TILLOTSON COLLEGIATE AND NORMAL INSTITUTE, AUSTIN, TEXAS.
This school was founded on the same comprehensive scale as the other chartered institutions of the American Missionary Association. In 1876, a beautiful site of eight acres, overlooking the valley of the Colorado River and the mountains beyond, was secured in the city of Austin, the capital of Texas, and subsequently paid for by the originator of the enterprise, Rev. Geo. J. Tillotson. Efforts were commenced at once to raise the funds for the first building, which is to serve all the purposes of a boarding school until the growth and ability of the institution shall necessitate and provide others. Dea. David Allen, of Connecticut, headed the subscription with $1,000, and to this amount has since added $250. David Banks, of Stanwich, Conn., a gentleman over 80 years of age, raised $1,200 more, subscribing one-third of it himself. The remainder of the amount we now have on hand was collected for the most part by Mr. Tillotson, who has kindly added the gift of his services to the enterprise founded by his liberality. The principal benefactors of the institution are all over seventy years of age.
Work on the new building was commenced last summer, and is still going on. It is being constructed of brick, with some trimmings, and will have accommodations for seventy boarding students. The funds at our disposal for the object are barely sufficient to inclose the building. We need $7,000 additional in order to finish and furnish it for occupation by the 1st of October. The money already given, amounting to about $11,000, exclusive of the $5,000 paid for the site, was subscribed largely in sums of $400 each by persons who are to have the privilege of naming the students’ rooms, of which there will be thirty-five. A grand example has been given. Are there not others ready to follow?
The burden of debt, and the struggle required to maintain the institutions already under way, has deterred this Association, during the past three years, from pressing the claims of this, our only school in Texas; but we believe the time has now come when we should earnestly solicit the gifts needful for its speedy completion. Already we have received the written indorsement of seventy-six of the leading citizens of Austin, saying, “We believe that such a school is very much needed, and that the enterprise will be hailed by very many of our best citizens as of great importance to the welfare of the State.” Texas has a territory larger than France, and constitutes no mean part of “the whole world” where we are commanded to go and teach. Will our friends aid us to go up at once and possess the land?
WHO SHALL CIVILIZE AFRICA?
We copy from the Tribune the following opinion of Col. C. Chaillé Long, the African explorer, who preceded Stanley by a year in visiting Mtesa:
If the heart of Africa is ever reached by civilizing influences, Colonel Long thinks the work must be done by intelligent colored people from the United States. They, if anybody, could keep communications open, introduce trade, and gradually train the natives in habits of systematic industry. Last spring, when public attention was attracted to the exodus of negroes from the Southern States, Colonel Long wrote a letter to the King of Belgium, who is President of the principal European society for exploring and civilizing Africa. In that letter he proposed that the King should stimulate, through the medium of his society, a movement to take a large body of the discontented blacks from our Southern States and settle them in Central Africa, opening with them a line of trading and missionary posts from the West Coast to the lake country.
Colonel Long believed that thousands of the most industrious and best educated colored men in the Gulf States could be induced to go. Their presence in Africa would, he wrote, create no surprise or hostility among the natives, and they would soon acquire influence over the native tribes and start the work of civilization. In this way the experiment of opening the dark continent would be tried under the only conditions that afford the least promise of success. King Leopold wrote in reply that the project deeply interested him, and that he should give it his careful investigation, but nothing further has been heard from him. Colonel Long says it would cost a great deal of money to carry out the scheme, but the African exploring societies in Europe could raise it if they tried. He is not enthusiastic about the success of his plan, but is confident that it is the only one not foredoomed to failure. Equatorial Africa, he insists, will never be civilized by white men.