During these years he had paid more than one visit to his home. His mother had received him with hearty welcomes, Satu had had long and frequent talks with him about the white men and their teaching, and the lads and lasses in the town had regarded his accomplishments in reading and writing with awe, envy, and superstitious fear.
Old Plaited-Beard always looked at him askant, with eyes full of hatred and malignity; but Tumbu, his slave friend, never left his side during those visits except to sleep. He followed him like a faithful dog, with eyes full of admiration and humble love.
The time came at last for Bakula to return to his town and live there. He asked his white friend for a few slates, pencils, reading-sheets and spelling-books, as he had decided to start, if possible, a school among his own people. These were gladly given to him, and, taking farewell of his many friends, both black and white, he commenced his return journey.
How different was this last going from his first coming! The darkness had given place to the light, the tangled, crooked path had become straight, though narrow and rough, and the evil spirits of fetishism no longer haunted his life with terror and horror, for they had been displaced by the ministering angels of God.
Chapter XXI
Bakula’s Work checked
The conservatism of the Congo people--Bakula and his scholars build a school-house--A missionary visits his town--He encourages Bakula in his work--A “luck fowl” dies--Its death is put to the credit of the missionary’s visit and teaching--The school-house is pulled down--Satu is afraid to interfere--Native way of punishing an unpopular chief.
Bakula had not been back many days before he asked Satu for permission to open a school for the boys in the town. The chief gave his consent, but was very doubtful how the townsfolk would regard the innovation.
For untold generations they, their fathers, and their forefathers had gone on in the same way. They had built their huts with either grass, mud, or rough plank walls; they had scratched the ground on their farms with little hoes; and when ill in health, unlucky in fighting, trading, hunting or in domestic affairs, they had nearly sixty wizards, or “medicine men,” to reverse their luck by their ceremonies, charms, fetishes and magical decoctions. They had kept their accounts with knots tied in strings, or notches cut on tallies; they had always hunted in the same way, fished in the same way, traded, travelled, lived and died in the same way. What, therefore, was the use of changing now?
They were a very conservative people that had always killed off the progressives--those troublesome fellows who wanted to introduce new methods of building, new articles of trade, new ideas, and new ways of using old materials. Men who in other countries were called inventive geniuses were accounted horrible witches in Satu’s town. The man who discovered the method of tapping palm-trees for palm-wine was killed as a witch; the men who first traded in rubber and ivory were regarded with suspicion, and treated as folk full of witchcraft; and the man who took the first load of gum copal to the traders was told never to take another, or he “would see plenty trouble.”
It was in the midst of such a people that Bakula started his school. Tumbu, of course, attended it. Many other boys came out of curiosity, and finding no magic in it, no short-cut to book learning, their ardour cooled, and they dropped away; and there were no school inspectors to inflict fines and penalties for non-attendance. A few had sufficient courage and perseverance to attend regularly, and these made some progress in the mastery of their letters and syllables.