Part One — The Mail from the Bush

BLACK SHEEP Part One THE MAIL FROM THE BUSH Liverpool, June 30, 1904. Now, surely you would know that I am off to West Africa. My circumstance reeks of it. My room smells of the rubber that is to keep me dry. My shining tin trunks and my traveling- bed mark me missionary or government. S.S. Sokoto, July 10. It is late afternoon of one of our monotonous bright days. We sail always south toward a horizon of summer clouds that we never over- take; sometimes we pass dreary-looking steam- ers making their journey north, and sometimes lovely lady ships. One to-day, a four-masted bark with every sail set and as white in the sun as Hubert's stag in the forest, made us feel the mean vessel that we are. Near by, but where he cannot see me, the chief engineer leans his long young body over the rail and talks to the stewardess in tones of the utmost cynicism about missionaries. July 15. Yesterday we called at Monrovia and this morning at another town. Monrovia makes quite a showing of clustered European houses, but the town at which we called to-day showed only native huts gray and squat. We lie off- shore; this is all open sea beach. All day we make along the coast; the stain of it is all day on the eastern rim of the bright circumference of the sea. Sometimes our course lies well in- shore; then we feel the land-swell, we see the white line of the inevitable surf, and back of this, the wall of the forest with its higher trees rising on bare trunks, a scanty and fernlike foli- age. There is a level light of afternoon that picks out to an extraordinary degree the detail of this forest and drenches it in green. The coast-line is for the most part low. The water hereabouts varies in color — gray, some- times green, once emerald with amber in the lights. Once we came to anchor in jade. To-day the Kroos came about the ship in their canoes, brown bodies in brown canoes, all wet with the sea and struck with violet lights. They came up the ship's side and took passage as crew boys; it is they will handle the cargo when we come to discharge it. July 19. Past Axim, Secondi, Accra, and Lagos, and always beauty to hold the eye. From every settlement there come out to the ship boats manned by strapping black men that sit on the gunwales as a woman rides a horse, six on a side, each with a short paddle that is a trident, my dears, like Neptune's. They lean to the water in unison. In the stern stands the helmsman, his loin-cloth blowing about him, and the effect of all this is not just primitive, it is classic. Many of the Africans wear a garment like the toga. I look at a row of them leaning over the rail (for our lower decks fore and aft are crowded with black passengers now) — I see them leaning looking out to sea with so much about them, in dress and gesture, of the Romans. Among them are others: Mohammedans, effeminate-looking young fellows as easily dis- tinguished by their hauteur as by their dress; and their dress is fine — hand-woven stuffs in stripes, lemon yellows striped in lavender, or tawny yellows striped in bronze. July 21. To-day I got off the ship and walked in Africa, my friends, and it smelt like a hothouse. This is Old Calabar. The government building and the mission building are on a hill that slopes to the river; the native town falls into a hollow and climbs halfway up the next hill. I took a photograph, but you will never see from that how the mammoth trees father the little brown huts. Batanga, Kamerun, July 31. This is the receiving-port for our mission, and we landed yesterday at sunset. Here the ship lies about three miles off the coast, and we had to go ashore in a surf-boat. I never went any- where in a surf-boat, and I must say when I saw them begin to hand the babies from the ladder to that intoxicated surf-boat I felt sick of the sea. You get into the boat any way you can. Presently we were all sitting where we had dropped, and we pulled away from the ship. The evening was golden, but the sea was pretty rough, and no one looked much at the scenery. There were five rowers on a side, and they were, it seems, very skillful in their management of the boat. But this was lost on me, and on my word of honor, when I saw the tremendous surf, and when the boat came broadside to wait the next wave, I began to take off my mackintosh. I thought we would end in the sea. But before I could get free of my coat the boat headed for shore, ran up a mountain and down, and hard on the sand. Back again with the return of the water into the turmoil ; but when the next wave carried us ashore again, natives ran into the surf to her prow and held her against the return, while others picked agitated missionaries off the sides. Mrs. Lehman had said to me, " Don't fight the native when he comes for you as we land." Fight him! I literally fell on his neck and embraced him all the way to dry land. I never saw anything more tragic than the faces of the mothers watching their little ones being carried through the surf. Batanga, August 7. Here we have spent a week, all of us busy preparing for the journey into the bush. Some of the caravans have gone to Efulen and Elat, and we for Lolodorf leave to-morrow morning. Yesterday our people — fifty carriers — came in from the bush. They came to shake hands with the new missionary, and looked at her gravely. There is at first something disquieting about their unsmiling regard, but presently one knows it to be friendly. Four of these men will carry my hammock, in relays of two; we shall be four nights on the road to the Lolodorf Sta- tion in the interior. Lolodorf, Kamerun, Friday, August 12. We left Batanga Monday morning at seven, and got into Lolodorf on Thursday at four in the afternoon. This means that we walked twenty miles each day and twenty-two the last day. I don't mean that I walked all the way; I had four hammock-carriers, but hammock- carriers reach their limit, and there are many steep places along the road; so I walked per- haps half the way, and yesterday I must have pegged along fourteen miles. There are different sensations for different hours of the day on the road. There is the miser- able 4.30 a.m. sensation. You are asked to get up, and the cot is snatched from under you. You start to wash and the basin is whisked off. Presently you sit down to breakfast by the light of a lantern, and as you eat, day breaks; well, you feel better. And when at six o'clock you take the road, in the dawn and the dew, it is heavenly. And so it is heavenly all day, in and out of the hammock swaying along a level path, or panting up an incline, in the forest or under the open sky, sunk in a valley with your road suspended behind you and be- fore, or on some hilltop, with the mountains for your betters. In four days I saw more beauty than in all my life before. So the morning passes gloriously. And at noon in the palaver house of some town you sit on a pole bed, or a sort of bamboo couch, with your knees up to your chin, and eat what your native cook has brought in the "chop-box," and it is good. You are ready for the road again. But by three o'clock you droop. At four you limp and drag. When you come to the native town where the tent is to be pitched, you sit on the ground until your men set up the camp-chairs, and after that, too, for you are too weary to move. Somehow you get to bed, and then it is 4.30 a.m. All your meals, your uprisings, and your downsittings are witnessed and commented upon by all the natives in the town. I suppose they stand outside the tent and listen to us breathe. The tent is always pitched in the center of the town. In the morning Dr. Lehman paid our debts for water and vegetables when any had been bought, and our currency is matches or fishhooks or needles — needles are especially acceptable. The forest is not lonely. There is a continual line of carriers coming from the east with ivory and rubber, — big men from Yaunde or Bene, fine physically, and just as untutored as you can conceive ; indeed, more so than I could have conceived. Happily they speak Bulu, so I shall be able to talk to them some day. The last day on the road it poured rain, the beginning of the rainy season. You can imagine struggling up hills and sliding down, "and when we came to the greasy ground we split ourselves in two." At four o'clock we arrived at Lolodorf. The native pastor, Ndenga, who had been left in charge of the station, had opened the house for us. This is a beautiful place. Everywhere you look you see a detached hill that is a young mountain, and every little mountain is dressed in tropical opulence. Lolodorf is a military post; the fortifications are on an abrupt hill near by. The mission itself is on the land that rises from the river and is bounded by the river on the west and north. South of us runs the road. The station consists of two dwelling-houses, a church in which school meets as well, and be- tween six and eight workhouses, tool-houses, or what not. The houses are all built bush-fashion — saplings set up for stanchions about three feet apart. The walls, of bark, — great sheets of brown bark, slatted horizontally with strips of bamboo, — are sewed to the stanchions with a rattan thread. No nails are used in the entire house; everything is sewed or tied with "bush rope" as I tell you. You can see daylight THE HOUSE IN THE OLD CLEARING AT LOLODORF through the punctures and sometimes through the splits in the bark. The roof is a thatch of palm leaves, and the eaves are low. We are very cozy and look Elizabethan. At this station there are the Lehmans; Ndenga, a native pastor from the beach, who has done very well by the work during the Lehmans' absence ; myself , and the Reverend Mr. Heminger, who is due from Elat any day. The regular school work has not been taken up as yet; we are just getting the station in order. The people here are largely Ngumba and Yaunde. These latter have been brought up by the government from the interior ; the Yaunde are the carrier tribe, they and the Bene. In carry- ing to the beach, hundreds of carriers in the week sleep here. The mission has a palaver house for their benefit, and one of the most interesting op- portunities is offered by this transient audience, a people absolutely virgin. There are dwarfs in this neighborhood, too, serfs of the Ngumba. Dr. Lehman journeys among them and we get them in the school. I am to learn Bulu; the Ngumba and the Yaunde understand it, though it is not theirs. The Fang understand it, and it is the best thing to learn, since my ultimate station is uncer- tain. August 12. High above us looms the government hill, where three Germans live. The senior officer, a lieutenant, came to make his call on Sunday, and told me that he already felt well acquainted with me, as, indeed, I should think he might, since he had informed himself by document as to the age and condition, intent and station of "Mis- sionar Sch wester Mackenzie."- After making this hopeful statement he became terribly embar- rassed and went away. I was so sorry, for I had some impertinent questions to ask him, with a view to acquaintance. There is a strange beauty about these people, especially the Yaunde and the Bene, — a beauty of body and of posture, of color and of draping. A thousand things would remind you of the art of the Renaissance. The way they dress their heads is so often like Botticelli. They have a sur- prising instinct for decoration; often the tattoo is a single figure on one side of the face, and their hair is dressed with no superstitious regard for the middle of their foreheads. August 26. Some belated carriers have brought mail. I feel as lavish as Ahasuerus when Esther enter- tained him — you shall have half of my kingdom. Dear me, I see your embarrassment when my retainer makes good. My kingdom is Bitum, in the trousers I helped him make, and in no shirt at all if you insist on immediate delivery, for he is washing his shirt to-day. Which half will you have? I suppose you will be selfish and take the dressed half. He came to me this morning with a most virtuous air; he was going to wash his shirt! "Good," cried I, with enthusiasm. But where, he begged to know, was he going to get soap? I suppose this appears to you fair enough, but there is a root of evil. I asked of Mrs. Leh- man, "Mayn't I give him soap this once?" 1 ' Well, if you do, tell him that he is not to have soap again; that he is to buy it out of his wages." I looked at Mrs. Lehman and wondered. Did she forget her first struggle with the Bulu language? September I. There is no organized church here, but the people are moving that way. On a Sunday there will be some four hundred of an audience — more brown arms and legs, closer packed, than the church was built to hold. Every day people come to make confession of faith and to be received into the class for instruction. This initial step is a long one ; you step out of your tribe and its cus- tom into the tribe of God and its custom. But you clean up your record before the transfer is effected; you pay your debts, you settle your quarrels, you confess your misdeeds to your hus- band, and you suffer, often enough, your beat- ings. There are Macedonian signals from a town about twenty miles from here, Nshicko's town; he is the headman. Nshicko is middle-aged. He, with several men like himself, well-to-do, was converted. Each put away all his wives but one — and superfluous wives mean property ; they formed the bulk of these men's possessions — and they entered school here. This was before the Lehmans' furlough. This last year the men have spent in their town, where they have told their people "the news." Now they come to us for help; sixty of their townspeople believe. I wish you might have been with us the night this de- putation waited on us as we sat about the lamp — three middle-aged men, two of them with loin-cloths, the other in a white nightshirt. This last was an old man, silent and mild, with a droop half patient and half sad, and a sort of austere mysticism that quite awed me. We are short-handed here, but we have sent Ndenga to Nshicko's town, where he will start a school and preach. Now I study Bulu and teach the primary class in a school. Some of you smile at this and so do I, but not all the time. I have over seventy pupils, some young ones and some grown men and women, — poor long-legged men who sit patiently through the morning while I explain with a chart and a pointer the difference be- tween e with an accent and without. It is my aim and my passion to keep the grown people up with the children. I can't tell whether this is the fruit of compassion or of the natural enmity between one generation and the next. There is a man called Zambe, and I mean that he shall read if it is to be done by sheer will. Lolodorf, September 8. I realized the other day that I am not giving you much sense of the externals of "Life in Africa." Too bad, for they are understood to be so thrilling. Truly I could write you a thriller if I saw things in a certain light. The other even- ing I was talking with Mrs. Lehman, and we agreed that we could get up a very moving ac- count of our affairs. It would read like this: — A missionary, his wife, and two children live in one room of a three-roomed house. They eat, read, and work in one room in company with a single woman missionary, who occupies the third room. The walls of the house are made of sheets of bark, which are split here and there so that the sun-rays penetrate in swaths of light which threaten the life and reason of the missionaries. Moreover, the roof, which is made of palm-leaf thatch, has given way here and there, so that in the rainy season the water falls into the soup and on the heads of the missionaries. (On the head of the little single missionary — think of it, she who never liked to get her head wet.) When it rains, the sheep and the goats take refuge under the house, and at night these heathen beasts clamor. When the single missionary puts her hand into her wall-pocket to pull out a hand- kerchief (an innocent luxury which she allows herself), she pulls out a cockroach as big as a mouse — and so on, horrors upon horrors. But I spare you. This is the wet season, one of them. Every afternoon it rains terrifically. Long before the rain booms upon the roof the rush of it may be heard in the forest, and there, among the great trees, the gray army advances. When it has passed and the sun comes out, the heat is pretty severe. Sunday, September II. Yesterday I took to myself and went for a long walk. I meant to say to Bitum, "I will walk presently." I said something in Bulu, very proudly. Afterwards Mrs. Lehman explained to me, between her laughs, that I had asked to walk in hell. (Dear Margaret, it was their own hades, that they manufactured for their primitive uses before ever the missionary appeared on the scene.) Small wonder that Bitum had looked at me oddly, shaking his head. I suppose he thought it was time to call a halt. September 12. Already these hills are less strange and this forest — I know the secret of many paths and shall soon know all. A country and a circum- stance are soon familiar; only people are per- petually mysterious. I thought about this so much to-day when I was plodding along in the mud, the hills about me blue with evening, and we passed some carriers — Yaunde women, nude but for leaves, and beautifully formed, as so many Yaunde women are. The carrying of loads does not encourage sight-seeing, and by the day's end the eyes of a carrier don't wander far from the path ; so these women were passing me, heads down. But I spoke the word of greeting and they looked up. Their eyes met mine. Ah, how far away the dim islands of their entity, and between us what expanse of " unplumbed, salt, estranging sea." Often, in meeting such women, I am conscious that a word has passed between us. They go on, I believe from my heart, not ungreeted. But our intercourse is hardly what might be called genial. It is very oppressively sad ; there never was one that smiled at me. And truly youth seems most desolate ; the younger the girl the more morose her gaze. Perhaps the ca- pacity for pain is the essential jewel of Yaunde youth. The Ngumba people seem much less tragic. September 15. To-night I was reading about Stanley's search for Livingstone, when suddenly I asked myself, "Am I really in the country of which he writes?" I went to the window to look out., to see, my dears, if I were. It was raining heavily, but for all that the moonlight penetrated the clouds and fell with a most impartial ray and no glamour. There were the wan paths leading from little gray huts to little gray huts ; there were the in- numerable banners of the plantain trees, and the slim, upstanding pawpaws, and beyond these the great columns of the trees of the forest, all patient under the vehement rain. And I knew perfectly, and for the first time, that I am in Africa. THE GOOD PATH Nowadays during half of the school hours I teach several classes in the primer. Zambe has graduated to the primer and reads, with inex- plicable pauses and with strange agitation of his arms and legs, sentences of three words each. Always his eyes plead with me not to desert him in this adventurous country of learning. Do you know, I am happy in this: that all these people are real and individual. One is clever, an- other is stupid; another's lips, when he recites, tremble with trepidation; another, bless her little heart, has a little frightened pulse that throbs in her neck when she grapples with the chart. Who could resist such allurements, such weaknesses, such eagerness? October 3. To-day on the road I saw a woman so small, so perfect, so black, and so comely that I looked at her with wonder. She walked with her arms folded, before a big carrier. She wore a leaf band- age supported by a crimson strap which held in place, low on her back, one of those curious bustles which are the pride of the people from the interior, — a thick, even glossy, bunch of dried grass that looks like black horsehair, and is jaunty to a degree. Her dark skin was in per- fect condition ; her beautiful slender limbs moved with elastic decision; above her slim shoulders her head was poised with a sort of nervous pride ; and her hair was charmingly and elaborately dressed. Fairly she seemed to glitter in the sunlight. October 4. The other evening as I sat writing there came from outside a sound of vehement voices. So I went out into the night, where the moonlight lay broad and even on the paths and on the banners of the plantain trees and on the little thatched church. The noise came from the dark interior of the church, through its doors and windows, which are never closed, lacking the wherewithal. Presently Mrs. Lehman called to me from the house that Ngya, one of the early converts, was in the church talking to a company of carriers; and then I could distinguish his voice, urgent and rapid in the languid night, and the occa- sional unanimous response of the carriers. " You have understood?" he would ask. "We have understood ! " they would roar in concert. Stand- ing there, listening, I wished that you might hear too. On Sunday, at the women's meeting, some twenty carriers strolled in and sat back against the bark wall, where they presented a great array of arms and legs. Mrs. Lehman told the women of that illuminating quarrel between Abraham and Lot, — we were sure of the car- riers during that time, for these people respond readily to the Old Testament. At the close of the service the rain hindered our return to the house, and while we waited for the storm to pass, Mrs. Lehman played on the little organ. Pre- sently there was about her a wall of great strap- ping carriers, so pleased with the magic of the keys, and with the brightness of her hair, that they looked at one and the other smiling. They had never heard the Word of God before, and they turned their faces on Mrs. Lehman with a sort of animal innocence, — such an unwinking, amazed interest as I could hardly have imagined as human, though I have seen horses look so before they were broken. Then such huddlings together, such linkings of arms, such leanings of friend against friend, such exclamations one to the other in their virile, ungoverned voices, such sudden laughs of jocund wonder. "Zambe, he who created us, is not one to endure fetish! Is that a true word?" — and they laughed. So Mrs. Lehman talked to them and I looked at them till the rain had moderated — and we were going. But one thing they must know — What was that fruit? — pointing to the revolving globe. Then they were told how the earth is round, and all the rest of that unlikely legend of its relation to the sun. So we left them, and they went on their way in that new world which is round, and was made by a God who rejects medicine (fetish). They may pass this way again. It will be Thanksgiving season at home when you read this, and so it will be with us. The other Sunday Mrs. Lehman held a Thanksgiving service with the women ; they were to tell of the mercies they had enjoyed during the past year. So they assembled on Sunday afternoon in their motley garments. At one service I saw a woman with pink corsets over a very proper dress, but there was no such indiscretion on this particular Sunday. These were some of the reasons given as cause for thanksgiving, and from among all I have taken one of every kind : — One woman said that her child had died, and that she had found comfort in the House of God. Another that, in answer to prayer, the animals no longer molest her garden. Another, that when she had visited a distant clan, ignorant of the things of God, and was taunted by them for her belief, she had been given strength to withstand their taunts. Another, that while she used to have to work hard and had none to help her, now God had sent her some one from the beach. There is an insult in vogue here which gives rise to the most deadly quarrel, — it is to "ta." I am sure I can't say why it is so effective; it is all a matter of words; but several women gave thanks for this: that they had suffered without retaliation when told that their husbands or their mothers were "taed." Pretty, smiling Malinga, wife of Ze, was thank- ful that she and her husband had been given grace to carry loads for the governor, and that God had put it into the heart of the governor to allow them to rest on the Sundays. There is one old woman who has held my at- tention from my first sight of her, — so unhappy and so poor does she appear, — so like an ancient maltreated orphan. She rose in her bits of rags to say that she had ten children, five of them were dead and five of them scorned her, — God helped her bear it. Her name is Wawa ; I go often to see her since, to make up for her children. Of course we do not converse very much, since she speaks only Ngumba, and I speak "three words" of Bulu, but in spite of such limitations we seem to be in a fair way to make friends. She told me yesterday that we were "one person," which I thought a rather extreme inference, but Mrs. Lehman said not to be frightened, that it was a not uncommon expression and entailed no responsibilities. Well, these were some of the reasons why the women thanked God; and some of them, you will agree, went deep. If many were quaint and fantastic, and if some were grossly material, why, so must many of our own appreciations seem to God. October 28. Yesterday being very fine I walked farther than at other times on the government road. And not I alone — but many others walked there. You should have seen one big beautiful Bene woman who stopped to look after me. Her frame was large, but rather thin, and her face was sharply outlined, with a fine line from the ear to the chin ; her eyes were merry and a some- thing jocund in her entire aspect was accentu- ated by her headdress, which was a matter of ridges encircling her head and set at an angle, — so that you would have said she wore a cap, tilted. Now I have the word for her — she was gallant — she was charmingly gallant. She looked at me as though I were a toy, and asked Bitum, what was I? and when Bitum told her, "a woman," she laughed, saying, "E k6!" — which is to exclaim, 11 Did you ever ! " I can't tell what I have given you of my cir- cumstances and of this beautiful and awful country. I wonder if you get any sense at all of that world through which I walk of a late after- noon under the giant trees and by the rows of little brown huts — all their roofs smoking at this hour with the supper fire. And of the daily contact with these people, who crowd about my knees to learn their letters — dirty, patched up here and there with sulphur for their skin diseases, deformed especially as to their feet, wrapped in rags in this cold weather, and as in- dividual as you or I, as dear to God as you are. I only wish they were as dear to me. To-night I thought it felt cold, and then (this is a simple true story) I thought of Jane, and remembered that in a like circumstance she would look at the thermometer. So I did (for Jane's example is potent with one still) and it stood at seventy. Just the same, I know I am cold. November 4. These people are not without manner; indeed, they have a great deal. They greet one, and take leave; they clasp hands; they appreciate by fa- cial expression and by little formal ejaculations the conversation of the missionary even when it is not understood by them, or, being under- stood, bores them; and all this in a very finished fashion. They have, I think, a real courtesy of the heart. But their conventions are so unlike ours that we often have mutual misgivings, and they infer, I fancy, that we have been badly brought up. I take lessons wherever I may, and hope to be able, eventually, to enter and to leave a town, having properly saluted the in- habitants and having announced my departure in form. A town in this neighborhood consists of two rows of houses with a street between. The houses differ very little. They are all low huts of a room each, — say, a matter of eighteen feet by seven, — with two openings like windows in the center of each long wall. The framework is of sapling poles, the walls of plates of a bark which is yellow when newly cut, but which soon tones to a silver brown, as do the leaf-mats which form the roof and make a thatch in appearance very like a straw thatch. The eaves project beyond the walls some two feet, and hang low; it is almost always necessary to stoop in passing under them. Certainly you must stoop to enter the door of the house, and at the same time must step over the sill, which will be anywhere from one to two feet from the ground. Inside you will find yourself on a mud floor in an interior persist- ently brown. For furniture there will be several beds made of split poles laid in rows on two logs which serve as legs; another log serves as pil- low; and all these are brown and polished with use. From the roof will be hanging mysterious bundles done up in great plaintain leaves brown with smoke ; gourds, brown by nature, I suppose ; brown baskets for peanuts and corn. On the ground there will be a fire and a woman evolving a meal; but there will be no chimney in the roof, which explains a good many things, and why the unseasoned visitor presently makes for the street. An average street will be from fifty to sixty feet wide, perfectly clean and generally barren, necessarily so when it is a section of the excellent government road. There is, now that I think of it, quite a differ- ence in character between such a travel-worn town and one where the little forest path, which has wandered into the street at one end, makes out at the other into the green shade. In such a town there may be oil palm trees; there will be, back of the houses or near them, little groves of plantain trees, their great banner-like leaves murmuring in the wind or drooping, green like the inner curve of a wave, in the still air. But most gardens are at a distance from the town. Thus, if you pass at eleven of a morning there will be no life stirring more than the silly coat- less sheep; while at five of an afternoon every house will give you a greeting. December 2. Any one passing through Benzork's village the other day would have witnessed a nice civil- ized scene. A white man going about the country in the interest of rubber culture, laboring with the natives not to cut the vines down, but to tap them, had pitched his tent in the middle of this village, and so, white-man fashion, owned the place. Here he might be seen of an evening sitting outside his admirable little tent, playing pleasant airs on a cornet, — an accomplishment which might have endeared him to the entire community ; but that he set little store by popu- larity you will agree when his deeds come to light. One night he could not sleep for the noise of rats in a neighboring house. The house was empty, and the stranger found the rats among the fetishes of poor Benzork, who is off in Bulu. There is a flourish to the effect that he found some of his food hidden away by the rats in the treasured skulls. Be that as it may, the white man brought the skulls out of the house and ar- ranged them in a line beside the path, sixteen poor skulls amazed at the stars. Behind these he set up two mingunemelan — small wooden idols — sitting passive among these ruins. So I saw them next morning, and so they were seen of common eyes, both of men and women. Who shall say what thoughts burned in the hearts of the men of Benzork's town, or with what emotions the Christians looked at this shame of the past? For myself, I could not look at these things of darkness under the morning sun with any lightness of heart. Mr. Heminger saw Benzork's little daughter step off the path to walk directly in front of the line, — a very bold, bad action indeed, and entirely in keeping with the little girl's reputation, for had not she once slapped the faces of the unwinking mingunemelan, the very same that watched her from behind the skulls? And did she not, for this offense, suffer a sore disease of her guilty arm? Presently the fetishes were gathered up by black soldiers, who took them up the government hill, and from there, by order of authority, they were thrown into the river; which is a reason, if another were needed, why one had best not drink river water. One evening after these events I saw the white man sitting in front of his tent playing a pleasing air, in which he paused to bow to me with mild courtesy. Benzork has not yet returned to his desecrated hearth ; but one of his little daughters, three years of age, has been sent to him that she may be turned over to a man who has bought her. Benzhuli is a young Ngumba who assists in the school and has many talents. He is the dress- maker of this region. He is very kind and gentle with stupid little children. For a long time he has been paying goods on a girl, — guns and goats and many hundreds of little iron objects called Nsuba, that are currency for women. One day he hears that Minko, son of a big, bad headman, is in the running and likely to win out, for all that Benzhuli has the start of him in goods. Benzhuli takes a vacation to talk this palaver, and finds that the people of the girl's village favor the other man. And when the girl says she will have Benzhuli or none, they tie her up with bush rope, and make off with her into the forest. You can think if Benzhuli is happy. He comes back to Lolodorf, and an ac- count of the affair goes "up on the hill," that is, to the government post. And one day along the road comes a file of people, the girl with her people and Minko with his, pretty well laden with goods, — Benzhuli's goods, which they ex- pect to pay back, as they certainly expect to "stand" in the palaver. But not so. The gov- ernor listens to them and he listens to Benzhuli, and then, for all he is German, conducts himself like a true Ngumba " cutter of palavers." Plac- ing two sticks on the ground, he names them for the rivals, and "Which will you have?" he asks the girl. She, in the face of her oppressors, takes the Benzhuli stick. "You belong to me," says Benzhuli (Dr. Lehman had heard him talking the day before to Minko about "our woman"). So they come down the hill together. Pres- ently they appear at the station, Benzhuli a very smiling school-teacher and dressmaker, but poor Mvunga sad and shrinking and timid, as how could she be else? It is no light matter to break through the custom of a country, and women are sorry pioneers. Since then her husband the dressmaker has made her a garment, and her husband the teacher has taught her the alphabet, and she quite blooms in school, for she is a pretty girl with more than average poise. I have told you of these two events because they are of the most vital importance to these people. In all the community there is wagging of heads, — the heads of the elders, — for the old things are passing away. Two weeks ago last Sunday there was held in the church, after the morning service, a meeting called by the 3i Ngumba Christians at their own instigation, to consider the giving and taking of wives without price. I cannot understand Ngumba, so I did not know what was said, nor do I think that the missionaries look for any material results from this meeting. But consider what it means that there should be a few men in any African com- munity who voice such ideas. You cannot fancy how deeply complicated this marriage system is nor how many ramifications there may be to a "woman palaver." The other day Mr. Hem- inger was sitting in a hut talking with two mem- bers of his congregation, wives of one husband. He was talking to them about their sins, which were of an obvious character: the younger woman had been accused of stealing food. Then he turned to the elder, Wawa, she of the ten children, five of them dead and five of them cruel. "Wawa," said he, "why cannot you live at peace with this wife of your husband? Why are you always quarreling? " (They are notorious scrappers.) ' 1 Well, ' ' said Wawa, ' ' she was bought with one of my children and I cannot forget it." By the last steamer there came from America the latest translation into Bulu of Mark, Luke, and John; we already have a new Matthew and Acts. To-day these were put on the market. And what joy in the little Christian communi- ties, what haste to buy the pearl of great price, what caressing of little black books, and how Ngwa's teeth shone, and his eyes, when in a state of exalted extravagance he bought two, calling out to his wife, "I give you this!" I think that this deep, African joy in His Word must be a very flower of prayer before God. December 23. When I first came here, — with our four days' trip through the forest like four green doors shutting out life as I know it, I thought Lolodorf sunk out of the world; but now I see better; it is really a most cosmopolitan region subject to most animated events. The great highway that passes our gate is a river of life, — a mingling of many waters drawn from the dark places of the interior. The long files of carriers, that make from the interior to the beach and back again, stop in this neighborhood overnight ; many sleep in the station palaver house, which was built that they might rest in it, and so hear the Word of God. Always when I walk out of an afternoon and meet the caravans coming or going, laden with ivory or rubber or trade goods, — men and women so differentiated by tribal distinction that even a novice may know one brown people from another, — I feel a breath of the air from the interior pass with them ; you know the feel- ing one has about a ship from foreign lands. The work at Lolodorf is very much under this spell of "unhappy far-off things"; our horizons, every way but seaward, trouble the imagination and allure it, too; when we look toward the sea we are all, I suppose, at home. I very much admire Mrs. Lehman's dealings with these Ngumba women, and I am trying to learn of her. I am trying, too, to get into some sort of vital touch with them. I make them visits, sitting in their huts watching them grind- ing seeds, or mashing plantains, or fussing over kettles of food which boil over little fires on the clay floor of the hut. Sitting like this, I am often silent, but they do not seem to mind that, — they are too primitive to be oppressed by silence. Sometimes we talk as well as we may, and I was taking account last night of the subjects upon which we touch. They are reduced to these: their children, — we talk about them with great success, — many women have none, which is more than commonly sad here; their labors, in the garden and in the house; God, their experi- ences of his goodness, and mine; subjects, you will agree, worn with the handling of the genera- tions; but always it seems that there are new children, and new labors, and to these women YAUNDE MEN CARRYING AN IVORY all the goodnesses of God are new. So we try to get together. January 1 1, 1905. I have come from an evening stroll under a half-moon directly overhead. In front of the palaver house were five little fires, and about these sat groups of carriers, — I cannot imagine why, as the night is stifling. But there they sit in brown huddles talking and laughing in a muffled sort of fashion, — and so they will sit doubtless for hours. The talking keeps up in the palaver house pretty far into the night. By the boys' house was another fire, and all these fires made brilliant rents in the soft veil of the moon- light. Ndenga's door was open, so I looked in. There sat his little sister, sitting very straight and thin beside a small, smoking thread of light, — a lamp with a round wick and without a chimney. She was sewing on a little dress for herself ; and I felt, in her isolation and her occu- pation, the invisible bars which shut the minis- ter's little girl away from the little heathen girls in the town. January 14. Nzhia and his wife have given birth to a child, — which is an Ngumba account of the event. You, being provincial, cannot be ex- pected to feel the weight of the news, but you are to believe me when I tell you how nice a happening it is. I heard of it late Thursday afternoon, when the man-child was, say, an hour old; our friends and neighbors were gal- loping to see it. But I sent over word that I would call the next day; and I sent, too, a little note carefully dated, that it might serve, if need be, for certificate of birth ; this I pinned to some superb red flannel which came in my box. The next day Mrs. Lehman and I walked over to call — and oh, the little darling! The father saw us while we were yet afar off, and put the best robe on his son, — one that Mrs. Lehman had sent them, — so when we arrived the baby lay in state, in a little white night-slip, with the red flannel folded into a neat small square which ornamented his stomach. The red flannel was most becoming; little black babies are prettier than little white ones. This one slept, — and oh, wonder of wonders that amazed your mission- ary, it looked like its mother! There sat Malinga, drooping a little, her customary lovely smile touched with a difference, — a kind of wan hap- piness; and there on its grandmother's bare knees slept the baby, his little face lit by his mother's smile, — reduced to such a faint flicker of sweetness and light. January 20. The Lipperts are here, — I go to the beach with Dr. Lippert on Friday next. They tell me that the road has been cut through the greater part of the forest, where before there was a thread of a path. You should have seen a small agitated man who appeared this afternoon with a tale of his wife and her death by Ngi, which is a form of magic. He wore a cloth from his waist down, and a shirt; he was not conspicuously a savage in aspect, but oh, the dreadful dark heart of him as he told — with the utmost animation touched with some sort of sinister pride, a kind of com- placency that took account of what distinction there may be in such direct dealings with the powers of darkness — the tale of the poor woman's end. Dreadful little man! West Africa, Sunday, January 29. We left Lolodorf for our conference at the beach at midnight on Thursday. There was a veiled moon, — a very diffused light, — so that the path was perfectly plain and not checkered. Nights are so wonderful ! This one, on the wan path, with the dark forest rising from it on either side, the sighing of the forest, the breath- ing of it, the heavy, melancholy drippings of it, — you cannot know what it was like. And then the occasional overflow of the moonlight escap- ing the clouds and lying a spilt, opalescent glory on the road; the huddle of kbrown huts by the way giving out odors of wood fire and showing firelight from all the cracks; and everywhere by the road, in the open spaces before the houses, at the foot of the great cottonwood trees, the little fires built by the carriers, — little fires showing violet lights and crimson, and pallid blue, — hundreds of little jewel fires, and about them the ground black with sleeping men. So the carriers sleep; they cast aside their burdens and their loin-cloth, "and so good-night!" I had one carrier too few, — three instead of four, — to bear the hammock by twos, and so I was forced to walk a great deal, and you cannot think how strange a Limbo I traversed. I am sure that I saw quite a thousand firelit sleepers. When we reached Zenebot, which is a big palaver house on top of the mountain which we had climbed all night and where we had our coffee, we found two white men, — one a big cocoa- plantation man hunting laborers; he had over two hundred in tow, under way for Vic- toria; the other was a trader who hates "the whole bloody coast." All day until noon down the mountain with the talking river hidden in the ravine. Beautiful more than I can say, but oh, the missionary's game knee! By noon, under the shade of trees, I lay on the ground, and could not walk any farther for fear I should weep and hurt every- body's feelings. "Go on to Lam," said I, "and get two men." Bekalli was so kind to me; he was one of the three carrying me, and he as- sured me that they were good for the rest of the way. So we went on, and presently I was crossing a river on a fallen tree, and there was Lam! Ngoe, the teacher at Lam, has a very grand hut, and I lay on his table until my bed arrived. Do not ask any questions about Lam; it is doubtless an imposing village, but I was sunk in deep waters of rest all that afternoon. In the evening we had a little meeting; it was nice. We left Lam the next morning an hour before dawn, under a resigned moon ; my fourth carrier, the lost man, had arrived, and so I was free to ride in the hammock when I chose. Batanga, February i. That day — Saturday — was such a happi- ness, a green curtain between me and the night in the native house. I loathe sleeping in a native house; you can't think how glad of my tent I am. Mfan was our next stop, a big new town built by the order of the governor to secure safety for travelers in this great stretch of bush. Here I had a palaver house all to my- self; only I had a woman sleep in the house with me, because Dr. Lippert was disturbed to have me alone. On the Sunday, we had meetings among the trees of the forest ; there were people in the audience, too. That evening, at dusk, I held my first meeting. There were perhaps forty women, very boisterous. We were by the river; there were fireflies about in the grass, and in the far, far sky small early stars. The next day we stopped at noon, "and the rain fell upon that house"; we were glad to be sheltered that night. For lack of sufficient shelter in the town, — a miserable huddle of huts, — four of our caravan slept in one half of my house, one of them a woman. When the rats made too much noise, I turned on my electric lamp, and was grateful that my net prevented me from seeing them. We made Batanga at a little after noon of the next day. There were a good many Bulu in the caravan, and they were such fun. Poor Bitum suffered so much with his feet and looked, so comically, the clumsy rustic that he is. Some of the men were beauties — Bulu from Elat, picked men, full of humor, whimsical to a degree. They think it would be nicer if I were to be married. They asked how old I am; they said that they "saw me beautiful"; that for an old person, I was very " new," and still able to do many things. March 24. To-day I started out on one of the main roads, and as I passed through the towns I put my head in at every brown hut and said who would might follow me ; that I meant to hold a meeting in Biali's town. Presently I might be seen to lead a straggling single file of women, — yet not so single either, for almost every one had a child slung to her shoulder by a strap. To these were added a few small boys who very much admire me. So we walked along the road, which left the open, sunny spaces of the town and dropped into a hollow of the forest, very cool and green. And arriving at Biali's town, we con- sorted under a roof which will some day, per- haps, develop walls. Now it is open to all the winds, which is more of an advantage than you are likely to realize. The missionary, seated on a gin box,1 was sufficiently elevated above her audience, which sat upon the ground. So I led the little meeting in a species of Bulu of which 1 Boxes in which bottles of gin are carried inland. it is a shame so much as to speak. I spoke to them as well as I might about Christ and the Good Samaritan. On the way home we passed a sick carrier who was being left by his fellows on the open road, and with no more comfort than he was likely to get from a fire they had built him. When we neared him his friends were running from him, though I took them to be running from an im- pending rain; but a lad who had come with me from the meeting knew his people better, and the coincidence moved him. Here was his chance to be a good Samaritan ! And I left him calling out shame upon the priest and the Levite, and holding out to the sufferer glittering possibilities of relief at the hands of Dr. Lehman. Don't ask for the end of this story, for I was running home under an angry sky — you know that there was only one Samaritan in the parable April io. To-day I called upon my neighbors. Most of them were cooking at that time of day, — four in the afternoon, — sitting at the openings of their houses, on little gin boxes worn dark and shiny by continual use. They sit, ordinarily, a little to one side of the opening, their legs visible from the street, but not their faces unless they lean out to give a greeting. When I step over the high sill, I sit on the other side of the opening on a similar box. Sometimes they are peeling plantains with characteristic deft movements. These they drop into an iron pot that goes presently onto the log fire between two beds, — there are generally four beds in each hut, with a fire between each two. The African likes to sleep up against a flame, and one of the most haunting things in this country is the odor exhaled by the tight-shut houses at night, of wood fire and crowded humanity. Do you wonder what I say to the women when I sit in their huts? You could hardly evolve matter so simple — it is the fruit of the soil. There is an old blind woman whom I visit, — and she must always hear how, when she goes to heaven, she will see. Nothing is real to her but that prospect, and she wheedles it out of me in twenty different ways. Because she may not see this world, — in which she has played a rather unamiable part, — I talk to her about the beauty and goodness of Christ; but not as I would have talked before I came here. It always ends by my assuring her that when she reaches the town of God she will see. "Then I shall not go so?11 she asks, tapping on the mud floor with her staff. April 13. Mrs. Lehman and I have been out in the moonlight. We were walking on the road, where there are hundreds of carriers sleeping to-night. Their little fires were already built and their brown bodies heaped about them. As we passed the big government palaver house, some of them called out that they wanted to hear the Word of God. So Mrs. Lehman talked to them. I suppose that about fifty formally listened. They were a typical crowd, except for some Hausa men who were shockingly overdressed, as usual; one of these very ostentatiously withdrew from the scene of our heathen rites. All the air was thick with smoke so that the plantain trees by the roadside were veiled, and between us and the high illumination of the moon there was a blue haze. They listened to Mrs. Lehman with their characteristic voluble and animated atten- tion, and when she came to an end and started home, they complained. "I must go home to my three children in the house." This explana- tion spread from man to man, and gratified every one, as I have seen it do any number of times. "Aha! She has three children ! She goes to her three children!" And they were all as pleased as Roosevelt would be. I wonder — what is my excuse for going home? April 17. To-day has been one, to some extent, of events. The dwarf boy who has just entered school drank the medicine for the donkey's sores. It hurt dreadfully, and we are afraid it will make him homesick, — not exactly the medicine, for he got rid of that right away, but the event. And one of the monkeys got loose and came to school. It made the children laugh and play. He bit a boy and so the teacher put him out. Now it is afternoon. I call to Sanyana, a schoolboy (I am studying by the river to- day), "You haven't killed a fish?" And he calls back from the raft of logs which he has tied to a tree which runs out into the river, "Yes," meaning "Yes, I haven't." I can't help but fancy that he should be working and is n't; but then I should be studying Bulu and am not, so I keep quiet. Presently in the silence vivid birds come out from under overhanging branches and skim the water. They are fisher- men. And as the sun gets lower, great stretches of the river are silver, and over the shaken surface float yellow leaves and little detached weeds, like little barks with green silk sails full of a wind I cannot feel. These weeds grow in back-water and are of a delicate green like jade, but luminous. April 1 8. A few minutes ago a black boy arrived on the porch in a great hurry, and set about wiping his feet like a well-trained dog before entering the house. There was quite an air of bustle about this performance. I supposed the boy to have arrived on an errand of importance. As he came into the lighted room it proved to be Bitum. 14 What do you hunt?" asked I. 44 My hat," said he; " I hate to sleep far away from my hat. My hat and I, we sleep in one place!" So off he went in the moonlight, with his atrocious hat under his arm. But there was something very quaint about the eagerness of this quest. Elat, May 3. Here I am where I have come to study proper Bulu among the Bulu people. Elat is over fifty miles east of Lolodorf . I must say the study of Bulu worries me. I am working at it with a will, but more will than anything else. I sit down in a palaver house and listen to the men talk. Yesterday I heard a most animated pala- ver about a woman and one Ndungo, and a goat. Bits of sugar-cane stalk were spread upon the ground as the characters took the stage. The woman enters — a strip of stalk. Ndungo enters — another strip laid down with a discrim- inating squint of the eye; the goat, placed at a safe distance; and then four little strips laid down and adjusted with a final pat — these were the woman's children. What drama was enacted by these animated strips is beyond my guessing, but they moved about their little stage to the disapproval of their audience. Truly their doings would seem to have been shocking. Only one man laughed at the play, and him I took to be Ndungo in the flesh, who could not see himself so dramatic without audible joy and self-approval. Presently the man who was de- claiming stopped to look at me, all his gesture at rest and the fire of his eloquence flickering. "Why is white woman here?" inquired he. M I have sat down to hear the Bulu speak, but if you hate to have me here I shall go." How he liked this reply and took me for the nice sensible person that I am! "That is good," said he. "You may stay and listen to me"; which I did. I am trying to get a little Bulu girl to live in the house with me, who will, it may be, love me. But I cannot, of course, exact this exercise of her affections, and I shall have to be very severe and very watchful if I get her. I must tell you — Malinga and Mboshi came over to Elat from Lolodorf with their husbands who are studying for the ministry under Mr. Dager. And these two women going out from their own country found all the world strange, and Elat a Babylonish city. When they heard of my coming they lay awake at nights, and when I came their homesick hearts fairly altered the quality of their voices. When I sit down with them in their hut, the gossip of Lolodorf re- counted by me, and sung antiphonally by them, is nothing short of lyric. May 7. To-day I held a meeting in Mrs. Lippert's stead. I walked through a charming bit of forest to the village. A man beat on the call drum the call to women, and I waited in the palaver house for them to come. The sun beat cruelly on the roof and all the fresh air hung around outside the two openings into the street, fore and aft. Presently the women began to arrive, — a brown leg thrust into one of the openings, a brown body to follow, until all the palaver beds are filled with women. I took mental notes on the attire of one, that I might report to you. She wore a bustle of long ribbon grass, dyed orange and black, and attached to her person by two strips of deerskin, these hang- ing in two ribbons from her hips to her knees. Two leopard's teeth hung at her neck from a necklace of elephant's hair. Draped on one side of her puffed and beaded hair hung a string of some forty or more dog's teeth. Two long feathers were thrust in her hair. All her face and neck glistened with palm oil. To have been complete, she should have had brass coils from her knees to her ankles, a tremendous big brass ring or two, and to have been rubbed with red powder from the redwood tree. She was, even lacking these characteristic embellishments, a sufficiently interesting figure. I have taken no account of her tattooing ; it was a matter of fishes pretty generally distributed. The other women were much as she was except in the matter of age, which seems to vary here as elsewhere. May 14. I begin to be miserably fluent and much less conscious of my medium. I can quite address myself to the things which are the objects of words rather than just deal in the words them- selves, as I have done most of the time before now. Now I am conscious always of adjusting my mode of thought, of seeking some trail which will lead me to the hidden huts where these people live in their forest of ignorance. Elat has been of great benefit to me. May 1 8. Yesterday a big caravan came in with loads and the place was very animated when the men came for their pay. There was the usual palaver about the man who hated to carry the food kettle, when it came his turn, and so left it be- hind. I never knew a caravan but had one such grievance, and this morning there is a big pala- ver in Mr. Dager's study. The man, who sits sprawled out on the white man's beautiful mat- ting, declares that the men who stand about him, — with their arms folded or with right hands on left shoulders and left hands on right shoulders, which is the most characteristic of attitudes, — walked on Sunday. The accuser cries to Heaven, but the accused stand very much at their ease. One is draped like a Roman and holds his elbow with a ringed hand — brass rings. Another has a white trade comb stuck in his hair. He has a new loin-cloth, and no winter wind of criticism can penetrate that. Another has a white yacht- ing cap above no considerable costume ; he had, I should judge, hoped to complete it when he should be paid, and now there is a hitch. In the center of the room stands the only thoroughly primitive type — a brown lad with a bit of bark cloth to cover his nakedness, and his elabo- rately dressed head turning this way and that, while he wonders at the furnishings of the white man's house. June. The other day I went to see the dwarfs. Nzhia went with me ; he is a Christian studying for the ministry, a man who has often gone with Dr. Lehman on similar expeditions. Beside Nzhia I took Bitum and the donkey. So we walked along single file, the head of the caravan first, in a short skirt and woolen putties. After me came Nzhia carrying an umbrella and a lantern, wearing a black felt hat, a white singlet and a cloth; and looking the nice decent man that he is. Then came Bitum, his loins girt with a cloth, and his burden of my food and bedding strapped to his back. This pack projected above his head a foot or so, and gave him the true carrier air of being topheavy. The donkey had no burden at all; he was designed to carry me, but he cunningly intimated that were I in any sort of rush I had best walk. So he ambled along with that air of covert mischief which makes a donkey no fit comrade on a serious errand. Thus we progressed until we passed through a town where we were joined by a little boy whose name is Maya. I taught him to read, 5i and we are of course rather intimate. I allowed him to come with us, and afterwards I was glad, for he was so kind to me. He is a small, small boy in a ragged singlet and a dreary cloth, but he is a born protector; he followed at my heels and guessed what I was thinking about. When I walked logs he walked behind me, and I felt the moth-like touch of his little hands to right and left of me. After something less than two hours we left the government road for a beauti- ful forest path, open yet shaded. The bogs bothered us because of the donkey. Sometimes Nzhia carried me on his back. Nature had given Maya the heart, but not the body for this act of devotion. It was raining when we came to the town of Moga, where I stopped and spoke in the palaver house to some thirty people, mostly men. While I was speaking there came in by chance a dwarf named Be, a headman of the dwarfs visited by Dr. Halsey. He seemed glad to show us the way, and presently we started off again in the gray drizzle. When we struck into the bush Be led the caravan. I walked after him and could see the path after he showed it. The wet leaves brushed my face; all the forest was full of a perfect green light; some flowers there were here, but not many, — rather all the forest dress was green except where little streams ran brown. Thus we walked for three quarters of an hour, when B6 went ahead to tell the people of his village that a woman of the "Minisi" was coming. At noon, after a walk of four hours, I stepped into the little clearing where the dwarf shelters lay. I sat down in the first shelter beside a little shriveled woman who shrank away. I did not speak to her, more than to greet her, but looked about me. The settle- ment lay on the side of a hill and took the form of a rectangle with one side open. There were no houses, properly speaking, but four shelters made of roofs of leaves. The eaves sloped from a roof-tree about five feet high. One was carried to the ground ; the other, at a more open angle, stopped short of the ground some four feet. This was your house. It is easiest to enter such a shelter from the open ends. This much I saw while I sat beside the woman. Presently one little man after another came from somewhere and shook hands with me pleasantly enough, until quite a company were squatting in front of the shelter watching me breathe. The women hung back. I could see them watching from under cover. I think that there must have been twenty adults about the settlement within fifteen minutes of my arrival. The smallest woman did not pass my shoulder; and most of them were smaller than I,1 — none larger. Most of the men were about my size; some larger by half a head, some smaller by as much. One knows them for dwarfs not so much by their size as by some indefinable expression of face, — something at the same time dreary and cunning. Their eyes are singularly unsmiling. They prepared a shelter for me, a little one with two beds, — the heads under the ridge-pole and the feet crowded under the eaves. These beds are stationary, elevated about eight inches from the ground, and are made of poles an inch in diameter, laid close together in parallel rows. Those in my shelter were shorter than myself by a foot. Between the beds was the log fire, and I was glad of it, for I was wet through. Be brought me a bunch of green plantains, and on top — as Solomon must have showered benefits upon the Queen of Sheba — he laid a bit of dried meat, the head and forequarters of a little animal (a monkey), its expression all resistance and its small meager paws holding indefatigably to nothing. Poor little beast — a long time dead and still that miser grasp ! Bitum and Nzhia ate the offering. I ate some peanuts cooked in a leaf, and something out of a tin. This was, of course, very edifying to the populace, who might 1 Five feet three. see me from all three sides of the open hut. Still it rained; the people made off to their shelters, and those who lived in the neighboring settle- ments disappeared. Presently the normal life of the village was resumed. From where I rested on my bed I watched it. There was a woman who made a net ; truly she was like a candle in that dark world; my eyes came back to her again and again. There were four beds in each hut and two fires. Those women who were not cooking over the fires lay on the beds, as did the men. Over the cross-pole, which is elevated at the head of the bed and is the pillow, peered their faces; and they looked fixedly at me, or far off into the gray rain. When I was rested, I sat in the other huts with the women. They could not speak Bulu and they suffered, I sup- pose, from dumb alarms. They distrusted me. I walked to another settlement, the one where Dr. Halsey stayed, and saw other such people, most of whom had come to see me when I ar- rived. I thought: This is the primeval slime at the bottom of the sea of life; somewhere up above me, where the sun shines through the clear water, are those I love. I know that there are times and seasons — and aspects ; but so the dwarfs appeared on one rainy day, to one missionary who is a woman. At five o'clock, the rain having ceased, I held a meeting with fifteen adults and some children; most of the audience were men. I spoke in Bulu and Nzhia interpreted in Ngumba. The dwarfs listened attentively; they listened with a certain amount of enthusiasm, — not, you would say, a hunger and thirst, but a pleased sort of acqui- escence in the argument, — a complacent agree- ment as to the desperate wickedness of the natural man, and with no balking as to their own wickedness in particular. I fancied that there was a perceptible deposit left in their minds from what they must have heard at other times. Altogether there was everything in the meeting to encourage an orator, and not very much to encourage a missionary. It was dark when I stopped talking and went to bed. I did not sleep at all — how might I ? The dwarfs drank some and Nzhia scolded them. Presently they went to sleep and the beautiful, awful night filled the little cup of the clearing with moon- light. Where the hills sloped I could see the white sky through the trees. All the little airs that moved were chill and sweet. From time to time a dwarf would mend his fire, and the em- bers would flare up and then die down to a steady glow. All slept until the morning was on us full and golden. I ate and paid my debts: a box of matches and a brass ring to B6, and a ring to Be's old mother because she was his mother. I put this on her finger and had a perverse whimsical recollection of the marriage of Ariadne and Bacchus in the Doge's palace. There was still a woman unpaid — she who brought the water — and she could not be in- duced to come out from under the eaves of her shelter. I ducked under and sat down beside her. She snatched the ring out of my hand and drew away, for all the world like a monkey. She never gave me so much as a glance. After this we had a meeting with those who lived in the village. Then we went away into the morn- ing and the radiant forest, which takes no ac- count of the evil doings of man. The green light was shot with the sharp glitter of wet leaves and shattered with spears of sunlight. The walk home was all beauty. Did you ever read "The Story Without an End"? The forest was like that. It gleamed and flashed with color. June 21. I have a little girl now and she is the cun- ningest kitten — pretty, too. When I first came to Lolo I taught her the alphabet ; but, dear me, she has forgotten that long ago. She is the de- spair of her teachers, but she is really a neat, sweet little thing to have about one. I think she must be about ten years old — hardly eleven. Her name is Makako. Long ago she made up her mind to be my little handmaid; I suspect that she is pretty stubborn; anyway, she achieved her end. She firmly refused to serve Mrs. Lehman, she refused Mrs. Johnston, and all the countryside: — "Makako very much fears," meaning that she was shy. But all the time Makako was making sheep's eyes at me, and sidling up to me on Sundays and on week days to murmur, in her miserable Bulu, " I want to work for you." One day she arrived with her mother, who is a Christian woman, and she muttered her usual plea. Dear, but she was cunning with her little old cloth tied over her little flat chest, and her big eyes pleading at me out of her kitten face. So I said yes, that she might come on Monday — this was a Saturday,- but Makako took root in her chair; she would stay now. I looked at her severely — "You are such a 'shy' little girl that you will cry, and bother me." Makako looked sheepish. Well, she never cried. She remembers all the nests into which I put my belongings. Her first ques- tion about an object is, "Where shall we put it?" and there she keeps it very well. I have insisted that she spend Sundays with her LITTLE BULU BOYS AND GIRLS mother, so on Sunday she visits me. Last Sun- day she came in and she cast a critical eye over my room. "Where is the dust-cloth?" asked little Makako, and set to work to dust. July 4. Our executive officer — I mean the lieutenant — has gone into the Njem country, where there is a revolt. The Njem are a very large tribe. Another tribe called the Maka6 are revolting with them. Once every year for the last three years the Njem have killed and eaten a white trader. This year another trader was caught by them. On the evening of the day when they meant to kill him, he was bought for two women — I mean, two women were paid for him — by a headman who wished to befriend him. He came to this station on his way to the coast, with his wrists bound up. He had tried, when he saw no hope of escape, to open, with a fork, the veins in his wrists. July 16. Makako has made a dress. It is a bright blue trade cloth, with a white figure — a pattern of her own choosing. All the last week she has sewed and sewed and sewed; in the evenings, the little black head bent over her work, she has sewed and sewed and sewed. The dress is just a little chemise with bits of sleeves. Yester- day she finished it and put it on — her first dress! I took her to the glass, but at sight of that brilliant image and her nakedness so elabo- rately covered, she hung her head and suffered who shall say what pangs of delicious embar- rassment. Cleopatra, I suppose, when they un- rolled her from the rug in the presence of Caesar, hung her head, too. At least she should have. July 17. More about Makako's dress. She went down to the river to-day when she had been forbidden. I went down the path after her; and presently I could see, on a tree-trunk hanging low and long over the water, a red dress and a blue dress. The red dress was fishing, and you would have thought, had I a heart in my bosom, or a mem- ory, I would have slunk off in the thick green about the path. But missionaries always do their duty and I kept straight on the narrow path. When the blue dress saw me coming, it just rolled off the log into the river. Poor little blue dress! Presently Makako preceded me up the path with the blue dress wrung out and coiled on her head, her little brown girl body all wet, and fear knocking at her heart because her mistress did not speak any word, either good or evil. August 3. There are now eight little girls on the place — three of them house-servants and the other five school-children. The eight train together a good part of the time; and you might see them now if you were to look from my window, busy about their evening meal. They have as yet no house, and cook in the open. I have pitched my tent for their foregatherings, and the fire is near by. Such chatterings! I like them. It is pretty to see eight little brown girls in swimming, and to see one of them on the bank all wet, fishing with her left hand and taking the correct Venus pose with her right. This pose is unfailing in every case of absolute nakedness. Well, after they come dripping out of the water, and put on their cloths with no wiping at all, they take to cutting the weeds and grass; or if it is Wednesday or Thursday they sew with Mrs. Johnston. When they work out of doors I oversee them. At five-thirty work is done — then more cook- ing, with the soft night closing in till the little girls appear and disappear in the wavering fire- light. They are boisterous in the evening, which disturbs me because I fear it will disturb every one else. The other night I went into their cabin to see what they were about. The eight of them were drinking water, each a quart can full, but with such horse play, my dears, and their little stomachs bulging visibly. Then they measured waists. This was funny to see by the light of their two fires. Presently they sat down and listened to Makako, who must be a sly humorist, for her most sober aspect arouses mirth. She talks to her friends in Ngumba, so I miss her little personality. The most charming sight is to see Makako run, — such unbelievable grace! To see her run through high grass, leaping, her head up, her little arms outspread, the blue of her dress blowing back from her straight body is a sight so beautiful and joyous, so full of young animal life, that one's head fills with lovely images and similes. All her little gestures are perfect. Once she passed me in the path on her even, light run; and I looked to see her pass a man who came toward us, but when she met him she stopped — with no preliminary slackening of speed — and gave him her hand — her arm out- stretched at length. This sudden pause and the little free gesture were beautiful in poise — one felt her even, happy breathing. August 4. Outside under the stars the little girls eat their supper of boiled plantain. The donkey comes nosing at their backs as they sit about the fire and they shriek their clamorous alarms — which are not fictitious. Presently they sing softly intricate little chants, very charming, in- deed ; one of them stands up in the firelight and moves to the sound of their voices and the sud- den accurate clap of their hands; her move- ments are slight and monotonous, not at all obvious in meaning. Asks your child, "What do the words mean in Bulu?" for the little girls sing in Ngumba, — and she is told that their im- port is: "Who would wish to marry an old man?" August 7. One gets so balled up with these people. "I have eaten your bread and salt, I have drunk your water and wine, The deaths you died I have watched beside And the lives that you lived were mine." The deaths we die are mostly marriage palavers, — we have on hand at present three most har- rowing marriage palavers. Polygamy is terrible. I had so open a mind about it when I came to Africa — and now I have so many sad thoughts of it. Makako is the subject of one; her father wishes to buy another wife with her, and Makako's poor mother feels the thrust of a two- edged sword. She told me about her troubles to-day with great bitterness. I looked at her with all the pity of my heart, seeing which she laughed and scratched the ground with her toes. Her laugh was sad — not merry at all, my dears. She explained to me that if they took Makako on that palaver she would just die — but none of her race die so. August 10. Last night being a moonlight night — nothing vehement about the moon, however, but a dis- creet filtering through clouds, and that there was need for discretion you will agree — all the girls took off their outer clothes and made little trunks of their loin-cloths. So attired they began a series of games, so amusing, my dears, so wild, so young and animal, that you would have laughed from your souls to see their nim- ble antics, all under the gray moonlight, and with no sound but the soft, measured sound of the chant proper to the game and the pad of their feet. Imagine my surprise to find them playing a catching game, in which the captive was drawn aside by two rivals, who addressed her thus: " Which do you choose, dresses like the white person, or real food?" "Food," said greedy little Makako. Now, if this was not "London Bridge," and it had all the marks, I want to know. Yet they said that their mothers played so, before them. Many other games they played, some delicious imita- tions of animals. Every one thinks Makako so naughty, and naughty she certainly is, with explosions of vehe- ment, windy wrath — fishwife frenzy : only among her equals, of course. But all the time under her soft little child bosom beats her little wild heart with its rebellions and its fears, its little evil passions and its little hurry of gayety. She knows I love her, and so sometimes she droops to me a little tamed and meek. She does not steal, but she very subtly lies about her motives and especially about any undesirable knowledge. There is a little girl in Makako's mother's house, a new wife for her father, but Makako has never so much as heard of that little girl. For her she simply does not exist. Now, every one thinks this very naughty of Makako, who cannot pos- sibly ignore the child's existence, but I think it rather superb, a triumph of spirit over matter, quite in the manner of Mrs. Eddy. September 18. I continue to teach the chart classes; not now letters alone, but numbers and writing, which is pathetic and incredible, as are many of our African uses. There is a small boy of a mourn- ful cynicism who entered school something less than two months ago. He writes as well as I do and will excel me when he dares. When we instituted the girls' boarding school, Mrs. Lehman and Mrs. Johnston said that they would teach the girls to wash and sew if I would teach them morals. And I thought that if I could teach them writing, I could teach them morals, so it was agreed. Because morals require supervision at all hours their house was built outside my window, a cabin eight by fourteen, with a shock of leaf-thatch over log walls; these covered with plantain leaves to keep the wind and the rain out of the cracks. The little house is all brown and silver in its tattered dress of dried leaves. Inside there are four beds made of poles laid in close rows; on the floor burn two wood fires, for cooking by day, for warmth by night. There are no windows. The firelight shines through the open door and the smoke wavers above the whole surface of the roof. Some of our little pupils are house-servants, some are girls who must do field work for their food and tuition. On the days in the week when they were not engaged in the afternoon with such fancy accomplishments as Mrs. Lehman and Mrs. Johnston taught them, it fell to me, the Department of Morals, to see that they earned their salt. This they did with cutlasses and hoes and rakes, cutting down the indefatig- able high grasses that possess African clearings. Here is an account of their day: Six-thirty, prayers with the assembled school, the workmen and the neighbors; after school any ambitious little girl may work for an hour to her own credit at the rate of two cents an hour — twelve hours of such work to buy a slate (and a pencil to boot), three hours' work to buy a lead pencil, thirty hours to buy a song-book. You can see them in the mists of the morning, their bits of cloths not keeping their little brown bodies dry, swinging their cutlasses and cutting their way to some such academic possession. At eight- thirty, school in the church with the boys; at eleven- thirty, the division of food; then clamor and rest until two. During this period they bathe in the river; they are really very clean little girls. From two until five-thirty, work in the fields or sewing — for this is none of your charity schools, but self-supporting and in line with mission policy. In the evening a great noise of chatter floats out from the little house with the smoke of their fires. They cook and eat; sometimes they quarrel about their food. Angambe, looking up from some such supreme occupation, sees the moralist in a white dress, and cries out at the ghost. Moralists are, it would seem, less of this world than of some other. Now, if I will sit down with them, they will really talk to me, or sing their curious charm- ing little chants that are wonderfully accurate and difficult. Perhaps I bring in the lantern, and by its light on the earth floor they sew patches or cut pictures with scissors sent by her friends to the moralist. This is all very happy, very free. The little girls are gay and noisy until nine o'clock, when there are prayers again, and the door is locked. Very happy were the little girls and free for several weeks. Then we fell under the curse of the marriage palaver. One girl, a house-servant, was sold to a man owning several wives. When it came to delivery of the goods, the goods be- came animated in dissent — not, indeed, that consent had been asked of the goods. The station backed the girl. News of the defiance of good Ngumba custom penetrated to the ends of the earth and woke a thousand anxieties. The social fabric was imperiled. Two of the little school- girls were led away weeping by canny male rel- atives. This was sad to see. My own little servant Makako was ordered to her town by her uncle, her father being off in Bulu where he is hunting goods with which to buy a new wife upon whose purchase he means to give Makako in part payment. There you see the exit of the three little injuns. The school is depleted and in ill repute. Putting up overnight at I pose, where one of the children lives, I heard from her that the townspeople say of the school, "No little girl may marry who enters there.' ' You are re- minded, doubtless, of the legend over the gate of Dante's Hell. My single state is a matter of common marvel. It does not help us in our present difficulty, and may be taken as evidence of a cult from which young Ngumba maiden- hood must be protected. Mfun, the little girl in question, had her slate as token of her having drunk at the wells of learning. It hung in her hut, as a diploma hangs in a doctor's office, witnessing to her poor little achievements. She slept in my hut and did me some service. I paid my debt with a needle and some thread. When next I go I shall take her some patches. Patches are dear to little African girls; poor Amana, when she was taken away, went down the path wiping her eyes on her bits of patchwork. We were sad when these children were taken away. Any work for girls in a polygamous country is sad. Other girls will come; some, whose parents are Christians, or otherwise en- lightened, we shall be able to keep. And some will go, yet not without benefit. Something they will have learned of reading and writing, of sewing and washing, of truth and of the love of God. The night before Mfun left, when I asked the children for what they would wish me to pray, she said, "Tell Him that I am afraid of getting married." It is a comfort to know that our High Priest was touched by the feeling of that piteous little infirmity.