GENERAL NOTES.
The Freedmen.
—Of 142 cases of yellow fever reported at Memphis during the week, August 18th to 24th, 79 were of colored people—about one-half. About three-eighths of the total population are colored.
—Among the colored refugees in Kansas is an entire Baptist church of 300 persons led by the pastor and deacons. They were from Delta, La.
—Sojourner Truth, the famous colored woman, who is now 103 years old, is at Chicago, en route to Kansas, to make a study of the colored exodus.
—Governor St. John, of Kansas, believes that the colored exodus has only begun; that it is not unlikely that it will soon re-open, and reach to hundreds of thousands in its numbers.
—The current catalogue of Howard University reports a total of 236 students for the year. Of these, 21 are in the Theological department, 64 in the Medical, 10 in the Law, 17 in the College, 16 in the Preparatory, and 87 in the Normal. This Association for the third year sustains one-half the expense of the Theological department. Rev. Dr. Craighead of this city, many years connected with The Evangelist, has been appointed to the chair of Theology, made vacant by the death of Prof. Lorenzo Westcott. Dr. Craighead has accepted, and is to enter upon duty this fall. The Law and Medical departments are under the instruction of resident lawyers and doctors in Washington. Rev. Wm. W. Patton, D.D., is President and Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy, Natural Theology, and Evidences of Revealed Religion, also Instructor in Hebrew.
An appropriation of ten thousand dollars was made by the last Congress exclusively for the benefit of the College; not a dollar is to go to sustain the professional courses. It is fitting that the Government, which, through the Freedmen’s Bureau, did so much to found the institution, should help it along in its straits.
Prof. R. I. Greener, of the Law department, before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in session at Saratoga, joined issue with Frederick Douglass in the discussion of the exodus question. He is a man of platform popularity. It must have been a touching scene when Col. Thos. J. Kirkpatrick, of Virginia, and Frederick Douglass, in the meeting of the Howard Board of Trust, joined hands in mutual expression of regard—the ex-slaveholder and the ex-slave.
—The Marysville College in East Tennessee, founded before the war by the New School Presbyterians, now under the presidency of Rev. Peter Mason Bartlett, who has also a brother in one of the professorships, received some of the funds of the Freedmen’s Bureau, upon the condition that its doors should ever stand open to colored as well as white students. This provision has been carried out in spite of local prejudice, so that all along there have been a few students of the African race among its numbers. This institution is to be praised for fidelity to the bond. Some schools that received from the same fund, on the same conditions, have not stood to the contract.
—Aunt Kelly, now living at Troy, Missouri, at an advanced age, but “bred, born, and raised in ole Virginny,” told the writer, that, when a young woman, she sawed the lumber for the building of the State University. For that matter, the labor in building the mass of the literary institutions of the South was performed by the colored people. It is, then, only a piece of reciprocity that the several States of that region should now provide public schools for that class of their citizens. Old Virginia appropriates ten thousand dollars a year to the Hampton Institute; South Carolina aids the Claflin University (Methodist), and other States are doing a like generous thing.
Africa.
—Of the twenty-three new missionaries sent out by the Church Missionary Society during the last year, three were for West Africa and five for the Nyanza Mission. Of the eighteen new this year, two are for West Africa and two for the Nyanza Mission, to be stationed at Mpwapwa. Mr. Price is, for the present, the only ordained missionary at the station. Mr. Cole is to devote himself largely to the industrial interests of the Mission with a view to its self-support at as early a day as may be found possible. Dr. Baxter and Mr. Last have already occupied the field for a year. In the instructions given them at a farewell meeting it was said: “Not only is it made more and more clear that Mpwapwa is in a sense the key to the Lake district, and likely to remain so for many years to come, and hence important with a view to the work carried on in the interior by other societies as well as the C. M. S., but there is also no doubt that from it, as a centre, missionary work may be carried on both among the natives inhabiting the Usagara Mountains and amid the manly and numerous race inhabiting the Ugogo country.”
—The same Society reports that its work in behalf of the freed slaves in East Africa is beginning to bear spiritual fruit. The improved condition of the settlement at Frere Town, materially and morally, has been reported from time to time; but the spiritual results hitherto have been comparatively small. Until lately no mention has been made of the gospel’s taking root among the poor liberated slaves rescued by Her Majesty’s cruisers, and handed over to the Mission in the Autumn of 1875, to the number of nearly 300, and perhaps another 100 in smaller detachments since. Mr. Streeter now reports the baptism of thirty-two of them on their own confession of faith, besides infants. The Rev. A. Menzies reached Frere Town June 1st.
—The Free Church of Scotland reports the transfer of Miss Waterston to the new field at Livingstonia. Miss W. has for seven years been the successful superintendent of the female seminary at Lovedale. She is fully qualified as a medical missionary, and carries the confidence and good wishes of all who know her. Says the Monthly Record: She means to go first to Lovedale, where she will halt for a short time in order to select coadjutors from among her former pupils. She hopes to induce some of them to accompany her to the sphere of her future labors, where they will be employed as teachers, and in other departments of the work. When Dr. Stewart first started for Lake Nyassa, so many of the Lovedale young men volunteered for service under their noble missionary’s banner, that he found it impossible to accept of half the number. From what we have heard of the young women, they are not likely to be behind in courage and zeal, nor is Miss Waterston likely to be disappointed in her hope of volunteers. Her aim will be now, as formerly, to blend Christian teaching with efforts to civilize and elevate, and, as opportunity offers, to gather the young into boarding and industrial schools. She will also help Dr. Laws in his dispensary and other medical work among the women.
The only other lady who has gone to Livingstonia is to be the wife of the well-known missionary, Dr. Laws, who so ably conducts the Free Church Mission there; and at Blantyre, the station of the Established Church of Scotland, there already resides the wife of one of the missionaries—Mrs. Duff McDonald.
—When the missionary steamer owned by the mission of the Free Church of Scotland was to be placed on Lake Nyassa, the leader of the expedition applied to the chief of the tribe for reliable help to carry the craft around the Murchison Cataracts. The chief responded by sending eight hundred women,—a compliment certainly to the trustworthiness of the sex. “Some of them came fifty miles, bringing their provisions with them. These women were intrusted with the whole, when if a single portion of the steamer had been lost, the whole scheme would have failed. They carried it in two hundred and fifty loads in five days, under a tropical sun, seventy-five miles, to an elevation of 1,800 feet, and not a nail or screw was lost. They ‘trusted the Englishman,’ asking no questions of wages, and receiving each six yards of calico; and for the sake of being liberal, each was given an extra yard.”—Heathen Woman’s Friend.
—The sudden death of Rev. Dr. Mullens, of peritonitis, at Aden, is announced. He has been for some years a Christian leader in Great Britain, and his opinions have had great weight with intelligent Christians throughout the world. He has been the chief Corresponding Secretary of the great London Missionary Society during about twenty years—a position of great responsibility and usefulness, and one of the most influential in the Church of Christ. Before he was called to this service he had been for many years a successful missionary in India. Two or three months ago, by his own request—if memory serves us faithfully—he was appointed by the Society to accompany a band of young missionaries to Zanzibar, and to go on, if necessary, if his judgment so decided, to Lake Tanganyika, in the heart of Southern Africa. It was expected that his strong sense and remarkable executive ability would see and organize some method to overcome the serious obstacles and difficulties which lie in the path of missions to Central Africa.
On arriving at Zanzibar, Dr. Mullens decided, in the exercise of the discretion given him by the Board, to proceed onward, in company with Messrs. Griffith and Southon, to Lake Tanganyika. The party left Zanzibar on the afternoon of Friday, June 13th, and having landed at Saadani, started for the interior. Letters dated Ndumi, June 16th, report that all the members of the expedition were in excellent health, and were well on their way westward.
News of his death on the 10th of July has brought sadness to many hearts outside of the circle who will most deeply miss his counsels and mourn his loss. He was not yet fifty-nine years of age, and was one of the foremost men of the present time in foreign missions, having been, perhaps, the most prominent leader in the Basle Missionary Conference held in October last.
—There is now an unbroken chain of communication by steam from England to the northern end of Lake Nyassa in Central Africa, excepting seventy miles of the Murchison Cataracts in the Shire River; and it is ascertained that Lakes Nyassa and Tanganyika are but 130 miles apart, instead of 250.
—The London Daily Telegraph says: Among many interesting particulars of discoveries brought from Africa by the gallant Portuguese explorer, Major Serpa Pinto, none is more absorbing than his story of the white people encountered between the rivers Cubango and Cuando. Serpa Pinto found in these districts a tribe absolutely European in tint, yet nowise of the Albino type, for the hair was black and woolly. He described them as uglier than the plainest negroes, and lower in civilization than any race met with, having receding foreheads, slanting eyes like the Chinese, prominent cheek-bones, and hanging lower lips. The appearance fails to do much credit to the white men whom they resemble. Who, then, and whence, are these people, so strangely recalling the tribe spoken of by Mr. Stanley between the equatorial lakes?
—Late news from Bishop Crowther’s mission, on the Niger River, Africa, states that one of the chiefs, Captain Hart, who had been most active at Bonny in the persecution of Christian converts, is dead. On his death-bed he commanded that all his idols be destroyed, warning his followers to have nothing more to do with idol worship. The next day after his death the heathen fell upon the collection of idols with a will. Archdeacon Crowther writes:
“Early this morning they began to destroy the jujus. The work of destruction is great. The poor gods and goddesses are having very hard times in late Captain Hart’s quarters now. They are handled in a most unceremonious and rough manner. Two canoe-loads, it is said, have found their resting-place in the deepest part of the river, and those that float and will not sink are broken into ever so many pieces. Floating wrecks of idols made and worshiped since the days of Captain Hart’s father are to be seen dotted all over the creek to the river in the shipping. Imprecations and abuses have taken the place of worship.”
Bishop Crowther reports that, after a long season at Bonny, in which, owing to persecution, there were no converts, eight persons have been baptized.
—Dr. John Kirk, the British Consul-General at Zanzibar, Africa, writes that Keith Johnson, the leader of the expedition to explore the head of Lake Nyassa, died of dysentery on the 27th of June, at Berobero, 130 miles inland from Dar-es-Salaam. The expedition will be continued by Mr. Thomson, the scientific assistant of Mr. Johnson.
—Mr. John S. Hartland reports his arrival at Bonny, and Mr. W. H. Bentley at Sierra Leone, on the West Coast of Africa. They are both on their way to the English Baptist Mission on the Congo or Livingstone River.
The Indians.
The following paragraph from the Independent so fully expresses our view of the matter of the Ponca Indians, that we both copy and endorse it:
The story which Secretary Schurz tells about the Ponca Indians, while it corrects some misapprehensions in regard to the case, nevertheless confesses that the Government has treated the Indians very unjustly. This the Secretary said in his first annual report. After securing to the Poncas 96,000 acres of land in South-eastern Dakota by the treaties of 1817, 1826 and 1858, the Government in 1868 granted this very land to the Sioux Indians, without any reference to the rights held therein by the Poncas, both by treaty and occupancy. The Sioux Indians were unfriendly to the Poncas, and the collision between these tribes made it necessary for the Government to seek the removal of the Poncas to the Indian Territory. All this was done before the present Administration came into power, and hence it has no responsibility for the wrong done. Secretary Schurz says that “no effort has been spared by the Executive branch of the Government to rectify all the wrongs that the Poncas have suffered, so far as these wrongs can be rectified.” He also says that “a bill for their relief, providing for payment for their lands in Dakota, and also providing for the payment for their new reservation, with an appropriation of $58,000 to reimburse them for their losses, has been sent to Congress by the Interior Department.” We are glad to learn from so good an authority that the Executive Department of the Government recognizes the wrong which has been done to these Indians, and shows a disposition to make an honorable amende therefor. It is to be hoped that Congress will sustain and concur with its efforts.