There were sides of John's character she did not like. She was not naturally pious. The easy-going Church of England and its decorous faith were good enough for her; she loved this world—the world of the Kennet Valley with genial, worldly Reading on one side and not-too-disreputable, racing Newbury on the other—too well to care overmuch for the Heavenly Home in which John was staking out claims; if she had known the word she would have called John priggish; instead, she said "sanctimonious." Yet withal she was conscious of a certain manliness, a determined purpose about him....
Perhaps, however, in the summer months and the rich contentment of September the balance of her inclination might have been tilted against him, she might have nerved herself to writing that cruel letter which should say she shrank from joining him in Africa; were it not that he wrote faithfully from each stopping place, each crisis on his journey. His letters—closely written in a facile running hand on thin foreign paper—were stuffed with conventionally pious phrases, they contained diatribes on his ungodly fellow-passengers who broke the Sabbath (with an added zest from his remonstrances), played cards for money, told shocking stories in the smoking-room, and conducted themselves on shore in a manner which he could not describe. But then he gave very good descriptions of Algiers, of Port Said, Suez and Aden, and made her wish to see these places with her own eyes, smell their strange smells, and eat their strange viands. His letter from Unguja announcing his arrival there in August finally decided Lucy to throw in her lot with John.
There was also the further incentive that African adventure—missionary and political—was again becoming fashionable and attracting attention. Stanley was starting to find Emin Pasha; others had embarked or threatened to embark on the same quest. More and more missionaries were going out. It was rumoured that Ann Jamblin had announced her intention to take up a missionary career. Lucy wrote a little anxiously to inquire. Ann admitted she had toyed with the idea as she believed herself capable of teaching and even of preaching to the savage. But if she did go it would probably be to West Africa where the climate was even more deadly than in the South and East, and such a sacrifice might be more acceptable before the Heavenly Throne than the comfortable and assured position of a missionary's wife, not expected to do more than make a home for her husband.
John's first Unguja letter said that Thomas, Bayley, Anderson and himself had been very kindly received there by the Commercial Agent to the East African Mission—commercial because from the first it had been decided that a reasonable degree of trade should go hand in hand with fervent propaganda and Brotherhood work. The Mission must strive to make itself self-supporting in the long run as it had no rich church behind it. So there were to be lay agents who traded in the products of the country and whose stores would prove an additional attraction to the native visitor and inquirer. The Agent at their Unguja depôt—Mr. Callaway—had been a trader on the West Coast of Africa, agent there to a great distilling firm; who had become so shocked at the effects of cheap intoxicants on the native mind and morals that he had thrown up his employ and enlisted under the banner of a Trading Mission, pledged not to deal in alcohol or gunpowder. Mr. Callaway had "got religion" and "found Christ" (in Liverpool), but in spite of that—the naïve John wrote thus unthinkingly—was a very pleasant fellow who had soon picked up the native language and got on good terms with the Arabs of Unguja. The latter fully approved of his teetotalism—avoidance of alcohol being one of the few good points in their religion. John described with unction the prayer meetings and services they held in Mr. Callaway's sheds and go-downs on the shore of Unguja's port; though he had to admit that his fervour had been a little modified by the rancid smell of the copra[#] stored in these quarters and the appalling stench that arose from the filth on the beach. But there was plenty of good Christian fellowship at Unguja. The representatives of the great Anglican Mission established there—with a Cathedral and a Bishop and a thoroughly popish style of service—had shown themselves unexpectedly good fellows. One of them, Archdeacon Gravening, had presented the four young recruits for the East African Mission to the Arab sultan, and they had seen him review his Baluchi and Persian troops at the head of whom was an English ex-naval officer. Even the Fathers of the French Roman Catholic settlement had a certain elemental Christianity he had never thought to find in the followers of the Scarlet Woman....
[#] Dried coco-nut pulp.
The great British Balozi or Consul-General who had been the unacknowledged ruler of Unguja had just left for home ... rumour said because he could not get on with the aggressive Germans, who were obtaining a hold over the country. They had paid their respects instead to British authority in the person of a very uppish and sneering Vice-Consul—Mr. Spencer Bazzard ... who had great doubts of the value of Christianity so far as the negro was concerned. Mr. Bazzard, however, was dead against the Germans and wanted as many British subjects as possible to enter the interior behind the German coast so as to "queer their pitch," if they attempted to put their "rotten protectorate," in force.
Unguja, John wrote, was a wonderfully interesting island, despite its horrible smells, its heat and mosquitoes, which never left you alone, day or night. Such a mixture of Arabs and Persians, Indian traders, fierce, long-haired Baluchis, plausible Goanese half-castes, Madagascar people, Japanese and Chinese, and negroes from all parts of Africa.... He had already had a touch of fever and Bayley had broken out in boils; Anderson had suffered from diarrhoea; but all three were overjoyed at the prospect of leaving, soon after this letter was posted, in an Arab "dhow" which would convey them and the porters of their expedition to Lingani on the mainland, whence they would start on a two weeks' journey up-country. They were taking with them Snider rifles and ammunition to defend their caravan against wild beasts on the road and also to shoot game for the caravan's meat supply. At Mr. Callaway's advice they had been practising with these rifles at the shooting butts of the Sultan's army for the past week.... Thomas had been told off for Taita....
Then ensued a long silence and Lucy, now thoroughly interested, was getting anxious. But in January came a letter of many pages headed "Hangodi, Ulunga, November, 1886." John wrote that he and his companions had encountered many difficulties. On the fortnight's march inland from Lingani their porters had several times run away in alarm, hearing that a bloodthirsty tribe called "Wahumba" were on the march, or that there was famine ahead. The German traders on the coast had not been friendly, and the attitude of the Arab chiefs in the coast-belt was surly. However, one of these Arabs, Ali bin Ferhani, was a kindlier man than the others and had told off some of his slaves (John feared they were, but what could you do?) to carry their loads to the Ulunga country. They also had with them a Christian convert, a native of Ulunga and a released slave (Josiah Briggs) who could speak English to some extent and was very useful as an interpreter and head man.... Well, they had reached Hangodi at last and liked its surroundings. There were mountains—quite high ones—all round. Hangodi, itself, was over three thousand feet above sea level and quite cool at nights. Indeed John now regretted he had spurned the idea of mantel-borders, for they had fireplaces in the dwelling-houses, both those already built and those they were planning. A fire at night, in fact, was often welcome and cheerful. The Chief approved of the settlement, wanted them to teach his people, and keep off the "Wa-dachi," as he called the Germans, whom he did not seem to like. But the Chief's people, the Wa-lunga, were suspicious and quarrelsome, and as he could not speak their language and had to explain the Gospel through an interpreter, they paid him little attention. The elders of the tribe liked to come and talk with him in his verandah, that is to say, they did the talking—punctuated by a good deal of snuff-taking and spitting; and he gleaned what he could of its sense from the summaries given to him by Josiah Briggs. It seemed to consist of many questions as to how the white men became so rich and why he could not teach this method to their young people. If he tried to expound Sacred things to them they asked in return for a cough medicine or to be shown how to make gunpowder and caps, and how to cure a sick cow. Yet he felt sure their minds would be pierced ere long by a gleam of Gospel light....
There were also some Muhammadan traders from the Coast settled for a time with the Chief, who, he strongly suspected, was selling them slaves, war-captives. Though the Chief seemed willing to listen to their story of the Redeemer, he nevertheless sent out his "young men," his warriors, on raiding expeditions against the tribes to the south, and they sometimes returned from such forays with cattle, with men cruelly tied with bush-rope and their necks fastened to heavy forked sticks, and with weeping young women whom they took as wives.... The Wangwana, as these black "Arabs" were called, were very hostile to his mission—more so sometimes than the real Arabs. Occasionally he had met a white-skinned Arab who reminded him most strongly of the Bible patriarchs, and who seemed very desirous of being on friendly terms with the white man. But these black Arabs who spoke Swahili, the language of Unguja, though they affected outward politeness, were working hard against the good influence of the East African Mission and trying to persuade the Chief to reconsider his first grant of land and expel the white people who were spies in the service of the great Balozi and the English men-of-war, watching to intercept slave dhows....
The children of the Wa-lunga were frightened of him and his two companions and could not be induced, even by gifts of beads, to sit on their knees. But their mothers, on the other hand, worried the white men incessantly for beads and calico, soap and salt, which last they ate as though it was a sweetmeat. Yet they ran away when he sent for the interpreter and tried to tell them about God. One woman had shouted back at him that it was very wicked to talk about God; it would only draw down the lightning ... much better leave God alone and then He left you alone—this at least was how Josiah had translated her speech.