KILLED BY AN ELEPHANT.
“A sad termination of an heroic defender of a righteous cause, was the death of Mr. Deane, the recent chief of Stanley Falls Station, Congo State. Capt. Coquilhat, one of Mr. Stanley’s faithful coadjutors in founding the State of Congo, gives, in his official report, the following statement: ‘In August last (1887), a female slave escaped from the Arab camp at Stanley Falls, and sought refuge in the Congo State Station there. Her surrender was demanded and refused. The Arabs were very angry, and made threats of war, which Mr. Deane disregarded. The slave-hunters had about 2,000 troops, while the garrison of the station numbered about fifty. The steamer Stanley then arrived, and the Arabs kept quiet till she left; but, the day after her departure, they attacked the station without warning, and, in course of three days, made four attacks, which were repulsed, the garrison losing two men and the Arabs sixty. At the end of the third day, the Haussa soldiers and the Bangalas refused to fight longer, as their rifle ammunition was spent.’ [The Haussas are native soldiers hired by the Congo State. They come from near Acra, on the Gulf of Guinea. The Bangalas belong to a desperate and warlike tribe, that fought Stanley on his first trip down the Congo.] ‘So these native soldiers took to their canoes at nightfall on the 26th of August, and went down the river. Mr. Deane and Mr. Dubois, the only white men in the garrison, remained behind with eight men to fire the buildings and destroy the stores. This they did, blowing up the two cannon and the remaining gunpowder, and then escaped themselves from the island, on which the station was located, to the north bank of the Congo, and made their way along its bank on foot, in the dark. On their way, the banks being very
steep, Dubois fell into the river. Mr. Deane jumped in after him, and succeeded in getting him on to a rock; but poor Dubois was drowned in attempting to get from the rock to the mainland. Deane sought refuge among the natives, and found them most friendly. They showed him great devotion, taking him from one place of shelter to another, hiding him from the Arabs, supplying him with food, and keeping him till he was rescued.’ The Haussas and Bangalas arrived in their canoes at Bangala Station, where Capt. Coquilhat was stationed as Commander-in-Chief of that department, on September 7th. The captain at once went up in the steamer Henry Reed, then in the service of the Congo Government, and, finding the Stanley Falls Station in ruins and in the hands of the Arabs, he went in search of Mr. Deane, and after three days of diligent inquiry, found him, and rescued him from the fury of the Arabs.
“It is sad to relate, as I learn from Bradley L. Burr, our chief missionary at Kimpoko, Stanley Pool, that recently Mr. Deane, in an elephant hunt, was charged and killed by an Upper Congo elephant.
“Those who brave the perils of Africa ought always to be prepared to die. The destruction of the Arab slave trade, and the redemption of Africa, will cost the lives of more than 1,000 missionary heroes and heroines. People who want to run home from Africa before they see the elephant had better go to Barnum’s show and stay at home.” Wm. Taylor.