Liberia Coffee.—The species of coffee which is indigenous to Liberia promises to have an important influence on the industry of those countries in which the coffee blight has almost extinguished the Arabian coffee plant. In Dominica, W. I., the Liberia coffee, from seedlings planted in 1874, has proved impervious to the ravages of the blight, and its productiveness is a matter of astonishment. The stranger is described as “much larger than that of Arabia, being, indeed, in its native state a small tree, its leaves much larger; the berries are twice the size of the ordinary coffee bean, and the flavor is excellent.” The Liberia coffee seed has been introduced into Ceylon, and Liberian coffee from that isle commands a much higher price than the Ceylon, (Arabian) coffee. The bark Elverton took from Liberia to Rio de Janeiro some one hundred thousand coffee plants and fifty thousand pounds of coffee seed, and returning to Monrovia, readily obtained a similar cargo for the same parties in Brazil. A German trading firm is extending the coffee culture a short distance inland, near the Gaboon, with scions procured in Liberia. The Republic is in its infancy with regard to the cultivation of the far-famed berry. The crop last year is said to have reached a half million of pounds.
Mohammedanism.—Enthusiastic propagandists of Islam, without commission or compensation of any kind, but trusting wholly to that hospitality which is the pride of the Oriental, pass from village to village reading the Koran and giving instructions to wondering groups of natives. Whole tribes are stated to be converted to the Mohammedan faith. The eminent scholar and writer, Rev. Dr. Blyden,[*] says: “Africans are continually going to and fro between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea. I have met in Liberia and in its eastern frontiers, Mohammedan Negroes born in Mecca, the holy city of Arabia, who thought they were telling of nothing extraordinary when they were detailing the incidents of their journey, and of the journey of their friends, from the banks of the Niger—from the neighborhood of Sierra Leone and Liberia—across the continent to Egypt, Arabia and Jerusalem. I saw in Cairo and Jerusalem, some years ago, West Africans who had come on business and on religious pilgrimage from their distant homes in Senegambia.” The promoters of Christianity are using these native travelers and missionaries of the false prophet. Copies of the Holy Scriptures in Arabic, printed at Beyrout, are sent to Egypt and for circulation in the Delta and along the valley of the Nile, and to Liberia, whence they are distributed among the inhabitants of vast outstretching realms whose vernacular is the Arabic.
[*] Liberal use has been made of the writings of this gifted Negro, and of the pages of the Missionary Herald, of Boston, Foreign Missionary, of New York, African Times, of London, and L’Afrique, of Geneva.
Population.—The population of Africa, exclusive of its Islands, is estimated by Dr. Behm, in Peterman’s “Mittheilungen,” at 201,787,000. Of these the number of Protestant communicants in the various colonial and mission churches was reported in 1880 as 122,700; the number composing the communities connected with these churches 506,966; the number of Jews, 350,000; of Coptic, Abyssinian and similar Christians, 4,535,000; of Mohammedans, 51,170,000; of heathen, 145,225,000.
To carry the gospel to these millions, sixty four societies are at work. In South Africa and the colonies and Sierra Leone and Liberia there are connected with colonial churches 468 ministers, evangelists and teachers, of whom 54 are natives. The other white missionaries and teachers on the continent, are reported as 662, with 1095 natives, making 1757 mission workers proper, and 2,255 ministers, missionaries and teachers of all kinds, engaged in religious labors.
MAP OF EXPLORATIONS SINCE AUGUST, 1877.
The population of Liberia, including Medina, may be 1,400,000. The largest proportion of the natives are Mohammedans, perhaps 1,000,000. There are 26 Baptist churches, reporting 24 ministers and 1,928 communicants. The Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States reports one bishop and 31 others, missionaries, teachers and assistants, 361 communicants, 597 Sunday-school scholars and 415 in day and boarding-schools. The report of the Methodist Episcopal Church of the United States, gives 25 ministers, 10 assistants, 4 native preachers and 47 local preachers and teachers, 2,200 members, 1,831 Sabbath-school scholars and 300 day scholars. The American Presbyterian Church (North) reports 9 missionaries and assistants, 270 communicants, and 65 pupils in schools. Total 104 ministers, assistants and teachers reported, 4,759 communicants, 2,428 Sabbath-school scholars and 780 day pupils.
It is a suggestive truth that a few only of the “104 ministers, assistants and teachers” laboring in Liberia were sent by missionary societies, but that nearly all of them were sent or are the children of men sent by the American Colonization Society as emigrants, and established there with means of subsistence. This single fact teaches that in proportion as the emigrants from this country are multiplied, the Christian laborers are also multiplied.
Missions.—The six European missions commenced in Central Africa since the death of Dr. Livingstone have been constantly reinforced and strengthened, viz.: The Presbyterian stations on Lake Nyassa; the Church Missionary Society efforts on Lake Victoria Nyanza; the London Missionary Society operations on Lake Tanganyika; the French Bassuto extension to the Barotse Valley, and the Baptist Mission and the Livingstone Inland Mission, both on the Congo. The two latter named are pushing inland from the coast; the first on the southern and the other on the northern side of the river. The Baptists are nearing the accomplishment of their first leading design, viz.; the establishment of a station at Stanley Pool, to be used as a base of operations beyond. A gentleman has given the £4,000 ($20,000) necessary to procure a steel boat to be named the “Plymouth,” to be used upon the Congo. The Livingstone Inland Mission (undenominational, begun in 1878,) has founded five stations and passed some two hundred of the three hundred miles to overcome the cataracts, where the river stretches out in navigable waters for about one thousand miles. Here it is intended to locate an industrial mission station, and to make the work ultimately self-supporting and self-extending.