 CHAPTER VI. In an earlier chapter on the work of Dr. Chamberlain, among the Telugu's of southeastern India, something was said about the romantic aspects of even the ordinary routine of medical missions, whether in the wards of his hospital or itinerating among scattered villages, the missionary doctor has an opportunity and an influence beyond any possessed by one who is only a preacher or teacher. Jesus Christ, it has been said, was the first medical missionary. As he went about Galilee doing good, he not only preached the gospel of the kingdom, but healed all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people. In this combination of healing with preaching lay a large part of the secret of our Lord's attractive power. The modern missionary doctor cannot work miracles, but through the progress of medical science he has acquired a marvelous power to heal sickness and relieve suffering, and by the quiet exercise of his skill amongst a heathen and sometimes hostile population, he inspires a confidence and calls forth a gratitude by which the solid walls of prejudice are rapidly broken down and locked doors are thrown wide open for the entrance of the Christian Gospel. It is the gracious work of healing steadily carried on from year to year that lays the foundations of a medical missionary's power, but sometimes in the history of a mission there come hours of crisis which bring with them the chance of doing something heroic, and in which a strong man's grandest qualities become revealed. It was in such an hour that Dr. A. McDonald Westwater, a Scotch Presbyterian missionary, gained the name of the Saviour of Liao Yang by which he is now known all over Manchuria. The boxer madness had swept up to Manchuria from the south and had raged across the country with the swift destructiveness of a prairie fire, hordes of Chinese soldiers joined the anti-foreign movement, and everywhere there was red ruin and the breaking up of laws. Christian missions and native Christians suffered most, for they had to bear the full brunt of the savage hatred stirred up against the foreign devils. But the rioters did not stop short with massacring Christians and destroying mission property. Boxerism soon turned to indiscriminate brigandage, and by and by the great city of Mukden, the capital of the three provinces of Manchuria, was looted, while for a distance of five hundred miles the marauders marched along the railway line, tearing up the rails, destroying stations, plundering and burning houses and villas on either hand. But the Avengers were soon on the trail, Russian troops were poured into Manchuria, and a terrible work of reprisal was begun. Advancing simultaneously from south and north, the Russians simply wiped out every village in which they found any railway material, and left the country behind them, black and smoking on both sides of what had once been the railway line. The terror of their name traveled before them, as they drew near to Haiching the people fled en masse, though the better off among them, in the hope of securing some consideration for their property, took the precaution of leaving caretakers behind in their houses and shops. But the troops of the Tsar treated Haiching as they had already treated many a meaner place. Of the numerous caretakers left in the city, only six escaped from the pitiless massacre that followed the military occupation. Haiching itself was looted and left absolutely bare, and then the Russians moved onwards, still destroying as they went, and making their way now towards the important city of Liao Yang. In Liao Yang, previous to the boxer outbreak, a splendid work had been carried on for years by Dr. Westwater, an agent of the United Presbyterian, now the United Free Church of Scotland. His free healing hall, as the name of his mission hospital ran in Chinese, had become a place of note in the city. In this hall, as one of the citizens, not himself a Christian, expressed it, the blind saw, the lame walked, the deaf heard, and all were counseled to virtue. Called by the boxer fury to lay down his work in Liao Yang for a time, the doctor sought and obtained permission to accompany the Russian punitive field force as a member of the Russian Red Cross Society, with General Alexandrovsky at its head. He was present in every battle fought during the campaign, and immensely impressed the Russian officers by his surgical skill, which quite surpassed that of any doctor of their own. In this way he gained the good opinion and respect of the general in command, and was able to do something towards checking the frightful excesses of which, at first, the army was guilty. When the advancing troops reached Liao Yang, a small engagement was fought in which the Chinese were defeated. Following up their victory, the Russians were just about to enter the suburbs when they were fired upon from the city walls and so brought to a halt. Meanwhile from the Korean gate the inhabitants were pouring out in crowds, endeavoring to make good their escape before the Russians should take the city. Numbers of people were trampled to death in the panic-stricken rush, many were pushed into the river and drowned. To crown the horrors of the scene, the Russian gunners got on to this black mass of struggling fugitives, and began to throw shells into the thick of it. It now seemed certain that Liao Yang would share the fate that had already befallen Haiqing, the fate of being deserted by a terrified population, and given up to massacre and loot at the hands of native brigands as well as of Russian troops. Only one man stood between it and destruction, but that man had the soul of a hero, and proved himself equal to the occasion. Before the general had ordered an assault on the city, Dr. Westwater had obtained an interview with him. His words were brief, but to the point. I undertake, he said, to enter Liao Yang by myself, and to persuade the people to surrender peacefully but upon one condition. What is that, asked the general, that I have your solemn word of honor that no harm shall be done to the person of man or woman within the walls, and that there shall be absolutely no looting. To a Russian commander this was a new way of dealing with an obstinate Chinese town, but Dr. Westwater's personality by this time had made a strong impression on him, and he at once gave his word of honor to observe the stipulated terms. The doctor then mounted his pony and rode on all alone towards the walls of this lately boxerized city. Obtaining entrance by one of the gates, and riding on through the streets, he could see no sign of any living creature. It looked at first as if the whole population had already vanished, though most of them, he afterwards found, had simply shut themselves up within their houses. At last a Christian schoolboy approached who had recognized him and come out to meet him. From this boy Dr. Westwater learned that at that very time the members of the guild, the city fathers of Liao Yang, as they might be called, were gathered together to take counsel regarding the city's fate. Riding on, he came to their hall of meeting, and introduced himself as one whom most of them knew as a Christian doctor, but who was now come as an ambassador of peace from the head of the Russian army, and when he went on to inform them that the general had passed his deliberate word of honor to himself to do no harm to the place if it was quietly surrendered, a thrill of astonishment and relief ran through the meeting. The word was quickly carried through the streets, and the confidence of the city was restored as if by magic. The people no longer thought of abandoning Liao Yang to its fate, but prepared with perfect calmness to receive their conquerors. The Russian general, on the other hand, was absolutely loyal to his word. To secure that his promises should be observed to the letter he appointed, not sergeants merely, but commissioned officers to go about the streets with the patrols. And this was the altogether unexampled result. During the whole of the Russian occupation of Liao Yang, there was not a single instance of crime committed by the soldiery against the person or property of any inhabitant of the city. This gallant deed of the Scotch missionary doctor has been described by Mr. Wiggum, the well-known Eastern traveler and war correspondent, as a fine thing done by a white man all alone, and as the bravest deed of which he knows. And it was this that gained for Dr. Westwater from the people of Manchuria his enviable name of the Savior of Liao Yang. Upon the citizens of Liao Yang itself, Dr. Westwater's action made a very deep impression. They felt that to him they owed the salvation of their lives and homes. On his return to the city after the conclusion of his period of service with the Red Cross Society, the heads of the native guilds called on him to express their gratitude. They offered him the choice of a number of compounds for a temporary house and hospital, stating their readiness to pay all the expenses of alterations, rent, and even of medicines. Finally about a year after, when he went home to Scotland on furlough, the city honoured him with a triumphal procession, banners waved, musical instruments brayed and banged, with native dignity and grandeur the gentry of the place accompanied the man whom they delighted to honour through the streets, out of the gate, and right up to the railway station, where they bade him their best farewell. As the result of what he had done, the doctor's name and fame spread far and wide through the provinces of Manchuria. Some time afterwards the reverend Mr. McNaughton, going on a prolonged and distant missionary tour, found that right away to the banks of the Yalu River, some two hundred miles from Liao Yang, Dr. Westwater's was a name to charm with. Immediately on hearing it mentioned, the people would say, Oh, that was the man who saved Liao Yang! Very less deep was the effect produced by the doctor's character and action upon the Russians in Manchuria. His opinions had weight with the authorities, while he himself became a great personal favourite with all who knew him. Being a Scotchman, Muscovite demonstrativeness often caused him some embarrassment, for a Russian admirer thought nothing of throwing his arms round him and bestowing a hearty kiss. Mr. Wiggum tells how he met a Russian engineer, Shua Restzhoff, who, learning that Mr. Wiggum was a Scotchman, said he was glad to make the acquaintance of one who came from Scotland, for the two greatest men he knew of were both Scotchmen, Dr. Westwater and Sir Walter Scott. Much water has flowed under the bridges of Manchuria, water often mingled with blood, since the days of the Boxer rising. But the events of more recent years have only added to Dr. Westwater's reputation, and proved once more how much can be done in the interests of humanity and Christianity amid all the tumult and the shouting, and the unbridled savagery of war by a brave, strong man who has devoted his life to the service of his fellow creatures as a medical missionary. When the tremendous struggle began between Japan and Russia, Dr. Westwater and his colleague, Mr. McNaughton, together with their wives, were allowed to remain in Liao Yang. This in itself was a tribute to the doctor's influence, for it is practically certain that but for him the Russians would have expelled the missionaries from the province with the opening of the war. It was the entire confidence felt in him, sufficiently proved by his being in constant demand at headquarters to prescribe for the officers of the army, that enabled the mission to retain its hold upon the city right through the long period of stress and conflict. As General Kuro Patkin had fixed his headquarters at Liao Yang, every fresh disaster to the Russian forces sent an electric thrill through the whole region of which the city formed the center, and as the opposing armies drew nearer and nearer, the Russians constantly retreating and the Japanese pressing on, the surrounding population began to flock into Liao Yang by tens of thousands. At this stage the doctor obtained General Kuro Patkin's permission to open a refuge for these poor, homeless creatures, and soon he had four thousand of them all heathen under his immediate care. Meanwhile the tide of battle rolled nearer and nearer. From Mr. McNaughton's lips we have received a vivid account of the scenes which were witnessed by Dr. Westwater and himself from the city walls during that long-drawn week of desperate and titanic encounter which is known as the Battle of Liao Yang. Everything lay before them as in a vast panorama, the great Manchurian plain rolling out its length towards the boundary of the distant low hills, the constant stream of ammunition and commissariat wagons flowing on steadily from the station to the battlefield, the sad stream of wounded men flowing as steadily back, the deadly shells bursting nearer and nearer, until at length it became no longer possible to stand in safety on the city walls. Then after the days of waiting and watching followed the days of strenuous action, men, women, and little children horribly smashed up began to be carried into the mission hospital till not only the wards but all the surrounding sheds were crammed with patience. Meanwhile the doctor had his crowded refuge to think of and provide for and be anxious about, for the shells were falling thick and five times it was hit, though by a merciful providence on every occasion not a single soul within the walls was so much as scratched. In his Empire of the East, Mr. Bennett Burley, the veteran doyen of military correspondence, describes Dr. Westwater as he found him in the thick of his work at this decisive moment of the war. Brave as a lion, he writes, Dr. Westwater went about alone, regardless of shell fire and bullets, suckering the wounded and doing good. And then he goes on to tell in more detail what kind of good the doctor was doing in those awful days. How he sheltered the homeless, fed the starving, performed under all the strain of multiplied duties, scores of critical operations, and yet found time to show pity and kindness to the crowds of terrified women and helpless children whom war had cast upon his hands. I saw the doctor, he says, just after he had completed seven amputations and a score more of cases remained to be dealt with. It adds to the impressiveness of Mr. Bennett Burley's picture of a hero at the post of duty in a trying hour when he remarks, he had no assistant, his only helpers, a few Chinese who served as nurses. We should supplement Mr. Burley's statement, however, by mentioning that while Dr. Westwater was ministering to the heathen refugees, Mr. McNaughton, by previous arrangement with his colleague, was devoting himself to the service of the native Christians of Liao Yang in their hour of need. When the Japanese at length entered the city, they paid their tribute, like the Russians before them, to the value of Dr. Westwater's work. It was their fire, of course, that had wrought the havoc among the noncombatants, but this was an inevitable result of the fact that the Russians had made their last stand at the railway station, and no one more regretted the suffering cause to the people of Liao Yang than the victorious general. One of his first acts was to contribute one thousand yen to Dr. Westwater's hospital, and the same sum to his refuge, i.e., in English money, one hundred pounds to each. We have shown something of Dr. Westwater's renown among Chinese citizens and English war correspondents, among the warriors of Russia and Japan alike. It is half amusing to learn that he holds a reputation hardly less distinguished among the robbers and bandits of the Manchurian wilds. These outlaws, the pests of the country in troubleous times, have a happy facility of becoming armed marauders or peaceful villagers at will. The advantages of the Dr's free healing hall to a man with a broken limb or an un-extracted bullet are not unknown to them, and now and then a robber wounded in some skirmish will find his way into the hospital at Liao Yang, representing himself as a poor peasant who has been attacked and wounded by cruel bandits. Some time ago a Christian coal porteur from the city was traveling through the country districts with his pack of Bibles, Testaments, and Tracts. He was passing along a road bordered by a field of ripe millet, when in a moment three or four robbers armed with revolvers sprang out from their hiding place behind the tall stalks. First of all they relieved him of the money made by his sales, and they opened his pack and looked curiously at his books. Who are you? one of them asked. I belong to the Bible Society, he said. What is that? It is a Society of Christians, the man replied. Ah! Christians! they shouted. The Society of the Foreign Devils! And with that one of them pointed his revolver at the coal porteur's head, fingering the trigger meanwhile in a way that was decidedly nasty. Just then another of the band suddenly stepped forward and asked, Do you know Dr. Westwater? I know him well, the man answered. He is a member of the church to which I belong. On hearing this the robber turned to his companions and said, Do not touch this fellow, Dr. Westwater is a good man. Two years ago he took a bullet out of my ribs, whereupon this robber band handed back to the coal porteur not only his pack, but every copper of his money, and bade him go in peace on his way to Liao Yang. Another experience of a somewhat similar kind befell the doctor's colleague, the reverend Mr. McNaughton himself. About a fortnight before the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, Mr. McNaughton, who had been itinerating in the province, was riding back to Liao Yang. He was drawing near to a strange village and there was nothing on the road in front of him but a Chinese cart rumbling slowly along. All at once they're shot out from the village in a fan-shaped skirmishing formation, a band of about twenty horsemen, all armed with rifles. Some of them galloped furiously to right and left so as to cut off any possibility of escape, but five came straight down the road towards the Carter and the missionary. They met the Carter first. One of them, who was mounted on a tall Russian horse, taken no doubt from a murdered Russian soldier, drew up his steed across the road, compelling the cart to stop, and then drawing a heavy whip began to lash the unfortunate peasant from head to heel. Mr. McNaughton's heart beat fast, for he knew that at that very time Russian outposts were being nipped off every now and then by bands of desperate bandits. He did not know what might be about to befall him, but he thought it best trusting in God to put a brave face on the matter and ride straight on. When he reached the cart the five robbers were drawn up beside it on the road. One of them held his rifle across his saddle ready for use, and all of them looked at him keenly, that he was a European they saw at once, but the Chinese sheepskin robe he wore showed that he was not a Russian but a missionary. Where are you going? they demanded. To liao yang, he replied, then pass on, they said, and without the slightest attempt on the part of any one of them to deprive him of his money or to molest him in any way, he was allowed to continue on his journey. Talking to the present writer of this incident, Mr. McNaughton said that he had no doubt whatever that, though not himself a doctor, he owed his escape to the influence of the liao yang medical mission. Even to the savage bandits of Manchuria, Dr. Westwater is a good man. Some of them, as has been said, have passed through his hands and are grateful to him accordingly. Others have heard of his skill and generosity, and if on no higher grounds entertain a kindly feeling towards him at least from the lower but still effective motive of that form of gratitude which has been defined as a lively sense of favours to come. CHAPTER VII In days when the British flag flies proudly over the commissioner's residence in what is now known as the Uganda Protectorate in the equatorial regions of East Central Africa, and railway trains pass regularly to and fro through the wild regions that lie between the town of Mombasa on the coast and Kavirando Bay on the eastern shores of the Victoria Nyanza, the grandest of all African lakes, most of the mystery and romance which once hung about the kingdom of Uganda may be said to have disappeared. Less than fifty years ago the case was very different. One or two bold travelers, pushing on towards the sources of the Nile, had heard from Arab traders, not less bold, of the existence of an ancient, powerful, and half-civilized kingdom lying directly under the equator and stretching along the coasts of a great inland sea. But these at best were only hearsay tales, and if the thrilling romance of King Solomon's minds, dear to the hearts of boys, had been in print half a century ago, the wonderful regions discovered by Alan Quatermain and his companions would have had as much reality to English readers as the dominions of King Matissa. But in 1862 Captain Speak reached Uganda, the first of all white men to enter the country, and in 1875 there came an explorer greater still, Henry M. Stanley. Stanley was much impressed by what he saw of Matissa and his kingdom, and was especially struck with the great possibilities for the future of Christian missions in Africa that seemed to be opened up by the existence in the very heart of the continent of such a country as Uganda, ruled by a monarch so enlightened. On his return to England he wrote a historic letter to a great London newspaper describing his visit to Uganda and challenging the Christian churches of Britain to send missionaries to that land. It was this letter that led the Church Missionary Society shortly afterwards to undertake that work in Uganda with which the name of Alexander McKay will always be associated. McKay was a young Scotchman, the son of a Presbyterian minister in Aberdeenshire, who at an early age had made up his mind to devote himself to the service of Christ in the foreign field, and had conceived the original idea of becoming what he called an engineer missionary. From the first he saw, as most missionary societies have now come to see, that Christianity and modern civilization should go hand in hand, and that mechanical work is as legitimate an aid to missions as medical science. He had a natural bent towards engineering, and after studying it theoretically for three years at Edinburgh University, went to Germany and spent some time there as a draftsman and constructor. So marked were his constructive talents that one of his employers offered him a partnership in a large engineering concern. But what would have seemed a tempting opportunity to most young men was no temptation to him. Already his heart was in the mission field. When he was twenty-four years of age and hard at work in Berlin, he wrote in his diary on the first anniversary of Dr. Livingston's death, this day last year Livingston died, a Scotchman and a Christian, loving God and his neighbor in the heart of Africa. Go thou and do likewise. It was in the year following that Stanley returned from Uganda and wrote the celebrated letter already referred to. And among the first to respond personally to the explorer's challenge was the young Scotch engineer who had drunk so deeply of Livingston's spirit, and whom Stanley himself described fourteen years later when he had seen with his own eyes the kind of work that McKay had done in the heart of Africa as the modern Livingston. According to Stanley it was the practical Christian teacher who was wanted in the dark continent. The man who, sailor-like, could turn his hand to anything. Such a one, he wrote, if he can be found would become the savior of Africa. McKay's practical teaching began long before he set foot in Uganda, for as soon as he reached the East African coast he set to work to cut a good road to Mapuapua, two hundred thirty miles inland. It was a huge task for one white man to undertake in the teeth of countless natural difficulties, and in spite of frequent sickness and dangers from wild beasts and savage men. But in the words of the old Scotch proverb, the young engineer set a stout heart to a steep ray, fording swamps and climbing hills, bridging rivers, and cleaving his way through forests. It was not till two years after he had landed in Africa that he arrived at Kage on the south of the Victoria Nyanza, and caught his first glimpse of the great lake in the neighborhood of which the remainder of his life was to be spent. Two of the missionaries for Uganda, Lieutenant Smith and Mr. O'Neill, had been murdered shortly before by a neighboring king, others had succumbed to the climate one by one, and meantime he was left alone to hold aloft in this vast region the flag of Christianity and civilization. His first business was to get across the lake, for Kage is at the south end, while Uganda lies along the northwestern shores. In size the Victoria Nyanza is about equal to Ireland, and the only way of crossing this inland sea was by means of a sailing boat called the Daisy, which had been brought up from the coast in sections by Lieutenant Smith, but in which not a single sound plank now remained, thanks to the burning rays of the sun, the teeth of hippopotamia, and the ravages of armies of white ants. McKay had to begin without delay those mechanical labours by which he was to produce so deep an impression on the native mind, and which by and by made his name famous all round the shores of the Victoria Nyanza. Day by day he toiled single-handed on the beach with crowds of natives all around, willing to help so far as they could, but sometimes doing more to hinder, watching and wondering until, as they saw his turning lay that work, or beautiful candles growing under his fingers out of the fat of an ox, or a complete steam engine out of a heterogeneous collection of bars and rods and bolts and screws, they began to whisper to one another that the white man came from heaven. But before his boat-building was completed, McKay impressed the natives in another way by paying a visit to King Lekongae of the island of Yukariwi, by whose warriors the two missionaries had been murdered a short time before. The friendly people of Kage entreated him not to go to Yukariwi, ignoring him that by doing so he would only be putting his head into the lion's jaws. But he went, alone and unarmed, and got Lekongae to promise that he would allow the missionaries to come and teach his subjects, and then, after a nine-days absence, returned to Kage, where he was received almost as one who had come back from the dead. At length the Daisy was ready, and McKay had now to undertake the duty of navigating her across unknown waters, even to an experienced sailor like the murdered Lieutenant Smith the task would not have been an easy one, for like the Sea of Galilee the Victoria Nianza is a lake of storms, while countless rocks and islets stud the broad expanse on every hand. And McKay was not only no sailor, he had not the slightest acquaintance with the art of handling a sailing boat. Still there was nothing for it but to launch out into the deep with a native crew which knew even less about boats than he did himself. It was a terrible voyage. Soon after leaving Kage a great storm came down and raged upon the lake for two days, during which the Daisy was driven helplessly before the fury of wind and waves, until she was hurled at last a mere wreck upon the western coast. The boatbuilder's task had to be resumed once more, and the Daisy was repaired, as McKay himself puts it, much as one would make a pair of shoes out of a pair of long boots, cutting eight feet out of the middle of her, we brought stem and stern together, patching up all broken parts in these with the wood of the middle portion, and after eight weeks hard labour we launched her once more on the Victoria Nianza. It was not till November 1878, two-and-a-half years after leaving England, that in Tebe the port of Uganda was cited at last, and five days afterwards McKay entered Rubaga, the capital of the land which had so long been the goal of all his hopes and endeavors. On the earliest day on which there was a Baraza, or Levy at Matisa's court, he received a summons to attend. It was a striking succession of scenes that met his quietly observant eye, as he passed along the magnificently wide road that led to the royal palace of this central African city. In his Two Kings of Uganda, Mr. Ash, McKay's colleague at a later period, gives a graphic account of one of Matisa's levies, when amidst the rolling tattoos of deep-toned drums and the blare of trumpets, lords and chieftains from far and near, villainous but smiling Arabs, runaway Egyptian soldiers from the Sudan, adventurers from the East Coast and Madagascar, mount-a-banks, minstrels, dancers and dwarves all gathered into the courtyard of the Kabaka, which was the native title of the king. McKay's presentation passed off very well, and it was not long till his great skill in all kinds of arts and crafts, and especially in iron work, made him an object of wonder to the whole country and a special favorite with the king. But he never allowed himself to forget that, important as practical work was, there was something which was infinitely higher, and that all the influence which he gained by his mechanical ingenuity must be turned to the service of the gospel he had come to Uganda to proclaim. So while during the rest of the week he practiced the arts of civilization and imparted them to others, when Sunday came he regularly presented himself at the court, and read and expounded the New Testament to a listening crowd in the presence of the king. At first Matisa appeared to be in sympathy with his teaching, and to the ardent young missionary it almost seemed as if the whole nation of Uganda might be born in a day. It was not long, however, till adverse influences began to work. The Arab traders bitterly disliked McKay, for they were well aware that all his influence went to undermine their very lucrative slave trade. There were some Roman Catholic priests, too, who had followed him to Uganda after he had opened up the way, and these men set themselves to prejudice both king and people against him as far as they could. But worst of all, Matisa turned out to be a hearer of the type of that Felix to whom St. Paul preached. Up to a certain point he listened to McKay willingly enough, but he did not like the missionary to get into close grips with his conscience. There was much that was good and amiable about Matisa, and to the end he protected McKay from all his enemies, but his whole previous life had been a training in cruelty, brutality, and lust, and though his mind was convinced of the truth of the Christian gospel, its moral demands were too much for his taste, and he remained a heathen in heart. And so there came a time when McKay discovered to his horror that while for more than two years the king had been listening to him with apparent interest, he had been permitting almost unimaginable cruelties to be practiced just as before. In particular, every now and then he gave orders for a quendo, i.e. a great massacre of human victims, in one of which as many as two thousand persons were put to death in a single day. In anticipation of these great sacrifices, gangs of executioners prowled about the land by night, pouncing upon innocent and helpless people and marching them off to the capital. And by and by McKay came to know that the deep roll of drums, which sometimes wakened him in the dead of night, was nothing else than the signal that a fresh batch of victims had been brought in. When the day of the quendo arrived, these wretched creatures were put to death by burning. But before being cast alive into the flames many had their eyes put out, their noses and ears cut off, or the sinews of their arms and thighs torn out and roasted before their faces. Against these horrible deeds McKay protested with all his strength, but only offended the king, who now declined to see him at the court, and no longer as at first supplied him with food, so that he and the two other missionaries by whom he had been joined were sometimes reduced to actual starvation. From time to time, however, the royal favor was regained in some measure by a fresh demonstration of the white man's mechanical power. Once in a time of great drought, when water was not to be had in the capital, McKay sank a deep well, a thing which had never before been seen in Uganda, and fitted it with a pump, a thing more wonderful still. And when the people saw the copious stream of water ascending twenty feet high, and flowing on as long as any one worked the pump handle, their astonishment knew no bounds, and they cried, MAKAY LUBARE, MAKAY IS THE GREAT SPIRIT, AGAIN AND AGAIN. But their benefactor did not trade on their ignorance. He told them that the pump was only a kind of elephant's trunk made of copper, or that it was like the tubes they used for sucking beer out of their beer jars, only much bigger and with a tongue of iron to suck up the water. I am no great spirit, he assured them, there is only one great spirit, that is God, and I am only a man like yourselves. Another of McKay's tasks at that time was imposed on him by the death of Matisa's mother, and consisted in the manufacture of what the king considered a fitting receptacle for the corpse of so august, a personage. It was a triple series of coffins, an inner one of wood, a middle one of copper, and an outer one of wood covered with cloth. Everything had to be made as large as possible, and to fulfill the office of undertaker on this brobding naggy and scale the handy missionary had to toil incessantly for thirty days, and laterly all through the night as well. The outer coffin was made of one hundred boards nailed together, with strong ribs like the sides of a schooner, and was so enormous that it looked like a house rather than a coffin, and required the assistance of a whole army of men that it might be lowered safely into the grave, which, again, was a huge pit twenty feet long, fifteen feet broad, and about thirty feet deep. At last Matisa died, worn out prematurely by his vices, and was succeeded by his son Mwanga, a youth of about seventeen, who inherited his father's worst qualities but none of his good ones. Then began a time of fiery trial for the mission. McKay and his companions were daily threatened with death, and death was made the penalty of listening to their teaching or even of reading the Bible in secret. Many of McKay's pupils and converts were tortured and burnt to death, but in Uganda as everywhere the old saying came true that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. Inquirers became far more numerous than ever, men stole into the houses of the missionaries by night and begged to be baptized, and there were cases where bolder ones went openly to the court and proclaimed that they were Christians, though they knew that their confession would immediately be followed by a cruel death. Sir H. M. Stanley said of this martyr church of Uganda that he took it to be a more substantial evidence of the work of McKay than any number of imposing structures clustered together and called a mission station would be. Certainly it is that it was by the tearful sowing of McKay and his companions in those gloomy days that there was brought about that time of plentiful and joyful reaping which came in Uganda by and by. And now we come to the culminating tragedy in this story of tyranny and bloodshed, and the moment when the faith and courage of the missionaries were most severely tested. They knew that Mr. Hannington had been consecrated bishop of East Equatorial Africa and was on his way to Uganda from the coast, and they had heard with much concern that, instead of following the customary route to the south end of the lake, he was marching through the Masai country on the east towards the district of Yusoka at the northern extremity of the Victoria Nianza with the intention of entering Uganda from that quarter. The ground of their concern lay in the fact that the people of Uganda looked upon Yusoka as their private backdoor, through which no strangers, and especially no white men, should be permitted to approach. There was an old prophecy among them that their country was to be conquered by a people coming from the east, and when word was brought that white men with a large caravan of followers had made their appearance in Yusoka, Mwanga and his counselors grew excited and alarmed. McKay guessed at once who the advancing travelers would be, and did everything he could to reassure the king as to Hannington's purpose in coming to his country. But in spite of all his efforts, a band of soldiers was secretly dispatched to intercept and massacre the bishop and his followers, and soon the news spread throughout all Uganda that Mwanga's instructions had been literally fulfilled. The murder of the bishop seemed to wet the tyrant's appetite for Christian blood, and a general persecution followed in which the very flower of the native converts were slain. While the lives of the missionaries themselves constantly hung by a single thread, the king being kept from ordering their instant execution, only by the powerful influence of his catacoroh or prime minister, who urged him to remember all that McKay had done for his father in the past. At length Mr. Ash, McKay's only remaining companion, got permission to return to England, while McKay himself was allowed to withdraw to the south end of the lake. Much as he needed arrest, he could not be persuaded to turn his back on Africa at this critical juncture. Nor did he cross the lake through any personal fears, but only because he was convinced that it might be best for the native Christians that his presence should be removed for a time. He went accordingly to the district of Usambiro, south of the lake, and immediately started mission work there, devoting himself at the same time to the task of translating and printing portions of scripture for the Uganda people, so that even in his absence the divine word might continue to win its way in many hearts. It was whilst he was at Usambiro that Stanley and he first met. The distinguished explorer was then on his way back to the coast after his relief of Eamon Pasha, and to him and his companions it was a welcome relief, as several of them have testified, an oasis in the desert of African travel, to come in the midst of their long and weary march upon McKay's mission station at Usambiro. In his book In Darkest Africa, Stanley himself gives a graphic description of the meeting, and thus records his impressions of the young Scotch missionary, and the work in which they found him quietly and steadily engaged. Talking thus, we entered the circle of tall poles within which the mission station was built. There were signs of labor and constant unwearing patience sweating under a hot sun, a steadfast determination to do something to keep the mind employed, and never let idleness find them with folded hands brooding over the unloveliness, lest despair might seize them and cause them to avail themselves of the speediest means of ending their misery. There was a big, solid workshop in the yard, filled with machinery and tools, a launch's boiler was being prepared by the black smiths, a big canoe was outside repairing, there were saw-pits and large logs of hard timber, there were great stacks of palisade poles, in a corner of an outer yard was a cattle fold and a goat pin, fowls by the score pecked at microscopic grains, and out of the European quarter there trooped a number of little boys and big boys looking uncommonly sleek and happy, and quiet laborers came up to bid us, with hats off, good morning! A clever writer lately wrote a book about a man who spent much time in Africa, which from beginning to end is a long-drawn whale. It would have cured both writer and hero of all moping to have seen the manner of Mackay's life. He has no time to fret and groan and weep, and God knows if ever man had reason to think of graves and worms and oblivion, and to be doltful and lonely and sad, Mackay had, when, after murdering his bishop and burning his pupils, and strangling his converts and clubbing to death his dark friends, Mwanga turned his eye of death on him. And yet the little man met it with calm blue eyes that never winked, to see one man of this kind working day after day for twelve years bravely, and without a syllable of complaint or a moan amidst the wilderness, and to hear him lead his little flock to show forth God's loving kindness in the morning, and his faithfulness every night, is worth going a long journey for the moral courage and contentment that one derives from it. Stanley spent twenty days at Usambiro, enjoying to the full the society and hospitality of his missionary friend. On the day that the expedition left, Mackay walked with the travellers for some distance, but bade them goodbye at last, and stood on the path waving his hat till they passed out of sight. One of Stanley's officers wrote afterwards, that lonely figure standing on the brow of the hill, waving farewell to us, will ever remain vividly in my mind. The end of this heroic life came not long after. Mackay was struck down in the midst of his labours by a sharp attack of malarial fever, which he had not the strength to resist, and after some days of delirium he passed quietly away. He has been called the hero of Uganda, and the record of his life shows that he would be worthy of the name, even though no great apparent frutige had come from all his toils and trials. But the events that have followed since his death help us to a clearer estimate of the richness of the seeds he sowed, often in manifold pain and sorrow, in those first days of Christianity on the shores of the Victoria Nianza. The Reverend J. S. Moffat, son of the celebrated Doctor Moffat and brother-in-law of Dr. Livingston, writing in August 1904 in the Aurora, the Journal of the Livingstonia Presbyterian Mission on the West of Lake Nyasa, gives a vivid description of a recent visit to Uganda, and thus pictures the following scene he witnessed on Easter Sunday in the Cathedral Church at Nami Rimby. From where I sat I could see at least three thousand faces. I was told that there was still a crowd outside, of those who could not find room, and there was a separate and simultaneous service being conducted in an adjacent building, at which at least five hundred younger people were assembled. In the Cathedral we joined in the stately service of the Anglican Church, never so stately and impressive as when it is rendered in noble simplicity, free from the adventitious accompaniment and the vicarious performance of a highly artistic choir. There was something more real and solemn than this in the vast murmur, almost a thunder roll, of thousands of responding voices, the voices of men and women who had been born in the most degraded and darkest heathenism, the people that sat in darkness but had seen a great light, the Easter sun shining upon the stone that had been rolled away and upon the open grave. CHAPTER 8 THE LION HARDED BISHOP There is no chapter in the story of modern missions which has more of the romantic element about it than that which tells how the kingdom of Uganda, within less than a generation, was turned from a land of heathen darkness and cruelty to one in which on the Lord's Day such scenes of devout Christian worship are to be witnessed in church and cathedral as are described on a preceding page in the language of the Reverend Mr. Moffat. We have spoken of Alexander McKay as the hero of Uganda, and undoubtedly it was he more than any other who sowed in that land the seed which has been reaped so plentifully since. But there is another name which the Church of Uganda must ever cherish side by side with McKay's, the name of that lion-hearted man Bishop Hannington, who literally laid down his life for her sake. It is true that Hannington never saw Uganda, and yet during his brief missionary career it was for Uganda most of all that he prayed and toiled and suffered, and it was for Uganda too that he died at last a martyr's death. When the soldiers of the cruel Mwanga were about to thrust their spears into his body as he stood on the very threshold of the land he had sought so long, he bade them tell their king that he was about to die for Uganda and that he had purchased the road to Uganda with his life. James Hannington was the very ideal of a pioneer missionary. Full of physical vitality and animal spirits, and absolutely devoid of fear, he spent his boyhood in all kinds of adventures by land and water, which sometimes developed into schoolboy scrapes of the kind that Mr. Kipling describes so vividly in Stalki and Company. When only twelve, he had the thumb of his left hand blown off by some damp gunpowder squibs or blue devils which he had manufactured with a view to taking a wasp's nest, and in after years, when a young curate, he often alarmed the parishioners by his reckless feats as a climber and egg hunter on the Devonshire cliffs. But in the heart of Mad Jim as he had been called at school, there grew up a great love for Christ and a desire to serve him in the ministry of the church, and when he took holy orders after studying at Oxford, it proved that his adventurous spirit, his athletic habits, and his frank outspoken manliness gave him a power over many minds which the ordinary clergyman mostly fails to reach. By and by the stirrings of the heart began to urge him forth to a larger and more difficult field than he could find at home. In particular, when word came to England of the murder of Lieutenant Smith and Mr. O'Neill on the Victoria Nianza, he felt the impulse of the brave soldier to step into the gap where a comrade has fallen, and when the church missionary society decided to send a fresh party to Uganda to reinforce McKay, who was holding the ground with a single companion in the face of infinite difficulties and discouragements, Huntington was one of the first to volunteer. He was most happily settled by this time as incumbent of St. George's Chapel, Hearst Pier Point, the home of his boyhood and youth, and had besides a wife and young children to whom he was passionately attached. But the call he heard was one to which he could give no denial. For Christ and for Africa he felt that he must be willing to suffer the loss of all things. Huntington was appointed leader of the new party which consisted of six men, and his instructions were to endeavor to reach Uganda from Zanzibar by what was then the ordinary route, Viz, to the south end of the Victoria Nianza, and thereafter by boat across the lake to Rubaga, King Matissa's capital. His first landing in Africa was thoroughly like himself. The thirty miles of channel between Zanzibar and the mainland was crossed in a filthy Arab dow, but the water was so shallow that the vessel could not get within half a mile of the shore. A dugout canoe put off to their assistance, in which the rest of the passengers were conveyed to land two or three at a time. But as the sea was rough the waves broke constantly over the canoe, nearly filling it with water. Huntington said that he preferred a regular bathe to a foot bath with his boots on, so he stripped off his clothes, put them into a bag which he carried on his head, and disregarding the sharks he waited and stumbled and swam over the half mile of rough coral and through the breakers which lay between the vessel and the beach. So he landed on the coast of Africa in a manner quite characteristic. When Huntington went up for his examination before being ordained, he did not make a very brilliant appearance, and the bishop, after looking him all over, said, You've got fine legs, I see, mind that you run about your parish. His parish now was East Central Africa, and it was well that he had good legs. Practically the whole of his life as a missionary was spent in journeying up and down this vast region. But to a man of his temperament, though the motive of carrying the gospel to the heart of the African continent was the central one, exploration and adventure were very welcome in themselves, and he entered into his new experiences with much of the zest of his boyish days. Here is a description written to his nephews and nieces and accompanied by one of those droll sketches with which he often embellished his letters to familiar friends. Fancy a set of hideous savages regarding your uncle as a strange, outlandish creature, frightful to behold. Are those your feet, white man? No, gentlemen, they are not. They are my sandals. But do they grow to your feet? No, gentlemen, they do not. I will show you. So I would unlace a boot. A roar of astonishment followed when they saw my blue sock, as they thought my feet must be blue and toeless. I pulled off the sock, and they were dumbfounded at the sight of my white, five-toed foot. They used to think that only my face and hands were white, and the rest of me black like themselves. My watch, too, was an unfailing attraction. There is a man in it. It is Lubari. It is witchcraft, they would cry. He talks. He says, teak, teak, teak. My nose, they would compare with a spear. It struck them as so sharp and thin as compared with their own. Often one would give my hair a smart pull to try whether it were a wig and would come off. There were times when the experiences of the travelers were more dangerous than amusing. For there were murderous robbers in some of the forests who were ever on the watch to pounce upon unwary strangers, and there were deep pits cunningly covered over with twigs and grass, and with upright spears at the bottom, which were used by the natives as traps for the larger kinds of game. To stumble into one of these means almost certainly a horrible death. Huntington himself fell into one, but fortunately in this case the spears were wanting, and he was not dangerously hurt, though much shaken and bruised. It was fitting that this lion-hearted missionary should have more than one exciting encounter with lions. The most thrilling of all took place one day when he had gone out to shoot, accompanied by a single boy. Seeing a small animal moving through the long grass in front, he fired, and the creature rolled over quite dead. On coming up to it he discovered that it was nothing less than a lion's welp. Immediately the boy shouted, Run, master, run, and took to his heels as hard as he could. His terror was not premature. For the next moment, with terrific roars, a large lion and lioness came bounding towards Huntington out of the jungle. His gun was empty, he had no time to reload, but though his natural impulse was to run, he felt at once that this would be fatal. So he stood his ground, and when the lions came near growling and lashing their tails and glaring at this intruder, he only glared back at them with steady eyes. This unflinching courage completely subdued them, and as they stood staring fiercely at him, he gradually retreated backwards for a hundred yards or so, facing them all the while, and then turned and quietly walked away. Most men, however brave, would have been content with this victory. But Huntington was not content, for he now determined to go back and secure the young lion's skin, if possible. As he drew near again, he saw that the lion and its mate were walking round and round the dead body of their wellp, licking it and turning it over, and trying to restore it to life. Throwing his arms into the air and yelling as loud as he could, he rushed forward, and the fierce beasts, which evidently had never met such a person as this before, fairly turned tail and leaped away into the bush, whereupon Huntington seized his prize, and by and by marched into camp carrying it triumphantly on his shoulders. The Victoria Nyanza was reached about Christmas, 1882, after a weary journey of several months, marked not only by dangers from lions, leopards, rhinos, and buffaloes, but by constant worries and anxieties due to the fact that the expedition was very badly provided with supplies. At first it seemed to Huntington that his journey was almost at an end, for only the great sheet of water now separated him from Uganda. But like McKay before him, he soon found that his worst troubles were yet to come. In the meantime they had no means of crossing, and while Huntington toiled to make arrangements he took a violent attack of malarial fever, and was quickly reduced to such terrible weakness that his companions agreed that his only chance of saving his life lay in returning to England immediately. And so went almost within sight of his goal he had to turn back, and allow himself to be carried in a hammock all the dreary way back to Zanzibar. Catching a mail steamer, he got safely home to England, and was received again into his beloved circle at Hearst Pier Point, almost as his biographer Mr. Dawson puts it, as one alive from the dead. At first it seemed certain that he would never see Africa again, but gradually his strength returned, and with it a keen desire to resume the task he had undertaken. Meantime the directors of the Church Missionary Society, who had long been anxious to secure a bishop to take the oversight of all the churches they had planted in East Central Africa, singled him out as preeminently qualified for the position, and the Archbishop of Canterbury cordially agreed to consecrate him. In the summer of 1884, accordingly, he became Bishop of East Equatorial Africa, a diocese which embraced not Uganda only, but the immense region which lies between the Victoria Nianza and the coast. Uganda, however, was still his chief concern, and his failure to reach it on the first attempt made him all the more determined to visit it now without delay, and to endeavour to bring some comfort to its persecuted Christians and some help to the brave McKay, who still held the fort for Christ and the Church in that unhappy land in which the debased and cruel Mwanga was now king. Having set things in order at the stations near the coast and paid a flying visit to Mount Kilimanjaro for the purpose of planting the banner of the cross upon its very slopes, the bishop therefore began at once to make preparations for his second and last journey towards Uganda, and now he came to what proved to be a fateful decision. Hitherto the missionaries had started from Zanzibar and made for the south end of the lake, thereafter crossing the Victoria Nianza in boats. But Hennington knew by painful experience the difficulties of that route, its undue length, its exasperating delays, the deadly influences of its fever-haunted swamps. He conceived the idea of a new line of March Witch, starting not from Zanzibar but from Mombasa, about one hundred fifty miles nearer the equator, should aim not at the south of the lake but at the north. For one thing this route would be considerably shorter. Moreover, as his brief visit to Kilimanjaro had shown, instead of passing through a low-lying country it would lead to a large extent over healthy uplands where traveling would be safe for Europeans. The one great difficulty he thought of, a difficulty which, until lately had seemed insurmountable, was the fact that he would be obliged to traverse the country of the Maasai, whose very name was a word of terror for hundreds of miles around. But not long before that intrepid young Scotchman, Mr. Joseph Thompson, had explored the Maasai country without coming to any harm, and a close study of his fascinating book through Maasai land, had set the bishop thinking. If an explorer could make his way among the Maasai, why not a Christian missionary? Any how he meant to try, for he was convinced that if this route was at all practicable, the choice of it in the future would mean to the society an immense saving of time and money, as well as of precious lives. Unfortunately there was one element in the case which escaped all Hannington's calculations, and brought about the tragedy of which we have to tell. He did not know that the kings of Uganda regarded the country of Yusoga to the north of the lake through which he would have to pass as their back door, by which no white man must be allowed to enter. Nor was he aware that that very journey of Joseph Thompson's, from which he was drawing encouragement, had caused a great flutter at the court of Matissa, and that it was well for that bold traveller that he had turned back after merely touching the lake at its northeastern extremity without attempting to advance farther. No blame, however, can be ascribed to the bishop for his ignorance, nor can he be accused of acting rashly. His plans were made with the approval of both the Sultan of Zanzibar and Sir John Kirk, the British consul, with the latter of whom he had frequent consultations before starting on his ill-fated journey. In the meantime something like his old strength and vigour had returned, as may be judged from the fact that, on a preliminary tramp-up country in connection with some of his episcopal duties, he marched back to the coast, a distance of 120 miles, in exactly three days and half an hour, forty miles a day on an average, a feat which is perhaps unexampled in the annals of African travel. It was in July 1885 that he finally set off from Mombasa at the head of a caravan, two hundred strong. He knew that he must be prepared to face many dangers. Starvation, he wrote, desertion, treachery, and a few other nightmares and furies hover over our heads in ghastly forms. But nothing disturbed the flow of his spirits. His biographer gives us this glimpse of the bishop on the march. All the way during that march to Taita, his letters reveal him to us, till we seem to see him as he strides ahead with that springy step of his, arms swinging, eyes ever on the alert to notice anything new or remarkable, now a snatch of song, again a shout of encouragement, a leap upon some rare flower or insect, the very life and soul of his company, while ever and a non his emphatic voice would be raised in the notes of some old familiar tune, and the wilderness would ring to the sound of a Christian hymn. Peace, perfect peace, the future all unknown, Jesus we know, and he is on the throne. By and by his correspondence ceases as he vanishes into a region which knows not the post office, even in its most primitive forms. Fortunately, however, his little pocket diary was recovered from one of the band that murdered him, and much additional light has been shed upon that last journey by Mr. Jones, a newly ordained native clergyman whom he had taken with him as his companion. The new route proved to be less easy than Hannington had hoped, and the caravan, besides having to fight its way through obstinate jungles, had a good deal of trouble with unfriendly natives, even before reaching the land of the much dreaded Maasai, discourages at that time of East Central Africa. The Maasai are not Negroes, or members of the great Bantu family by which the greater part of the African continent is inhabited, but belong to what ethnologists call the hemitic race, occupying a distinctly higher position in the scale of humanity. Up to the age of thirty, Mr. Joseph Thompson tells us, every young Maasai is a warrior, and these warriors, or El-Maran as they are called, live in huge crawls or military barracks large enough to accommodate two thousand of them at a time, from which they issue periodically on murdering and marauding expeditions. The arrogance and insolence of the warrior class is unbounded, while any attempt at resenting it is met at once by the uplifting of a forest of their great broad-bladed spears. With these Maasai, Bishop Hannington had a trying time. It was quite impossible to keep the young warriors out of his tent, and they came crowding in at their pleasure demanding Hongo, which is the name for an enforced present, and making themselves free with everything. His chair, his bed, his wash-tub, his biscuit-boxes were all covered with dirty, sprawling figures, and he himself was subjected to impertenences of every kind. They stroked his hair, pulled his beard, felt his cheeks, and tried on his clothes, and not only fingered all his personal belongings, but spat upon them, that being the Maasai token of appreciation. Again and again destruction seemed to be hanging over the camp by a single thread, for the El-Maran liked nothing better than an excuse for slaughter, and if any one had lost his temper for a moment, it might have been the signal for a wholesale massacre, but at this time the bishop and his men were mercifully preserved. He notes in his diary, I strove in prayer, and each time trouble seemed to be averted. And it would appear that even those fierce people felt the power of Hannington's brotherliness. They were by no means agreeable company with their spitting habits, and the grease and red earth with which they daubed their bodies and so smeared everything they touched. But once when three of them had come with an ox for sale, Hannington invited them to stay with him all night, as it was getting late and their crawl was far off. And rather to his surprise they consented quite gratefully. So the bishop and the three warriors lay down side by side on the floor of the little tent, and though the Maasai slept with their spears beside them, he neither showed nor felt the slightest fear. He writes, They packed themselves away like sardines in a box, and I covered them over first with a leopard skin, then with a grass mat, and finally a waterproof sheet. They fell almost instantly into a most gentle sleep. I followed their example, and with one exception I did not wake up until time to start, wherever we meet we are to be brothers. Soon after passing through the Maasai country the travelers came to Cavarondo, a region which no white man but Mr. Joseph Thompson had ever visited, while even he had not attempted to go farther. Between them and Uganda nothing now lay but the forbidden land of Yusoga. At this stage, owing to the uncertainty of the route, Hannington decided to leave Mr. Jones with the bulk of the caravan in Campden, Cavarondo, and to push on himself towards Uganda with fifty of his men. News travels swiftly, even in Africa, and the cruel Mwanga was by this time perfectly aware of the white man's advance, and as we learned from McKay was greatly concerned about it. McKay did all he could to reassure the king and his advisors, but without effect. Mwanga decided that this daring stranger must die, and sent orders to Lubwa and Yusoga, chief, who was his puppet in the matter, to have him and his followers arrested. For fully a week they were kept in close confinement until a band of Mwanga's soldiers arrived with secret orders to put them all to death. The bishop was led through the forest to a place some miles distant from the scene of his imprisonment, and there he found his men before him, stripped naked and bound with thongs. His unclothing was then roughly torn off, and he saw that the end was near. Although weak with fever and greatly reduced by his trying imprisonment, his courage never failed him in that awful hour. He gave his murderers that message to their king which we referred at the beginning of this chapter, and then kneeling down he committed his soul to God. A moment after the fierce soldiers rushed upon their victims with their stabbing spears. Two of them, who had been told off for the purpose, and were stationed one on either side of Hannington, plunged their weapons into his heart, while all around him the ground was covered with his dead and dying men. The diary which he kept during his imprisonment is exceedingly touching, especially the entries of the last two days. It was on a Thursday that he died, and on Wednesday we find him writing, A terrible night, first with noisy drunken guard, and secondly with vermin, which have found out my tent and swarm. I don't think I got one sound hour's sleep, and woke with fever fast developing. Oh Lord, do have mercy upon me and release me. I am quite broken down and brought low, comforted by reading Psalm 27. The last entry of all is very brief. It must have been written just before the soldiers came to lead him out to die. October 29th Thursday, eighth day's prison. I can hear no news, but was held up by Psalm 30 which came with great power. A hyena held near me last night, smelling a sick man, but I hope it is not to have me yet. Our knowledge of the final scenes comes partly from the testimony of three or four of Hannington's men, whose lives were spared on condition that they would show the murderers how to open his boxes, partly from the evidence of some of the soldiers themselves, who subsequently became members of the Uganda church, but especially from one of his porters, a young coast Christian who was with the bishop to the very last, and was speared by his side and left on the ground for dead. During the night he revived and crawled for miles through the forest, with his bowels protruding from a dreadful wound, till he reached the tent of a native who was a friend of McKay's, and by whom he was kindly received and tended until his recovery. So died the lion-hearted bishop at the comparatively early age of thirty-eight, but we live indeed not years, and the brave simplicity of his character, together with his martyred death, will keep his name alive as one of the truest of the many missionary heroes of darkest Africa. CHAPTER IX PIONEERS IN NIASALAND The traveller to Niasaland, who has been carried swiftly to the far south and round the Cape of Good Hope by one of the great steamers of the Union Castle line, and has next sailed up the East African coast on a German liner, may find after arriving at the mouth of the Zambezi that the remaining stages of his journey take nearly as long as the ocean voyage of ten thousand miles. First comes a tedious struggle up the Zambezi in a river steamboat, which proceeds only by day, since it would be impossible to pilot her through the snags and shallows at night, and sometimes sticks on a sand bank so that, crocodiles notwithstanding, the black crew has to tumble into the water and try to drag her off, by and by, after entering the Shirei, that great northern tributary of the Zambezi which flows out of Lake Niasa itself, the steamboat is exchanged for a barge propelled by poles. The barge is provided with a tiny deck-house in which the traveller is supposed to spend his nights, but if he is wise he will climb with his pillow on to the house-roof, where as he lies he can catch the night breeze and listen drowsily before falling asleep to the lullabies of innumerable frogs, and see the fireflies flitting through the reeds on the riverbank, and the southern cross gleaming before him like the chief jewel of a diadem on the forehead of the sky. When the Shirei Highlands are reached and the rapids begin, he must be take himself to Terra Ferma for an overland journey of a few days via Blantyre, the Central African namesake of Dr. Livingston's Scottish birthplace, for this whole region of the Zambezi, the Shirei and Lake Niasa with its western hinterland, is consecrated more than any other part of the dark continent to the memory of the greatest of missionary explorers. Having rounded the rapids, partly by the help of a brand new railway line, and partly in a Machila, or hammocks slung on a bamboo pole and carried by relays of sturdy natives, our traveller arrives at the Upper Shirei, where the river is navigable once more, and soon is again steaming onwards. At last comes a red letter day in his experience when he reaches Fort Johnston, where his vessel glides out from between the river banks into the broad blue expanse of Lake Niasa stretching northwards for 350 miles. It is a slow and sometimes painful progress this journey to Niasaland from the coast, and yet how swift and easy and luxurious compared with what it was little more than a generation ago when Dr. Livingston died. But even more striking than the changes brought about in Central Africa by the introduction of steam, and the making of roads, is the transformation wrought by the coming of a Christian civilization. When Livingston explored the Zambezi and discovered the Shirei River and the magnificent lake by which it is fed, Arab slave traders were devastating the whole country by their abominable traffic with its accompaniment of outrage and massacre. Wherever he went, he saw skeletons scattered about the bush, villages left without a single inhabitant, corpses floating down the streams in such numbers that he could not keep count of them, showing that the very crocodiles were gorged to satiety with human flesh. To this great hearted man it seemed that his brother's blood was crying to heaven out of the ground, and he made a passionate appeal to the Christian people of Britain to heal what he described as the open sore of the world, not till after his lonely death in the heart of Africa and his burial in Westminster Abbey did his words have their full effect, but the voice of the dead hero touched his countrymen as the voice of the living one had never done. Especially was this the case in Scotland, which claimed Livingston as her very own. The established Church of Scotland entered upon its noble work at Blantyre in the Shirei Highlands, while the Free Church, now the United Free Church, founded on the shores of Lake Niasa, that remarkable Livingstonia mission of which the present chapter is to tell. It was in the month of July 1875 that Lieutenant Young R. N., and the party which included the Reverend Dr. Laws, a qualified medical man, who may be described as the veteran and hero of Niasaland, together with a carpenter, a blacksmith, an engineer, an agriculturist, and a seaman, found themselves dumped down at the Zambezi Mouth after a dangerous voyage from the Cape in a small German schooner called the Harrah. As part of their equipment they had brought with them a little steamer, the Ilala, built in sections, and as soon as they had succeeded in fitting it together they started on their journey upstream, a toilsome journey it proved, for the Ilala had been built for service on the lake rather than the rivers, and was constantly going aground and requiring to be emptied of its cargo, and then hauled off into deeper water. When the Merchison cataracts were reached, where for sixty miles the Shirei rushes swiftly down from its upper reaches towards the lower levels of the Zambezi by a succession of falls and rapids, their little transport had to be taken to pieces again, and dragged with terrible toil over the long portage to the Upper Shirei, where once again it was rebuilt and relaunched. By that time, however, the journey's end was well in sight. Three or four days of quiet steaming brought them safely at last to the lake of their hopes and dreams. Of the little Ilala it might be said not only that she was the first that ever burst into that silent sea, but that she was the first steam vessel to float on any of the great lakes of Central Africa, the forerunner of the numerous steamers that ply up and down the waters of Lake Nyasa, Lake Tanganaika, Victoria Nyanza, and the other inland seas of the Continent. The first settlement of these pioneers was at Cape Maclear, a beautiful promontory at the south end of the lake, where before long the leadership of the Enterprise fell upon Dr. Laws, Lieutenant Young being recalled by the Admiralty to his naval duties, from which he had only obtained temporary leave of absence. From life in Central Africa an element of danger is never quite wanting. Those who have moved through the forests and along the streams can tell many a tale of adventures with lions and leopards, with crocodiles and hippopotamie, crocs and hippos as they are familiarly called. Sometimes a boat is upset by a hippo or a boatman carried off by a croc. Once when Dr. Laws and Dr. Elmsley were camping in the open, they were wakened through the night by a lion tearing their tent down, and a lady missionary of our acquaintance can tell of a leopard which took possession of her veranda one night, attacked her bedroom door with its claws, and finally leapt on to the roof of the cottage and began to tear off the thatch which was its only covering. But in those early days there were other and special dangers. Around the settlers there were fierce savages who often showed themselves unfriendly, while Arab slave hunters hated them with a hardiness due not only to the invariable antipathy of the crescent to the cross, but to a premonition that the coming of this little band of Christian men presaged the downfall of their profitable traffic. Above all fever raged continually at Cape Maclear, and death was busy. A queer country this, a visitor to Africa once said to Dr. Laws, where the only things of interest you have to show me are the graves. Yes, replied the doctor, but they are the milestones of Christianity to the regions beyond. Milestones of this kind were frequent at first, and by and by it became evident that Cape Maclear was little better than a white man's grave. In order therefore to secure a healthier site, as well as one which would be more central for the command of the whole lake, the headquarters of the settlement were transferred to Bandawi, nearly midway up the western shore. The wisdom of this change was soon abundantly proved. Bandawi was not only much healthier, but lay in the heart of a populist district, with ready access to several large and influential tribes. The work of the mission began to extend with wonderful rapidity along the lake coast and far into the interior, but success itself brought fresh dangers and trials. One of the greatest difficulties lay in the perpetual onslaughts made upon the more peaceful people of the lake shore by the fierce angony warriors of the west. These angony were descended from a branch of the great Zulu family, and were possessed of all the characteristics of that brave but cruel race. Their fathers had crossed the Zambezi from the south, and carried death and terror all over Nyasa land and right on to Tanganyika. Their chief settlements were on the uplands to the west of Bandawi, and none suffered more from their periodical and merciless raids than the tribes in the neighborhood of the mission. For fear of the angony these poor people, who lived largely by fishing, were compelled to huddle themselves by the thousand within stockades, or to build their houses on piles in deep water, recalling the crannogs of our Celtic ancestors, or on rocky islets scattered about over the surface of the lake. When the white men came to Bandawi, great numbers of the natives settled in the immediate vicinity, hoping to be safe under their protection. A great protection the missionaries undoubtedly were, and yet the history of living Stonia in those days was constantly overcast by the shadow of brutal and pitiless massacre. Every now and then a band of the Angoni would make a rush by night upon a defenseless village stabbing the inhabitants with their cruel, broad-bladed spears. And in the morning when word came to Dr. Laws, and he set out to do all that could be done by medical skill and Christian pity, he would find scores of unfortunate victims lying on the ground weltering in their own blood. The Bandawi Mission Journal says Mr. Jack, the historian of living Stonia, reads in some places like the history of a bloody campaign owing to the frequent attacks of these mountain warriors. Ex-postulations with these people in their heathen state was useless, for murder for its own sake was part of their very life and creed. It soon became evident that the only way of turning them from their paths of blood was to turn them into Christians. A young converted coffer named William Kogi, who knew the Zulu language, was settled among them in the first place, and did his best to teach them a higher way of life. He was, of course, in constant peril, and day by day there went on all around him things which were enough to break even an African's heart, and which by and by sent him prematurely to his grave. A woman carrying a pot of beer would be killed in broad daylight in order to get the beer and prevent detection. A scream would be heard in the evening, and on inquiring the cause he would be told that it was a worn-out slave who had been put out for the hyenas to devour, as being no longer able to take care of himself. Skeletons of persons murdered were to be seen lying about many villages and in the bush. Still Kogi's life and words were not without their impression, and when Dr. Laws, secured from Scotland in Dr. Elmsley, a medical missionary for the Angoni themselves, a striking work of reformation began among these savages. Not all at once, however, for there were sections of the tribe which were unwilling to give up their former practices, and several years after Dr. Elmsley's arrival there took place in a village beside the lake, one of the worst raids in the whole experience of the mission. A band of Angoni crept down through the night upon the hapless people. At the door of every hut a full armed warrior took his stand, and ordered the inmates to come out. As they appeared, the men and boys were immediately dispatched with spears, while the girls and women were seized and bound with bark ropes. In the morning no mail was left in the place, and more than three hundred captive women sat trembling on the ground, the Angoni mean time feasting themselves on the food and beer of their victims. But even here this tale of bloodshed does not end. During the night a fugitive had succeeded in carrying word of these events to a station about twelve miles off, where there were two white men, agents of the African Lakes Company. These brave fellows resolved to make an attempt to rescue the women. Seizing their guns and gathering a force of about one hundred natives, they made a rapid march upon the village. But no sooner did the Angoni see them advancing, than they determined to slaughter their captives wholesale rather than allow them to escape. And so before the very eyes of the rescue party there began a horrible scene. Women screaming for mercy, women wrestling for dear life with armed savages, women and girls writhing in their death agonies on the ground. A sharp fight followed between the Angoni and the traitors, but after the former were driven off, a missionary in the locality who had hurried to the spot found that while about two hundred of the women and girls had been saved, one hundred thirty-two of them were speared to death, and all around the bush was full of dead and wounded men and boys. It is one of the triumphs of the Livingstonia mission that this whole Angoni people, who once lived solely for war, are now peaceful subjects of King Edward. On September 2, 1904, they placed themselves by their own free act under the administration of the British government. Sir Alfred Sharp, H.M. Commissioner for British Central Africa, accompanied by Lady Sharp as well as by several of the Livingstonia missionaries, met the Angoni nation in a great endaba, and arranged to their complete satisfaction the terms on which Angoni land was taken over by Great Britain. One of the conditions was that the police force should be entirely drawn from the Angoni themselves, another that Yakobi, a nephew of one of their own chiefs and a man who received his education at the Livingstonia institution, should be appointed the head of this native police. The change wrought by years of Christian teaching is significantly shown by the fact that throughout the whole endaba, the commissioner was unattended by a single armed soldier, and that armed himself with nothing but paper and pencil, and with his wife by his side, he sat all day in the midst of thousands of Angoni warriors in all their panoply of shields and spears. The following month there appeared in the Aurora, a journal which is published in Livingstonia in the English language, and is entirely set up and printed by natives, a graphic account of the day's proceedings from the pen of one of the missionaries who was present. With much justice he remarks that the scene inevitably suggested other and very different chapters in the history of the expansion of the British Empire. Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war, and in this case the teaching and influence of a little band of Christian men and women have gained a province for the British crown without the firing of a single shot or the shedding of a drop of human blood. But even more distressing at one time than the raids of the Angoni or the ravages of the Arab slave traders throughout Niasaland, and hereby hangs another chapter in the romantic tale of Livingstonia. Over the Angoni the white men always had some influence, but over the Arabs they had none. It was contrary to their principles to take up arms against them, and so they had to look on while outrage and murder were perpetrated, all that they could do being to make their stations sanctuaries where at least the escaped captive would be safe and free. Even this right, however, was challenged by the Arabs, who by and by in certain districts of the country declared open war upon the white men, including along with the missionaries the agents of the African Lakes Company, which as will presently be explained, stood and still stands to the mission in a very close relation of sympathy and cooperation. Out of a multitude of episodes in this Arab war, one may be selected which in its thrilling character, as Mr. Jack very fitly says, recalls the defense of the residency at Lucknow during the heroic days of the Indian mutiny. Melosi, one of the greatest of the Arab traders, proclaimed himself Sultan of a large district near the head of the lake, and intimated to the whole Kondi tribe that they must consider themselves his slaves. To escape from his tyranny many of the people flocked to Koronga, where the African Lakes Company had a station under the charge of Mr. L. M. Fotheringham, whereupon Melosi besieged the station with a force of five hundred men armed with rifles. Fortifying his post as well as he could, Mr. Fotheringham sent word to Mr. Bane, the nearest missionary, asking for his help. By a forced march of twenty hours, Mr. Bane succeeded in reaching the Koronga and making his way into the station. Shortly after, they arrived most opportunely from the other side of the lake for additional white men, including Dr. Tomory of the London Missionary Society, and Mr. Alfred, now Sir Alfred Sharp, who has since risen to the distinguished position of H. M. Commander for British Central Africa. For five days and nights the Arabs poured in an incessant fire upon this little band of six Europeans assisted by about fifty armed natives. The defense was conducted with much skill and courage. Deep pits were dug in the sands for the women and children, while behind barriers of boxes and bales the fighting men kept the Arabs at bay. The escape of the party with their lives was almost miraculous, for often on waking from a brief nap snatched in the trenches, they would find their pockets full of sand kicked up by the bullets which had been sputtering all around them while they slept. It would have gone hard with them, however, if one of their number had not managed to make his way through the ring of besiegers, and to secure the help of a neighbouring and friendly tribe. He got back just in the nick of time with five thousand of the Wambuanga behind him, and thus reinforced the defenders soon drove off the Arabs in confusion. For two years this state of war continued in Nyasa land, till at length the British government felt itself obliged to interfere in the interests of humanity as well as of its own subjects. In 1892 a protectorate was proclaimed, and on the hoisting of the British flag the slave hunters speedily disappeared, and the people of Nyasa land had rest. Reference has been made more than once to the African Lakes Company, and its relation to the Livingstonia mission should now be explained. From the very first Dr. Laws and his fellow workers had done what they could to promote industry and commerce among the natives. It was a step forward when the doctor introduced money into the country, and taught the people the immense advantage of a currency. At first they were rather slow to appreciate the benefit, but before long they became so fully alive to the superiority of coin over Calico as a medium of exchange that some of the more cunning ones would hand in a button and say with an air of innocence, will you please exchange my money? But however convinced the missionaries might be of the truth of Dr. Livingston's saying that to teach the Africans to cultivate for our markets was, next to the gospel, the most effectual means of their elevation, it was of course impossible for them to become traders. They had other and more important work to do. Accordingly some of the same philanthropic Christian men in Scotland who had been most active in founding the Livingstonia mission, now conceived the idea of forming a company which, while established on sound business lines, should have as one of its principal objects the promotion of the cause of Christian civilization in East Central Africa. The leader in this enterprise was Mr. James Stevenson of Glasgow, who will always be remembered in the region of the Great Lakes by his special and splendid gift of the road which is called after him the Stevenson Road. It is a ten-foot road involving some difficult feats of engineering which runs all the way from the north end of Lake Nyasa to the south end of Lake Tanganayaka, a distance of more than two hundred miles. It is scarcely possible to estimate the blessings both positive and negative which the African Lakes Corporation, as it is now called, has conferred upon the whole of the vast region which lies between Lake Tanganayaka and the mouths of the Zambaisi. It has revolutionized the means of transit by its steamers on the rivers and lakes and by its opening of roads. It has awakened and stimulated the spirit of industry in the natives and has both created new and higher tastes and made plentiful provision for the growing demands. Negatively it has been a blessing by rigidly keeping out gunpowder and strong drink and by destroying any hankering on the part of the chiefs after the old traffic in slaves through its readiness to pay better prices than the Arabs ever gave and also to supply European goods more cheaply. The chiefs know now that it is highly unprofitable to sell a man when they can get quite as much for a canoe load of potatoes. The operations of the Livingstonia mission now cover an area of thousands of square miles along the lakeshore up the Stevenson Road and far out to the west. Of its various stations and agencies, evangelistic, medical, educational, and industrial, it is impossible to speak in detail, but the heart and soul of all is the institution, now called the Overtoon Institution in honor of Lord Overtoon, to whose magnificent generosity it has all along been deeply indebted. Standing on a lofty and healthy plateau, a few hours climb above the lake and about a hundred miles north of Bandawi, it is a veritable hive of varied industry. Into its schools, pupils are gathered from all parts of the country and from different tribes speaking quite distinct languages. Here young men are trained as evangelists or as dispensary and hospital assistants, while others are taught bookkeeping and fitted to become clerks in the service of the government or of the lake's company. Carpentry, bricklaying, engineering, printing, and other useful trades are imparted by skilled artisans from Scotland. Here, too, under a scientific agriculturist, there is carried on a work of gardening, farming, and arboriculture, for which the British government has made a free grant to the mission of one hundred square miles of land. The beautiful Manchewi Falls have been bridled so as to supply the plateau with electric light as well as with motor power to drive machinery. A splendid zigzag road has been cut from the lake right up the precipitous shoulders of Mount Waller on the summit of which the institution stands. The institution is provided with the telegraph and telephone, it rejoices in a literary and debating society, a periodical of its own, and many another fruit of civilization. All this besides the work which day by day lies nearest to its heart, the work of Christian evangelization, by means of which so many thousands of persons young and old have then brought into the faith and fellowship of the Christian Church. In the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland in 1874, where Livingstonia had begun to be, the late Doctor Stuart of Lovedale made a speech proposing that such a mission should be founded, in which he drew a picture of a beautiful dream city of the future that has risen up before his mind. It is not too much to say that the foundation stones of this city of dream and hope have already been laid. What I would now humbly suggest as the truest memorial of Livingston is, the establishment by this church or several churches together of an institution at once industrial and educational to teach the truths of the gospel and the arts of civilized life to the natives of the country, and which shall be placed on a carefully selected and commanding spot in central Africa, where from its position and capabilities it might grow into a town and afterwards into a city and become a great center of commerce, civilization and Christianity, and this I would call Livingstonia. END OF CHAPTER IX On an autumn day in the year 1875 three horsemen rode out of King Williamstown in the Cape Colony and turned their faces to the North for the long journey to Basuto land, a distance of 300 miles which lay before them. As they rode on side by side they talked earnestly about a movement in which they were all deeply interested for extending the influence of the French Protestant mission in Basuto land into the vast region to the North between the Lim Popo and Zambezi rivers. Virgin soil in those days so far as Christian teaching was concerned. Of the three one was a soldier, Major Milan by name. He was a Swiss by birth, who had become an officer in the British army, but had resigned his commission in order to devote himself to Christian work among the native races of Africa. The other two, Monsieur Collard and Monsieur Mabille, were Frenchmen, agents of the celebrated Basuto land mission carried on by Protestants from France. These two had already done their part in building up a strong native church among the valleys of that Switzerland of South Africa, and now they were lifting up their eyes to wider horizons and thinking of the needs of the tribes to the far North. When the trio reached the Great Cay River they plunged in and made the crossing. As they landed on the Northern Bank a common impulse seized them and springing from their horses they knelt down under the shadow of a bush and devoted themselves before God to the new enterprise on which they had set their hearts. Then when they had remounted, Major Milan, as if he had been leading a cavalry charge, waved his hat, spurred his horse, and galloped up the hill with his two friends fast at his heels, shouting in his enthusiasm, three soldiers ready to conquer Africa. These men meant what they said. That incident marked the origin of the Barotzi mission, and it is one of the three Monsieur Collard and how he fulfilled the vow he took beneath that bush by the Cay River that this chapter is to tell. When the honour of leading an expedition to the north of the Limpopo was entrusted to Monsieur Collard by the Church of Bessuto land, he was no Tyro in the work of the pioneer. In fact he had been pioneering already for twenty years. For most of that time he and his wife, a brave Scotch woman, had been content to live in a wagon after the fashion of the South African Vortrecker, or at best in a poor hut. He had lately built himself a comfortable house and planted a garden round it, but of the fruit of that garden Madame Collard and he were never to eat. The rest of their lives was to be spent in seeking to do for the tribes of the Zambaisi what they had already done for the Bessuto people. Starting from Bessuto land with four native catechists as well as his wife and niece, a girl of eighteen, Monsieur Collard trekked with his ox caravan right through the territories of the Transvaal Republic, crossed the Limpopo, and plunged into a trackless wilderness where, like sailors on the ocean, they had nothing to guide them but their compass and the stars. Their first rude experience was at the hands of Massonda, a cowardly and treacherous Massona chief. He received them with great protestations of friendship, but the very next day tried to decoy them to the edge of a frightful precipice, with the view of hurling them down. Being frustrated in his murderous plan, he sought some compensation in robbing them of seventeen of their oxen before he would allow them to leave his country. They had not long escaped from the clutches of this rascal when they fell into the hands of a savage still more dangerous, because much more powerful, the redoubtable Lobingula, king of the Metabeli, a band of Lobingula's men seized them and dragged them off to Bulawayo, at that time the capital of the Metabeli, on the charge of having entered the king's territory without his permission. For three weeks they were hurried by forced marches across a very rough country, while every comfort was denied them. Even to wash in a wayside stream was a crime, respect for this black monarch requiring them to appear in his presence with all the dirt and sweat of the three weeks upon them, as a proof that they had obeyed his summons with the utmost alacrity. When they came in sight of Bulawayo they were met by a witch-doctor who performed a ceremony of exorcism. Dipping a news tale in a slimy green mixture he applied this spiritual disinfectant liberally to every member of the company back and front. For Monsieur Coyard, as a rival sorcerer, he reserved a double dose of his medicine, dashing the liquid into his face and all over his clothes. For nearly four months Lobingula kept the Coyard's prisoners, but finally he contented himself with expelling them from his country and forbidding them ever to return to Metabiland. There seemed no alternative now but to retreat, and so with heavy hearts the little caravan made their way for hundreds of miles to the southwest till they reached Kama's country, where that well-known Christian chief, then quite a young man, received them with the utmost kindness. He warmly approved of their purpose to push northwards, and did all in his power to further their plans, and as a good deal of communication went on between his own country and that of Leuannica, king of the Barotzi on the upper Zambaisi, he sent a body of envoys along with Monsieur Coyard all the way to Barotzi land to urge upon Leuannica the advisability of welcoming the white teachers. It was largely through Kama's influence that the way was thus finally opened up for an advance to the very threshold of Central Africa. Having returned to the south and also made a voyage to Europe for the furtherance of his new plans, Monsieur Coyard was at length in a position to trek to the north again. This time he was accompanied not only by bas-soute-helpers, but by a young Swiss clergyman, Monsieur Jean Meret, and by two white artisans, one English and the other Scotch, whose services proved absolutely invaluable to the enterprise. In the interval Barotzi land had been visited by Mr. F. S. Arnaud, of whom something will be said in another chapter. He had spent a considerable time in Leuannica's capital, facing endless privations and trials, but had at length been compelled by illness to leave the unhealthy Zambaisi basin and start on that long march to Benguela, which led him eventually to the Garangansi country. It was to take up and carry on the work which Arnaud had tried to begin that Monsieur Coyard now turned his face towards the upper Zambaisi. Having once more reached Kama's country, the caravan next crossed the Makari Kari Desert, with its swamps and sands, its almost impenetrable jungles of thorn, its dreary death-like solitudes. Here dwell the Bushmen, the Masarua, as they are called by the tribes of the Zambaisi basin. These people would have proved troublesome but for the fact that Kama, whose strong arm was respected over all that region, had once more sent a party of his men to accompany the travellers all the way to their destination. After the desert came vast virgin forests. Through these the cumbrous wagons with their long teams of oxen, so suitable for movement on the open belt, could only be forced with heartbreaking toil and to the destruction of nearly everything that was breakable. Constant zig-zags were indispensable, but in spite of all care in trying to get round the trees an unexpected branch would every now and then make a clean sweep of a wagon, so that portmanteaus, trunks, toolboxes, books, and haberdashery lay in wild confusion on the ground. At length to their intense delight they came in sight of the great river just where the upper Zambaisi joins its waters with those of the Chobi, but their difficulties were far from over. The cruelties of Leuannica had brought about a revolution in Barotzi land, the king had been driven into exile, and the whole country was in a state of anarchy. It was impossible in the meantime to proceed up the river to the capital, and for months the expedition could do little but wait on the turn of events. At length there came a counter-revolution. Leuannica was restored to the throne, and signaled his triumph by a massacre of the rebel chiefs, their children also being put to death without exception, while their wives were divided among the conquerors. After all this had taken place, Leuannica gave permission to Monsieur Coyard to advance into the heart of Barotzi land, and to begin work not far from Lealui, as the capital was called. seldom has pioneer work been carried on in the face of more crushing difficulties and bitter disappointments than those which were encountered for several years by this heroic Frenchman and his colleagues. It soon turned out that Leuannica cared nothing for the introduction of Christianity among his people, all that he wanted was to reap material advantages from the presence of the white men in his country. Whatever was theirs he considered to be his, and when he found them less pliable than his own cringing subjects, he treated them to threats and studied insults, or tried to starve them out by a system of boycott in which all the markets were closed against them. Meanwhile they had to witness day by day the worst horrors of African barbarism, the inhumanities of the slave trade, the fruits of a universal belief in witchcraft, the open practice of murder. Slave children were offered to the Coyards whom they could not buy, and yet they knew that to refuse might be to sign the death warrant of a child. It was impossible to walk a few steps from their door without striking their feet against a skull or a collection of half-chart human bones, marking the spot where men and women had been burned alive. Whoever gave the slightest offense to Leuannica was at once ordered off to execution. But most painful of all were the witchcraft or deals which constantly went on. If misfortune came to anyone he had only to accuse a neighbor of having used sorcery against them, and the accused must submit to trial by ordeal. The method in Barotzi land was by boiling water. A pot of water was set on a large fire. As soon as the water boiled the poor wretch had to plunge his hands into it and if the skin peeled off, as of course it almost invariably did, he was at once dragged away to a cruel death. From this fate no one was safe man or woman, young or old, chief or slave. But the power of truth, backed by such patience and heroism as were shown by the Coyards, gradually began to tell. Leuannica grew ashamed of his cruelties, and came to have a larger sense of his responsibilities as the master of a vast territory stretching from the Kalahari Desert on the south to the watershed between the Congo and the Zambesi systems on the north. He was naturally a most intelligent man possessed of a mechanical skill still exceedingly rare in an African prince. He had a workshop of his own in which he spent his leisure hours, and could turn out almost anything he wanted from a canoe to a harmonica or a delicately carved ivory bracelet. Canoe-building was a specialty of the Barotzi, for like all the Zambesians they are essentially a river-people. But the state barge of the king's own designing, sixty feet long and manned by fifty rowers, was a structure of which the whole nation was proud. Though his heart was difficult to reach, his intelligence and ambition could be appealed to, and by and by he grew eager to see education, industry, and civilization develop among his people. As the representatives of all these good things he came to trust M. Coyard and his subjects, and to favor the progress of Christianity among his subjects. When he had at length secured a firm footing in the capital, Coyard began to think of the various tribes on the higher reaches of the Zambesi, which were more or less under Leuannica's sway, and one of the most interesting chapters of his striking book on the threshold of Central Africa, is that which tells of a voyage of exploration far up towards the sources of the river. He was accompanied by forty men in a flotilla of ten canoes, and in order that canoeing might be easy, the expedition was made at a time shortly after the height of the annual floods, when the Zambesi valley was all under water. The plain at this season is a floating prairie enameled with flowers, rosetted water lilies, with their delicate tents of blue, pink, and white, and a kind of convolvulus which proudly erects her great magenta trumpets, only dipping them reluctantly as our canoes go by, but it is also diversified by tall grass and reeds, through which we have to force our way. Far up the river they met a venerable man, nearly blind, who had seen Livingston, and who pointed out a spot where the great traveller had camped, and which was still known by his name. When Coyard spoke of Jesus he listened attentively and said, It is just what Nayaca, i.e. the doctor, used to say. In one place where the mission-party held a meeting with the people and sang a hymn, they were astonished to find that all present could join in it heartily. Who taught it to you, they asked, and the people shouted, Bangueta! Then M. Coyard saw how the seed he had been sowing had silently spread like bread cast upon the waters, for Bangueta had been a pupil in his own school at Lealui. At length they reached a district so far up the river that Leuannica's name was no longer the protection it had hitherto been. They were now in the country of the Balubale, whose chief was called Kakingi, a mob of young men armed with guns met them who demanded to know what the white man meant by coming into Kakingi's country with a band of Borotzi and without having obtained his permission. They also sought to exact the homage or tax which Kakingi imposed upon all traders coming to that land. Coyard told them that he was not a merchant or even a traveller but a moruti, i.e. a teacher, and that he had come among them to teach the things of God. They took him into the presence of the king, who was thrown on a stool, clothed in a coloured blanket, and shaded by an enormous blue cotton umbrella held by a slave. All Coyard's explanations were treated by Kakingi as lies, and after breaking into a passionate speech he suddenly turned his back on the missionary and disappeared into his harem. Things were looking bad, especially as the expedition had been refused all food since coming to Kakingi's country, and by this time they were nearly starving. But the situation grew still more serious when two of Mishor Coyard's men, who had contracted blood brotherhood with some of the Balubali, obtained secret information that out of pure hatred for the Borotzi, Kakingi had sworn to destroy the whole party, and had already given orders for their massacre. That night not one of the company slept, all of them, and Christian alike were praying to God, and next day a wonderful change had come over Kakingi's mind, for he sent them a plentiful supply of millet and fowls and sweet potatoes, and when they went in a body to the court to thank him for his kindness, told them that he had come to believe in their good intentions, and asked them to forget his ill temper of the past days. This was the farthest point reached by Mishor Coyard in his advance from the South towards the heart of Africa, and at this point our account of the labours and wanderings of this brave and devoted Frenchman must stop. Those who wish to know more about him and his work will find the story fully told in his own book. There have been wonderful changes on the Upper Zambezi in recent years. The Borotzi Kingdom now forms a part of that vast stretch of British-African territory which is known as Rhodesia. King Lewanika himself has paid a visit to England and been presented at King Edward's Court. A mighty bridge now spans the Victoria Falls, through the regions where Coyard once toiled slowly with his laboring teams. The Cape to Cairo Railway now carries its passengers in swift and luxurious ease, but nothing can dim the honor of the heroic Christian Vortrecker who left his home in the fair Basuto Valleys more than a generation ago, and turned the poles of his ox wagons towards the land beyond the Limpopo.