When the crocodile had reached the shore, the canoe was well out in the river. If the animal had not stopped to crawl out on the land and look around for his victim, the boy's devotion would probably have cost him his life. As it was, the crocodile had nearly overtaken the canoe, when the boy's cries brought the villagers to the shore, and the shouts and missiles frightened the angry pursuer away. The poor mother was dead, but her little son, who had risked his life to save her, had at least the satisfaction of knowing that her body would not be the food of crocodiles.
"Don't you fire guns in your country when a baby is born?" asked a Congo native of a missionary, who had rushed in great alarm when he heard a volley fired.
"Come back," shouted the natives to him. "It's only a baby born, and everybody is glad."
That white man was glad too it was only a baby. Many an African child, more unfortunate than most of them, has been glad to be befriended by the white men who are living in their country. Here is one among many stories illustrating this.
One day, in Central Africa, Mr. Arnot found several girls in a slave caravan, nearly dead from the hardships they had suffered. He bought them for a few yards of cloth, and took them home. One of them, little Mwepo, was very bright and happy, and was the favorite in the household.
Mr. Arnot went one day to dine with King Msidi. A little girl came into the yard where they were sitting and threw herself at the King's feet. When he bade her tell her troubles, she said she was a slave whom the King's soldiers had taken from her home. She said her mistress treated her so cruelly that she had run away to beg the King's protection. Arnot was about to leave, and the sly old King told the girl to follow him if she wanted a good home. So Arnot took her hand and led her to his cottage, where Mwepo and the little stranger flew into each other's arms, weeping as though their hearts would break. Three years before they had been playing on the banks of the Luba River when slave-stealers suddenly tore them from their homes and parents; but after many months of suffering they had been reunited in the home of a white man.
[GOLD, AND ITS USES.]
If the average reader or thinker will devote a few minutes to the subject of gold and its uses, and how much of it annually disappears by wear, leaving no possible trace, he will find himself involved in some extremely interesting calculations. If some genius would only invent a power strong enough to attract to it the millions of invisible particles that have, and are constantly being worn off the various articles composed of that metal, what an immense amount would be recovered!