so in the strongest way. Three days later, one who subscribed himself an unprofitable servant offered the Church Missionary Society £5,000, as the beginning of a mission fund for this purpose. On the 23d of November, the committee resolved unanimously to undertake the work. As soon as this was known they received in the same anonymous way £3,000, which was afterwards increased to £5,000. Within a month £2,000 more came in in smaller sums. The question now was by what route the missionaries should try to reach the lake. Dr. Krapf urged his own plan of 1850 and Knight's of 1864 of an advance directly northwest from Mombasa. This line is much shorter than the common road from Bagamoyo through Unyanyembe to Kagei, but it leads through the territory of wild tribes, a region almost wholly unexplored. The society, warned by experience, wisely declined to use up its resources and perhaps indefinitely to postpone the accomplishment of its object by undertaking to break a new road through an unknown country, and preferred to follow the beaten track. The men chosen for this advance were Lieutenant G. Shergold Smith, R. N.; Mr. A. M. Mackay and Mr. G. J. Clarke, engineers; the Reverend C. F. Wilson; Mr. John Smith, physician; W. Robertson, J. Robertson, and T. O'Neill. Lieutenant Smith, who had seen some African service in the Ashantee war, was at the head of the expedition, which was assembled at Zanzibar by the 1st of July, 1876. A preliminary exploration by Lieutenant Smith in the steam yacht Highland Lassie, which had been sent out for the use of the East African mission, proved that the Wami, which Stanley had recommended as a missionary road to the Usagara country, is not navigable. So there was nothing to be done but to follow in the footsteps of other travelers with great caravans of native porters. They left the coast in four divisions at different times between July 14th and September 14th. The first stage of the journey ends at Mpwapwa in Ugogo. Here Clarke and Hartnoll, a sailor who had volunteered to take the place made vacant by the death, at Zanzibar, of J. Robertson, were left to establish a station. W. Robertson had to be sent down to the coast, sick; and a little farther on Mackay also was compelled to turn back. The rest went on in two companies, the first of which, Wilson and O'Neill, reached Kagei at the southern end of the lake, January 29, 1877. Not long after Lieutenant Smith and Dr. Smith came up, but the latter reached the lake only to die. On June 30, 1877, Lieutenant

1 An expedition of the Royal Geographical Society under Mr. J. Thompson is now engaged in the exploration.

Smith and Mr. Wilson reached Mtesa's capital, Rubaga, where they were cordially received. Leaving Mr. Wilson there, Lieutenant Smith returned to the southern end of the lake, Ukerewe, to see to the transportation of the stores. Here he and his companion, O'Neill, were killed December 13, 1877, in the attempt to protect an Arab trader who had taken refuge with them from the wrath of the king. Clarke and Hartnoll were soon forced by ill health to leave Mpwapwa, so that of the eight men sent out only Wilson, at Rubaga, and Mackay, who after his recovery had been busy in the most necessary work of making a passable road from the coast at Saadani to Mpwapwa, were left. But in a few months a large reinforcement was on the way. Six men were sent by Zanzibar, and four by the Nile. Mackay hurried forward and joined Wilson in Uganda in the fall of 1878. Their relations with the king were friendly and encouraging. He seemed ready to do almost anything they asked. One day the report came that at Mackay's suggestion Mtesa has published an edict forbidding the selling of slaves on pain of death! It is needless to say that it was never enforced.

On February 14, 1879, the Nile party, consisting of Litchfield, Felkin, and Pearson, reached the capital. Ten days later two French Jesuit priests, the advance guard of a considerable missionary expedition, arrived from the south, and on April 9th two more of the English party came up by the same route. For a moment the mission had the full strength originally intended, seven men. But before the arrival of the last party, Messrs. Stokes and Copplestone, the affairs of the mission had taken a most unfavorable turn. The Arab merchants, exasperated by the opposition of the Englishmen to the slave-trade, and anxious to regain the influence over Mtesa by which in former times they had profited, so misconstrued or mistranslated a letter from Dr. Kirk, British consul at Zanzibar, to Mtesa, as to make the missionaries appear a pack of impostors and liars. The king became angry and hostile. Sweeping prohibitions were laid on the work of the mission, and things came to a stand-still. After some consideration it was decided to say to the king that as the promises with which he had invited the establishment of a mission in his kingdom were thus broken, they would withdraw and seek a field elsewhere. This did not suit Mtesa, who found the white men useful and hoped to make them more so. Various difficulties were put in the way of their departure. In June, 1879, however, Felkin and Wilson, with three chiefs of the Waganda, es envoys

to England, set out by the northern route for Egypt, and Stokes and Copplestone left by the lake for the south, leaving Litchfield, Mackay, and Pearson in Uganda. The next reports from them were more encouraging, so far as there is any encouragement in the fickleness of a black tyrant. Mtesa had ordered all his chiefs, soldiers, and pages to learn the alphabet, and this unexpected and somewhat premature compulsory education act made much business for the missionaries. He promised to build a church and a school; in September he wanted to be baptized, and to have Mackay write to Queen Victoria to send him out an English princess for his wife.

Stokes and Copplestone having crossed the lake established themselves at Uyui, a collection of villages twenty miles northeast of the principal Arab town of Unyanyembe, Tabora or Kaseh. The station at Mpwapwa, which had been established in 1876, and then for a time vacated, was reoccupied by a part of the company sent out in the fall of 1877, Dr. J. E. Baxter and Mr. J. T. Last. Forty or fifty freed slaves from Mombasa and from Bishop Steere's schools in Zanzibar were brought up as the nucleus of a settlement. The Rev. J. C. Price and Mr. H. Cole joined this mission in October, 1879, and an out-station was planted in the Nguru country at Mamboia, three or four days nearer the coast than Mpwapwa, and on the road to it. This was occupied by Mr. Last, who in January, 1880, brought his wife thither, the first woman in the Central African mission.

In January, 1880, the mission in Uganda witnessed a great pagan reaction. An old woman, in whom Mukasa, the lubare or demon of the lake, is supposed to reside, made her appearance at the king's town. The powers of heathen darkness aroused themselves to make war on the light. The chiefs were loud for the old ways. Mtesa declared his policy: "The Arabs can have their religion and you yours, but we will have the religion of our fathers." In accordance with this he strictly prohibited all teaching and preaching. The excitement lasted only a few weeks, the lubare returned to her place, and the world went on as before. Referring to this outbreak Mr. Litchfield wrote, "There were always the elements of an explosion at hand in Mtesa's court, which the stirring of a child's finger may bring together,-Arab, savage, Roman Catholic, and Protestant; politics, religion, envy of the native chiefs, hatred of the Arabs, underhand machinations of Romanists, and other sulphurous materials." The next religious revolution was in July of the same year, when Mtesa declared himself a Moham

medan in consequence of a dream. His Mohammedanism was not more serious than his Christianity. He never would submit to circumcision, and within a week after his new conversion solemnly decided, in full council, not to keep Ramadan! The substance of it was a parrot-jabbering allah akbar! the burning of some gunpowder, and flying a flag on Friday. In March, 1881, Mr. Stokes and the Rev. P. O'Flaherty, accompanied by the Waganda envoys, returning from England by way of Zanzibar, arrived at the king's town. The reports the chiefs gave of what they had seen in England seem to have increased Mtesa's respect for the English, and no further serious obstacles were put in the way of the missionaries. Mr. O'Flaherty fortunately had a knowledge of the Koran, with which he confounded the amateur missionaries among the Arab traders, much to Mtesa's delight, who has a barbarian's delight in a controversy, deepened by total indifference to the result. In these encounters with the Arabs M. Lourdel, of the French mission, also took an active part. The relations between the English and French missionaries at the beginning were not very friendly, but in time a modus vivendi was established in the presence of the common foe. The year 1881 was one of material progress. A house more permanent and comfortable than the grass huts of the natives was building, a well sunk and a pump mounted to the amazement of all who saw it. A cart had been built and a yoke of oxen broken to draw it, a new wonder. The road from the mission station to the town was made passable for wheels. Mr. O'Flaherty had been employed in teaching, translating, printing, etc. The first spiritual fruit of the mission was gathered in March, 1881, when five young men were baptized ; fifty more had been taught to read, and not a few were thought to show signs of having received the truth into their hearts. The Gospel of St. Matthew, Bishop Steere's "Scripture History," a large part of the Old Testament lessons, the order for morning and evening prayer and for the baptism of adults, had been translated. The mission grounds had been enlarged and fenced; several thousand plantain-trees set out; good crops of maize, millet, beans, peas, tomatoes, and sweet potatoes, were raised. Not the least of the results of these improvements is that the natives are learning to work for hire. The regeneration of labor is the first step in the conversion and civilization of Africa.1 At Mpwapwa and Mam1 See the weighty words of Père Horner, Sir Bartle Frere's East Africa as a Field for Missionary Labor, p. 52. Nobody can ignore the fact that the natural apathy and indolence peculiar to the negro character form the greatest ob

boia also 1882 was a year of progress. The mission at the former station occupied a point called Kisokwe, in a fertile district six miles from Mpwapwa, where they raise their crops of grain and vegetables. The experiment of ostrich farming is being tried at Mpwapwa, where the conditions are unfavorable to agriculture. Mr. Last at Mamboia reports an open door in Usagara. Some notion of the Babel that reigns in this country may be got from the fact that Mr. Last finds seven dialects, belonging to at least two separate families, necessary to the prosecution of his work. The mission suffered during the year by the death of Mrs. Last and Mrs. Cole, the pioneers of woman's work in Central Africa. In 1883 the society sent forward a large reinforcement, five clergymen and one layman, with the Rev. J. Hannington at their head. Two of them were designated for Uyui, where they relieved Mr. Copplestone; the rest took a new road to the Nyanza through Mirambo's country, reaching it at Msalala, west of Kagei. Delays occurred in getting transport across the lake, and all suffered severely from fever. Mr. Hannington was compelled to return, and with him one of the men from Uyui. One of the party reached Mtesa's May 2, 1883, and at the last reports Mackay with the other two were near Kagei, putting together the boat which had been brought out in sections. In the meanwhile the French missionaries had abandoned Uganda, intending to found two new stations southeast of the lake at a place whose name they give as Boukoumbi.

George F. Moore.

stacles to his moralization;' and it is only by degrees that we can conquer their vices, by inspiring them with a regard and love of work according to the principles of Christianity."

1 The statistical summary at the latest date is as follows: Number of stations four (Uganda, Uyui, Mpwapwa, Mamboia); English missionaries, 14 (of whom in the field, nine, in England five); native Christians, seven; scholars, 81. The distribution of the force in the field: Victoria Nyanza, Rev. Messrs. O'Flaherty, Ashe, and Gordon; Messrs. Mackay and Wise; Uyui, Rev. Jos. Blackburn; Mpwapwa, Rev. J. C. Price, Mr. Cole; Mamboia, Mr. Last.

Conclusion in the next Number.