Stanley in Africa / The Wonderful Discoveries and Thrilling Adventures of the Great African Explorer, and Other Travelers, Pioneers and Missionaries

by James P. Boyd

One beneficial result of the war with Ashanti has been the abolition of domestic slavery in the “Gold Coast” colony.

The work of the society (Basle) generally on the west coast of Africa has been very gratifying. In 1882 under the care of the 34 European missionaries and upwards of a hundred other agents, there were some 4,000 natives, from whose minds the darkness of night has been dispelled, besides about 1,500 pupils under instruction who may be expected to do good work in the future. Many of the churches on the “Gold Coast” have attained to a position of self-support.

One single fact may be mentioned, as indicating the influence of the mission here. The king of Cape Coast in early life was the means of getting it established. He forsook the “fetish” of his country. In consequence he was cut off from the succession to the chieftainship, and publicly flogged. But after thirty years’ profession of Christianity, he was elected chief or king, and, on the occasion of the anniversary in 1864, he publicly acknowledged his obligations to the mission.

Lagos, a considerable island in the Bight of Benim, was in former times one of the most notorious slave depots on the western coast of Africa. It is situated at the mouth of a river, or rather, a large lagoon, which runs parallel with the sea for several miles, and affords water communication with the interior in the direction of Badagry, Dahomi, Abeokuta, and other parts of the Yoruba country. It is now a British settlement, with its resident lieutenant governor and staff of officers.

The population of Lagos and the neighboring native towns, both in the Yoruba and Popo countries, is of a similar character to that which is found on other parts of the coast. Perhaps it became somewhat more mixed several years ago, by the emigration from Sierra Leone of a large number of “liberated Africans,” who ventured thus to return to the countries from which they had been dragged as poor slaves, when they heard that the slave trade was abolished. Some of these emigrants had the happiness to find parents, brothers, sisters or other relatives and friends still living,

who received them as alive from the dead; whilst others sought in vain for any one who could recognize them. There were many touching and affecting meetings, and great was the surprise of the natives of Lagos, Abeokuta, and other places in Yoruba and Popo countries, to see the change which had passed upon their friends and relatives by the residence of a few years in a free British colony. They all appeared decently clothed in European apparel, many of them had learned to read and write in the mission schools, and a few of them had become the happy partakers of the great salvation, which they had heard proclaimed in all its simplicity and power in the land of their exile.

It was the extensive emigration of civilized “liberated Africans” from Sierra Leone to Lagos and the neighboring towns in the Yoruba country, that led to the vigorous efforts of the Church and Wesleyan Missionary Societies to evangelize the natives of this part of Africa. The Christian emigrants who had been connected with these organizations in Sierra Leone, on reaching their destination reported to their respective ministers the state in which they found the country and earnestly requested that their friends and countrymen might be favored with the proclamation of the Gospel which had made them so happy. These appeals were cheerfully responded to by the parties concerned, and a work was commenced which for prosperity and blessing has had few parallels in the history of missions.

The Church Missionary Society was happy in the selection of the Rev. Samuel Crowther, an educated and ordained native minister, as the leader of the enterprise. The history of Mr. Crowther is equal in interest to any romance that was ever written. Torn away from his native land and sold as a slave when a mere boy in 1821, he was rescued from a Portugese slaver by a British cruiser and brought to Sierra Leone, where he was educated in the mission school, and being specially bright was sent to England. He completed his education in Islington Training Institution and was ordained by the Bishop of London. He returned to Sierra Leone and was afterwards in 1846 appointed as a missionary to Abeokuta, to labor among the Sierra Leone emigrants and others. It was here, to his inexpressible delight, he met his mother, twenty-five years

after he had been snatched from her by the slave dealers; and in 1848 he had the further unspeakable joy of seeing her admitted, along with four others, into the membership of the Christian church. They were the first fruits of the mission. In 1864 he was consecrated at Canterbury Cathedral, Bishop of the Niger territory and superintendent of all the stations in the Yoruba and adjoining countries. Making the island of Lagos his headquarters, Bishop Crowther, assisted by a noble band of native missionaries, has succeeded in establishing stations, erecting churches and organizing Christian schools, not only in Lagos and Abeokuta, where the work was first commenced, but also in various towns and villages in Yoruba and Popo countries, and in several centres of population on the banks of the Niger. The principal stations on the Niger are Bonny and Bross at the mouth of the river, and Onitsha, Lokoja, New Calabar, and Egan, higher up. The last named is 350 miles from the mouth of the river. In 1877 a steamer named the Henry Venn was supplied to the mission, thus doing away with the hard labor and slow navigation by means of the old fashioned canoe in vogue on the river. An exploratory voyage made up the Binue in 1879 revealed the existence of numerous tribes ready to receive teachers.

At Bross and Bonny there has lately been a remarkable movement in the direction of Christianity, hundreds of people throwing away their idols and attending the church services, which are thronged every Sabbath. The famous Juju temple, studded with human skulls, is going to ruin. A village opposite Bonny has been named “The Land of Israel” because there is not an idol to be found in it. At an important market town thirty miles in the interior, the chiefs and people, influenced by what they had seen at Bonny, and without ever having been visited by a Christian teacher, spontaneously built a church with a galvanized iron roof, and benches to seat 300 worshipers, got a school-boy from Bross to read the church services on Sundays, and then sent to ask the Bishop to give them a missionary.