AFRICAN NOTES.
—The Mission church at Old Calabar, Western Africa, where the Rev. E. P. Smith was buried, is spontaneously aiming at self-support.
—A few French Protestant missionaries from South Africa, have penetrated the great Barotse Valley, North of the Zambesi, with a view to establishing a mission in this unevangelized region. M. Coillard, the leader, is now in Europe, endeavoring to awaken an interest in the new enterprise.
—At the new San Salvador Congo Mission, excellent work has been done during its first six months of labor. A school has been opened and the scholars have made good progress. One hundred and fifty on the average have attended preaching services; about a thousand words of a hitherto unwritten language have been collated, and the missionaries thank God and take courage.
—Mr. Adam McCall, a converted engineer, with seven years’ experience in African life, has gone out from the East London Mission Institute, in charge of an expedition, planned to reach Stanley Pool this summer. Here he proposes to establish a good, strong industrial station, to which the natives from the surrounding country may be attracted, and where they may gather round a centre of civilizing and Christianizing influence.
—The mission of the United Presbyterians in Egypt has been signally blessed. They have thirty-five stations, nearly one thousand communicants, and over twelve hundred pupils in their schools, and have received, in all, assistance equal in value to $120,000. $40,000 of this was from the late Viceroy, and $80,000 from His Excellency Maharajah Dhuleep Singh.
—According to Mr. Stanley’s report, the population in the upper Congo region is very dense. The towns in some places are two miles long, with one or more broad streets between rows of neat well-built houses, superior to anything in East Africa. Mr. Stanley is constructing a good road, ten feet wide, on the lower Congo, past the rapids and cataracts. Relief stations are to be built at intervals for the benefit of merchants, missionaries and explorers, according to the original plan of the King of the Belgians.
—Coal is said to exist in abundance in the vicinity of St. Paul river, Liberia, West Africa, and a survey for a railroad has recently been, made on the St. Paul river.
—“The conditions of health in the Gaboon, West Africa,” says Rev. S. H. Murphy, a Presbyterian missionary, “are good living, godliness, cleanliness, tranquillity, patience, and quinine.”
—A Trans-Sahara Railway from Algeria to Soudan, across the Desert to Timbuctoo on the Niger, and another line from Senegal to the Niger, are proposed by the French. The necessary explorations for the first of these schemes are being made by Duponchel, a celebrated engineer, and for the second by Soleillet, another celebrated engineer and explorer.
—The Dutch Church in South Africa began on January 2d the publication of their first weekly religious paper, in the Dutch language, called “De Christen: Weekblad voor Kerk en Maat schappij;” (or the Christian; a Weekly for the Church and Society.) It is well gotten up, and is indeed quite an attractive sheet.
There are several large and enterprising secular sheets published at Cape Town.