“The teaching force of all the facts in the case, as we now see them, leads us clearly to the conclusion that we need our steamer on the Lower Congo much more than on the Upper. So, the Lord permitting, we will put her together at the base of the hill on which Vivi Mission is located, during the next dry season. She will carry goods from the side of ocean steamers at Banana 100 miles up to her berth, in the mouth of a little creek in which she will be constructed, the highest point of steamer navigation. This will save us exorbitant rates of freight up the river and land our goods where we want them, and give other missions a chance to reduce their heavy leakage of the same sort. The price for carrying to Stanley Pool is twice as large now as two years ago. We can’t pay such prices and found the stations in the Upper Kasai. That we feel (D.V.) bound to do; but with our steamer on the Lower Congo and a steel boat of our own, of three or four tons, to be worked by oars and sails on the middle passage, to carry freights from Isangala to Manyanga, will give us the inside track of the freight business to those upper countries, and cut down our expenses more than a half
of the present rate, and do work for other missions as well. Except in leadership and superintendency, all this heavy work will be done by natives, whom we wish to employ and train to habits of industry—one of the auxiliaries of our mission work.
STEAM WAGONS FOR HAULING AT VIVI.
“The steamers on the Upper Congo water-ways have multiplied from four or five to a dozen in the past three years, so that we can get passage for the few missionaries we want to put in to hold our Kasai pre-emption claim till we can work up from our lease, and by and by send up a small steamer of our own for our enlarged Kasai work. I am on my way now to make final arrangements with the builder of our steamer to put her up and launch her at the earliest practicable moment, and will, the Lord permitting, be back to
Liberia in December. I will ask Richard Grant to furnish a statement of the total expenditures.
“In regard to appropriations, I remark: (1) That if the Committee wish to enlarge the appropriation to the African (Liberia) Conference, I make no objection, but I ask at least for the continuance of the usual amount of $2,500, sent altogether as it was last year, and have the distribution at Conference for the whole year.
“(2) If the Committee are pleased to order $500 subject to my call, all right. I did not draw it last year, because I had not time to use it for the purpose I had in mind.
“(3) If the Committee will appropriate $10,000 or $5,000 for the establishment of self-supporting schools for the principal countries of Liberian population, for the education alike of the Liberian and the heathen children, I will administer it as carefully as possible and report progress. It would take five or six years to grow marketable values adequate to self-support, but quantities of food can be produced from the first or second year.—October 4, 1889.”
Writing in June 1889, Bishop Taylor speaks as follows concerning his Angola Missions: