GENERAL NOTES.
Africa.
—A French school of archæology, like those which already exist at Rome and Athens, will be established at Cairo. M. Maspero, Professor in the College of France, has charge of the organization.
—M. L. Vassion, attached to the office of foreign affairs in France, has gone to Cairo; he will start from there for Khartoum and the river Blanc, where he will study the nature of the commercial relations which it will be possible to establish with Soudan.
—Dr. Pogge and his companion, M. Wissman, have sailed from Hamburg for Saint Paul de Loanda. The German Government has officially asked for them the protection of the Portuguese Government, by which they may traverse the African possessions on the western side.
—The mission of Algiers proposes to found two new stations between the great lakes and the Atlantic. The first will be upon the Congo itself, at the point where the river bends to the north; the second will be in the States of Mouata Yamvo.
—Messrs. Brazza and Ballay will descend the Alima in the transportable steamer which the latter has obtained from Europe, to complete the exploration of the Congo.
—The L’Afrique, in an article on the Sanitary Condition of Africa and the adjacent Isles, says, “Madeira is remarkably healthy, so that it has been for a long time chosen as a sanitarium for consumptives. Malaria is wholly unknown there; dysentery is rare and shows itself only in the epidemic form.”
—Bishop Crowther returned to Lagos, from a six months’ absence on the Upper Nile, just in time for his wife’s prayer, that she might die in his arms, to be answered. She did so, though unconscious of the fact, on the 19th of October last.
Adjai, afterwards Bishop Samuel Crowther, and Asano, afterwards Susanna, his wife, were children of the same tribe, kidnapped, rescued, and landed almost the same time, though not in the same party, at Sierra Leone, and were placed in the same church missionary school. They were married fifty-one years since, in 1829.
—A Kaffir Girl’s Worthy Example. One day a Kaffir girl in South Africa went to a missionary and dropped four sixpences into his hand, saying: “This is your money.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” replied the teacher.
“I do,” she answered; “and I will tell you how. At the public examination you promised a sixpence to any one in the class I was in who would write the best specimen on a slate. I gave in my slate and got the sixpence; but you did not know then that another person wrote that specimen for me. Yesterday you were reading in the church about Zaccheus, who said: ‘If I have taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold.’ I took from you one sixpence, and I bring you back four.”
The Indians
Sisseton Agency, Dakota Territory.—Mr. Charles Crissey, the agent, in a brief report, says:
There have been built since I came here in 1879 seven new frame houses, and three others finished that were not habitable when I came, besides a number of log houses roofed and floored. A new engine has been procured and put in place for the flour mill, and the building enlarged to double its former capacity. A barn 21×70 feet has been built; the school building repaired, after six years’ use; the old engine converted into a portable saw-mill; and timber for a new church at Good Will sawed out. The people have been supplied with 95 yoke of work cattle, with yokes and chains complete; also with all the plows, wagons, harrows, etc., that they will need for some time.
I have also had thrown upon my care the Brown Earth Indians, formerly living here, 30 families, now 40 miles away, who are trying to get homesteads like white men. They have been supplied with 20 yoke of oxen, 20 wagons, all tools necessary, including portable forge and tools, also carpenters’ tools, and material for a new school-house.
The Drifting Goose Indians have been quietly disposed of and settled at Crow Creek, D. T., after being on my hands ten months.
Three Indians are now talking of building for themselves frame houses as good and large as the one I live in, provided the Government will furnish half the material required.
Our grain is not all threshed yet. From present indications it will reach about 28,000 bushels wheat and 10,000 bushels oats; potatoes, corn, etc., in abundance. I cut down the estimate on flour for this season 25,000 lbs. The Indians now furnish about 70 per cent. of what they eat.
My next step will be to introduce stock raising, by procuring cows and calves for this people.
Washington Territory.—Hon. John McReavy has fitted up a hall at Union City for church purposes, and the people have procured an organ and bell for the same object.
The Clallam Indians at Jamestown, near Dunginess, Washington Territory, have bought a bell for their church, the first church bell in their county, although it has been settled more than twenty years, and has a white population of over five hundred and fifty.
The members of the church at Seabeck, at the close of the services on the first Sabbath in December, presented their pastor, Rev. M. Eells, with a purse containing forty dollars and fifty cents; and the ladies of the place who are not members of the church, presented his wife on Christmas with a box containing articles of clothing worth about thirty dollars.
Two persons at Jamestown were received into our church in December, and two more at S’kokomish in January, all on profession of faith.