And now we had to turn east, straight for the Mission House, which we began to hear of as being in Usambiro. From Bwanga to Uyombi is a march of 6¾ hours, thence another, Kamwaga, of 5 hours, thence to Umpeté, 5 hours, and from thence to the abandoned French Mission Station in Usambiro in 6 hours. In the centre of the circular palisade was a neat church, and above the roof of it was a simple cross, which instantly suggested Christ and Civilization, words and thoughts to which I fear most of us had been strangers for many months.
1889.
Aug. 27.
Usambiro.
The French Missionaries, we must admit, are not to be excelled in the art of building Stations and developing an appearance of comfort and prettiness out of the most unpromising materials. Those who have travelled the last three or four hundred miles with us will have seen that I have been almost indifferent to the face of the land. We had traversed it during the dry season, when it is difficult to find one acre out of a million worth looking at, and yet equal to the unloveliest of all was that occupied by this handsome Mission Station. There were three rows of low earth-covered structures, forming three sides of a spacious square, and in each row were four or five chambers neatly plastered within and without with grey clay. Midway between the houses were the church, excellently built out of materials in the vicinity; an inner circle of palisades surrounded the civilized quarters, and an outer circle protected the village of the proselytes. Nothing could be better, considering that the myombo forest close by, and the soil around them, furnished the materials, than the plan and execution of it. One realised how patiently and with what love they must have laboured. There were two faults in the place, however, which, had their faith not been so great, they would have known before building. The natives were cantankerous, hard-hearted, worldly Wanyamwezi, and there was no water, and before they had quite completed the Station, the signal for retreat and abandonment was given.
1889.
Aug. 27.
Usambiro.
The next day, having already sent messengers ahead, that we might not take Mr. Mackay, of the Church Missionary Society, by surprise, we arrived in view of the English Mission, which was built in the middle of what appeared to be no better than a grey waste, on ground gently sloping from curious heaps of big boulders, or enormous blocks thrown higgledy-piggledy to the height of a respectable hill down to a marshy flat green with its dense crops of papyrus, beyond which we saw a gleam of a line of water produced from an inlet of the Victoria Nyanza. We were approaching the Mission by a waggon track, and presently we came to the waggon itself, a simple thing on wooden wheels, for carrying timber for building. There was not a green thing in view except in the marsh; the aspect was cheerless and melancholy, grass all dead, trees either shrunk, withered, or dead, at least there was not the promise of a bud anywhere, which was of course entirely due to the dry season. When we were about half a mile off a gentleman of small stature, with a rich brown beard and brown hair, dressed in white linen and a grey Tyrolese hat, advanced to meet us.
“And so you are Mr. Mackay? Mwanga did not get you, then, this time? What experiences you must have had with that man. But you look so well one would say you had been to England lately.”
“Oh, no, this is my twelfth year. Mwanga permitted me to leave, and the Rev. Cyril Gordon took my place, but not for long, since they were all shortly after expelled from Uganda.”
Talking thus we entered the circle of tall poles within which the Mission Station was built. There were signs of labour, and constant unwearying patience, sweating under a hot sun, a steadfast determination to do something to keep the mind employed, and never let idleness find them with folded hands brooding over the unloveliness, lest despair might seize them, and cause them to avail themselves of the speediest means of ending their misery. There was a big, solid workshop in the yard filled with machinery and tools, a launch’s boiler was being prepared by the blacksmiths, a big canoe was outside repairing; there were sawpits, and large logs of hard timber, there were great stacks of palisade poles, in a corner of an outer yard was a cattle-fold and a goat-pen, fowls by the score pecked at microscopic grains, and out of the European quarter there trooped out a number of little boys and big boys looking uncommonly sleek and happy; and quiet labourers came up to bid us, with hats off, “Good Morning.” Now if there is anything on God’s earth better calculated than work to make men happy, it must be with some peculiar dispositions the knowledge that their work is ended. Hence, when I entered the Mission House my soul was possessed with some such feeling as this; at any rate before my mission was terminated the welcome we received promised rest and relief.
