The American Missionary — Volume 35, No. 12, December, 1881

by Various

The little that we know of the country and people up the Sobat is not encouraging. The land is flat, and in the rainy season marshy. On the banks of the streams are forests of the talch acacia. The people have been hostile, and Col. Gordon withdrew his station from that region before I went to the provinces of the Equator.

The mouth of the Sobat, and the great east and west reach of the Nile which flows here east by south for about 100 miles, mark the southern limit of the steppe country. South of this one should not rest till he reaches the high lands of the Bahr el Gebel, below latitude 5. The characteristic features of that region are truly charming to one who has crossed the deserts, steppes and marshes on his way from the Mediterranean.

Here are found various tribes of negroes, the Bohr, the Shir, the Madi, and finally, to the south, the great Wanyoro and Waganda tribes, who are thought by Speke not to be negroes. On the east are the Latookas and the Lungo; on the west the Niambara. For our purposes it is not necessary to discriminate very closely between them. They are all naked heathen, given to warfare and pillage, detesting work, and certainly not spiritually minded.

All of these people had been greatly exasperated by the slave-traders and by the garrison left at Gondokoro by Baker. The policy of the slave-traders had been to keep one tribe at war with another, and by allying themselves with one and the other to get much of the fighting done for them and to carry off the spoils in slaves, cattle and ivory. The Egyptian garrison had imitated the traders, and when Gordon went up it was practically besieged at Gondokoro. In two years and a half Gordon had reduced the garrison at Gondokoro to a sergeant and ten men, and his strongest garrison, that at Moogi, was but 90 men. He had established stations for 300 miles at a day’s march, or less, apart, and over much of this distance one courier could pass unharmed. The chiefs about the stations paid tribute of corn and furnished porters readily. On the Albert Lake he put a steamer and two large iron life-boats, which traversed without danger or difficulty the 125 miles of river south of Dufli. The Moogi family, for some distance on the east bank of the river, was still hostile, but all the other river people had great confidence in the wonderful white man who had been just and truthful with them. How much of this condition still exists I do not know, but the fact that it did exist in 1877 shows what missionaries might hope to do there.

The negroes of the far Nile country, like the Shillooks, the Dinkas, and the Nouers below, breed cattle, raise their poor breadstuffs and a few vegetables, and hunt but little. Were it not for the tribal wars, they would seldom suffer for food, although local famines from drought do occur. Like the negroes farther down the Nile, they are, too, a simple and happy people, only asking to be let alone. They want nothing that our civilization can give them except bright beads and wire. Therefore, to establish relations of trade with them is not easy.

I began by promising to give you somewhat accurate notions of certain limited regions. I find that I have been able to skim but hastily over even the area to which I have confined myself.

I will conclude with a few words about that area as a missionary field. I need not tell you that the poor people are densely ignorant of Christianity, as they are of all religion. I need not tell you again that like all savages they make each other as miserable as they can with their poor knowledge of the art and means of war; or that the slave-traders and the Khedive’s troops are adding daily to their capacity in that way. I hardly need tell you that I believe them to be human beings whose happiness might be increased by teaching them peaceful industries and by inducing them to give up idleness and fighting. In short, there is no doubt that the condition of the people of Central Africa and the Soudan is deplorable, and there is a possibility that Christian missionaries might make it better. The question is how and where you can do the most with the means at your command. Probably the most can be done by working steadily up the Nile, and to moderate distances east and west of the water-way, with a base in the more healthful regions of the north, and a steamer to carry people back and forth. I believe it would be a mistake to plant an isolated mission anywhere south of the swamp region. The essential thing is to be able to take a man away as soon as you find that he can no longer resist the fevers, recruit him in the desert air, and then hurry him back before he and his people have forgotten each other. If you plant a colony in the heart of Africa and leave it for three years, at the end of that time there will probably not be a man of it living—almost certainly he will not be living and working there. But it will take an ordinary man at least three years to fit himself for really good work amongst a people whose language and ways are so new to him.

A valuable lesson may be drawn from the experiences of Gordon and Baker in the same country. Baker isolated himself in Unyoro, with no base and no line of communications. He was obliged to burn his baggage and retreat, with great courage and skill it is true, but with the absolute waste of his expedition. Gordon kept up fortnightly steamers to Khartoum, established his little garrisons step by step, and when he left the Provinces the power of the government was firmly fixed there.

The idea of the Roman Catholic mission is excellent so far as it goes. They have built comfortable houses at Khartoum and El Obeid; have established schools, gardens and hospitals; have a corps of people trained in Arabic and some of the negro dialects, and somewhat acclimated, and—there they stop and sit in their gardens. They are capital financiers, and their mission will not be apt to break up for want of money or recruits; but as a means of practical good in Africa, it is nearly worthless without a chief of heroic fibre.

The scheme that I should strongly advise is a sanitarium and school in the north, with your own steamer on the Nile; a mission near the Sobat; and if the White Nile is found to keep open, another at the head of navigation. In the course of years such a scheme would probably make a mark in the countries it reached; but to succeed it must have at its head a man of courage and brains, a man of sleepless energy, a man hungry and thirsty for work, and he must be a diplomat as well, for he will be terribly worried on all sides. I have suggested a point near the Sobat for a mission, because at that point relations could be established with some of the largest tribes—the Shillooks, Dinkas and Nouers—and because it is the last point at which a colony could be planted north of the great swamp basin. A colony south of that is liable to be cut off for months and even years, by the formation of the “sud” or grass barrier in the Nile. Undoubtedly the Sobat region is inferior in land and climate to the high lands south of Gondokoro; but, as I have pointed out, to isolate your mission so that it cannot be rapidly recruited and supplied will be fatal. Of this I am positive. When you find that the Soudan authorities are sure or even likely to keep communications open up the Nile, then a mission should be sent up to Gondokoro or farther south. All the dangers in and obstacles to this noble work should be measured and faced, and the work so organized that a real retreat need never be made. True progress must be very slow, and you must not look for quick results. When you have done your best you must not be disappointed if you seem to have done very little. To plant a mission on a solid foundation, with the right chief at its head and the right material at his hand, will be a great work.