Part 2

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.

An offer of £4,000 ($20,000) has been made by James Stevenson, Esq., of Glasgow, for the construction of a road between Lakes Nyassa and Tanganyika. The gift is based on the condition that the London Missionary Society and the Livingstonia Mission open and maintain stations at Mambe and Maliwanda, on the line of the proposed road, and that the Central African Trading Company undertake to keep up regular communication between Lakes Tanganyika and Quilimane. The distance between the lakes is about two hundred and twenty miles. The London Missionary Society has resolved to assume the conditions as far as it is concerned, and the Livingstonia Mission of the Scotch Free Church has sent a force to begin the station at Maliwanda.

Christendom knows not any other such mission as the Niger mission of the Church Missionary Society, begun in 1867, to evangelize that portion of the continent by native Africans, headed by a native African, Bishop Crowther. Large and increasing Christian congregations exist at Bonny and Brass, and assemblies of varying sizes at Onitsha, Asumare and Lokoja. Sixteen hundred worshippers attended religious services at Bonny last Christmas. Kings and chieftains are erecting churches for themselves and their subjects. A cathedral is to be built at Bonny at a cost of £2,000, ($10,000.)

The appointment of a Secretary by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to superintend its operations in Africa, indicates an earnest purpose with respect to that land. Three pioneer missionaries have been cordially received by the King of Bailunda, and others are on their way to found a station at Bihe, which lies behind Benguela, some 250 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, an elevated region, inhabited by large and compact tribes.

The American Missionary Association has sent two commissioners to select a site for a station near the headwaters of the Nile, in aid of which Robert Arthington, Esq., of Leeds, has contributed £3,000, ($15,000,) and English Christians have given a like sum. Two missionaries are under appointment to occupy this field. The American Baptist Missionary Union is considering the Soudan as a theatre of labor, stimulated by an offer from Mr. Arthington of £7,000 ($35,000) toward a mission on an extensive scale in that populous district. No man in this age has done so much to stimulate missionary enterprise as Mr. Arthington. The Southern Presbyterian Board of Missions is contemplating the opening of a station at Kabenda, preparatory to an advance on the centre of the Kingdom of Loango.

AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY.――This association is quietly prosecuting its work of boundless scope and thrilling issues. An impartial observer of its progress in the United States, and who has personally seen its fruit on the coast of Africa, lately declares: “This was the first and remains the _only_ Society ever organized for the explicit purpose of giving the Negro perfect freedom, of promoting his education for his own good, of making him independent, of giving him a country he can call his own, and of elevating his race to the standard of a Christian nation. * * * * * Liberia’s flag is now honored by all Christian nations, and none more deserves honor, for the cause over which it floats is the grandest and holiest which ever gave birth to a nation――the redemption of a whole race of mankind from heathenism and slavery.”

The number of persons provided passage to and homes in Liberia by the Society in 1880 exceeded that in any one year since 1872. One of its recent proteges, Rev. James O. Hayes, a graduate of Shaw University, writes: “I have met many of the prominent citizens and others, all of whom have extended to me the warm hand of fellowship and welcome. Hon. Beverly P. Yates, who has resided in this Republic fifty-two years, remarked to me that he would prefer Liberia to America, even if he were made President of the United States. I have two brothers and their families, with numerous friends residing at Brewerville, and they are prospering finely. The conviction is strengthened by all I see that persons who improve the advantages afforded immigrants here could not be induced to exchange countries.” The Society looks hopefully for that increase in gifts which the broadening work imperatively demands.

CLIMATE.――Africa continues to be guarded by her malarious seaboard and poisonous fevers, and alien travelers, explorers, miners and missionaries still there find early graves. Statistics show the difference in the effects of the climate upon the white, the mulatto and the black man. In the recent Ashantee campaign, out of the heavy death list of forty-two English officers only six died of wounds. Four scientific explorers are known to have fallen in the last few months, including the hardy Popelin, the leader of the second Belgian expedition. Each of the three first stations of the Livingstone Inland Mission has been consecrated by the call of one of its founders to higher spheres and grander activities. The Presbytery of West Africa has had during the past twenty-five years eleven members. Four were pure Negroes, the others mulattoes and quadroons. Of the mixed men six are dead, all comparatively young. Of the Negroes two are dead, both over sixty. Of the two who survive, one is nearly seventy and the other is fifty years of age. The Niger mission of the Church Missionary Society is manned wholly by native Africans, among whom the deaths in twenty-three years have been but eight, and that in a section which is mostly swampy and under water several months in the year. The Negro is the man of God’s right hand in Africa.

WORKMEN.――A convention of colored delegates from twelve Southern States, held at Montgomery, Ala., organized the Baptist Foreign Mission Convention, the object of which “is to give the gospel to the people of Africa.” Three ministers have expressed their readiness to enter upon labors in “fatherland.” The African Civil and Evangelical Association has for its purpose “the sending and supporting of missionaries and school teachers in Western and interior Africa, a duty we owe as descendants of that continent to our kinsmen there.” The Presbyterian Synod of the Atlantic, composed largely of Freedmen, has inaugurated a movement looking to missionary efforts in the country of their ancestors.

There is a bright and cheering history of African enlightenment to be written. The six millions of reserve force now drilling in America for the final victory are to be called out. They are now on the move. Thousands have already developed many of the proper qualifications for the work, and are waiting the means to go forward. And this mighty country has peculiar facilities for the introduction and extension of civilization. Europe has no population available. Entering on the West Coast, the people and Government of the United States may stretch a chain of settlements of her own citizens through the whole length of Soudan, from the Niger to the Nile――from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.

COLONIES.――A protracted experience convinces us that it may be laid down as a principle demonstrated by numerous examples, that if Western and Central Africa is ever to advance in civilization; if its inhabitants are ever to become not Europeanized, but intelligent, competent and productive Africans; if they are ever to be brought into commercial relations mutually beneficial with Europe and America, it must be by establishing and fostering such colonies as Liberia. If it is the desire of Christians to abolish polygamy, to put a stop to domestic slavery, to encompass and vivify the people by civilizing influences, to elevate their thought, ennoble their action, and regenerate the continent, these things must be done by planting colonies of Christian and civilized Negroes along that coast and in the interior.

“Worthy the Lamb, for he was slain for us! The dwellers in the vales and on the rocks Shout to each other, and the mountain tops From distant mountains catch the flying joy: Till, nation after nation taught the strain, Earth rolls the rapturous hosanna round.”

[_Editorial from_ THE SUN, _of Baltimore, October 25, 1881_.]

THE CONTINENT OF THE FUTURE.――The Supplement of “The Sun” to-day contains an article by Mr. William Coppinger, Secretary of the American Colonization Society, upon Africa, its condition from various points of view, its trade, mines, agricultural products and increased closeness of relation with the civilized world, which cannot fail to prove of interest to all persons concerned in the future of the mysterious “dark continent.” Americans can hardly conceive the importance attached by Europeans at present to the matters with which Mr. Coppinger so fully and entertainingly deals. The continental powers of Europe, perceiving the immense advantage possessed by England in having her Indian Empire and her colonies as outlets for her manufactures and excess of population, are seeking to imitate her example by founding claims to such territories yet unoccupied by Europeans as are unable to protect themselves from aggression backed by Krupp guns. After the pickings of Russia, England and France, there is little of Asia, besides, perhaps, the Corean peninsula, left to appropriate. The jealousy of the United States has deterred the nations of the Eastern hemisphere from attempts, like that of Maximilian in Mexico, to found claims upon territories in either North or South America. Africa remains, and is at their doors. Having an area of 9,858,000 square miles, and an estimated population, mostly barbarous, of about 201,787,000 souls, it offers, despite its unfavorable climate, great advantages to the European people who shall first appropriate its fertile interior, its trade in mineral and agricultural products, and open these up to European commerce by means of lines of steamboat and railway communications. Africa will perhaps at no distant day become to Europe what North and South America have been for the last two hundred years, the recipient of their overflow of population and their chief producer of food. Its capabilities are untried, but we know they are enormous. Explorers within recent years have traversed the continent in every direction, and have brought back reports generally favorable. The Sahara is shown to be by no means the barren waste it has been represented, and the Soudan has had its vast capabilities exploited. Behind the explorer comes the military post and European civilization. As was shown in “The Sun” some time ago, France has since 1854 been extending her acquisitions from St. Louis, on the West Coast, along the Senegal and Gambia rivers, eastwardly into the Soudan, until she now possesses a large area of country, and exerts a predominant influence over a territory comparable, it is said, in extent with that of England in India. It is to consolidate and strengthen her acquisitions that she proposes to add Tunis to Algeria, and it would be doing scant justice to her policy to suppose that the seizure of Tunis is a detached and insignificant incident. Mr. Coppinger narrates in detail the measures being taken to confirm her position in Africa, as against her various European competitors. A notable fact in connection with the Islamic movement, of which so much is said, is the large hold the Mohammedan religion already has in Africa. There are 51,170,000 of this faith to 145,225,000 heathen, 350,000 Jews and 4,535,000 Coptic and other Christians. Even in Liberia, out of a total population estimated by Mr. Coppinger at 1,400,000, fully 1,000,000 are Mohammedans, and of an aggressive character.

Transcriber’s Notes:

――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

――Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.

――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.