of missionaries each took a load of stuff, and struggled up the mountain range four miles to Pambos, arriving about midnight. We spread our bed on the ground and got a little sleep. Before sunrise I had carried wood and made a fire, and had on the tea-kettle. The Kabindas looked grimly on, but declined to help with the camp work. Breakfast over, we made a move for our march, but the K.’s refused to pick up their loads. All my kind talk, and Brother M.’s scolding, failed to move them, so we ‘were stuck in the mud.’ We got the men through the English house in Loanda, and about 9 P.M. I saw Mr. N., the head of the English house, coming in his ‘tipoia,’ carried by men from his farm at Kazengo. So I went a little way from our camp, and met him, and explained to him the situation.

“He said: ‘The trouble is the Kabindas are not carriers. They are sailors and porters and gentlemen’s servants. They were represented to you as good for any service to which you might want to put them, but they have not been trained to work of this sort.’

“I replied: ‘Well, Mr. N., if you can prevail on the fellows to carry till we can reach an interior village we can pick up all the carriers we need.’

“‘Yes; I’ll try.’ He had a palaver with the men, and they agreed to carry till we could find natives who would do it. Then we cleared the camp and marched about four miles, and stopped at a small hamlet for our lunch, and there we hired half-a-dozen men to carry the loads of the K.’s to Nhanguepepo, and we transferred our knapsack to the K.’s.

“The price quoted in Dondo for carriers to Nhangue was ‘sixty-four makutas’ ($1.92) per man. We offered that, but could not get a man. The price asked by these country fellows was but ‘twenty-five makutas’ (seventy-five cents), confirming the theory I had advanced, ‘If we can get to the country villages inland, we can get all the carriers we may require.’ So with our new team we went on about five miles and camped at Mutamba, and rested on the Sabbath. Many villagers called to see the show, the sight of white men, and exhibited great interest in us. We had our worship and a good day of rest. On Monday morning the K.’s refused to carry unless we would hire another carrier, which we did, and soon found that they overloaded the carriers by tying their luggage to our cargoes. We could not speak their language, and they knew but little of ours, so it was of no avail to try to reason with them about their oppressions; but soon after I reached Nhanguepepo, I settled with them, and sent them back to the sea where they belonged.

“On my trip last week I had no trouble with carriers. I started from Mutamba at 6 A.M., walked twelve miles to Kasoki, took lunch and rested till 2.30 P.M.; marched seven miles further to Ndanji a Menia on the divide of a range of mountains, and camped without a tent, just where we pitched our tent four years ago, and I was reminded of the trouble we then had with our carriers. The villagers we had hired complained of the bad treatment they had received from the Kabindas, besides overloading them with their luggage, and refused, to go any further. I quietly offered to give them extra pay, and thus induced them to proceed with their big load to Nhanguepepo.

“I had a refreshing sleep at Ndanji a Menia last Friday night, took lunch on Saturday at Endumba, and reached Nhangue – nineteen miles – at 5 P.M., and was joyously received by our dear Brother Rudolph.

“I have tramped the fifty-one miles between this and Dondo, back and forth many times, but never with less fatigue than on my trip last week. I don’t purpose to give a history of all those journeys through the mountains, but simply note a few points of contrast between my first trip, and the one of last week. We arrived in the midst of drought and ‘famine’ four years ago. We came through from Dondo dry-shod, but last Friday I doffed my boots and waded the pools and streams seven times, and on Saturday five times, and I found it to be pleasant and healthful to my feet.

“Till railroads shall be built through this country, the best mode of traveling, and the most healthful, is to walk, and ‘wade.’ As for speed in a journey of a few hundred miles, a man on foot will out-travel a bull, or even a good horse. Persons who travel in a ‘tipoia,’ amid the rattle of sleigh bells, and the shouts of their carriers, are not in a position to receive my statement, but I base it, not on a theory, but on facts from the field of action.

“When we were here four years ago, we lived in tents near the Caravansary for about three months. We had been invited by the Governor-General, Sr. Amaral, to settle on Government land wherever we chose, and the Government would make us a grant of any amount required up to 2,400 acres. Having explored the Nhanguepepo region pretty thoroughly, we concluded that the Lord would have us open a mission here. Our families and a number of our young men were waiting – in Loanda at a heavy expense – for us to open fields for them; and the dry season was passing away, so we had to proceed as expeditiously as possible.

“I opened a mortar bed for making adobes (sun-dried brick) preparatory to the erection of a mission house near the Caravansary, where crowds of carriers, many of whom were from a distance of five or six hundred miles east of us, camped every night. Having made inquiry I believed the site I had selected was Government land, but was notified by the “Commandante,” before I had proceeded with my adobe-making, that all the land about the Caravansary was private property. He was very kind to us, but wanted to sell us the house in which he lived, a roomy, substantial building, with adjoining roofless walls of solid masonry of much larger extent. I saw on examination that the property would be suitable for our purposes of residence for our large families, and for a receiving and training station for new recruits from home in coming time, being a high, breezy, healthful region; but we had no money. However, firmly believing that the God of Abraham would lead us, and provide for us, I wrote to our people in Loanda to come on as quickly as they could. Owing to the continued illness of a large proportion of them, and the difficulty and delay in getting steamer passage up the Coanza on account of the drought and low state of the river, our people came in groups in July and August. I was notified at the time of their transit that our money in Loanda was all used up. As strangers, we could not ask for ‘credit,’ and as servants of God, doing business solely for Him, and not for ourselves, I did not think it necessary, nor feel at liberty to try to put His credit on the market, so I worked and waited.

“My people could not travel inland without money to pay their carriers, and we had no place in which to shelter them, even if they could get in. Our cloth was all of one kind – white cotton, which became popular and marketable months later, but at that time was declared to be entirely unsuitable for the market, and hence could not be passed off at any price. Money was the thing required, and without it our people in transit could neither travel beyond Dondo, nor stop and pay expenses. I did not doubt that I was working in the order of God’s providence, hence could not and did not doubt that He would lead us, and provide for these demands on us, outside of our abundant home supplies which He had already provided. The fact is, I brought into the country, in money, only the small sum of about $1,200, and $1,000 of that had been handed to me by dear Brother Critchlow to meet ’emergencies’ in Loanda. Heavy duties, house-rent for forty persons with high rates for wood, water, etc., soon swallowed that amount. But just in our extremity, Mr. J. T., a Church of England man in the City of London, gave us £250 – over $1,200.

“The Lord thus tided us over that bar. So in our extremity of need, as before described, the God of ‘the Church of England’ as well as of our own, through His servant J. T. of London, gave us £250 more. With that we bought the Nhanguepepo property of the Commandante, and settled our people here, also at Pungo Andongo, and Malange.

“I proposed that our Nhangue Station should bear the name of our London brother, but when I spoke to him about it, he replied, ‘No, Bishop Taylor, no! that is an honor I do not deserve. I live at home in comfort. Call it after somebody who has suffered and done something for God among the heathen.’

“All the members of the families, and young men appointed to Nhanguepepo four years ago, are still at the front making a record for God and heaven, save Nellie and Edna Mead, who have gone to represent us in the home country of our King. Brother Carl Rudolph, however, is the only one who remains at Nhangue, and is at present in sole charge of the station, and is breaking in native workers, and is likely to make this a training station of native, rather than an American agency. If such should turn out to be in the line of God’s wisdom, and gracious leading, all the better. These are acclimatized, know the languages, and the life of the people, and have many advantages over foreign agency. The foreign missionary is sent by the Holy Spirit ‘to prepare the way of the Lord,’ but the sooner he can train and trust the native-born men and women whom God shall call to be heralds and witnesses of the truth, the better.