In the Missionary Record, June, 1881, appears the following intelligence: “The mission which seemed so long fruitless, is now
one of the most fruitful in the whole earth. The increasing number and activity of the communicants, the increasing number of students in training as teachers and evangelists, and the manifestations of a Christian liberality not yet reached at home, tell of the changes which the Gospel has wrought. We ploughed in hope: we sowed in tears: and now already we reap in joy. The most recent tidings are the most heart-stirring. A new tribe, which had long resisted our approach, has been visited. They had never seen among them a white man till they looked on the face of the devoted Samuel Edgerly. They invite teachers to settle among them. They offer us suitable sites. The country is far beyond the swamps; it is high and healthy. This favorable entrance was greatly aided by the wise and good King Eyo, who sent a prince to accompany Mr. Edgerly beyond Umon to Akuna Kuna. When the expedition returned and the king heard the result, he gave utterance to one of the noblest of sentiments. ‘God,’ said he, when Mr. Edgerly had told his tale, ‘has unlatched the door, and wishes us to push it open.’”
Such results as have been achieved at the Old Calabar Mission are worth all the money and toil and sacrifice of health and even of life which they have cost.
The mission to the Cameroons was established in 1845 by the Baptist Missionary Society. When the missionaries of that society were expelled from the neighboring island of Fernando Po, where they had been laboring since 1841, they settled among the Isubus at Bimbia, where a mission had previously been projected. The mission was afterwards extended to King Bell’s Town in an easterly direction, the people inhabiting that region being the Dualas. The entire New Testament has been translated into the languages of both tribes.
The Gaboon Mission was called into existence by the American Board in 1842. Baraka was the first station occupied. It was transferred in 1870 to the Mission Board of the American Presbyterian Church (north.) The Mpongwes on the coast, and the Shekanis, Bakalais, and Pangwes in the interior, are the tribes embraced in the field of operation. Not much progress has been made owing to the opposition of the Roman Catholics. In all the
French possessions on the west coast of Africa the Roman Catholics predominate and very little has been accomplished. Recently the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society has been doing a good work at Senegal and other settlements.
We come now to Angola. Angola was discovered by European mariners long before Christopher Columbus had given to the world another continent, yet many years passed before the value of the discovery was recognized and the country taken possession of and occupied by the Portuguese, at that period when Portugal was made remarkable by the commercial enterprise and maritime prowess of its people, more than three hundred years ago.
For several years before the occupation of Angola, the king of Congo had been doing a large and lucrative trade with the Portuguese in slaves. The sources from which were drawn victims to keep alive this nefarious barter were never failing. The superstitions of the people, their customs and habits, a season of drouth, a failure of crops, in fact anything, even the least trivial happenings, were all factors giving Congo’s king excuse for the selling of his subjects to securing wealth; wealth represented by many wives, granaries filled to bursting with manioc, and wooded hills and fertile valleys stocked to overrunning with flocks of sheep and droves of lowing kine; wealth which enabled Congo to dominate and overawe all contemporary tribes, and which naturally incited the jealousy of other kings and chiefs who ruled over the natives of other districts in this country of Congoland.
Among the savage rulers who were envious of the power of their rival, was Nmbea, king of Angola, autocrat of a large and densely populated country. Holding at his disposal millions of helpless and superstitious subjects, Nmbea soon recognized that by copying the practices of his powerful neighbor he, with but little difficulty, would also become chief and powerful. So, moved by this desire, he opened a correspondence with the Portuguese. He sent one of the rich men of his tribe, with presents of slaves, ivory and strangely wrought curios, as ambassadors to the Portuguese court at Lisbon, with instructions to endeavor to have the Portuguese establish trading relations between the two kingdoms.
At this time the attention of the Portuguese queen and the