The first Protestant missionaries on the Ogowe were Americans, who came there about 1860, but as they could not comply with the requirement of the French Government that they should give their school instruction in French, they resigned their work later on to the Paris Missionary Society.
To-day this society owns four stations: N'Gômô, Lambarene, Samkita, and Talagouga. N'Gômô is about 140 miles from the coast, and the others follow one another in that order at intervals of about 35 miles. Talagouga is situated on a picturesque island just in front of N'Djôle, which is the farthest point to which the river steamer goes.
At each Protestant mission station there are generally one unmarried and two married missionaries, and, as a rule, a woman teacher also, making five or six persons, without reckoning the children.
The Catholic mission has three stations in the same district: one in Lambarene, one in N'Djôle, and one near Samba, on the N'Gounje, the largest tributary of the Ogowe, and on each station there live about ten whites: usually three priests, two lay brothers, and five sisters.
The administrative officials of the district are stationed at Cape Lopez, at Lambarene, at Samba, and at N'Djôle, with about five hundred coloured soldiers distributed over it to act as a police force.
Such was the country, and such the people among whom for four and a half years I worked as the forest doctor. What I experienced during that time and the observations I made previous to the outbreak of the war, I shall now describe with the help of the reports which I wrote every six months in Lambarene and sent as printed letters to my friends and supporters. During the war such correspondence was, of course, impossible, and for that later period and for what is said about the religious and social problems treated of, I rely on memoranda which I made for my own use.