It was not long after this that the Bulu conceived the idea of wresting from us a higher price for all articles of native food. When we refused their demand they all joined together in a boycott. Our position was serious enough; for we had a number of workmen from the coast whose entire food we purchased from the Bulu. We happened to have rice on hand which for the time we gave the men and which was sufficient to last several days. Meantime, it happened that there was more sickness than usual. Some of the principal chief’s wives had bad ulcers and were coming daily for treatment. But one day when our rice was nearly exhausted, Dr. Good turned them all away, saying that he would treat them when the people would bring food. This was a possibility that had never occurred to them. A few days later they decided to bring food and end the boycott. But now that they had once attempted it there was need that we should always be prepared by having on hand a supply of rice.

About this time I went to the coast expecting to remain only a few days and return with a large caravan; for we were in need of many things. It was on this journey that the incident occurred which I have related, when my carriers lost their way with my bed and clothing and I suffered extreme exposure. The result was a fever immediately upon reaching the coast, and a second fever before I had sufficiently recovered from the first to set out for the interior, and then a third fever, the worst that I had had. If I could have reached Efulen I would probably have recovered; for the climate of Batanga is dreadful. But the wet season, which had been coming on gradually was now at its worst, and cut off the possibility of a retreat to the interior, in my greatly reduced health. The last fever had been so serious that I could not risk another. There was only one thing to do. So, with the advice of all the missionaries at Batanga, I took the first steamer that came, and fled from the coast, having been in Africa a year and a half. Nor did my health permit of my return to Africa for four full years. As I put out from the Batanga beach in a surf-boat and stood looking back at the receding shore while we rose and fell with the heavy waves of the evening sea, the last one that I saw was Mrs. Laffin, who again came out and waved her handkerchief. She was very well then; but only a few weeks later she died.

A month after Mrs. Laffin’s death came the dreadful news that Dr. Good had died. He was a man of iron constitution and such amazing vitality of body and mind that it seemed impossible to associate death with him. The unnaturalness of his death impressed me as might some great convulsion in nature; as if a mountain had been uprooted and cast into the depths of the sea.

Mr. Kerr was at Efulen when Dr. Good died and several other missionaries had arrived.

While I was still there Dr. Good had planned a trip of three weeks into the interior further than he had yet gone with a view to choosing a site for another mission station; but circumstances at Efulen led him to postpone the journey. At that time he received a message from a notorious and dreaded chief of the interior near the present Elat, warning him not to dare to come into his country, for that he would surely kill him. Dr. Good, however, continued his preparations for the journey. In the course of a long and serious conversation as to what it would be best to do in case that interior chief or any other should do him violence or should capture and detain him, he urged and exacted from me a promise that in any event the German government should not be called to his assistance, even to save his life. Not that he denied his right to protection but he knew the severity of the government, having recently witnessed it in a war upon a neighbouring tribe. And indeed I myself had arrived in Africa in time to see something of the desolation of that war in the silent and smoking remains of towns from which the people (all who had escaped from the sword) had fled into the depths of the forest. For instance, two little boys who had just been taken into our school at Batanga had been found alone in the forest, and crying beside the dead body of their mother. I yielded to Dr. Good a reluctant promise as he desired; for I could not controvert the moral principle which actuated this strong, brave-hearted man.

For other reasons he did not go at that time; but not long after I left Africa, and upon the arrival of others, he set out upon this hard and uncertain journey. Perhaps he erred on the side of economy and indifference to comfort, not providing himself with everything procurable that could conserve his strength and vitality. He made extensive explorations of the interior, chose the site for a new station, returned to Efulen exhausted, and the next day was stricken with fever. The third day afterwards he died, having been delirious most of the time. He was only thirty-seven years old. His last conscious words were a message to the church at home, “See that I have not laboured in vain.”

Great man and great missionary! There was something about Dr. Good that always reminded one of Livingstone. Six years later, standing at his grave on Efulen hill, where every tree and every foot of ground were associated with his memory, I recalled the inscription in the crypt of St. Paul’s Cathedral, over the tomb of Sir Christopher Wren, its great architect. “If you ask a monument look around you.” The Church of Efulen, the growth of which has since been marvellous, no costly pile of stone or marble, but of more precious human souls upon whose darkness the light of heaven has dawned, the large congregation that gathers there to worship the true God, and the many changes in the community near and far—these are the lasting monuments of Dr. Good.

IX
THE KRUBOYS

It was not on the voyage to Batanga, but on subsequent voyages along the lower coast, to the Congo, to St. Paul de Loanda and Benguela, that I was fully impressed with the service of the black man to the white and the disposition to cruelty on the part of the latter. For it is south of Batanga that the natives employed on the steamer do their hardest work. What I saw and heard on those several voyages gave ample food for reflection upon the moral danger of unrestrained authority and the unfitness of most men to govern their fellows of lower degree. I was allowed to remain absorbed in my own thoughts as there were but few passengers on board; on one such journey I was the only passenger for three weeks out of five.