“Should this eventually prove needful, the Committee earnestly hope that the work there may be carried on by some Evangelical German Missionary organisation, whose agents may have the joy of reaping a rich harvest from the toils, the tears, and the seed-sowing of devoted workers, many of whom have fallen asleep.
“Under present circumstances, however, and while negotiations are being carried on with Her Majesty’s Government by the Committee, it would be premature to forecast the future, or take any definite steps in the matter.
“The Committee are devoting to this painful business their constant and careful attention, and they earnestly invite friends of the Society to unite in special prayer on their behalf, that they may be Divinely guided to such issues as shall best promote the glory of God and the truest welfare of the peoples of the West Coast.”
The apprehensions of the Committee were realised, and in 1887 the stations on the Cameroons River and at Victoria were handed over to the Basle Mission.
NOTE B.—[P. 110.]
Kongo and Congo
The ancient kingdom, of which San Salvador was the capital, was the kingdom of Kongo. And the language of the Lower Congo region, of which Dr. Bentley wrote the grammar and dictionary, and into which he translated the New Testament, is the Kongo language. The San Salvador district is spoken of by the natives as Kongo. Hence when Mr. and Mrs. Lewis were departing for Kibokolo, they were said to be leaving Kongo. The distinction between Congo and Kongo is not always observed, but the reader will understand, when he meets the “K” spelling, that it is not used in error.
NOTE C.—[P. 134.]
“Concerning the Collection”
It may perhaps not be quite superfluous to inform the reader that the pig was duly paid for, and its price placed in the treasury, before it was eaten at the Mission Christmas feast. Obviously all the other items of this strange collection must needs be in like fashion turned into money, for transmission to London. Otherwise Mr. Baynes and his staff would have been decidedly embarrassed by the receipt of a consignment of goods, including a very dead pig, a keg of gunpowder, and all the rest of it.
NOTE D.—[P. 168.]
The Old Cathedral
The Portuguese discovered the Congo River in 1482, and in course of time San Salvador became the centre of a Christian civilisation of a kind. Several churches were built, and the Cathedral ruins referred to were the relics of the greatest of them. But the slave trade was of greater interest to the Portuguese than the business of evangelisation, and ecclesiastics engaged in it. When our missionaries reached San Salvador, only the faintest traces of earlier missions remained. For many generations barbarism had resumed its ancient sway.