SNAP SHOTS 
 
 yVonx 
 
 5UNNY 
 AFRICA 
 
 HELEN 
 SPRINGERS
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 **y o< Ca 
 
 IRVINE
 
 MRS. JOHN M. SPRINGER
 
 SiNAP SHOTS 
 
 FROM 
 
 SUNNY AFRICA 
 
 By 
 MRS. JOHN M. SPRINGER 
 
 THE KATANGA PRESS 
 
 150 FIFTH AVE., NEW YORK CITY
 
 Copyright, 1909, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 DT 
 
 9$- 
 
 sr 
 
 PRINTED BY 
 
 THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN 
 ISO FIFTH AVE., NEW YORK
 
 To 
 
 My Mother 
 
 who 
 Gave her only child 
 
 to 
 Africa
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 GENERAL R. S. S. BADEN-POWELL, of 
 the English army, for years a distinguished 
 soldier and traveller in South Africa, in his 
 Foreword to "Some African Highways," a recent 
 interesting book by Caroline Kirkland, says : 
 
 11 How I should like to be a woman ! It must be 
 nice to lie back in your cushions and watch the men 
 doing things which they think very clever, knowing 
 all the time that you can do them much better your- 
 self if you only care to try. 
 
 "For instance: I am convinced that if women 
 were to take up the art of scouting they would easily 
 beat men at the game. 
 
 "They have a greater natural gift of observation 
 and a most uncannily clever knack of ' putting this 
 and that together ' and then deducing meaning from 
 the smallest signs. 
 
 11 Hence it comes that when women travel into the 
 lesser-known countries of the world, as they fre- 
 quently do nowadays, they bring this power of ob- 
 servation into play with remarkable results. And of 
 all women in the world I would place our American 
 cousins at the top of the list for this particular 
 quality. 
 
 " Unfortunately it is only too seldom that they 
 record their impressions, but when they do their 
 
 7
 
 8 Introduction 
 
 pages ripple with little touches both quaint and 
 human which are the direct result of quick observa- 
 tion and which go to paint the character of the coun- 
 tries and people far more vividly than the more 
 erudite writings of the mere man who plods along 
 basing his remarks very largely on what he has 
 already read or been told of the country now spread 
 out before them." 
 
 These short stories by Mrs. Springer are a good 
 illustration of General Baden-Powell's estimate of 
 American women as intelligent travellers, able to 
 put their observations into up-to-date, vigorous 
 English. 
 
 The pictures are from actual life during several 
 years of residence and travel in Africa, and have 
 been written with the purpose of aiding those espe- 
 cially interested in the redemption of that continent 
 to understand better the conditions of the people and 
 the missionary labours among them. 
 
 Any of these "Snapshots" would be excellent 
 reading in meetings of the Woman's Foreign Mis- 
 sionary Society, of Ep worth Leagues, or of Sunday- 
 schools, where Africa is the theme. They could not 
 fail to arrest the attention and fix the thought of 
 those who hear them upon the pagan heathenism 
 which now enthralls more than one hundred million 
 of the people of that great continent. 
 
 JOSEPH C. HABTZELL.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 IT was about a year ago that we sat at lunch one 
 day with Bishop Hartzell in one of the crowded 
 restaurants of New York when the Bishop sud- 
 denly remarked, "Mrs. Springer, I think it would be 
 an excellent thing for you to collect and work over 
 into book form the many stories and articles which 
 have been appearing from your pen during the past 
 five years." 
 
 It was not a new thought. On leaving Africa, 
 Mr. Springer has insisted on bringing all my old 
 MSS. along with us to America for this very purpose. 
 But so far I had not felt that I could work them up 
 into readable matter. Nor did the Bishop's sugges- 
 tion convince me. 
 
 But as I travelled about speaking almost constantly, 
 I saw that there was a need of some book of short 
 missionary stories which could be used in meetings 
 of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society, Ep worth 
 Leagues, Christian Endeavours, Sunday-schools and 
 all other missionary meetings for which it is often so 
 difficult to arrange a live and interesting program. 
 
 Last fall I seemed to be providentially laid aside 
 from platform work for three months and it also 
 seemed as if that were God's time for me to take up 
 this work of writing. 
 
 The title is meant to be a true indication of the 
 character of the book. It is not a history of our 
 work in Ehodesia, but a collation of such a variety 
 of incidents of that work that I trust the whole book 
 will give the reader an insight to the real life and 
 
 9
 
 io Preface 
 
 work of a missionary just as the amateur snap-shot 
 photo album reveals more of the every-day lives of 
 its subjects than the most finished productions of the 
 studio. 
 
 The chapters are purposely short and each one is a 
 complete story in itself, and yet there is a line of con- 
 tinuity throughout the whole book. I have given 
 the real names of our native helpers in order that the 
 reader may become acquainted with them as they 
 appear and reappear in the various chapters. These 
 chapters are not arranged in chronological order but 
 are grouped in reference to subjects so that when 
 desired, two or three persons may read a chapter each 
 at a single meeting. 
 
 The articles which had been already printed were 
 all rewritten, the incidents being brought down to 
 date, while many entirely new chapters were added on 
 subjects about which I was most frequently questioned. 
 
 As Mr. Springer has so fully described our trip 
 across the continent in his book, " The Heart of Cen- 
 tral Africa," which was published this spring by 
 Jennings and Graham, I have only touched upon it, 
 enlarging upon some incidents which he was com- 
 pelled to treat rather briefly and from his viewpoint. 
 
 So this little volume goes forth with the writer's 
 prayer that it may not only be helpful to individuals, 
 but that also it may be of especial service in many a 
 missionary meeting where it may make real to the 
 hearers the joys, the successes, the sorrows and the 
 failures and discouragements, but withal the actual 
 conditions of our every-day missionary work. 
 
 HELEN E. SPBINGEB, 
 Chicago, III.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. STRIKING THE TRAIL . . . .15 
 
 II. ATTENDING A NATIVE DANCE . . 20 
 
 III. PHYSICIAN TO THE KING ... 24 
 
 IV. THE PASSING OF UFAMBASIKU . . 30 
 
 V. THE MAKING OF A DICTIONARY . . 35 
 
 VI. THE BANTU AND THEIR LANGUAGES . 39 
 
 VII. DIFFICULTIES OF AN UNKNOWN TONGUE 43 
 
 VIII. DOWN THE AGES . . . .48 
 
 IX. SHAKENI . . . . . .52 
 
 X. HER FIRST VACATION . . .57 
 XL FOR CHRISTIAN BURIAL . , . 61 
 
 XII. OUR LAST NIGHT TREKKING BY Ox 
 
 WAGON . ' . . . . . 65 
 
 XIII. IN THE HUNDI VALLEY . . . 71 
 
 XIV. WHAT'S IN A NAME?. . . . 78 
 
 XV. AN AFRICAN VANITY FAIR . . 82 
 
 XVI. ON THE TRAIL TO TETE ... 87 
 
 XVII. A TALE OF Two DONKEYS . . 92 
 
 XVIII. THE GLORIOUS FOURTH IN AFRICA . 98 
 
 XIX. CHRISTMAS AT OLD UMTALI . . 103 
 
 XX. WHEN GREEK MEETS GREEK . . 109 
 
 XXI. BUYING A TROUSSEAU . . . 113 
 
 XXII. MUKONYERWA . . . . . Il8 
 
 ii
 
 12 
 
 Contents 
 
 XXIII. KADUKU, THE LITTLE ONE . .124 
 
 XXIV. SUNDAY AT GANDANZARA'S . .133 
 
 XXV. WATAPA'S WEDDING . . . 1 39 
 
 XXVI. SWEET SIXTEEN . . . .145 
 
 XXVII. To BE OR NOT TO BE . . .148 
 
 XXVIII. PERPETUAL BLISTERS . . .153 
 
 XXIX. BICYCLING IN CENTRAL AFRICA . 157 
 
 XXX. THE BUFFALO AT THE 501 2TH ANT- 
 
 HILL 162 
 
 XXXI. THE LAND OF SOUR MUSH . .165 
 
 XXXII. SOUR MUSH AND SWEET JAM . .170 
 
 XXXIII. THE SOUL OF A CHICKEN . .173 
 
 XXXIV. JOHN WEBBA 179 
 
 XXXV. TRIED AS BY FIRE . . . .183 
 
 XXXVI. AFTER MANY DAYS ... 190
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Facing page 
 
 MRS. JOHN M. SPRINGER . Title 
 
 THE THREE. GUMBA, SHAKENI AND BASI . . 22 
 MT. HARTZELL AT OLD UMTALI .... 35 
 
 TRAVELLING BY Ox WAGON 87 
 
 ON THE TRAIL TO TETE . . . . .87 
 
 THE FIRST WHITE WEDDING AT OLD UMTALI MIS- 
 SION . . . . ... . . . 103 
 
 THE BELLES OF THE CAPITOL . . . .118 
 FEMALE ADORNMENTS IN NATIVE STYLES . .145 
 CAMP NEAR THE " 501 2TH " ANT-HILL . . . 15 7 
 
 KANSHANSHI COPPER MINE IN N. W. RHODESIA, 
 
 AFRICA ...... . 157 
 
 WOMEN POUNDING GRAIN 167 
 
 A HAND GRIST MILL . . . . . . 167
 
 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 i 
 
 STRIKING THE TRAIL 
 
 PEEHAPS it was not such an unpardonable 
 crime after all which my friend committed 
 that blustering May day when he took the 
 snap shot that so nearly ruptured our social relations. 
 Looking back on it with a long perspective and con- 
 sidering the great satisfaction with which on a later 
 day I more than rewarded him for his untiring ef- 
 forts to secure photographical " studies," I am con- 
 vinced that his was a venial sin. 
 
 In fact I'm almost sorry that no copy of the dis- 
 puted, hotly disputed, print is in existence. It must 
 have been a grotesque figure, clad in a short skirt, 
 stout, well-worn boots, heavy gloves and a large six- 
 penny Madeira hat securely tied down over the ears 
 on account of the high winds, which went out of Old 
 Umtali that day to enjoy the new experience of liv- 
 ing in a native kraal alone. 
 
 Nor were the other three members of the little 
 caravan with her less appealing to the risibles. 
 There was Shakeni, young and beautiful, gracefully 
 balancing a candle box on her head, never touching 
 it with her hands except when the unhappy occupant, 
 
 15
 
 16 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 who for the most part crouched in one corner in ab- 
 ject terror, suddenly gave a plunge to the other side 
 emitting at the same time one of his unearthly feline 
 yowls. 
 
 There were also two half-grown youths, one of 
 whom carried blankets and clothing, and the other a 
 box in which were a few cooking utensils and some 
 raw material to be used in them. I was indebted to 
 my friend Heinkel for these men, if such you could 
 call them. Two more dilapidated specimens would 
 have been hard to find. He admitted that they had 
 not been selected by him on account of personal 
 beauty nor muscular strength, but for the reason so 
 many other things are done out there, they were 
 all he had. 
 
 That first year (and ever after for that matter) but 
 particularly in that first year, I had good reason to 
 be thankful that I was a good walker. What with 
 red water killing the oxen, horse sickness the horses 
 and mules, and pyemia wiping out whole spans of 
 donkeys in the country, it was quite the style for all 
 but the very wealthy to walk for the good of their 
 health and the regulation of their livers. 
 
 So on this morning, I started out to make my seven 
 mile walk with gratitude that it was not ten. There's 
 nothing truly so bad in this world that it might not 
 be worse. But the last three miles that day, as the 
 sun rose to the zenith, were hot and toilsome ones, 
 though I would not have acknowledged to my fellow 
 missionary who met me at Shikanga's kraal how 
 weary I was, no not for anything. 
 
 It was noon and he was expecting me, as he had 
 been engaged for a week in getting a hut built for me
 
 Striking the Trail 17 
 
 there. So dinner was soon served. I was hungry as 
 well as weary. There was no place for us to eat ex- 
 cept out in the open, as the women were just finishing 
 the floor of the hut I was to occupy and he was using 
 a tiny tent. So we sat down on a big rock in the 
 centre of the village and were soon served with bully 
 beef and hot tea. 
 
 Bully, or, as it is commercially known, corned beef, 
 I loathed. And as we were soon surrounded by some 
 twenty nearly naked youngsters in indescribable states 
 of filthiness, I began to realize that after all, I did not 
 care for anything to eat, but was merely thirsty. And 
 the tea ! The water with which to make it came from 
 a spring where all the natives got their water ; and was 
 an opaque, grayish white, so that unless it were la- 
 belled, it was hard to tell whether the decoction was 
 tea or coffee. 
 
 Standing on decorum, I said nothing of the turmoils 
 going on in the internal regions. Had I done so, I 
 might have been favoured with the advice which in 
 recent years has come to be quite a family motto : 
 " Cheer up, the worst is to come." But we were both 
 on our good behaviour, and neither liked to admit to 
 the other how horribly repulsive everything was. 
 "We feared our missionary devotion might be called 
 in question. Bless you ! Devotion had nothing to 
 do with it. We were only natural human beings, 
 neither deprived of sight, nor taste, nor smell. We 
 needed stronger stomachs and we got them, in time. 
 
 But the worst was to come. Shikanga greeted me 
 most graciously and welcomed me to her kraal most 
 hospitably. And as a token of that hospitality, when 
 she cooked her evening meal, she sent me over a por-
 
 i8 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 tion. It was a large, brown ball with some ques- 
 tionable looking greens accompanying it. 
 
 The new missionary, though he has nothing of this 
 world's goods, is certain to be rich in theories. I 
 was wealthy along that line and that alone. With 
 sugar and flour at twenty-four cents a pound, butter 
 seventy-five cents, cabbages $1.25, eggs at $5 a dozen, 
 I was convinced that unless I could have a more suc- 
 cessful experiment on green sawdust than the Irish- 
 man's horse, I must get used to " native diet." 
 
 It sounded well at home. But here I was in 
 touch with it. Now, as I had not overloaded my 
 stomach at noon, I was ready for something substan- 
 tial by night. There could not have been a more 
 opportune time to start in on the native diet. There 
 was the added advantage that it was dark, and the 
 glimmering light of the one flickering candle did not 
 reveal the unpleasant features of the midday. Every- 
 thing was in the favour of the thick mush known to 
 the natives as sadsa. 
 
 It would not yield itself to the friendly offices of a 
 knife. The sadsa, which for centuries had known 
 only the manipulations of human fingers, gripped and 
 clung to and followed the knife until it won out, and 
 the knife was vanquished. A spoon did a little bet- 
 ter. I managed to get off a small portion of mush 
 on the spoon and then tried to chew it only to learn 
 to my sorrow that it was not meant to be chewed. 
 But having started, I had to exceed the Gladstonian 
 count before I had extricated my teeth and cleared 
 my mouth. 
 
 However, I tried again and again, on the theory 
 that practice makes perfect ; and at last managed
 
 Striking the Trail 19 
 
 to get enough down to satisfy the cravings of my 
 stomach. My appetite had been satisfied on the first 
 mouthful. The next morning (having been raised on 
 fried corn-meal mush up in Maine) I felt sure that I 
 could overcome my doughty adversary. I had it 
 fried. When it was served, it looked less appetizing 
 than before and proved stickier than ever. It would 
 not go down. 
 
 When I sent the dilapidated carriers back to my 
 friend, I wrote, " And if you can manage it, I shall 
 be glad to have a loaf of bread when the carriers come 
 again." And he faithfully supplied me with bread 
 the likes of which it seemed I'd never seen before nor 
 ever since, during all those two months in the kraals, 
 and without it, I could not have stayed and kept in 
 health. 
 
 Mr. Springer, who had built the hut, went away 
 and I was for the first time in my life left alone in a 
 heathen kraal. I confess now, what I would not have 
 admitted then for worlds, that I did feel afraid. And 
 had I known of the dance that was on for that night, 
 I should have been still more afraid. Ignorance in 
 that case was bliss. But He that watched over Israel 
 neither slumbered nor slept ; and so no harm came 
 to me.
 
 n 
 
 ATTENDING A NATIVE DANCE 
 
 I'M a good Methodist don't believe iii dancing. 
 It's a heathenish practice brought down from 
 time immemorial and always has been connected 
 with bad habits and worse results. 
 
 It was noon on Saturday when Basi came in and 
 said, "There's to be a dance here to-night and 
 mother would like you to go." 
 
 I gave her a non-committal answer and decided I 
 would find some excuse for staying away when the 
 evening came. 
 
 However, in that case I reckoned without my host- 
 ess. I learned very soon my mistake. Whoso goes 
 to live in the kraals to achieve good results must 
 needs take the chief into account and that right often. 
 
 At six-thirty, Basi, Shikanga's daughter came in 
 again and said, "Shikanga says for you to come to 
 the dance now." 
 
 There was no escape for me. 
 
 Basi led the way to a hut only a few yards from my 
 own, inside which could be heard the sounds of revelry. 
 With difficulty, I stooped under the low eaves and 
 entered through the tiny hole in the wall of the hut 
 which can only by courtesy be called a door. 
 
 Owing to the fact that the walls of native huts are 
 plastered with mud within and without, the eaves of 
 the roofs extend to within a short distance of the 
 ground all the way round. 
 
 20
 
 Attending a Native Dance 21 
 
 Now to enter the door, it was necessary to stoop 
 under this low roof, the stakes of which frequently 
 caught in my dress just between the shoulders, bring- 
 ing nie up with a jerk. The shock was equally try- 
 ing to my nerves and disposition so that I afterwards 
 remarked to Mr. Springer that I was certain those 
 roofs had so effectually scraped off my wings that 
 they surely never would grow again. 
 
 What a sight ! On the one side sat the women 
 apart from the men packed in as thick as sardines. 
 On the other side was the big drum and a goodly 
 number of the men. At the rear was Shikanga who 
 was expecting me. 
 
 As I entered, she arose gracefully and beckoned me 
 to her side, the seat of honour, on a mat exclusively 
 for her Majesty's use. It is hard to understand how 
 any space could have been reserved in that small hut 
 in which was gathered not only the people of that one 
 kraal but from all the surrounding kraals. 
 
 The village blacksmith was exercising his brawny 
 muscles on the drum and the effect was deafening. 
 Just in front of the door was another small space into 
 which a young buck by the name of Shilling suddenly 
 jumped. He had worked at the mission ; and being 
 a very graceful dancer, was anxious to show off his 
 skill before me. 
 
 I was too new in the language to understand much 
 of his song which he acted out as he went along. 
 Now his motions were rhythmical, then they took a 
 crescendo and the fortissimo was marked by leaps 
 into the air of so vigorous a character as to remind 
 me of David dancing before the ark. I do not doubt 
 but what David's dance was on the same order as
 
 22 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 Shilling's. For so long as I remained in the hut, all 
 the singing and dancing were perfectly proper, as far 
 as I could judge. 
 
 When Shilling finished with a display of fine 
 acrobatic feats, Shikanga took the floor. I judged 
 that Shilling had recited some thrilling history of the 
 people. Shikanga seemed to be giving a romance or 
 a bit of folk-lore and her acting and dancing were in- 
 different. 
 
 Two or three other men danced with less skill than 
 Shilling. All this time the drum kept a deafening 
 accompaniment while one and another of the women 
 punctuated it with a peculiar shriek made by tremo- 
 loing with the hand over the mouth. The whole ef- 
 fect was ear-splitting and after an hour of it, I began 
 to wonder if I would be permitted to escape. 
 
 Just then came a lull for refreshments. Several 
 huge jars of native brewed beer stood near Shikanga. 
 (Trust her to be near the beer every time in those 
 days. ) As a gourdful of this was being passed around, 
 I asked to leave as the heat had given me a headache, 
 I did not mention the smell and the sound, and 
 Shikanga gracefully bowed me out. She had done 
 the duties of a hostess and was evidently decidedly 
 glad to see me go. Basi, Gumba, Shikanga' s niece, 
 and Shakeni went with me. 
 
 What a night that was ! Once I was gone, the 
 restraint was off, the beer flowed freely and every 
 man, woman and child in that kraal except the three 
 girls with me became beastly drunk. It seemed like 
 a night in the infernal regions. Twice Shikanga 
 came to my door and demanded it to be opened. She 
 had then reached the fighting stage and she and an-
 
 THE THREE 
 Gumba, Shaken! and Basi
 
 Attending a Native Dance 23 
 
 other woman bad a fight iu the doorway. The sounds 
 round about the hut were fairly sickening. Most 
 of the men and women were yelling like demons. It 
 was simply horrible. 
 
 With the first gray dawn of the Sabbath, the revel- 
 lers came again and as the girls opened the door, 
 they swarmed in, drunk but most of them silly, good- 
 humoredly drunk. I managed to get into my bath 
 robe but it was nearly ten before the hut was cleared 
 so that I could dress. 
 
 Yet four years later, Shikauga asked us to send her 
 a teacher. She helped build a church, was converted 
 and to-day over forty of her people with herself con- 
 stitute a native church in her kraal. 
 
 But even our most optimistic faith would have stag- 
 gered at such a hope then. We had to learn thereby 
 the truth that God's hand is not shortened but that 
 He can certainly save to the uttermost.
 
 m 
 
 PHYSICIAN TO THE KING 
 
 SHIEANGA'S slight form darkened the door- 
 way. She entered, sat dowii on a soap box 
 which served in place of a chair and took a 
 pinch of snuff. She was not used to soap boxes nor 
 chairs either, and the elevation somewhat embarrassed 
 her. After a vigorous blowing of the nose as an 
 after-effect of the snuff, she wiped her hand on her 
 loin cloth, cleared her throat and began. 
 
 As I come to know the oriental better, I marvel 
 more and more at the wonderful simplicity and brev- 
 ity of the Bible. Circumlocution thrives in eastern 
 soil. On the present occasion Shikanga proceeded to 
 set forth at length a long preamble of which I could 
 only understand a little now and then. But when 
 she got through the preliminaries, she announced to 
 me that her father the king was very ill and she 
 wanted me the Mufundisi (teacher) and Nganga 
 (doctor) to go up and give him medicine. 
 
 There were several reasons why I did not want to 
 yield to her request ; one being that I felt reasonably 
 safe living alone in her kraal for I was within call of 
 her own hut. I knew the king's kraal to be a 
 wicked place and one in which a white woman 
 might not be safe unless other white people were near. 
 Even Jonas declared that he would not live there. 
 
 There were other reasons, none of which I could 
 24
 
 Physician to the King 25 
 
 explain to her highness so I merely tried to put her 
 off. But no, her father was sick unto death and I 
 could cure him. I told her I would send him some 
 medicine and by and by would go up. She seemed 
 satisfied and left, and I was happy. 
 
 Not so Shakeni : she knew Shikanga. So she began 
 to lament about the cold up at Mtasa's kraal. Then 
 she went out and brought in three big logs and built 
 a roaring fire, all the time bemoaning how little wood 
 and how much cold there was at Mtasa's. 
 
 There was no outlet for the smoke except at the 
 door and it was soon dense enough to affect the 
 hardest slab of sugar-cured bacon let alone my eyes, 
 and hot enough to roast out a salamander. After 
 supper I tried to write but the wind, which came in 
 under the eaves, blew out the caudle so I went to 
 bed on the home-made couch of sticks and poles. 
 
 That being alongside of the fire, I was worse off 
 than ever. So when there was a fresh burst of lam- 
 entation, I exclaimed, "But roasting me to death 
 down here will not keep you from dying with the cold 
 up there, so pull some of that wood off the fire." 
 Whereat the humorous side of the situation struck 
 Shakeni and she broke into an immoderate fit of 
 laughter. 
 
 The wind blew colder and colder and the fire died 
 down ; the rats raced up and down the walls, Bobby 
 chasing after them ; the bed was hard and a shower 
 of borer dust fell continually from the roof, but I 
 slept well in spite of all. 
 
 Shakeni arose at daylight and no sooner had she 
 opened the door to go out for kindlings, than the na- 
 tives began to pour in, some with eggs, peanuts, or
 
 26 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 meal to sell and some for medicine. As soon as I 
 could dispose of the lot, the door was securely locked 
 until I had had a chance to dress. 
 
 By eight o'clock I had treated fifteen patients of 
 whom many were babies suffering horribly with ec- 
 zema, their hands and feet being a mass of sores so 
 that they had to be bandaged. 
 
 Just as I had sat down to breakfast Shikanga came 
 in again and took her seat on the soap box with great 
 dignity, helped herself to the preliminary pinch of 
 snuff, called Shakeni to come near so that I could 
 surely understand what she was saying and then pro- 
 ceeded in the most matter-of-fact way to tell me that 
 she had engaged two carriers for my loads, and as 
 soon as they had eaten, we would start for Mtasa's 
 kraal, " Ku Guta," she said, which means the capital. 
 
 By nine we were on the trail tramping towards the 
 north. The paths were very slippery from the dried 
 grass on them, and it was a very tired white woman 
 who climbed the steep mountain late that afternoon 
 after doing fourteen miles to its foot. 
 
 After Shikanga had been to see her father, she told 
 me that I had better not see him that night as her 
 father had had " a little too much beer." For which 
 I was glad, not that he was drunk, but that I did 
 not have to see him that day. 
 
 So Shakeni and I slept in a little tent which I had 
 made of unbleached muslin for a child's play tent. 
 Early in the evening a heavy mist settled over the 
 mountain and dripped through our thin shelter, trick- 
 ling down in tiny streams on the inside. The girl's 
 fears of cold were fully realized on that and the suc- 
 ceeding nine weeks of our stay there.
 
 Physician to the King 27 
 
 However she snored soundly all night at my side 
 while I dozed fitfully on account of the cold and the 
 wind which howled through the ravine, whistled 
 through the tree tops and among the giant boulders 
 threatening every moment to carry away what little 
 shelter we did have. 
 
 About nine the next morning, Shikanga came again 
 and with her the king's chief counsellor, Nsebe, to 
 escort me into the royal presence. Nsebe was the 
 right man in the right place. He possessed all the 
 affability, obsequiousness, blandishments, the easy 
 grace and pleasing manners of a French courtier of 
 the middle ages ; and like them, a love of intrigue 
 which was in no wise hampered by a tender con- 
 science. 
 
 Through the raw, white fog which enveloped the 
 mountain, and the incredible filth under our feet, we 
 threaded our way in and out among the huge boul- 
 ders and the little haystack-like huts, under low, 
 arched ways, guarded by sentinels, over slippery 
 rocks, and winding our way upward until we came to 
 a very small hut under the shelter of a huge shelving 
 boulder on the top of which another immense boulder 
 just hung, as it were, by its eyebrows. 
 
 Here Nsebe stopped, began to clap his hands softly 
 and chant something in a dull monotone. After a 
 while, there came a gruff, grumbled response from 
 within and then Nsebe put his hand through an 
 aperture at the side of the door, pulled out the heavy 
 wooden pin which barred it on the inside and entered. 
 
 Squatting down near the door, he told the king who 
 we were and what we had come for, all the time accom- 
 panying all he said by the clapping of hands. And
 
 28 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 this preliminary had to be gone through every visit I 
 made even though, as for weeks, I went to the king 
 two or three times a day. 
 
 This ceremony ended, he came back to the door 
 and called the rest of us in. Not even Shikanga was 
 permitted to enter the royal hut unceremoniously. 
 
 The door was so small, the eaves so low (the inside 
 floor being lower than the outside) that I nearly fell 
 head first into the hut as I entered. Dungeon-like 
 darkness prevailed and at first I could see nothing. 
 Some one took my hand and placed it in the long, 
 bony, outstretched one of the king. Then I saw a 
 gaunt, emaciated figure sitting on a mat and recog- 
 nized the king of the Manika. 
 
 They stirred up the fire into a blaze, and one lighted 
 a piece of caudle I had brought along. What a sight 
 that was before me ! The whole chin and upper lip 
 were one putrid, sloughing sore over which the scabs 
 had formed a half an inch or more in depth while odd 
 sores were scattered all over his neck and body. The 
 stench was sickening. 
 
 Kneeling there in front of him, close to the uow 
 sizzling fire, I worked for a half hour dressing that 
 distorted face. Then I gave him some medicine and 
 left, saying that I would be back at noon to give him 
 more medicine and would dress the sores again at 
 night. For I knew that if I left medicine with in- 
 structions for it to be taken at noon, it would all be 
 drunk at once. If I wanted the medicine taken regu- 
 larly, I must go in person and see that it was done. 
 
 Then I rose painfully from my cramped position 
 and emerged awkwardly out into the cold, raw, misty 
 day. My head reeled, my stomach heaved and what
 
 Physician to the King 29 
 
 with my stiff joints and sore muscles from the previous 
 day's journey, I could hardly walk. 
 
 Did it pay? Yes, a hundred per cent., though the 
 compensation came only after many long days.
 
 THERE'S a new Mtasa now and a new Guta. 
 When the old king died, the customs of the 
 Manika led them to first spend one month 
 of mourning, duriDg which they drowned their grief 
 in native brewed beer, thus using up most of the grain 
 so that a famine followed. During this time the body 
 of the dead chief was slowly dried and smoked over a 
 fire. Then he was secretly buried, after which the 
 old kraal was abandoned so that his wandering 
 spirit might never be disturbed. 
 
 Four years later, we passed through the site of the 
 old kraal. It was a difficult thing to do for the weeds 
 and grass had grown up into an almost impenetrable 
 jungle. None of the huts were left : there were only 
 a few foundations to mark the once so familiar 
 ground. 
 
 There was the huge pile of rocks which we called 
 the Giant' s Cause way ; there was where Chimbadzwa's 
 group of huts had stood ; there was the big, ship-like 
 boulder under which Benzi was buried. Was Benzi 
 really murdered? We will probably never know. 
 But the wild, savage, hopeless frenzy of that funeral 
 is something never to be forgotten. 
 
 And here was where the Imp and Terror used to 
 30
 
 The Passing of Ufambasiku 31 
 
 play. They were bad little girls, as bad as the 
 nicknames we gave them. The Terror has long since 
 been at the Old Umtali school and become a fine 
 Christian girl. She may be married now. Several 
 of our promising young evangelists had spoken for 
 her hand two years ago. 
 
 And there was where I held daily dispensary, 
 treating dozens of patients among whom were Mu- 
 ledzwa, Shikanga's sister, and her daughter Mukon- 
 yerwa. She was wild too in those days, wild and 
 boisterous and rough but not especially vicious. 
 What a change came over her at the school ! Sorrow 
 matured her and Christ reclaimed her for His very 
 own. She is Stephen's wife now, a teacher to her 
 own people on an out station, a woman refined, dig- 
 nified and singularly attractive. 
 
 Up yonder is the shelving rock and on it the big 
 boulder still hangs by its eyebrows. It always seemed 
 to me as if it needed no more than the slamming of 
 the hut door to bring it crashing down. 
 
 And there was that massive face of sheer, solid, 
 unscalable rock at the back of the kraal, the cap 
 stone of the mountain. Only the droves of baboons 
 could get a foothold there. How they would chat- 
 ter ! And I can hear again as I heard it that cold 
 morning, the deep, bass "Ha, ha, ha" of some big 
 brute who broke the stillness with an unmistakable 
 laugh. 
 
 We made our way slowly through the masses of 
 blackjacks whose seeds stuck to us until we resembled 
 porcupines. It was only seven years ago that Ufam- 
 basiku died and the new Mtasa, Chiobvu, his son, 
 began to reign. But changes are many and rapid in
 
 32 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 Ehodesia so that there are probably but few left who 
 remember the old Mtasa and the old Guta. 
 
 I heard various versions of his history some of 
 which agreed. Jonas gave me the most realistic re- 
 cital of the usual version, before ever I went up to 
 treat the king, while still at Hartzell Villa. The 
 wind was wailing around the house and the one tallow 
 candle in my little study flickered unsteadily, throw- 
 ing long dark shadows into the hall. 
 
 Jonas' voice dropped almost to a whisper as he 
 told how the king had been wont to visit the usurper's 
 kraal ever in the night by stealth. At length he 
 succeeded in getting an intrigue with one of the wives. 
 It was the custom of the king to sleep in a different 
 hut every night so that no enemy could find him. 
 This wife agreed to tell Ufambasiku (The-oue-who- 
 walks-at-night) when the pseudo king came to her 
 hut. 
 
 This hut was in a seemingly inaccessible position 
 but she, at a given signal, let down a rope up which 
 the rightful successor climbed. Jonas' voice dropped 
 into a tragic whisper until it died out altogether as 
 he drew his hand significantly across his throat. 
 And Mtasa had held the power he had so violently 
 secured for about forty or fifty years, a reign of abso- 
 lute despotism until the advent of the white pioneers 
 in 1890. 
 
 I had done my best to redeem the old man's diseased 
 and almost decayed body. He improved rapidly at 
 first. The sores on his face and head were all healed 
 and he got so that he walked out. He went a mile 
 or two one day. Then the witch doctor told him he 
 was well. I told him he was not and that he must
 
 The Passing of Ufambasiku 33 
 
 still take great care, live a clean life, stick to his 
 medicine or he would surely die. But on the strength 
 of the witch doctor's statement, he held a council of 
 his head men who passed a resolution affirming his 
 complete recovery and then he had a big dance and 
 a big drunk and in two weeks all the benefits of 
 seven were wiped out and Mtasa' s days were surely 
 numbered. 
 
 I had had to leave him. I shall never forget the 
 pain it gave me when I paid my farewell visit to him. 
 He could no longer sit up. Shikanga was there, 
 Muledzwa, Nyakwanikwa, his notoriously wicked 
 sister, and Nsebe, of course. Custom forbade that I 
 should speak, or any of his own people for that 
 matter, directly to the king. So Nsebe, as ever, in- 
 terpreted. 
 
 There was an agony in the old king's face, an ap- 
 pealing interrogation which I tried to answer. I 
 said, " Mtasa, you are going to take a long journey 
 into an Unknown Country. When I came up here, 
 I did not know your paths. There is not a single 
 one you do not know. So I asked you for a guide 
 and you always gave me one. 
 
 " Now you are going where you will need a Guide 
 and I have come to give you one. Jesus Christ, our 
 Saviour, is the only one who can guide you into the 
 Land Beyond." 
 
 The dying man strained his deafening ears and 
 turning to Nsebe said, " What is that she is saying ? " 
 
 " She says she is going away," answered Nsebe, 
 blandly. It was no use. Perhaps they told him 
 later ; I doubt it. And so he passed away. 
 
 There's a new Mtasa now and a new kraal in every
 
 34 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 sense of the word. There's a big mission up there 
 now also and many converts. Old things are slowly 
 passing away, and not so very slowly either. Still 
 it takes time for the thorough renewal of a nation. 
 But God's work is going gloriously on.
 
 V 
 
 THE MAKING OF A DICTIONARY 
 
 " 1 MBST catch your hare," is a familiar adage. 
 
 1-^ The first thing in a new country is to get 
 
 JL the language. With only a small, imper- 
 fect dictionary compiled hastily in a district several 
 hundred miles away from us, we had to begin at the 
 very beginning as scores of other missionaries have 
 had to do among the hundreds of dialects of the 
 Bantu people. 
 
 So I asked the Lord to send me a boy who would 
 teach me the language and He sent me Jonas. Com- 
 mend me to a boy for information. If it is to be had, 
 he's got it ; and if he's got it, he is willing to impart 
 it A live boy generally makes it his particular busi- 
 ness to know what is going on around him. 
 
 So Jonas and I went up to Hartzell Villa to live. 
 It was a beautiful eight-roomed house way up on the 
 side of Mt. Hartzell more than a quarter of a mile 
 from all the other mission buildings. It had been 
 built by a surveyor, Mr. Pickett, at a cost of $20,000. 
 When the town moved and the government com- 
 pensated the property owners for their houses and 
 then turned the old town and all its buildings over to 
 Bishop Hartzell for an industrial mission, Mrs. 
 Hartzell chose this house for the Woman's Foreign 
 Missionary Society. The bishop deeded it over to 
 
 35
 
 36 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 that Society together with a fine plot of thirty acres 
 of land. 
 
 So I named it Hartzell Villa by which name the 
 deed is recorded. Jonas and I did "light house- 
 keeping." He was engaged ostensibly to do the 
 housework but as there was so little to do, he spent 
 two-thirds of his time in my study teaching me the 
 language. 
 
 There was little cooking to do for it was at the 
 close of the Boer war and prices were high. Eggs 
 were $5.00 a dozen, cabbages $1.25 each, and every- 
 thing else in proportion. Therefore, we lived very 
 simply, indeed. 
 
 As to furniture, I had a bed, a table, couch, two 
 chairs and a baby organ. Everything else was made 
 of packing and provision boxes dressed up in calico 
 caps and petticoats. 
 
 I had no stove for the first six months. Mr. De- 
 Witt said he had sent home for one and would give 
 me his when the new one came provided it lasted 
 that long and did not go to pieces on the way up. 
 
 In six months' time, the new stove came from 
 America and one day I heard a knock at my back 
 door and there was the old stove on a wheelbarrow 
 with two or three natives to do the pushing and two 
 white men to hold it together. 
 
 They set it up on bricks the legs had disappeared, 
 no one knew where. One cover lid was missing so 
 they brought a teakettle to set on that hole. 
 
 Nevertheless we were proud of having a stove even 
 though it did have fits smoking us nearly out of 
 house and home at such times. Doubtless the same 
 stove is still in use at Hartzell Villa to-day.
 
 The Making of a Dictionary 37 
 
 But with such limitations, neither Jonas nor I were 
 tied down to house work and my purpose of studying 
 the language was accomplished. 
 
 It surely would have been funny to an observer. I 
 did not know any of the Chikaranga nor did Jonas 
 know English. His keen desire to learn the latter 
 was all that kept him useful all those tedious 
 months. We exchanged commodities along the 
 linguistic line. 
 
 It was desperately hard at first. Jonas did not 
 know what I wanted and I had not even a few native 
 words at my command with which to make myself 
 clear. If only I could have known the one word 
 "name" or the brief sentence, "What is this?" I 
 could have got on so much better. 
 
 As it was, I had to talk English which made me 
 feel idiotic for I knew Jonas could not understand it, 
 and a vigorous use of my hands which were far 
 more intelligible. It was not so bad with nouns. 
 Thank fortune that a noun is the name of an object. 
 You can point to an object and even the most stupid 
 savage will soon get to know what you want. But the 
 rest of the parts of speech came very reluctantly 
 onto the platform. It takes long, weary weeks and 
 sharp eyes and ears to get them. 
 
 And then there are the abstract words. It took 
 me six months to find out the name for the local 
 dialect of the Manika. I knew that the language 
 prefix throughout the Bantu tongue was Jci or some 
 adaptation of it. Thus the language of the Bafiote is 
 Kifiote and the language of the Waswahili, Kiswahili. 
 But Jonas shook his head at all my efforts. 
 
 One day I was in the kitchen where he and
 
 38 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 Shaken!, who was paying me a visit, were laughing 
 and joking merrily together. I could follow much 
 of the conversation. Jonas was doing a little brag- 
 ging of his own and with a glow of pride remarked 
 as he stepped out of doors to hang up the dish wiper, 
 "She understands Chinyika perfectly. She knows 
 everything you say." 
 
 He did not, however, have the slightest idea that I 
 could understand. I almost jumped with joy. 
 Nyika I knew was land or the country: Chinyika 
 was the language of the country. Eureka ! I'd got 
 it at last ! 
 
 As I got my list of words from Jonas daily, one or 
 more of the other missionaries would take them and 
 verify them with other natives on the place. Then I 
 entered them in alphabetical order in a small note- 
 book. The spelling was phonetical and often had to 
 be changed later when the small book gave way to a 
 larger and the second to a still larger book. 
 
 Then the time came when it all had to be typed, 
 once more gone over with several natives from 
 different parts of the country and then retyped again. 
 That did not mean perfection, far from it. But it 
 did mean that it was ready for printing. It took 
 four years to collect, classify, verify and prepare 
 2,000 native and 4,000 English words. 
 
 But probably those years of work were worth more 
 to me personally than to any one else. I came to 
 know the natives as only one can who is able to talk 
 with them in their own tongue. I got to know so 
 much of their ways and to see things through their 
 eyes. And knowing them, I learned to love them.
 
 VI 
 
 THE BANTU AND THEIR LANGUAGES 
 
 THE name of Bantu was first used by Dr. 
 Bleek, the first great philologist to deal 
 with the African languages. He applied it 
 to the vast number of tribes throughout this conti- 
 nent whose language is notable for its prefix-pro- 
 nominal system, all of which have the word Bantu, 
 or some slightly varying form, used to designate men, 
 people. 
 
 In its primitive sense, ntu means head. Mu-ntu, is 
 one head or one person and ba-ntu is the plural form. 
 
 The Bantu occupy a territory from five degrees 
 north to seventeen degrees south latitude on the west 
 coast and from the equator to thirty-three degrees 
 south on the east coast thus covering the entire 
 centre of the continent from the Atlantic to the 
 Indian Oceans. 
 
 The languages arise from a common stem but have 
 become divided into groups which differ from each 
 other like Spanish and Portugese, or Italian and 
 French. Inside these groups, there are numerous 
 dialects not more marked than Scotch and English, 
 or Danish and Norwegian. Such is the case with the 
 Chikaranga which is used in the eastern part of 
 Southern Rhodesia. 
 
 The historian Theal voices the opinion of all others 
 who have made special study of the Bantu languages 
 
 39
 
 40 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 in various parts of the continent, when he says, 
 "The language spoken by the Bantu is of high 
 order, subject to strict grammatical rules, and 
 adequate for the expression of any ideas whatever. 
 It has no clicks although the Zulus have adopted 
 three from the Bushman-Hottentots and only in cer- 
 tain tribes are there to be found certain sibilating 
 sounds which are difficult for an adult foreigner to 
 acquire." 
 
 The construction differs entirely from all European 
 tongues. There is no gender and the nouns are the 
 governing factor in the sentence. These nouns are 
 divided into classes which vary in number among 
 different tribes but which average about twelve, ac- 
 cording to Torrend. 
 
 These classes are formed by the governing prefix of 
 the noun : thus muntu, bantu belong naturally to the 
 mu-ba class ; chigaro, chair, zwigaro, chairs, belongs 
 to the chi-zwi class. This prefix must be incorporated 
 into all the pronouns, adjectives and verbs connected 
 with it in the sentence, thus : Chigaro changu chikuru 
 wachiwona here ? Chair mine big, you saw it, did 
 you ? Or smoothly, have you seen my big chair f 
 
 This is not so difficult to learn. The real difficul- 
 ties of the language present themselves where the 
 original prefixes have been dropped from usage in the 
 noun itself but are obliged to reappear throughout 
 the sentence. Now ngombe is the one form for both 
 an ox and oxen, having in the process of time dropped 
 its i-dzi prefixes. In usage, however, ngombe yangu, 
 is my ox, ngombe dzangu, my oxen. 
 
 Closer study of this last named class of nouns shows 
 that originally they had the prefix fi or yi in the
 
 The Bantu and Their Languages 41 
 
 singular as all Bantu words originally began with a 
 consonant and ended with a vowel. This is still true 
 of some of the older, purer forms of the west coast 
 dialects. And, whenever any Bantu word ends in a 
 consonant, it is a corruption with some foreign ele- 
 ment. 
 
 Nothing is yet known with certainty of the origin 
 of the Bantu. It is quite certain that they have been 
 in Africa at least two thousand years and it seems 
 evident that their migration over the continent was 
 not extensive prior to 2,000 years ago. It is prob- 
 able that they came to Africa as early as 3,000 years 
 ago. The ruins testify to that. The traces of 
 Semitic blood in the Makaranga give strong colour 
 to the theory that these were the people used by the 
 Sabeans or Phoenicians for the building of these ruins. 
 
 Many great writers and explorers are of the opinion 
 that the Bantu are of Semitic rather than Hamitic 
 stock. Dr. Bleek also thought that there could be no 
 doubt but that the Papuan, Polynesian and Malay 
 languages were related to it and that the prefix -pre- 
 nominal system forms almost one continuous belt of 
 languages on both sides of the equator, from the 
 mouth of the Senegal to the Sandwich Islands. 
 
 The Hausa language of the Niger Valley is the 
 only one which was found reduced to writing and 
 with a literature of its own. Sir Harry Johnson says 
 of it, " This most remarkable Hausa speech is a con- 
 necting link between the Hamitic and Negro language 
 groups. Even at the present day, there are many 
 links existing which show the original connection 
 both physical and linguistic between the Arab and 
 the Negro."
 
 42 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 The same writer has also recently brought to light 
 the interesting fact that the little pigmies of the great 
 forests have been found not to have any language of 
 their own but that in all cases they have adopted and 
 adapted the dialect of their nearest Bantu neighbours. 
 
 The past history of the Bantu is and always will be 
 dark. But, thank God, a brighter future is before 
 them.
 
 VII 
 
 DIFFICULTIES OF AN UNKNOWN TONGUE 
 
 WE were over at the Umtali Academy and it 
 was tea time. Americans at home can- 
 not realize the enjoyment of the four 
 o'clock cup o' tea in Africa. It is an oasis in the 
 desert ; a half hour in the day when all the cares and 
 burdens are dropped and social relaxation prolongs 
 life and health. 
 
 It was a particularly delightful period at the 
 Academy. This afternoon there was a new and a 
 green boy in the kitchen. The tea was too strong for 
 
 one of the visitors so Miss J called the boy and 
 
 told him to bring up some hot water (chisa manzi, she 
 said). He understood that hot water was wanted but 
 all the particulars being left out he was left to his own 
 wits and resources to supply the rest. 
 
 Tired of waiting, the tea was drunk and all was 
 over when the guests were highly amused to see the 
 youth staggering into the room with the corrugated 
 iron bath tub in which was a bucket or two of hot 
 water. What else should any one want hot water 
 for ? Poor boy ! He beat a hasty retreat under the 
 fire of laughter which greeted his appearance. 
 
 There was a certain white man in the country who 
 married a new wife right out from England. As he 
 had been in the country some years, he tried to im- 
 press on her his excellent knowledge of the native 
 language. 
 
 43
 
 44 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 The poor woman had no end of mistakes like thp 
 tea party affair and the only consolation she got from 
 her husband was, u Now the fault is not the boy's. 
 If you could only talk to the natives like I can, you 
 would have no difficulty." 
 
 There was a well on the farm on which they lived 
 and one day the bucket dropped off and necessitated 
 the lord of the manor going down himself to fish it up 
 and tie it on again. Two natives turned the crank 
 at the top according to his instructions. 
 
 The job done, he looked up and shouted, " Panzi, 
 up." They knew what panzi meant, which was down. 
 The English they had never heard before. So they 
 let out a little more rope. " Panzi, up," shouted the 
 white man angrily as his feet were covered with 
 water. They unwound another turn and the water 
 came up to his waist. Another yell caused another 
 turn and only his chin was above the cold waters. 
 He was now convinced that the rascals intended 
 murder and he shouted with desperate frenzy, 
 "Panzi, up." 
 
 One of the natives now looked over the curbing 
 down into the well and said earnestly using the only 
 English word he knew, "Boss, tambo pelale," that 
 is, the rope is finished. That was all that saved him. 
 
 Another bride came to the country, a bonny, rosy- 
 cheeked English lassie. She was very much troubled 
 about a hut out in their back yard. It was the most 
 miserable pretense of a shack, patched together with 
 tin from old packing boxes. Beside the house serv- 
 ants three or four natives who were employed in her 
 husband's store had to sleep in it. 
 
 Now the majority of the white people talk a kind
 
 Difficulties of an Unknown Tongue 45 
 
 of mixed jargon known as Kitchen Kaffir. It's a 
 marvellous jingo in which conjugations and declen- 
 sions are thrown to the winds and one word is used 
 in at least fifty different senses and the native serv- 
 ants must be clever enough to know what is meant 
 rather than what is said. 
 
 The word suka then, is used for anything from 
 washing, bathing, sweeping, cleaning, down: susa, 
 on the other hand, is used in an infinite variety of 
 senses but its primitive meaning is to tear down, 
 throw away or destroy. 
 
 One day the bride decided that she would neglect 
 her own house that day and give her servants a 
 chance to tidy up their own little place. For being 
 new to the country, she supposed the boys had 
 this miserable shanty where they were all hud- 
 dled together by preference, not knowing anything 
 better. 
 
 " Now, Sixpence," she began with a most charming 
 smile, "I no want you work for Missis to-day. Go 
 susa lo house kawena." They were used to white 
 folks so they thought they knew what she meant. 
 The pretty bride wanted that miserable hut torn 
 down. And for once they wasted no time and by 
 the time their master came back at noon, every ves- 
 tige of the shanty had disappeared. 
 
 "It's my fault," pleaded the little woman half in 
 tears. u I meant to have said suka and I said susa." 
 
 11 The rascals knew well enough what you meant," 
 he stormed angrily. 
 
 "Of course it was all a mistake," she said to me 
 afterwards, "but I am rather glad now I made it. 
 The old shanty did look bad." I was glad too.
 
 46 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 It was one of Sweden's natural born linguists who 
 one day overheard an engineer at a mine talking to 
 a raw native whose sole clothing consisted of a five 
 cent piece of calico which had been worn until all 
 trace of the original colour had been lost The en- 
 gineer said to this boy, "Go to the engine, kangala lo 
 glass and come tell me if there is plenty manzi in the 
 boiler." The boy looked at him dazed ; for even the 
 native words belonged to a tribe 600 miles away from 
 his. The engineer was in a rage and turning to the 
 Swede exclaimed in a passion, " What's the use of a 
 white man spending twenty years to learn Kaffir? 
 These natives don't know their own language when 
 they hear it!" 
 
 It was one of our Umtali missionaries who told a 
 native to fora, take, a hand cart to some place. Now 
 tora with the native has the meaning of carrying 
 something on the head. So when the missionary 
 went to see why the cart was not forthcoming, he 
 found the native vainly striving to get it up onto his 
 head to carry it that way. 
 
 There is an exclamation of astonishment which is 
 common among the Ehodesian natives, "Maiwe!" 
 Mother thou ! It is usually pronounced, Ma ee way, 
 very like, My way. One white man, new to the 
 country, heard this without knowing its meaning 
 and supposed the native was talking English. He 
 got fearfully irritated over his inability to make his 
 servant understand all his wants and wishes, believ- 
 ing that it was pure obstinacy and cheek on the boy's 
 part. So one day as the amazed youth exclaimed 
 " Maiwe," he seized him by the neck and shouted to 
 the great amusement of the other white man who
 
 Difficulties of an Unknown Tongue 47 
 
 heard him, "I'll show you if it's your way or not. I 
 want you to know that you've got to do my way.' 1 ' 1 
 
 It was a Congo missionary who glibly told the na- 
 tives the angels and devils were all the same. Many 
 other equally bad and even worse mistakes are made, 
 but in spite of all the disadvantages, the natives get 
 to hear the Good News in an intelligible form and 
 then they themselves scatter the seed far and wide in 
 their own idioms which the white men seldom fully 
 acquire.
 
 vm 
 
 DOWN THE AGES 
 
 THE hut was dark, smoky, cold and draughty 
 within. Outside, the kraal was bathed in 
 a flood of moonlight which lit up the huge 
 boulders, caressed the dingy huts, concealed the lit- 
 ter and rubbish and turned the dirty old kraal into a 
 fairy-land. 
 
 Yielding myself to the charm, I crawled through 
 the tiny aperture called a door, wiped my eyes which 
 wept on account of the smoke and gazed about me 
 with a thrill of admiration. I wondered how it 
 would all look from an old fortification high up 
 among the boulders, a favourite, secluded spot of 
 mine by day. There was no one in sight so I hurried 
 down the main path and was soon hidden from view 
 among the big rocks as I climbed upward. 
 
 This place was on a great flat rock with a stone 
 parapet all around it. The main path from the lower 
 kraal passed at the foot of its perpendicular side some 
 fifty feet below. Indeed the top leaned a little over 
 the path. 
 
 The view from here was magnificent. Within 
 stone's throw was an open space where near a big 
 tree there was a cluster of the little huts which 
 strongly resembled haystacks. I could hear the hum 
 of voices which rose from those huts. Only two 
 nights ago there was a murder in one of them and 
 
 48
 
 Down the Ages 49 
 
 yesterday I attended the funeral ! What a wild, 
 frenzied, hopeless occasion that was ! Some day 
 these people will get to know the Comforter but to- 
 night there are only fearful, aching hearts. 
 
 The view is indeed magnificent ! Over on the 
 other side of the valley is Chiriwadzumbo which 
 with this mountain, Bingahuru, forms what is known 
 as the Gateway to Inyanga. Majestic gateway of 
 God's own making ! I have always felt as though 
 standing in His presence as I have looked upon it. 
 And there in the moonlight I seemed to lose hold on 
 the present as I looked down that deep, dark valley 
 whose sides were wrapped in silver sheen. It seemed 
 to me that I could see as in a vision the countless 
 generations who had passed adown it, see them in a 
 procession 4,000 years long pass by as on review. I 
 could hear the merry laughter of their young men 
 and maidens, the cries of the infants, the songs of 
 the dancers, the wailing of the mourners and the 
 lash of the slave-driver as it fell on an army of bare 
 and bleeding backs, the army of slaves who built up 
 these thousands of ruins all over the country here- 
 abouts. Who were their masters? Were they 
 Sabeans or Phoenicians ? And were the slaves Ne- 
 groes or Asiatics ? 
 
 We shall never know. They are gone and their 
 secret is buried with them. For them have ceased 
 "the voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness, the 
 voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, 
 the sound of the millstones, and the light of the can- 
 dle." The luxurious prince with his harem of beau- 
 tiful women, and the groaning, bleeding slave have 
 these thousands of years become common dust. The
 
 50 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 ruins in this beautiful valley tell us that they lived 
 here, but the places once so familiar to them now 
 know them no more forever. 
 
 These same heavens declared the glory of God to 
 them, and this same starry firmament showed to them 
 His handiwork. The same rising sun spoke to them 
 of an Almighty Hand ; this same silver moon uttered 
 its knowledge of a divine Creator. Some of their 
 sages and prophets read the heavenly Book aright and 
 gave Him the worship their hearts prompted. Some 
 of them made maps of the constellations and we have 
 found them engraved on solid stone. 
 
 No doubt they had their true prophets who warned 
 the people against the vile Phallic, Baal and Ashtaroth 
 worship introduced by the gold seekers of that ancient 
 time, priests like Melchisedek without pedigree, and 
 like him also without posterity. Had they listened 
 to the message of the living God in this probable land 
 of Havalah, they would not have wiped themselves 
 out by their own gross excesses as it seems so proba- 
 ble that they did do. 
 
 Two men come up the path and their talking arrests 
 my train of thought and brings me back to the pres- 
 ent. I recognize one of them as Chimbadzwa, the 
 king's son, and the other an older man. As they 
 walk along deep in conversation, armed with knives 
 and spears as usual, they suddenly halt and turning 
 around look up in my direction. It is then that I 
 realize what an unwise thing I have done in coming 
 out thus alone. But they soon recognize me and go 
 their ways and I am left alone. 
 
 But my train of thought is broken. Soon I must 
 leave this mountain where I have spent long weeks.
 
 Down the Ages 51 
 
 Over yonder where the trees and boulders throw their 
 long, black shadows, the old king is fighting his last 
 battle and must lose. His has been a cruel, despotic 
 reign for nearly forty years. O what scenes these 
 hillsides have witnessed ! The very stones cry out 
 against the bloodshed and murder they have seen ! 
 
 But the king's warfare is near its end. And when 
 the end comes, they will bury him secretly and then 
 move away and leave his spirit, as they believe, to 
 wander about the old haunts undisturbed by any liv- 
 ing man. 
 
 The silence of the night will then only be broken 
 by the uncanny hoot of the owl, the mournful wail of 
 the hyena, the startling bark of some huge baboon or 
 the piercing cry of the leopard. 
 
 As the old king has lived so will he die and thus 
 will he be buried. But for his people there are bet- 
 ter things in store. Aye, for them already "the sun 
 of righteousness has arisen with healing in his wings."
 
 BEAT SCOTT ! " exclaimed Harriet, sitting 
 bolt upright, " there's a snake as big as 
 your head." 
 
 "Where ? " I asked sleepily rousing up. 
 
 "Why, it glided just over the corner of the rug 
 there," she replied with a grimace of horror. 
 
 "Just you keep your eye on it, sister, will you, 
 while I finish my nap," I replied as I sank back. It 
 was a fearfully hot day and my friend, Miss Johnson, 
 and I had walked six miles that morning to reach 
 Shakeni's kraal. 
 
 At noon we had had our lunch disturbed by discov- 
 ering a snake in the tree over our heads so that famil- 
 iarity was breeding contempt. We were so tired and 
 the day was so drowsy that in spite of snakes and 
 the fact that our rug was spread over nothing softer 
 than a ledge of rock, we soon dosed off for a cat -nap. 
 
 And then Shakeni came. 
 
 Not long after I had first moved into Hartzell Villa, 
 I saw a ludicrous figure going along the wagon road 
 at the foot of the mountain. She wore a man's sailor 
 hat and a lot of old European clothes which were a 
 decided misfit. She was followed by two little girls 
 who looked like boys. 
 
 Some native men were digging near the house and 
 I asked them who the girl was. They only smiled 
 significantly to each other and vouchsafed no reply. 
 
 52
 
 Shaken! 53 
 
 Just then the apparition being embarrassed by the 
 eyes focused on her, broke into a run, and as the hat 
 would not stay on her head, she snatched it off and 
 carried it in her hand. We all laughed heartily. 
 
 Two or three days after that she came back and I 
 met her. She wanted to spend the night so I took 
 her and the two little girls into the house. They were 
 all three dreadfully dirty but I was fishing for the 
 Master so I kept them until the next afternoon. I 
 couldn't talk with them so I taught Shakeni to sew a 
 pretty piuk pillow, the first sewing she ever did. 
 
 Jonas regarded them with undisguised disgust. 
 The two children, Marusinyenyi and Mutisiswa, were 
 particularly dirty and unattractive girls of about ten 
 or eleven years of age. 
 
 They came again and stayed two or three days and 
 I showed Shakeni how to sew patchwork. She was 
 so delighted. As she was a girl of nineteen or twenty, 
 I asked, "Where is your husband?" She smiled 
 charmingly and replied, "I have no husband." 
 Another woman said the same thing, you remember. 
 
 As she departed on that occasion, Jonas came in an 
 inch taller from conscious superiority. 
 
 "O these Manika women!" he exclaimed, "how 
 dirty they are. Look at the difference between 
 Shakeni' s hands and mine ! These women never wash 
 their hands. Ugh!" With which explosion he 
 turned to the kitchen. 
 
 That evening I said to him, "Why isn't Shakeni 
 married?" 
 
 Jonas shrugged his shoulders expressively. 
 
 " Why isn't she married ? " I persisted. The ques- 
 tion had to be repeated several times before he re-
 
 54 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 luctantly answered, " Because she cut her upper teeth 
 first" 
 
 I was sure my ears deceived me, but he went on to 
 explain. 
 
 " In our country it is very, very bad to cut the up- 
 per teeth first. Do your children ever do so ? " I 
 had to frankly admit that I did not know which teeth 
 usually came first, and that it made no difference to us. 
 
 "Well, it does tows," replied Jonas emphatically. 
 " A child that cuts the upper teeth first is bewitched 
 and it is the custom of our people to bury such a 
 child alive." 
 
 I asked if some other mode of cutting short the 
 child's earthly career would not do just as well. 
 Jonas was horrified at the suggestion. Any other 
 method would be cruelty. 
 
 "But," said Jonas with a sigh, "I suppose her 
 mother loved her baby and did not want to do it, 
 anyhow she didn't (his gesture expressed his opinion 
 that such was a pity), and now there isn't a man in 
 the country would marry her." 
 
 "Why not?" Tasked. 
 
 " Because he would die," said Jonas emphatically. 
 
 " How soon would he die ? As soon as they were 
 married f " I asked. 
 
 Jonas became cautious. " He might and then he 
 might not." 
 
 "Well, would he die in a week?" Jonas was 
 more cautious. We are all bold in setting forth glit- 
 tering generalities but to get down to a specific case 
 is another thing. 
 
 "Would he die in a mouth then?" Jonas was 
 nettled.
 
 Shakeni 55 
 
 " Don't you see, Missis," lie exclaimed in an ex- 
 asperated tone, " he might die at once, he might die 
 in a week, he might die in a month. Or he might 
 live years and they might have children and the 
 children might grow up but sooner or later he would 
 surely die." 
 
 "I'm sure he would," I retorted laughing heartily. 
 " Did you ever know a man who married a woman 
 who didn't die, Jonas'?" 
 
 But Jonas refused to discuss such a serious ques- 
 tion further. 
 
 And this was the girl, a remarkable beauty, at 
 large. 
 
 Soon Jonas would be leaving me and I had made 
 this visit to the kraal to get this girl to come and 
 live with me. Jonas had previously approached her 
 on the same subject. 
 
 I was surprised as I found her in the kraal to see 
 how neat and clean she was. And her two sisters 
 were also cleaner. It was beautiful to see how they 
 adored this big sister of theirs. 
 
 Her mother also welcomed us most graciously and 
 the three days spent in the kraal were pleasant ones 
 if the nights were not and I returned to Hartzell 
 Villa with a light step and a lighter heart. At 
 last I was to have a native girl to live with me ! 
 
 I found Shakeni a treasure, indeed ! She had been 
 an outcast from babyhood and responded to the love 
 and attention I gave her as a flower responds to the 
 sun. 
 
 She was remarkably quick to learn either books, 
 sewing, or, what was harder yet, me. My grasp of 
 the language was as yet very weak. I managed to
 
 56 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 use quite a few words but I had not been able to as 
 yet get hold of the grammatical construction. 
 
 Shaken! soon learned what I wanted to say and to 
 repeat it after me to the women and girls of the 
 kraals where we live. 
 
 For nine months she was with me day and night 
 whether I was at home or in the kraals, except one 
 night when her mother sent for her to go to Penha- 
 langa to see a sick uncle. Afterwards, I bitterly re- 
 gretted allowing her to go there. I did not know as 
 much of native ways as I did later. 
 
 Shakeni learned to do what house work there was 
 to do and did it well. She learned, as I said, to read 
 quickly and had gone through the Primer in nine 
 months' time and a Chikaranga Primer is of neces- 
 sity much harder than the English one. 
 
 She learned to sew, to make her own clothes, al- 
 though she did not do the fine sewing Marita, Gumba 
 and the other girls did later on. 
 
 Had the shadow of the curse not been on her, 
 Shakeni would have been undoubtedly our first Bible 
 woman. That was what I hoped but it was not to be. 
 That honour was Marita' s who certainly deserved 
 some honour after walking six hundred miles to come 
 to our school. 
 
 But Shakeni was my first love among the Manika 
 girls and women. She was the most beautiful of 
 them all and the most affectionate as well, though 
 this may have been because I was the first person 
 who did not consider her possessed of an evil spirit. 
 
 And as I look back, I feel that the work of the five 
 years would not have been in vain had I reached no 
 other girl than ShakeuL
 
 SHAKEN! sat on the front door-step under the 
 heavily laden passion-vine which formed into 
 an arch over her head and then trailed grace- 
 fully along the front veranda of Hartzell Villa. 
 She had finished her morning's lesson, a chapter of 
 Matthew in the vernacular, but it was evident her 
 mind was not on her books. Still her listlessness 
 might have been because it was a very hot morning. 
 
 Now she sat in the full blaze of the sun twirling a 
 corner of her robe nervously and watching her 
 teacher's darning-needle pass in and out of a gar- 
 ment which was almost hopelessly worn out. 
 
 It was Jim, so Jonas said, who had one day been 
 washing with the other boys at the river, and who 
 held up a garment of Mr. Springer's and said in dis- 
 gust, " Look at that ! Is that fit for a white man to 
 wear? Why doesn't he give that to a boy 1 " 
 
 "This is a sample of the luxuries we missionaries 
 live in," thought the teacher, and she smiled invol- 
 untarily at the thought. 
 
 Shakeni saw the smile and gathered up courage, 
 and with an attempt to speak off-handed said, 
 " When this moon is finished, I am going to the 
 kraal." 
 
 The teacher was not at all surprised. She had 
 57
 
 58 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 read it in the girl for the past month so she merely 
 said, " You are going home to dig your field ? " 
 
 "Yes," she answered with a sigh of relief. And 
 now that the dreaded ordeal of telling the news was 
 over, she hastened into the house to find some work. 
 
 The missionary leaned back in her chair and the 
 work fell into her lap as she unconsciously watched 
 the sunlight gleaming among the trellised vines. 
 Her mind was on her one girl pupil in the land 
 where girls are so hard to get. It seemed as if her 
 heart would break to have this beautiful girl go 
 back to her old life. She had been more than a 
 pupil ; she had been a constant companion day and 
 night for eight months. 
 
 However, a change had recently come over the girl 
 and the teacher knew that it was of no use to try and 
 force her to stay. She must go. But the seed had 
 been sown and it surely would bring forth fruit in 
 time. 
 
 The crickets in the tall grass chirped merrily 
 and the birds whistled a lively tune. "Yes," she 
 said to herself softly, "it is best that she should go. 
 She is in His care. Our times are in His hands." 
 And with that comfort, the load was lifted from her 
 heart and she took up her darning. 
 
 That evening, the frugal supper ended and the 
 dishes washed, Shakeni went into the study for the 
 usual evening chat. As she set the lamp down on 
 the little home-made table, her heart smote her. 
 How she would miss these daily talks during which 
 there had been so much mutual instruction ! She 
 had learned a little English and a great deal about 
 the wide, wide world whose horizon had heretofore
 
 Her First Vacation 59 
 
 not extended beyond Mashonalaud. And she had 
 taught her teacher much about her own language 
 and her people. 
 
 What a difference between the neat, clean, cozy 
 study and the dark, dirty, cheerless hut which she 
 would occupy a week hence. She loathed the life of 
 the kraal. Why then was she going back ? Alas ! 
 The curse of a heathen superstition was upon her 
 and she must go back and bear its blight. 
 
 Shakeni was no ordinary girl and she loved the 
 bright and the beautiful passionately. She was 
 keenly sensitive to the coloured walls of Hartzell 
 Villa, and the bright calicos which converted old pack- 
 ing and provision boxes into useful furniture. She 
 loved the pretty cards which decorated the walls ; 
 she had liked the quiet and had enjoyed the learn- 
 ing. However, the curse was upon her: she must 
 
 go- 
 
 11 Now," said her teacher, " when you get back to 
 the kraal, I want you to gather the little children 
 around you and teach them the things you have 
 learned here, especially your two sisters, Marusin- 
 yenyi and Mutisiswa. I want you to teach them to 
 sing these hymns, teach them to pray, read to them 
 out of this little book of Matthew. If you don't you 
 will soon forget all you ever knew. Will you do it ? " 
 
 "Yes, Missis," she replied softly. 
 
 Monday morning came and she was up at 4 : 30. 
 It had been arranged that Charley Potter should take 
 her place so Charley came up early to get breakfast 
 but she insisted in setting the table for her teacher 
 herself for the last time and to cook that last meal. 
 Just before it was ready, she went into the study and
 
 60 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 said, " Can't we have prayers before breakfast to- 
 day? I want to sing once more before I go." For 
 she wanted to get on the trail before the sun was hot 
 
 Family prayers that morning were more like a 
 funeral service. 
 
 Then she was ready to go. Her bundle of clothes 
 was wrapped in a gayly coloured blanket. In this 
 bundle were many garments which she had made 
 with her own hands and among other treasures was a 
 patchwork quilt she had sewed herself. 
 
 Skillfully balancing her bundle on her head, grace- 
 fully pulling the loose, gayly coloured cloth over her 
 shoulders, she slowly descended the steps and down 
 the front yard to where the path joined the road. 
 
 Here she stopped and looked back at the white 
 woman standing under the passion- vine. It was only 
 for an instant ; then she turned her head and walked 
 rapidly northward while the lone white woman 
 stood in the doorway until the girl disappeared from 
 view. 
 
 Some day she would come back but it would not be 
 for long years in which everything, most of all her- 
 self, should be changed.
 
 XI 
 
 FOR CHRISTIAN BURIAL 
 
 " T^ Jf ISSI8, there is a mukadzi (woman) who 
 %/| wishes to see you." 
 
 JL Y JL " What does she want ? " I asked. 
 
 "I do not know," Samuel replied. So I got up 
 from the typewriter where I was copying sheets of 
 dictionary and went down-stairs. There in the 
 front yard sat a dejected, untidy figure of a woman 
 whom at first I did not recognize until she got up 
 and came towards me when I exclaimed, " Shakeni ! 
 Why did you not come right up to my study I Come 
 now." 
 
 What a change in my beautiful girl ! Who would 
 have dreamed that this fat, sloppy, dirty, ragged, 
 bedraggled woman was the bright, bonny, graceful 
 girl who had gone down the walk and away to her 
 kraal from Hartzell Villa three years before ! I 
 groaned inwardly at the change as I led the way 
 back to my study where I seldom received native 
 women from the kraals, one reason being that the 
 most of them were deathly afraid to climb the stairs. 
 
 Shakeni dropped down on the floor with the ex- 
 clamation, "Ndizwo is dead." I had forgotten the 
 child's name and did not at first understand who was 
 meant so she repeated, "Ndizwo is dead." Ndizwo 
 was her child and the cause of her absence from the 
 mission all these years. Ndizwo was part white. 
 
 61
 
 62 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 We did not know his father but Metapudzwa told me 
 he was a half-breed transport rider at Penhalanga. 
 
 I was glad, frankly, that the little fellow was dead. 
 He had ever been an Ishmael. From the first that I 
 saw him, he seemed to wear an inveterate scowl and 
 have an aversion for every one except his grand- 
 mother. Did the bitterness of his mother' s soul as she 
 rebelled against the curse which had denied her legal 
 wifehood like other women and had made her an 
 outcast of whom her hard stepfather made gain, 
 enter into the child and poison his unborn nature? 
 It certainly looked like it. I never saw a child who 
 seemed so solitary and so impregnated with hatred as 
 that child. We had often spoken of what a hard, 
 fierce fight he would have in life. And now he was 
 gone. Truly I was glad. 
 
 And I told Shakeni so. I told her I was glad the 
 little fellow had been taken by a merciful heavenly 
 Father where he would not have to bear and suffer all 
 that he would have had to meet had he lived. 
 
 Then she told me why she had come. She could 
 not bear to think of him buried after the heathen 
 fashion so she had come to beg a box and to know if 
 he might not be buried up in the churchyard by her 
 sister, Marusinyenyi, whose death and burial had af- 
 fected Shakeni greatly. 
 
 Some eighteen months previously, the two little 
 girls who used to run about the country with Shakeni 
 had come to me and said they wanted to stay and go to 
 school. They had developed into quite young ladies. 
 Philip told us afterwards that he had fallen in love 
 with Mutisiswa at the kraal and had told her he 
 wanted to marry her. She admitted that she was
 
 For Christian Burial 63 
 
 very willing. He then informed her that she must 
 come to school and study. She dropped her head, 
 twisted her robe and said she did not want to go to 
 school. He thereupon informed her that she could 
 do as she liked but that he did not propose to have 
 any heathen girl for his wife. So she came. She was 
 only a foster-sister of Shakeni and Marusinyenyi, but 
 the two girls were inseparable, so they both came. 
 
 Marusinyenyi died a year later of dropsy but her 
 death was a beautiful one. She knew she was dying 
 and told Mutisiswa that she could see the angels in 
 the room so she was not afraid to die. She was 
 buried beside Kaduku in the native churchyard at 
 Old Umtali, and we planted flowers as an emblem of 
 the resurrection on their graves. 
 
 And now Shakeni wanted this son of her sorrow to 
 be laid beside the little sister whom she had loved so 
 dearly. So I gave her a box, asked Mr. Spears to 
 line it with white cloth which he did gladly and they 
 took it back to the kraal for the body. 
 
 They did not get back until sundown so we had to 
 wait till morning for the service, for Mr. Springer 
 was away that day and did not return until late Sat- 
 urday night. 
 
 Sunday morning dawned a perfect Easter day. 
 The bell rang and we gathered in the chapel with all 
 the boys and girls for the funeral of the poor baby. 
 There was the grandmother with dry eyes and break- 
 ing heart. But for the love of Christ which had sent 
 Dr. Gurney out there, she herself would have died 
 in awful, lingering agony long ago. There was 
 Mutisiswa sobbing not only for the child but more 
 for the memory of the dear girl for whose death she
 
 64 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 had been almost unconsolable. There were likewise 
 all the others of the family and every heart was 
 stirred as we sang softly a Christian hymn. It was 
 the same hymn we had sung at Keduku's funeral 
 when we had all wept together. How we had loved 
 that boy ! 
 
 As the baby had died the day before, we did not 
 open the box but it was covered with white cloth and 
 strewed with flowers. The service was brief for 
 there was little to say and soon we stood around 
 the open grave and again heard the solemn words, 
 " Ashes to ashes ; dust to dust" 
 
 Then bowing his head, the preacher prayed aloud 
 that the mother and other relatives and all there as- 
 sembled might come to know the Saviour of men who 
 alone is Life and the Resurrection, that believing on 
 Him they might never die. 
 
 Another year went by and Shakeni came to me 
 again. This time she had another baby on her back 
 and a smile on her face. She came to tell me that 
 she was really married now to a native of Cape Colony 
 and that as her husband was away from her on the 
 road most of the time, he had given his consent to 
 her coming back to the mission to the Girls' School. 
 
 Later on while at Broken Hill, I got a letter from 
 her telling me of her entire change of life and how 
 happy she was. 
 
 " Sow your rice upon the waters," said the oriental 
 sage. "It will disappear from sight and lodge in 
 the black mud below. But it isn't lost ; it will not 
 rot. Leave it in God's hands and after many days 
 thou shalt find it again and reap a rich harvest."
 
 xn 
 
 OUR LAST NIGHT TREKKING BY OX WAGON 
 
 AS long as we live, we will not cease to bless 
 the De Witts for that trip when we were only 
 two weeks new to the country. We were 
 gone a mouth and no one can estimate the benefit of 
 such a trip to a new missionary. 
 
 And when, so soon after that, the cattle sickness 
 broke out and destroyed our herd, we thanked God 
 more than ever that we had had that never-to-be-for- 
 gotten evangelistic tour in an ox wagon, an American 
 make, by the way. But it was an experience we 
 never wished to have repeated. It came in its own 
 time and had its own place. For of all the tedious 
 modes of travel we have in Africa, the ox wagon is 
 the worst. How many times on that trip I walked 
 after the wagon expecting it every minute to be over- 
 turned ! 
 
 For nearly a month now, we had journeyed up and 
 down the rugged mountainous country of Southern 
 Ehodesia. We had left the wagon at outspans and 
 visited kraals just off the road whenever they were 
 not more than two or three miles away. Here we 
 had held services in English for want of something 
 better. To be sure the natives could not understand 
 us. But it roused their curiosity and led many of 
 them to find out later more about us. It was four 
 years later when Benjamin told me that he was in his 
 
 65
 
 66 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 father's kraal when we visited it and that that one 
 visit gave him a sense of knowing us. 
 
 Owing to the fact that the road was bad, the oxen 
 slow, the driver very inefficient and the covered 
 wagon springless, we rode very little, as our browned 
 faces and blistered noses testified. 
 
 We had also wept briny tears over the smoking 
 little camp-fires and had eaten with relish the badly 
 cooked food which was liberally seasoned with sand 
 and dirt by the incessant winds. 
 
 By night we had climbed into the wagon whose 
 big, canvass-covered top afforded protection from 
 the wild beasts and from the biting cold, and the 
 high winds which increased in violence with the set- 
 ting of the sun and which howled around the tent 
 flaps. Sometimes the wind would die down near 
 morning and then as we emerged from our cramped 
 quarters, we found every leaf and blade covered with 
 a silver filigree of hoarfrost beautiful to behold. 
 
 That last day we had all tramped many miles in 
 dust several inches deep under a burning sun, the 
 men far in advance of the wagon and Mrs. DeWitt 
 and myself in the rear. What a relief when we came 
 to the roaring, rushing Oodzani Eiver where we 
 bathed our dusty faces and lay down under the 
 shadow of a large tree while our last meal was being 
 prepared, and gazed unseeingly at the tall, cool, green, 
 lush reeds and rushes growing rank and tall in the 
 shallow pools near the shore and on a small island. 
 
 Our minds were occupied with the thought that 
 the trip was now over and on the morrow, we would 
 all of us settle down to regular work. We discussed, 
 but with languor, the two bridal couples who were
 
 Our Last Night Trekking by Ox Wagon 67 
 
 also outepanned near us. They were going back to 
 the Dutch Settlement in the north from which we 
 had just come. Their double wedding was still the 
 talk of Inyanga. 
 
 At five o'clock the oxen have had their feed and 
 so have we. So we inspan the sixteen oxen and then 
 get into the wagon with dread for we have to cross 
 at the Slippery Drift where many an ox, a horse or a 
 mule has been drowned. The wagon, a springless 
 one, you remember, jolts down over the rocks into 
 the eddying, foaming, swirling river where the oxen 
 flounder desperately in striving to find firm foothold 
 on the slippery rock bottom. 
 
 The men assure us women that there isn't the 
 slightest danger but even as they speak, big, black 
 Blessman slips, staggers and goes under. The driver 
 yells frantically, cracking his long whip in the air 
 over the backs of the others and soon Blessman is on 
 his feet again. 
 
 Almost immediately Eupee, a big, ugly black 
 brute but one of our strongest and best, goes down 
 while his yoke-mate struggles and splashes in his ef- 
 forts lest he too be dragged under by the swift cur- 
 rent, but they also right themselves amid the fierce 
 yells of the driver and leader. 
 
 The crossing takes but a few minutes but it is dan- 
 gerous and exciting. As we pull up the bank, we see 
 the two Boer couples on the other side, standing 
 under a tree. The brides are mere lassies of sixteen, 
 short, plump with fair round faces framed in pink 
 calico sunbonnets. The lads, scarcely in their 
 twenties, are large, stalwart fellows in gray flannel 
 shirts, stout breeches, high boots, " Boss-of-the-
 
 68 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 plains" hats and the inevitable ammunition belts 
 around their waists. 
 
 They make an ideal pastoral picture as they stand 
 there close to the rushing, swirling waters, each little 
 bride with one hand in a large brown one. As we 
 turn the bend in the road, we see the fingers inter- 
 twine more closely and the pink sunbonnets rest 
 lightly against the gray-flanneled shoulders. 
 
 Our hearts soften into tender, hearty blessings on 
 this a Love's young dream." A few years more and 
 these blooming, rosy-cheeked girls will be weary, 
 haggard, prematurely old women from hard, out- 
 door toil, poverty, loneliness and a big family. 
 
 A ripping, creaking, crashing, tearing sound in- 
 terrupts our thoughts and causes us to start up in 
 fright and dismay as an overhanging limb catches 
 the wagon tent and leaves it almost demolished. We 
 then learn that our driver got hold of some beer at 
 Mtasa's and is now half drunk. This impresses the 
 men that they must now walk near the span and we 
 women are too nervous to stay in the wagon, so we 
 get out also. 
 
 A walk of a mile or two in the moonlight calms 
 our nerves and raises our spirits, though we are 
 somewhat annoyed at first by a fantastically dressed 
 native, the latest addition to our party, who persists 
 in barely keeping off our heels until we stop and 
 make him pass by. His is a grotesque figure often 
 pictured but seldom seen, a wandering minstrel. 
 As he walks along in the moonlight carrying a native 
 organ and tambourine on which he plays as he walks, 
 the one long feather in his hair, his appearance is al- 
 most uncanny.
 
 Our Last Night Trekking by Ox Wagon 69 
 
 The last donga, or ravine, is reached and we see 
 the lights of home but we cannot reach there till to- 
 morrow. On the other side of the valley, five miles 
 away we see a single light at Old Umtali. We set 
 the freak to work getting wood for a fire. 
 
 At ten o'clock the wagon comes up and as there is 
 no wind, we wrap ourselves in rugs and blankets and 
 draw around the glowing fire on the other side of 
 which are the native boys. We are glad and sorry it 
 is our last of so many pleasant evenings together. 
 
 The boys put on a big pot of beans to cook for 
 themselves and we give them tinned beef to put into 
 it. They crouch down warming their hands and re- 
 lating to each other the incidents of the trip while 
 we drink tea and munch roasted peanuts hot from 
 the ashes. 
 
 Big Jim, the cook, now gets his mbila, or native 
 piano, and begins to play the national dancing tune. 
 The freak joins him and they begin to sing. At first 
 they croon softly in a weird, minor strain. Now 
 they start singing responsively to the perfect accord 
 of their instruments. The song waxes faster and 
 louder and their bodies sway rhythmically as they 
 crouch there on their haunches. 
 
 We are now lost to their world as memory takes 
 them back to the far-away scenes of their childhood 
 and as they sing the same song which their ancestors 
 have sung these hundreds, perhaps thousands, of 
 years. 
 
 The singing increases in speed and volume until 
 Big Jim, no longer able to control himself, springs to 
 his feet and executes a vigorous dance. 
 
 As he ceases, we all applaud and the hungry boys
 
 70 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 make an equally vigorous attack on the underdone 
 beans and bully beef. 
 
 We get up, unwind our rugs and blankets and 
 crawl up into our bed on wheels where little Vivian 
 lies in her hammock long since asleep. 
 
 It is just the hour of midnight when at last we get 
 our weary bodies under the warm blankets while the 
 frogs in the neighbouring donga hoarsely croak us to 
 sleep. And in the brilliantly lighted tropical sky, 
 over our heads, there gleams and sparkles the beauti- 
 ful Southern Gross.
 
 xin 
 
 IN THE HUNDI VALLEY 
 
 ALL that morning we made our way along the 
 bleak Inyanga Heights in the teeth of a bit- 
 ing wind which nipped us to the bone. As 
 we passed the old sheep kraal, we were reminded of 
 that night five years ago when Mrs. DeWitt and I 
 walked along that dark road where we had to feel 
 our way with our feet, carrying the baby. 
 
 The wagon had got stuck at the bottom of the hill 
 and we had been sent on ahead. The brief twilight 
 had faded and black night had set in. Being over 
 7,000 feet above the sea, the night was cutting cold. 
 We had some matches so we gathered a few ferns and 
 started a fire. There was no wood on all that vast 
 plain but we knew there were plenty of lions and 
 leopards. So we had kept up the fire until we had 
 cleared a large space beyond which we dare not ven- 
 ture. It was already nine o'clock so we decided that 
 all we could do was to walk back to meet the wagon 
 which we did. 
 
 Now the sun was shining but even so our hands 
 and faces ached with the cold. As we rode along 
 the old wagon road side by side, many other reminis- 
 cences came up before our minds. Here was where 
 we turned off to see the Pungwe Falls. Mrs. DeWitt 
 and I were appointed to view them from the top 
 
 71
 
 72 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 while the men got a nearer and better view from a 
 rather perillous position. 
 
 And just over that deep gully yonder was where 
 the monstrous big baboon appeared, and seating him- 
 self on a great ledge of rock, shook his fist at us two 
 women. 
 
 We were now bound for the Hundi Valley of which 
 we had never heard until the day before. We were 
 anxious to reach it by night lest our native boys die 
 of the cold as so many others had done up there on 
 those bleak, unprotected plains. Moreover we 
 wanted to visit the valley in order to carry the Gos- 
 pel to yet another part where it had not gone 
 before. 
 
 But in turning aside to once more view the falls, 
 we missed our trail and went astray. For a mile or 
 two, we followed a narrow ridge of land some 1,500 
 feet above the surrounding country. On the one side 
 of it was the magnificent Pungwe Gorge through 
 which the river roared and seethed and boiled so 
 furiously as to have invested itself with all sorts of 
 wild superstitious tales among the natives. On the 
 other side was a view that was awesome in its 
 grandeur. There stretching away to the southeast 
 was a vast expanse towards the sea where on clear 
 days could be seen Gorongoza mountain nearly 200 
 miles away. 
 
 We had to continue to follow this ridge or turn 
 back, for both sides were too precipitous to descend. 
 The trail and the ridge narrowed until we came to 
 an abrupt and dizzy descent among huge boulders. 
 So high was it that the donkeys balked stoutly as 
 they looked down the almost sheer trail and it took
 
 In the Hundi Valley 73 
 
 a good half hour to get them started for we had to 
 deal gently with them lest they break their precious 
 necks. Maybe you can reason with a mule but you 
 can't with a donkey. 
 
 Once started, we all went like goats from boulder 
 to boulder. But when we got to the foot of the ridge, 
 we found that the trail we were following only led up 
 again onto another ridge and there was no trail to 
 the kraal which we could see about five miles away 
 over in the Hundi Valley. So we left the path and 
 determined to cut across the unbroken veld in order 
 to get off the Heights, so that our boys would not 
 suffer with the cold. 
 
 We now plunged into grass from four to eight feet 
 high through which we made our weary way up and 
 down almost precipitous ravines so slippery from the 
 tall grass that we were constantly losing our footing. 
 Eiding was long since out of the question and we had 
 trouble to even drive the donkeys down the steep 
 mountainsides. They did not mind going up but 
 they were afraid going down. 
 
 There were swift mountain streams to be crossed, 
 thick jungle to be penetrated but at last at eight 
 o'clock that evening, we reached a kraal whose chief 
 we learned was named Bowu. Here we rejoiced to 
 find a lion-proof stockade empty in which we could 
 put our weary donkeys with safety. A roaring fire 
 was soon built at the village loafing place, the dali, a 
 place like the "gate" of olden times, where all the 
 elders congregate. 
 
 The next morning, assured of our peaceful inten- 
 tions, a large crowd gathered to hear the Gospel mes- 
 sage for the first time. Many of the women laughed
 
 74 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 and giggled, the young bucks nudged each other, 
 some asked questions, some mocked and a few lis- 
 tened with interest. 
 
 No missionary had ever been through here before 
 and we had good audiences at the nine or ten kraals 
 where we held services during the day which was a 
 hard one. It was still impossible to ride, for though 
 the kraals were not far apart they were all separated 
 from each other by steep ravines from 500 to 800 feet 
 deep. 
 
 Near sundown, we came to a very small collection 
 of huts and asked if it were far to the big chief 
 Sangama's kraal. A smart young buck, with a 
 long feather in his hair, came out and assured 
 us most plausibly that Saugama was close at hand 
 and we would reach his kraal before the sun went 
 down. 
 
 Were there any more dongas (ravines) to cross ? 
 O no, there was only one little one and we would get 
 there before the sun set. The raw heathen take nat- 
 urally to lying so we rarely believe what they say 
 but this story seemed quite truthful. 
 
 A mile farther we came to one of the worst canons 
 in the whole of Ehodesia. Had we seen at once how 
 bad it was we would have turned back. But having 
 got into it we had to go through. 
 
 The trail was so steep that it was very difficult to 
 get our donkeys to go down. We dare not force 
 them or they would fall head first and be either 
 maimed or killed. 
 
 So I had to lead the way taking care to be far 
 enough ahead so that Jack would not drop on me if 
 he did stumble and fall.
 
 In the Hundi Valley 75 
 
 Jack was used to following me like a dog and so, 
 with many a halt, he came on. Nig was more fright- 
 ened but he could not bear to lose sight of his little 
 white chum. And besides behind him came Mr. 
 Springer with his sjambok (whip) in hand. Take it 
 all in all, he considered it best to make his way care- 
 fully down the dizzy trail. 
 
 It was dark when we reached the bottom and 
 plunged into thick jungle close to a roaring moun- 
 tain stream which made a sheer plunge of about 500 
 feet a mile farther up-stream. Had there not been 
 so many lions in the vicinity, we would have camped 
 there until morning, for the stream was full of big 
 boulders and deep pools and we knew it would be 
 hard to get the donkeys across. 
 
 The moon came out bright and clear as we got the 
 unwilling quadrupeds into the cold, rushing stream. 
 They slipped into a pool and no effort they could 
 make enabled them to get a footing on the slippery 
 rock ahead. The boys crossed over, laid down their 
 loads and came back to the rescue of the discour- 
 aged, exhausted little beasts who seemed in imminent 
 danger of drowning. Eight boys and Mr. Springer 
 succeeded in fairly lifting each one out bodily and 
 getting them safely on land. 
 
 Then my turn came to cross. In midstream, I 
 came to a boulder which I could not climb unless 
 I took off my boots. So balancing myself on two 
 rocks, I managed to get to my bare feet and, with a 
 good deal of help, climb up one side and slide down 
 the other without dropping into the water. 
 
 Once more we had thick jungle and a steep climb 
 in pitchy darkness so that it was nine o'clock before
 
 76 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 we reached the first kraal, Chijara's. Sangama's was 
 three miles further, but we were ready to camp for 
 the night. In a few minutes it began to rain. 
 
 The next morning the mountains were enveloped 
 in a cold, white fog and mist. Our tent was wring- 
 ing wet and all our clothes damp. "We could not get 
 an early start, so we asked Chijara if we could not 
 hold a service in one of his huts. He was quite will- 
 ing and soon nearly every one in the kraal was 
 crowded into the hut. I sat on one side of the hut 
 and the women and girls gathered by me. The men 
 and boys took their places over by Mr. Springer. I 
 mention this for it is a characteristic custom, ob- 
 served rigidly within doors and generally in the open 
 air services. 
 
 Whenever we have held services in huts, even 
 where no Christian service has ever been held before, 
 we have always noted that the women shyly take their 
 places by the white woman's side. 
 
 This congregation listened intently as they heard 
 the Old, Old Story, and the men asked several intelli- 
 gent, interested questions. 
 
 At ten o'clock the mists lifted and the sun came out 
 so we started on the trail, but we had not gone more 
 than two miles when it began raining again and soon 
 our feet and legs were soaking wet. What a day that 
 was ! Drenched and chilled to the bone we had to 
 climb and descend, climb and descend and then climb 
 again for about 4,000 feet until once more we reached 
 the wind-swept heights. And after that, we had to 
 travel nearly ten miles to reach a white trader's store 
 so that our boys could sleep in a hut. Here we 
 changed our own wet garments, but as there was no
 
 In the Hundi Valley 77 
 
 fire we put in another night of keen suffering with 
 the cold. 
 
 Such is one of the experiences of itinerating in va- 
 cation time. 
 
 But itipays. We have had not a few boys from that 
 Hundi Valley come to the school at Old Umtali and 
 some of those chiefs have been asking us to send them 
 teachers. Each boy who comes to the school is him- 
 self a witness. He goes back at vacation times and 
 tells what he has himself learned and experienced, as 
 he sits around the fires and the people listen and freely 
 ask him whatsoever they will. Thus the seed is sown 
 and later the missionary follows to reap a glorious 
 harvest.
 
 xrv 
 
 WHAT'S IN A NAME? 
 
 THE African changes his name like his gar- 
 ment, when it is worn out. He gets tired 
 of one name and gets another. He feels 
 that his baby name is worn out by the time he reaches 
 puberty. If he joins one of the many secret societies 
 which exist among the various tribes, he changes his 
 name again. I remember one time on the Congo 
 when I met a man and asked him how his little son 
 Mwanga, who had worked for me, was. He replied, 
 "He is dead," which being interpreted meant that 
 having joined the Nkimba, the secret society of that 
 region, he had changed his name and the old name 
 was dead. He also wished me to believe that his son 
 had really died and that a new being had come to live 
 in his body. That same man has since learned to 
 say, "I am dead unto sin and alive through Christ," 
 and become one of the most energetic and earnest of 
 Christian workers there. 
 
 We find the kraal natives who go to the towns to 
 work almost always return to their people bearing 
 such names as Sixpence, Shilling, Jumbo, Tickie, etc., 
 to which names they hold tenaciously and which are 
 recognized in all seriousness by their friends. 
 
 We missionaries are usually sticklers for native 
 names as these hotchpotch combinations grate on 
 our ears. In the school I always insisted on learning 
 
 78
 
 What's in a Name ? 79 
 
 a boy's kraal name and calling him by it. So when 
 Benjamin gave his name as Fifteen, I turned it down 
 at once and always called him Mashoma. When he 
 came to be baptized, he chose the name of Benjamin, 
 but to this day writes his nameBenjaminF. Madziro, 
 the F. standing for Fifteen. His last letter is signed 
 F. B. Madziro. Others have read F. Benjamin and 
 all other imaginable combinations. 
 
 For although the African is exceedingly imitative 
 and determined to have the full complement of names 
 like a white man, he can never seem (in the Khodesian 
 district, at least) to understand the proper relation 
 and order of the names, his variations being not only 
 confusing but disastrous to a satisfactory mail service. 
 And the boys are very keen on writing and getting 
 letters. 
 
 When our natives are baptized, they invariably 
 want a new name, nor is this a custom peculiar to the 
 African. Pagan names in all pagan countries have 
 had their heathenish significance so that converts have 
 turned from them to the names of the Bible which 
 they have adopted. 
 
 We allow our people to choose, and yet it often 
 needs a bit of the missionary's guidance to keep them 
 out of the ridiculous. There was James : long before 
 he came to us, he had taken the name of the master 
 for whom he worked, James Caplan, so that we never 
 knew him by a native name. When he was baptized, 
 he had his heart set on the name Eevelation, and it 
 was with considerable reluctance that he gave it up 
 for Daniel, which name was well suited to his charac- 
 ter. Daniel's preaching was after the pattern of the 
 early Methodist preaching of which we read. He
 
 80 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 certainly reminded us of Peter Cartwright, who, it is 
 said, "fairly shook his congregation over the mouth 
 of hell." 
 
 When Mali and Useni came up for baptism, they 
 modestly asked for suggestions from their pastor. Mali 
 said he had thought of Stephen and wished to know 
 if that seemed proper. Nothing could have been 
 more suitable to his general character, while the im- 
 pulsive but ardent, tender-hearted, affectionate Useni 
 had always been suggestive of the name of Philip. 
 So they were thus named. 
 
 These two boys had come to us in the famine year 
 when our crop had failed and we were heavily in debt. 
 The edict had gone forth that while no one should 
 be sent away, no more boys should be received. The 
 next week these two came and applied for admission. 
 Mr. Springer hesitated for a few seconds and then 
 said to himself as he looked into their bright, eager 
 faces, "The Lord will surely provide," and took 
 them in. They are married to Mukonyerwa and 
 Mutisiswa, two of our best girls, and are doing excel- 
 lent work as evangelists and teachers. 
 
 Jone Nsingo and his wife, Suiwara, walked six 
 hundred miles to come to our mission. Jone chose a 
 no less high sounding name than that of Solomon. 
 He is a good man but as yet has not been preemi- 
 nently noted for his learning. Suiwara decided on 
 Marita, a Bantuized version of Martha though in 
 disposition she is more of a Mary. She usually 
 signs herself to me, Mrs. N". Solomon. When she 
 had her first little girl baptized Janet Heren (the 
 natives often have difficulty in pronouncing the letter 
 I), I was wholly unconscious of the honour done me
 
 What's in a Name? 81 
 
 for months. I often heard the younger girls calling 
 " Helen " but it was a long time before I knew that 
 Janet was my namesake. 
 
 Dr. Gurney strongly disapproved of giving Eng- 
 lish names to the wee black babies who came under 
 his professional care. But one day while showing 
 Mrs. Ferris the latest addition to our mission family 
 he jokingly said, " We will have to call her Mabel, 
 hey?" And from that on the name Mabeli was 
 irrevocably fixed on the small miss by her parents 
 and friends. 
 
 We had our Isaiah, Ezra, Abraham, Isaac and 
 Jacob. From the day they were baptized and 
 solemnly congratulated with hand-shaking by their 
 fellow Christians, they were always religiously called 
 by their Christian names. Perhaps that was the right 
 way to do but it was hard for us to bear in mind who 
 was Isaiah and which was Ezekiel and we often 
 lapsed into using the native names again. The 
 thing that is of vital importance to us is that these 
 boys and girls, these young men and young women 
 have the New Name given them and are, indeed, 
 sealed by the Holy Spirit.
 
 XV 
 
 AN AFRICAN VANITY FAIR 
 
 WHOSO wends his way to the Celestial City 
 must needs pass through Vanity Fair. 
 It may be in the gay Champs- tilysees of 
 gayest Paris, in London's poverty-pinched White- 
 chapel, the fierce "Wall Street battle-ground of New 
 York or in some obscure corner of a country town. 
 But there is no evading it. So long as this world 
 stands we shall have to pass through the inevitable 
 Vanity Fair. 
 
 We had been three weeks on the trail. By foot 
 and by donkey we had averaged twenty miles a day. 
 All this day we had travelled over the veld which 
 was carpeted with a thistle an inch or two high so 
 that our band of carriers were footsore and tired out. 
 
 These were not ordinary carriers whom we had 
 with us this time. They were eight of our senior 
 boys who were in training for evangelists whom we 
 had out on a 400 mile trip for practical instruction. 
 
 We were also in unknown country full of big game 
 and abounding in lions so we were anxious to get a 
 guide. So when we came to a certain kraal at sun- 
 down and the people told us that there was not 
 another kraal near, we settled down for the night 
 gladly. It was a large kraal but when we held a 
 service in the evening, very few people came out. 
 This was unusual and we wondered much at it. 
 
 82
 
 An African Vanity Fair 83 
 
 However, we hired a guide who told us that with 
 one exception we would not pass another kraal for 
 three days and that we would need to supply our- 
 selves with food beforehand. 
 
 We had not gone more than four miles the next 
 morning when we heard the booming of a big drum 
 and the shrill, "Yaii, yaii-yaii" of the women, 
 which warned us that a native dance was in progress. 
 We were not keen on taking our little Christian band 
 through a drunken kraal in this remote and wild 
 section but there was no escape ; for almost as soon 
 as we heard the singing, the news of our coming had 
 reached the people and they came dashing out to see 
 the white woman, the first who had ever been there. 
 
 This was a dilemma. We were depending on 
 these natives to sell us food for the empty country 
 ahead. We had been unable to get much at the last 
 kraal as the people were all going to this dance and 
 did not want to bother with us. 
 
 Our guide truly wanted to go along with us to seek 
 work but he also wanted the benefit of this beer en 
 route. So he began telling us that we could not 
 reach water again that day. We decided to stop long 
 enough to eat and to buy. We had been eating only 
 two meals a day so if we ate then, we could go until 
 night. 
 
 Used as I am to natives (and on that trip in par- 
 ticular I had been an attraction unrivalled by 
 Barnum's white elephant), I was considerably dis- 
 concerted by the howling mob which surrounded us 
 as soon as we dismounted and unsaddled our don- 
 keys. 
 
 I sat down on a log and began to write in my
 
 84 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 journal while one of our boys, Long Jake, began to 
 barter. Some of the women came and looked over 
 my shoulder to see me write and shouted their 
 opinions as to my cleverness close to my ears. Some 
 were selling millet meal to Jake ; some came with 
 gourds of corn for the donkeys ; some were scream- 
 ing for beads, some were shouting for salt. One 
 woman suddenly shrieked out that the white man 
 was taking a picture ; some were yelping one thing, 
 and some another, and unutterable confusion 
 reigned. 
 
 A decrepit old hag comes and asks me to do the 
 trading. She can't cheat Jake and she knows she 
 can me. I tell her I do not know how to trade, and 
 she turns and shouts this to the others. A little 
 woman bends down close to my ear and begs for a 
 needle. I have none. A poor wretch staggers up 
 and asks me if I will buy a goat for money. I tell 
 him that is my husband's business, not mine. A 
 woman thrusts her face into mine, her breath reek- 
 ing and her form reeling, and asks if I do not want 
 to buy some beer. I assure her I do not, and she 
 proclaims this loudly. 
 
 Yonder, in his few filthy rags, lies the chief of the 
 kraal, dead drunk. Over there lies another man, 
 stretched out, sleeping off his dissipation. A younger 
 debauchee makes himself odious to me by following 
 me around, with persistent begging and flattery. 
 There goes a woman trying to lead her staggering 
 husband to his hut where he will be out of sight. He 
 resists and she has to give up the task. 
 
 At last the trading is over and we try to have a 
 little service with them though it does seem like cast-
 
 An African Vanity Fair 85 
 
 ing pearls before swine. Still it is our work to scat- 
 ter the seed broadcast. They are all too drunk to 
 take in much that we say, if anything, or even to 
 keep quiet. The young rake drops off to sleep. 
 Near him an old man, in indecent array, sits in the 
 centre of the group and alternately dozes and shouts 
 to the others to keep quiet. It would be humorous 
 if it were not so pathetic. There they are, boys aiid 
 girls, youths and maidens, old men and old women, 
 all insufficiently clothed and all more or less drunk. 
 Even the babes at the breast have been affected by 
 the intoxication of their mothers. 
 
 Poor souls ! Far removed from civilization, in one 
 of the most remote and unfrequented parts of 
 Rhodesia, they live the same lives their fathers have 
 lived and no one has told them of a better way. 
 
 This is heathenism at home as it really is, divested 
 of all its romance, vile, sensual, devilish. We 
 shudder at the repulsiveness of those never-washed 
 bodies and the indescribable filth of the whole kraal. 
 We shrink with disgust from the sight and sounds of 
 this sin-polluted place. 
 
 There is often an idea at home that missionaries do 
 not mind these offensive features so much. On the 
 contrary, the missionary gets to loathe them more and 
 more as he comes to know more of the real life of the 
 people and the first rosy-coloured romance of novelty 
 wears away. 
 
 What's the use then of staying ? Because we have 
 seen rich jewels for the Master gathered out of just 
 such communities as this. Two men went out of that 
 kraal and accompanied us to Old Umtali where they 
 worked for months at the mission. One was not
 
 86 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 promising but the other was a very decent, earnest 
 sort of fellow who attended our meetings regularly. 
 
 We cannot say what became of them. Sometimes 
 we are privileged to trace direct results. Sometimes 
 we cannot. But this we do know that many such 
 young men have been found in after years to have ac- 
 cepted Christ and to have lived a new life which has 
 been the means of bringing about an entire revolu- 
 tion in their old kraals. 
 
 u Now I saw in my dream, that Christian went not 
 forth alone, for there was one whose name was Hope- 
 ful who joined himself to him. This Hopeful also 
 told Christian that there were many more of the men 
 in the fair that would take their time and follow 
 after."
 
 TRAVELLING BY OX WAGON 
 
 ON THE TRAIL TO TETE
 
 XVI 
 
 ON THE TRAIL TO TETE 
 
 MISSION ABIES are often credited with most 
 extraordinary statements which would sur- 
 prise them even more than their readers. 
 I have before me a copy of one of my letters home in 
 which the copyist made me say that the Zambesi 
 " was swarming with frogs who were used to human 
 flesh." This may be a judgment on me for using 
 the rather slangy term crocs instead of spelling croco- 
 dile in full. 
 
 For a week we had travelled through the dry, 
 desert-like forest where we could only get water for 
 cooking and baths were out of the question. Ac- 
 cordingly we had looked and longed for the Big 
 Eiver. 
 
 The Zambesi was a disappointment to us as far as 
 utility was concerned on account of its saurian in- 
 habitants ; now although on the banks of the great 
 river, we were able to get water enough for cooking 
 only by tying our buckets to a long pole and care- 
 fully dipping them into the river. 
 
 At Cachoa the country became very mountainous 
 and the trail led away from the river over one of the 
 roughest mountain ranges I have ever seen. The 
 donkeys had all they could do to look after them- 
 selves which they did very willingly with much kick- 
 
 87
 
 88 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 ing of heels whenever they got onto a place sufficiently 
 level to admit of such capering. 
 
 That night at Cachoa we had slept in the same 
 house where Livingstone had been entertained a half 
 a century before. The house was a large, roomy, 
 massive affair, its thick walls and heavy shutters 
 and doors having been made to stand against an at- 
 tack of the enemy whether Portuguese or native. 
 That was in the high day of slavery and the half- 
 caste owner of this house was a nabob and a prince. 
 
 The house was all falling in when we were there in 
 1906, and had been abandoned as unsafe. As Mr. 
 Springer was taken with a very heavy fever, we were 
 put in one room that was considered reasonably safe, 
 in order that I might be better able to care for him 
 than in a tent. So the boys brought in grass and 
 piled it on the floor in one corner, arranged our 
 blankets and he went to bed about 2 p. M. 
 
 The house, to repeat, was in a state of decay like 
 the government whose slave trade had been its own 
 undoing. The heavy rafters had been tunnelled by 
 borers and the white ants until they bent, and in 
 some places had already fallen in under the weight of 
 the red tiles on the roof. Most of the rooms were lit- 
 tered with dirt and rubbish and the only occupants 
 were the rats or a chance snake which came to hunt 
 them down. 
 
 I was glad when the morning dawned for my hus- 
 band had been more or less delirious all night and I 
 felt none too comfortable in the gloomy old ruin all 
 alone. As he felt better, we got onto the trail as early 
 as possible for we had learned in the sultry Zambesi 
 valley to travel early and late (usually whether sick
 
 On the Trail to Tete 89 
 
 or well) and keep in the shade through the heat of the 
 day from ten till four. 
 
 We were now to go around the Kabrabasa Kapids 
 by an inland route. We had been told that water 
 was scarce and so took two of our canvass buckets 
 full when we left Cachoa. After ten miles, we had 
 our breakfast and rested in the shade of some fine, 
 big trees. At three, we went on about four miles 
 when we came to a camping place for caravans. 
 Here we found a hole in the ground into which water 
 slowly seeped. But in order to dip it out, each car- 
 rier had to step into the hole with one foot. That 
 day some 200 carriers had possibly stepped into the 
 hole. We had met them on the trail and so decided 
 that we would do without water and food until we 
 could find something better. For it is hard to find a 
 native who is not affected directly or indirectly with 
 some loathsome disease. Leprosy is very common, 
 ulcers abound, a horrible eczema prevails and other 
 things unmentionable. So our refusal to use that 
 water was not on purely fastidious grounds. 
 
 However, our boys cooked their food and drank 
 the water, though they laughed and made wry faces 
 and admitted the water wasn't exactly up to the mark. 
 It was five o'clock when we started out again and the 
 short tropical twilight soon gave way to the light of 
 the moon. We began to climb wearily and made 
 poor time, but mile after mile passed and we reached 
 what seemed the top of a range of high hills and yet 
 no sign of water. 
 
 After nine miles, I announced that I could not go 
 another rod, and as we were in quite a woods where 
 the boys could have a fire to protect them from the
 
 90 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 wild beasts, leopards were especially thick in that 
 section and lions quite numerous, we camped and 
 spent a restless night dreaming about streams and 
 fountains, ever trying to get a drink. 
 
 With the first gray of the dawn, we were on the 
 trail again descending to the plain where we knew we 
 must reach water. Soon our eyes were gladdened 
 with the sight of fields of Kaffir corn. Now there 
 must be water. After another mile, which seemed 
 like two, we met a couple of men. 
 
 "Where is the water?" we asked. 
 
 "It isn't very near," they replied, "and it isn't 
 very good. There are snakes in it." 
 
 Now the word for snake is nyoka, and it is used also 
 for a pain in the stomach, so we were in doubt as to 
 what was meant. None of our boys could talk flu- 
 ently with the men, being of another tribe. But we 
 all wanted to find water and were willing to take, as 
 we thought, most anything. 
 
 Two miles further, we came to an opening where 
 there were twenty or more men and women gathered 
 around a bare spot. There were as many large black 
 clay water jars, some of which were filled with an 
 opaque, slimy fluid. The other jars were empty. 
 
 "Here," said the man who had guided us to the 
 place for a box of matches, "here is the water," and 
 he took us over to a hole in the side of a black clay 
 bank. The hole might have been four feet deep, but 
 ran diagonally into the bank. At the bottom, the 
 water was slowly oozing through, but before there 
 could be enough for the waiting women to dip it out, 
 it had to cover one tangled, slimy, crawling mass of 
 glazy, black frogs which bore little resemblance to
 
 On the Trail to Tete 91 
 
 the pretty, bright green, cheery, bass-toned playfel- 
 lows of our childhood days. These frogs appeared to 
 be sightless and half dead. 
 
 " Why in the world don't they take them out?" I 
 exclaimed shuddering. 
 
 11 Because they are afraid they would displease the 
 water spirits (bad spirits) and the water would cease 
 to come at all." 
 
 " Do you want to stop here and eat?" was asked 
 the boys. Daniel, the spokesman, was quick to give 
 an emphatic negative. Jake shook his head with a 
 comical grin. Not a boy would consent to stay. So 
 we had to retrace our way a half mile back to the 
 main trail and then trek four miles more until we 
 came to another of the numerous sand rivers in that 
 region. Here the natives had several holes from two 
 to twelve feet deep where we could get a clean though 
 whitish water. Here too the natives crowded cu- 
 riously about us bringing food for sale while we were 
 able to tell them who we were and somewhat about 
 that water of Life which Christ has promised so freely 
 and which the Church deals out so sparingly that 
 these poor souls had never heard of it before nor will 
 they for a long time again.
 
 xvn 
 
 A TALE OF TWO DONKEYS 
 
 THE first big thing I ever prayed for in my 
 life was a donkey, and it took considerable 
 coaxing of my faith to do that. I was so 
 afraid I might be presumptuous and be asking too 
 much : for donkeys were costing then about $200 
 each. The Master says, " Ask largely : herein is My 
 Father glorified," and then we resort to all sorts of 
 dodges, lest if we do ask we may embarrass Him. 
 
 So I did a lot of quibbling before I asked for the 
 donkey. It wasn't exactly an absolute necessity, as 
 I have ever been a fairly good pedestrian. I could 
 not even claim it on the ground of health, for I was 
 nearly five years in Rhodesia before I had a fever and 
 I was not able to foresee what a blessing a donkey 
 would be to me then. But I did know that I could 
 do more effective work if I had a quadruped, and so 
 at last I very tremblingly stepped out on His prom- 
 ises and prayed for the donkey, all the while telling 
 myself that if my prayer wasn't answered, I should 
 know it was because I did not really need the 
 donkey. 
 
 No wonder that we find so oft repeated by the Mas- 
 ter, " O ye of little faith !" How our meanness must 
 pain Him ! Now as nearly as I can figure out, all the 
 time I was metaphorically standing first on one foot 
 and then on the other trying to decide which way to 
 
 92
 
 A Tale of Two Donkeys 93 
 
 go, the money was on the way, sent by a woman of 
 God in Vineland, New Jersey. 
 
 Jack's master died and he was put in the hands of 
 an auctioneer for sale. One day when Mr. Springer 
 was over to Umtali, ; this man said that he heard I 
 wanted a donkey, and here was one for only $150, 
 and he would throw off his own commission and that 
 would make him $140. So Jack became my prop- 
 erty. He worked for his board down at the mission 
 stables the while I was under the Woman's Board, 
 and many a trip to the kraals he carried me between 
 times. 
 
 However, as an unmarried woman I could not make 
 extensive journeys, but after my marriage I was able 
 to accompany my husband on the wider circles of the 
 district of which he was presiding elder. Altogether 
 little Jackie must have carried me more than 2,000 
 miles by native trail. 
 
 As a rule Jack was a gentle, sociable, friendly little 
 beast, an ideal lady's riding donkey. His one weak- 
 ness was his unwillingness to tolerate a rival. He 
 was ready to fight to the finish any donkey who made 
 pretense of braying louder than he did. 
 
 So when two new donkeys were added to the mis- 
 sion equipment and one of them was chosen to go on 
 a 400 mile trip with Jack, he was quite willing to 
 make friends. The newcomer couldn't bray. Jack 
 was quite willing to do all the braying for them both. 
 The new donkey was as black as Jack was white so 
 we called him Nig. 
 
 Nig had never been broken to the saddle before 
 and did not receive his burden on his back with good 
 grace. For the first week, he was continually bolt-
 
 94 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 iug from the path to wipe off that load under the 
 low limbs of the trees. This not only proved annoy- 
 ing to the rider but as Jack always insisted in follow- 
 ing suit to see what was going on, it was difficult for 
 me to keep my own neck safe. 
 
 After a week's time, the two were inseparable. It 
 was impossible to hold one if the other was out of 
 sight. And yet when they were together they quar- 
 relled. Many a night we were kept awake with 
 Nig's kicking and squealing until Mr. Springer 
 would have to get up and give them both a thrash- 
 ing. That seemed to satisfy them and they would 
 keep tolerably quiet the rest of the night. 
 
 When we dismounted and walked along the trail 
 to rest our backs and theirs, we always tied their 
 reins to the saddles and sent them ahead. Off they 
 would trot with a frisky kick of the heels, Jack fre- 
 quently stopping to look around as much as to say, 
 "Are you coming?" But when he heard the loud 
 " Anno " for him to wait, he would slyly wink an 
 ear, kick up his heels, give Nig a nip in the thigh 
 and the two would scamper off like two naughty boys. 
 
 One night we were down in the Sena district and 
 came to a kraal at about sundown. As usual we 
 asked the chief where we could pitch our tent for the 
 night. He replied that he would not consent to our 
 putting up our tent at all. That the lions were so 
 thick and so bold in that section that he would not 
 risk having any white man's blood on his head. It 
 was a small kraal so he said he could not let us have 
 a hut either but if we wished, we might sleep over 
 the goat pen. Now this particular goat pen was the 
 strongest one I ever saw or smelled. It was built of
 
 A Tale of Two Donkeys 95 
 
 large poles so to be lion proof. On the top of it was 
 a small grainery which was reached by a ladder. I 
 objected to the grainery on account of the odour. 
 Moreover, we could not leave the donkeys out to be 
 eaten. The boys could all find shelter and protec- 
 tion, if not comfort, in a dilapidated hut used for 
 the kraal boys and single men. 
 
 What should we do ? Darkness was already upon 
 us so we could not go on nor go back. At last the 
 chief very unwillingly consented to let us have one 
 hut for the night. There seemed no other way but 
 to take the donkeys in with us, giving them one-half 
 of the hut and we taking the other. 
 
 We ate our humble meal by the light of a slim bon- 
 fire and then began to hold service as it was getting 
 late and the native retires early. I noticed a group 
 of women some distance away and calling to Daniel 
 to come with me and bring the baby organ, I went 
 over to them. They at once came around me and I 
 talked to them in Chikaranga while one of their 
 young men acted as interpreter into Chikunda. I 
 shall never forget the earnest faces and earnest ques- 
 tions of those women as I told again the Old, Old 
 Story, ever new. There was one woman whose face 
 was lined with sorrow who drank in my words with 
 an eagerness which showed the hunger and thirst of 
 her soul. I had our only lantern in which was a 
 candle with me and it seemed to me that my coming 
 to these women was like that tiny flame in the midst 
 of the dense darkness. We sent Daniel and Jim 
 back over that route to preach again and I hope that 
 that one woman at least found the soul rest for which 
 she was longing.
 
 96 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 The services over, we had the task of stowing our- 
 selves away for the night. At the very outset there 
 was trouble with the donkeys who objected to being 
 crowded through that narrow door. Jack, being the 
 smaller and more amenable to reason, was pulled in 
 first when Nig crowded after him in haste. 
 
 We had partitioned the hut off with poles and 
 made a partition between the two donkeys so we 
 thought they would be quiet. They seemed peace- 
 able enough when we crept in between our blankets 
 with our clothes on as usual. 
 
 For a half hour there was nothing to disturb us 
 but the incessant buzzing of mosquitoes and biting of 
 fleas. The fleas were also stirring up the donkeys 
 who began to get restless and move around. Mr. 
 Springer shouted to them to keep quiet and there 
 was a lull. Soon they began prancing around again 
 so he got up and tied them more securely. He had 
 hardly laid down again when there was a scrimmage 
 between the two donkeys and we jumped up just in 
 time to save ourselves as Jack fell over the poles and 
 rolled onto the bed speeded by Nig's heels. 
 
 It was then eleven o'clock and we were dead tired 
 from daily marches and much fever. So the decree 
 went forth and one donkey with it, Nig. He was 
 tied out under the eaves where he and Jack could 
 smell noses through the cracks but not touch each 
 other. The tent was tied around the back of him so 
 to give all possible protection. And then we went 
 to sleep while Jack behaved himself until morning. 
 
 It was a week later on a Monday morning that we 
 found ourselves at the foothills of the high plateau 
 on which Old Umtali is situated. There was a climb
 
 A Tale of Two Donkeys 97 
 
 of some 3,000 feet ahead of us and we were both weak- 
 ened by fever. For weeks we had had fever nearly 
 every day and as our rations had been unvaried rice 
 and salmon, we had not been able to eat, either. 
 How we ever made it, I hardly know. But the last 
 half mile was less steep than the rest, as there were 
 no boulders but only a steady ascent. I had dragged 
 my aching body as far as it seemed I could. Mr. 
 Springer put his saddle on Jack and placed me in 
 the saddle. It was a stiff climb but I determined to 
 stay on as long as Jack would carry me for if it got 
 to the impossible, I knew he would stop. 
 
 Jack started off bravely. The path grew steeper 
 but he only dug his little hoofs into the ground and 
 kept on climbing. At last it was so steep that I 
 leaned over, put my arms around his neck and flat- 
 tened myself on his back and in that way, with much 
 hard panting, he got me to the top. 
 
 And what a magnificent panorama of mountain, 
 valley and plain was spread out before us as we stood 
 there at the head of that Hundi Valley into which 
 we had gone for the first time the year before. 
 During this time we had had several boys come to 
 our school from that vicinity. And the time will soon 
 come when that region will ring with the songs of the 
 children in school and when on Sabbath days the 
 sweet toned bell on some native chapel will summons 
 the Valley to praise and to prayer.
 
 IT was on Monday, July 3, 1905, that we broke 
 camp anew after a rather unsatisfactory Sun- 
 day at M'Bewa's, one of the largest kraals in 
 Southern Bhodesia. A large crowd had gathered 
 around us on our arrival and all the rest of Saturday 
 afternoon we were besieged with visitors. But the 
 word had gone out that we were there to steal the 
 children to cut up and make them up into medicine 
 for witchcraft and at once there was a marked change 
 in their attitude. Instead of running after us in a 
 perfect mob, they ran away as hard as they could. 
 Sunday morning most of the mothers bundled their 
 babies onto their backs and left for their gardens. 
 So Sunday we could not get an audience anywhere. 
 
 Monday morning we once more got onto the trail. 
 There were Charley, Vega, Philip, Samuel, Tom, 
 Stephen, Mukanganwa and Nyasha, all of whom 
 were in training for the ministry and who are now 
 engaged as Christian workers in the mission. They 
 with one other boy, the two donkeys and ourselves 
 formed our little caravan. 
 
 Leaving the M'Eewa police camp at eleven o'clock 
 we took as our next objective point the M'Toko 
 police camp forty miles away. We had been told 
 that there was water all along the trail and we 
 could camp anywhere. So there was if one but 
 
 98
 
 The Glorious Fourth in Africa 99 
 
 knew where to find it. We did not and as there 
 were no cross trails leading to it, darkness fell and 
 we had found no place where we could camp. 
 
 Two natives passed us just at dusk and we asked 
 them where there was water. They replied it was at 
 the river and they were hurrying towards it for the 
 night. As they had no loads, they went on and soon 
 disappeared in the rapidly deepening twilight. 
 
 We were going down a mountain range to the 
 Nyandiri Eiver. I walked as fast as I could in the 
 darkness fearing to ride, but nay strength gave out so 
 I had to mount. Mr. Springer walked behind Nig 
 switching his legs now and then so that he trotted on 
 almost out of Jack's sight. This made Jack hurry 
 on after him, forgetting his own tired little legs. 
 
 After four miles in the darkness, the sound of 
 rushing waters warned us that the river was close at 
 hand. The boys put down their loads and begged to 
 camp where they were. They said they did not 
 know the river and did not like to cross in the dark. 
 Besides they were too tired to go further. But there 
 were too many lions in this vicinity for us to think 
 of camping in the open. It was here that Mr. Nell 
 had been killed by lions two years previously. It 
 was so dangerous that the government had built a 
 lion proof caravansary for travellers, mostly native 
 police. 
 
 So the boys lighted the candle in the lantern 
 and Vega started with it down the steep embank- 
 ment towards the river and carefully made his way 
 across, the others following. But we could not cross 
 where they did on our donkeys and we did not feel 
 like wading unless it was necessary.
 
 loo Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 So with many a plunge into some deep pool, a 
 stumble over a rock and the danger of being any 
 moment precipitated into the stream, we finally got 
 safely over and climbed the bank on the other side. 
 
 But there was not a sign of the caravansary. 
 Where could it be? At last after much searching 
 along the trail with the lantern for a path leading off 
 from it, we spied a light about a quarter of a mile 
 away and started for it stumbling along over rough 
 native gardens, shivering with the cold. 
 
 The caravansary was a yard enclosed by a high 
 circular fence of strong poles placed close together so 
 no lion could break through nor jump over. There 
 were also two huts, one in which the native guard 
 and his family lived and the other for strangers. 
 The latter was already full of natives. 
 
 There was no place for us to pitch our tents, and 
 only a little wood for a fire so we drank some hot 
 coffee, wrapped up in our blankets and tried to sleep 
 but could not for the bitter cold. When the morn- 
 ing dawned, the ground was all white with hoar-frost. 
 
 Our boys cooked the supper they did not get the 
 night before for breakfast, and it was late when we 
 started. The frosty ground chaps their bare feet 
 badly if they are forced to go out on it in the early 
 morning. So we do not compel them to start early 
 on such mornings. 
 
 Then began an ascent on the other side. About 
 three miles on, we met a native police, or black 
 watch, and asked him how far it was to M' Toko's. 
 "Just at hand," he exclaimed encouragingly; "I 
 just left there this morning." The heathen African 
 is perhaps the most cheerful liar in the world.
 
 The Glorious Fourth in Africa 101 
 
 Noon found us still toiling along in heavy white 
 sand while the sun shone blisteriugly over our heads. 
 We came to an almost stagnant stream of milky 
 water and decided to stop for lunch. About one 
 o'clock we started on thinking we surely were almost 
 there. Soon we met a native man and woman. 
 " Where is M'Toko's? " we asked. " Ah ! " he ex- 
 claimed his face lighting up with pleasurable antici- 
 pation of a reward for his information, " you are 
 there already. When will you get there? Zwino- 
 zwno, just now, this minute." " Zwinozwno," 
 snorted the boys, "it's all zwinozwino with these 
 natives here. They're awful liars." Which was be- 
 yond dispute true. 
 
 At three o'clock we came to the only sign-board 
 we have ever seen in over 3,000 miles trekking. In 
 weather- washed lettering we read, "To M'Toko 
 Police Camp." Our courage revived. Surely we 
 must be near there now. But the old wagon road 
 was so overgrown that it soon was obliterated and 
 several times we lost it in the long grass as we 
 crossed some swampy place or old abandoned native 
 gardens. 
 
 At four o'clock we came to a kraal and asked a 
 young man the way to M' Toko's. "You are in the 
 most direct path now," he answered. "You will 
 get there when the sun goes down." This was, I be- 
 lieve, the only truthful and direct answer from a 
 native on all that trip of nearly 400 miles and there- 
 fore deserves special mention. 
 
 Sure enough, five miles further, we came to the 
 camp where two white troopers and a corporal might 
 be said to be buried alive. No white woman had ever
 
 1O2 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 visited that camp before and very few men. There 
 was little work to be done, and almost nothing to read. 
 They were practically cut off from all the outside 
 world in which they had grown up, buried alive in the 
 midst of a savage people and untouched heathenism. 
 
 Said one white man to us, "Take the Gospel to 
 these Africans for our sakes if not for theirs. They 
 will surely drag us down if we, as a superior race, do 
 not lift them up." 
 
 We spent the evening with the three lonely white 
 men who had not seen a white woman for so long that 
 they hardly knew how to act. They felt like school- 
 boys of the awkward age again. One brought in his 
 mascot, a queer, beautifully marked wild animal that 
 he had caught and tamed. This broke the ice and 
 conversation flowed freely. Before they left, we had 
 evening prayers, a fitting close for that loug-to-be-re- 
 membered Fourth.
 
 XIX 
 
 CHRISTMAS AT OLD UMTALI 
 
 WHENEVER I think of that first big cele- 
 bration of Christmas at the mission, there 
 conies up before me the picture of Philip 
 (he was only Useni then) as I saw him coming back 
 from the kraals with the Christmas dinner. 
 
 Mr. Springer had given him and Vurungu (Jacob) 
 five dollars and had sent them away to do their best 
 in buying meat for the feast. Philip was a senior : 
 Jacob was still classed among the "picanines," as the 
 boys called them. Jacob was the old king's grand- 
 son and he knew it well. So did the natives and that 
 was why he was sent with Philip to help drive a 
 bargain. 
 
 The next morning I heard a noise, and looking out 
 my back door saw Philip in the wake of two lively 
 goats which were trying to pull him along at a pace 
 that was incompatible with his dignity. He was 
 dressed in a long, black rubber rain coat which came 
 down to his bare feet and was buttoned up tight to 
 the chin. On his head was a black derby hat while 
 his usually sunny face was as grave as a deacon's. 
 Was he not the important bearer of the Christmas 
 dinner ? Behind him was Jacob with a rooster under 
 each arm. (He had bought and paid for them 
 though.) Once the two goats were safely tethered 
 
 103
 
 104 knap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 out in the side yard, Philip relaxed and entered into 
 the prevailing air of festivity. 
 
 Daniel had been told off to decorate the church so 
 he marshalled his band of youthful assistants, had 
 them form in military line and march for the veld 
 like young soldiers. Daniel had a real passion for 
 drilling all the small boys, himself being the com- 
 manding officer, of course. And the small boys en- 
 joyed it too. Daniel's band would have put to shame 
 the native soldiers whom we saw drilling in a go-as- 
 you-please manner near Malange. That kind of 
 thing would not have done for Daniel. In person he 
 was so straight that he almost bent backward : in 
 character he was the same and his religious doctrine 
 measured up to his character. So he marched the 
 small fry away and later on they came marching 
 back with palm leaves for guns, lustily singing, " On- 
 ward Christian Soldiers." 
 
 Daniel trimmed the church handsomely and in the 
 afternoon I found him in the compound presiding 
 over the kitchen where a dozen or so boys had 
 clubbed together to make cakes, pies and other in- 
 digestible pasties out of flour, sugar, etc., that they 
 had bought with their saved-up money. One pie was 
 made with two thick, unshortened crusts, the filling 
 consisting of native honey. However, the boys were 
 all blessed with good appetites and equally good 
 digestions. 
 
 Christmas eve the suppressed enthusiasm of the 
 day gave way to a burst of song. They sang the 
 hymn-book through and back again and our little 
 valley was a flood of melody until nearly midnight. 
 
 Although it was our midsummer, the morning
 
 Christmas at Old Umtali 105 
 
 dawned rather chill and misty. Heavy white clouds 
 hung over the top of Mt. Hartzell and a thick fog 
 hovered over the spruit. But nothing daunted by 
 the late hour of the previous evening or the cold of 
 the morning, every student was out by the first gray 
 of the dawn to march in line around to the three 
 houses of the white missionaries, singing Christmas 
 carols. The Boer farm overseer's wife told me with 
 tears in her eyes that when she first awakened and 
 heard the singing in the distance, she thought she 
 must be in heaven. 
 
 At nine o'clock the call for church was sounded on 
 a broken crowbar which had been hung up in place 
 of the bell which came three years later. Our boys 
 arrived promptly with faces duly solemnized for the 
 occasion. Whatever other apparel the native African 
 may lack, he is always able to clothe himself with 
 dignity as with a garment. With the boys were a 
 few native guests who had been invited by their 
 friends and brothers, enough to spread the word 
 about the country so that the next year there were 
 four times as many others from the kraals. Among 
 the guests was Mukonyerwa, Jacob's sister, soon to be 
 Kaduku's fiancee. 
 
 The two little Boer girls had been made glad with 
 white dresses and new dolls and their mother by 
 means of hard work and fine calculations had 
 managed to buy them shoes and white parasols. Even 
 the fifty carved ebony faces lighted up with admira- 
 tion and pleasure as the two flaxen-haired lassies, ar- 
 rayed like little angels, softly tiptoed up the aisle and 
 took their usual places on the front seat. 
 
 After the singing, the praying and the short
 
 io6 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 Christmas sermon, the gifts were distributed. The 
 mission could not afford luxuries but the new hymn- 
 books for the older boys and enamel plates and tin 
 spoons for the younger ones were thoroughly appre- 
 ciated. 
 
 Then came the dinner, and two goats did not go 
 very far when they had to be distributed among sixty 
 persons. But there was plenty of rice and the cooks 
 saw to it that there was plenty of gravy. On account 
 of the extra and unexpected visitors, we added to the 
 menu a few tins of salmon, a slice of bread for each 
 person and some peanuts. 
 
 One of the amusing features was the setting of the 
 tables. All the new plates and spoons had to be 
 turned over to Stephen and Philip. Some of the 
 boys were the wealthy owners of agate cups. Care- 
 fully opened milk tins had to serve for the rest. But 
 there were not enough of them, so there was a hur- 
 ried search made in all the houses and every possible 
 place where a milk tin might be found to eke out 
 enough. The table-cloths were of unbleached muslin 
 and Daniel came to the front to lay flowers on the 
 cloths and arrange bouquets of flowers of which there 
 were plenty. 
 
 The early morning mist had soon disappeared and 
 the rest of the day was cloudless and exceedingly hot. 
 
 The goats and rice dispatched, the boys took to 
 playing the graceful and musical native game of ball. 
 At four o'clock the school bell rang vigorously and I 
 hurried over to the compound to see whether it was 
 a fire or what. To my surprise the boys were about 
 to serve afternoon tea, on which occasion the pastries 
 of the previous day played an important part. One
 
 Christmas at Old Umtali 107 
 
 table was set for the girls and women and another for 
 the boys. Mutisiswa looked up with a shy smile (she 
 and Philip were not engaged then), Marita beamed 
 with satisfaction and a happy tea party was soon in 
 session. 
 
 At six o'clock the wash-boiler was put on the stove 
 in my kitchen. When the water boiled, I put in a 
 half a pound of tea, three or four tins of milk and 
 sugar enough to make it real sweet. In the mean- 
 time, Stephen was getting the tables set again in the 
 schoolroom, and one extra table near the door was set 
 unknown to me but with Benjamin's supervision 
 with my table-cloth and dishes, and when I went over 
 to see if everything was all right Daniel politely 
 bowed me to a seat at that table where I was soon 
 joined by Mr. Springer and the Lawrence family. 
 
 Stephen was head waiter and master of ceremonies. 
 Years of experience working for whites had made 
 both him and Samuel expert table waiters. These 
 two were also able to manage the small boys. We all 
 laughed most heartily to hear Stephen as he passed 
 the biscuits, say, "Take one," in English, nor would 
 they have dared take more at each passing. 
 
 They ate a little and sang much that evening. 
 Eeaching over to one of the bouquets, Benjamin took 
 some sprigs of bright purple boganvilliar and put it 
 in his hair and over his ears. Others followed his ex- 
 ample until nearly every woolly head was brilliantly 
 and sometimes grotesquely ornamented with flowers. 
 Daniel usually led the singing as he was best able to 
 pitch a tune and carry it through, which is quite an 
 achievement when there are at least twenty lusty 
 singers who know neither the tune nor the words.
 
 io8 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 Jim got up and recited eighteen verses of the tenth 
 of John, in English, to the great admiration of the 
 boys while Gumba, his " friend," dropped her eyes 
 on the table as if blinded by his brilliancy. Charley 
 Potter, being our best reader, gave us the poem, 
 "Hark what mean those holy voices," in English, 
 and then the whole crowd sang it lustily in the ver- 
 nacular. Others read and recited both English and 
 Chikaranga. And thus with fresh relays of tea three 
 hours passed merrily away. Then they rose, sang 
 the doxology and asked for the benediction, which 
 was no sooner given than Daniel, without the least 
 irreverence on his part, called for three cheers and a 
 tiger. 
 
 We had all had one of the merriest of Merry Christ- 
 mases.
 
 XX 
 
 WHEN GREEK MEETS GREEK 
 
 MISSIONARIES are quite as human as other 
 people, in fact a little more so owing to 
 the narrow circle of social life in which they 
 are placed. Moreover, they do not (as is so often sup- 
 posed) spend all their time in teaching the poor 
 heathen the way to heaven, that is not directly. 
 
 Usually there isn't anything the missionary has 
 ever learned to do in his life that he doesn't have to 
 do again on the foreign field, particularly in a primi- 
 tive field like Africa. And in addition to these, he 
 has to turn his hand to half a hundred things of which 
 he never dreamt. 
 
 One of the first things this missionary of whom I 
 write had to do on the field was to drive a span of 
 oxen, eight yoke to the span. Then the oxen all died 
 of Bed Water Fever and donkeys took their place. 
 Not a few of them shuffled off their leather reims with 
 pyemia and the rest still remain in the service. This 
 story has to do with the ones which survived. 
 
 There were two white men, both Yankees, hailing 
 from the Middle West : they both had the unmistaka- 
 ble Yankee twang and Yankee drawl : moreover they 
 were both endowed by nature with the enjoyment of 
 driving a sharp bargain : and they had both been 
 bred on the prairies where they had known the joy 
 of swapping horses : and they met in Africa. 
 
 109
 
 no Snap Shots From Sunny Afric 
 
 The one was a road- maker for the Chartered Com- 
 pany and the other a clerical looking missionary. 
 The road-builder had two span of donkeys, eighteen 
 in each span, while the missionary was at the head 
 of a mission which owned one span. In the course 
 of his going and coming, the missionary often passed 
 the other on the road, and as is the custom of Western 
 men, usually stopped his mule for a few words of 
 friendly chat. 
 
 " I say," drawled the road-builder as they met one 
 hot day, " don't want to trade a donkey, do you ? " 
 
 Inwardly the instincts and training of twenty years 
 ago made the missionary prick up his ears and an- 
 swer cautiously, even indifferently as he flicked an 
 imaginary fly off the mule's back, " O I don't know. 
 Hadn't thought of it." 
 
 The road-builder squirted out a mouthful of tobacco 
 juice, pushed back his hat, took a sight with one eye 
 on the distant range of mountains, cleared his throat 
 and said, "Wa-al, yer see it's this way : I've only 
 one white donkey in my lot and I noticed the other 
 day 's your team wus goin' by that you'd only one 
 white donkey in your span. I hate to see donkeys 
 odd mated an' I thought I'd just speak to you 'n' 
 mebbe we could trade if it's all the same to you." 
 
 " Well," said the other, still with true Yankee cau- 
 tion, "I'll be back this way to-morrow and I'll take 
 a look at the one you want to trade and then we'll see 
 about it." 
 
 " All right," said the road-builder as he turned 
 back to his work and the other drove on with an in- 
 ward chuckle. He knew only too well that his white 
 donkey was the biggest, finest looking donkey in his
 
 When Greek Meets Greek ill 
 
 span. And he knew that that was what had struck 
 his compatriot's eye and not the aesthetic desire to 
 have a well-mated team. He also knew that the 
 white donkey was the laziest one in the lot. More 
 than once it had been suggested that the white 
 donkey be hitched with his head to the wagon in 
 which case the rest of the span at least would be 
 saved the trouble of pulling him along. Anything 
 with four legs which could hold up the reims in 
 Whitey's place was sure to be a bargain. 
 
 He had not spent years on the Dakota prairies for 
 nothing. When he came back and saw the poor, 
 shabby little brown donkey to be swapped for the 
 big white, he knew his conclusions were correct. 
 However, he leisurely concluded the bargain and the 
 shabby little mare held up the reims in Whitey's 
 place, did twice the work and in the course of six 
 months presented the mission a nice little foal. 
 
 Some time later as the missionary was passing by, 
 he said, "Haven't got another donkey you want to 
 trade, have you?" 
 
 "Dunno's I have," replied the road-builder medi- 
 tatively, "unless," he added again, putting his foot 
 up onto the hub of the wheel and spitting sidewise 
 into the middle of the road, "unless it's that white 
 one." 
 
 "He is kinder lazy, isn't he?" replied the mis- 
 sionary in a confirmatory tone. 
 
 "Yes," shortly added the other, "but," as if 
 speaking out his mental vindication of his own case, 
 " the other was a kinder lazy critter too." 
 
 Five years have passed and there's another road- 
 builder on that job now, but the last time the mis-
 
 1 1 2 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 sionary passed that way there was a white donkey 
 with a big cow-bell on his neck out at grass by the 
 side of the road. He had never been seen in the 
 span. And so long as the Yankee stayed on the 
 road-building job, he had one big, white donkey 
 which he was willing to trade for anything of the 
 long-eared species.
 
 XXI 
 
 BUYING A TROUSSEAU 
 
 KADUKU'S bare feet made only a slight 
 swishing sound as he swiftly descended the 
 three steps which led from the mission 
 home kitchen down into the room where he had his 
 bed. It was a crude sort of bed made of old pro- 
 vision box boards nailed onto two poles while four 
 sticks nailed onto the corners acted as posts. It was 
 a very rude production but the pride of Kaduku's 
 heart. He had made it himself. To be sure the legs 
 were a bit unsteady and every now and then they 
 collapsed entirely, when they had to be reset with 
 much ostentation and vigorous hammering. So 
 much the better. It only the better demonstrated 
 to his fellows that he, Kaduku, the Little One, could 
 hammer. 
 
 Kaduku's bed was neatly spread with three blan- 
 kets and the crowning feature was a straw pillow on 
 which was a gaily coloured pillow-case. Around the 
 room were various pictures tacked up on the wall. 
 Some were Sunday-school roll pictures which Charley 
 had given him, some were those he had taken out of 
 old magazines ; they were of infinite variety, ranging 
 from Abraham on the Plains of Mamre to the latest 
 races taken from "The Graphic," while the highly- 
 coloured print of King Edward and Queen Alexandria 
 stood out in bold relief against the ultra marine wall. 
 
 113
 
 114 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 Kaduku sat down on the bed and drew out a little 
 tin trunk in which his Sunday clothes and his hoarded 
 wealth were kept, but not always secure. He had 
 once taken in a passing friend to sleep with him 
 and the friend had got away with six of Kaduku's 
 precious gold sovereigns. It was a heavy blow for 
 the generous-hearted youth to be repaid with such 
 treachery, so he had kept the trunk securely locked 
 and wore the key about his neck thereafter. 
 
 He had been saving ever since and now had ten of 
 these bright pieces for a special purpose. He also 
 took out his Sunday clothes, a rusty black and a 
 most unbecoming suit, but the pride of his heart. 
 Did not the Mufundises wear black on Sunday ? And 
 had he not risen to the dignity of Interpreter f If 
 then his teachers wore black as a fitting apparel for 
 the Sabbath day, he must wear it also. 
 
 Dressed in his Sunday clothes, his leather shoes 
 and socks, he put the precious gold coins in a purse 
 and hurried out into the white, hot sunlight for a ten 
 mile walk to town. 
 
 I can see him now as he went down the road swing- 
 ing his stocky little figure from side to side with a 
 most self-important swagger. 
 
 There are two kind of stores to be found in all 
 European towns in Africa, the so-called Kaffir Store 
 where only the natives and Indians trade and the 
 White Stores where the Europeans deal and where 
 large profits are also gathered from a native trade. 
 Many of the white men will curse the Kaffir roundly 
 and the mission which " pampers him so that he gets 
 above his place." But if he comes into the same 
 man's store with a handful of yellow sovereigns in
 
 Buying a Trousseau 115 
 
 his pocket, why thaffs only business. This same 
 man will spend a whole morning waiting 011 such a 
 native, taking down everything he has on his shelves 
 and showing him, for the time being, all the defer- 
 ence that he would to the mayor or the president of 
 the local bank. 
 
 Kaduku knew a man who kept one of the best 
 stores for whites and straight to him he went. 
 
 "Good-morning, Kaduku," exclaimed the young 
 man genially. He knew the short, stubby little fel- 
 low well from frequent visits to the mission. 
 
 "Good-morning, sir," was the polite reply. 
 
 "Well, what can I do for you this morning 1 ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 " I wish to make purchase of some lady's dress," 
 said Kaduku. 
 
 " Eight you are," was the retort. " "Well, I've got 
 j ust what you want. Do you want a suit or a skirt ? ' ' 
 
 11 1 think I should like to see some blouse and some 
 skirts, sir," was the reply. 
 
 Kaduku was no raw Kaffir to have anything 
 palmed off on him. He had spent weeks thinking 
 over this thing and knew pretty well what he wanted. 
 But fortunately for him with his rather limited 
 vocabulary relating to ladies' garments, the manager 
 of the store also knew about what would suit Kaduku. 
 He was willing to spend three or even four hours 
 with him if need be. But owing to the mutual in- 
 telligence of both parties, it only took about an hour 
 for the transfer of the most of the golden sovereigns 
 to the till and the wrapping of an immense bundle 
 which looked half the size of Kaduku himself. 
 
 Kaduku made one more purchase, a brass ring gilt-
 
 li6 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 washed which he put in his vest pocket ; then 
 shouldering his bundle he started back over the 
 mountain range for Old Umtali, the happiest boy in 
 all that section. 
 
 The sun was just setting as he arrived at the mis- 
 sion home. Jim Gigita had the fire built and the 
 kettle merrily boiling towards the master's supper in 
 the large roomy kitchen. 
 
 Kaduku hastily divested himself of the sweltering 
 rusty black clothes and the shoes which pinched his 
 unaccustomed feet and the socks which were the sure 
 mark of his being a well dressed gentleman and then 
 he spread out his purchases before the admiring gaze 
 of his most intimate friend Jim whom he had known 
 since the days when Jim herded Mr. Ehnes' cow. near 
 Umtali. 
 
 Jim's eyes fairly bulged with astonishment as he 
 gazed at the marvellous array of finery while he 
 rattled off a stream of ejaculations and favourable 
 comments which would have led any hearer to think 
 that there was the worst kind of a row going on. I 
 used to step to the door frequently to see if there were 
 a fight in the kitchen until I got used to Jim's way of 
 talking. Brown's bulldog at Broken Hill used to 
 growl most viciously at me every time I saw him and 
 at first filled me with terror for he was a most savage 
 looking brute. " Don't be afraid of him, that's only 
 his way of talking," his master said. So it was : he'd 
 trot along with me down to the house growling all 
 the way. He was perfectly harmless and good- 
 natured. And so was Jim. 
 
 Then Kaduku called in the master and lastly the 
 missis who marvelled most of all as she compared
 
 Buying a Trousseau 117 
 
 the fine array with her own simple wardrobe. That 
 black broadcloth skirt in the latest style made her 
 four- year-old flannel sink into insignificance. That 
 handsome red blouse she had priced herself on her 
 last trip to town but her purse-strings were two 
 short. Then there were a pink petticoat and a blue 
 petticoat, a tailored wash blouse and other articles 
 of finery. 
 
 The next Sunday the black skirt and red blouse 
 appeared at morning service. I was playing the 
 opening hymn at the time and so only noted out of 
 the corner of my eye that something was not quite 
 right. As I sat facing the audience, I saw later that 
 the blouse was worn hind side fore. Being made to 
 hook up behind, it was found more convenient to 
 hook it in front. Such details do not matter. The 
 petticoats were worn as dress skirts. The next time 
 I saw the rich broadcloth, the owner had it on while 
 washing out a cooking pot in the back yard. She 
 wore no apron and my New England conscience 
 shrank from the desecration. But Mukonyerwa and 
 Kaduku were perfectly happy. So long as Mukon- 
 yerwa was dressed in the best clothes of any girl on 
 the station, it mattered not to them what was the 
 manner in which they were put on.
 
 TCTCH 
 
 MUKONYERWA 
 
 f ~"^HE first time I saw Mukonyerwa was at her 
 grandfather's kraal. Jacob, her brother, 
 
 _M_ had been in attendance upon the old man 
 from the first of his illness. Now his mother, 
 Muledzwa and his Aunt Shikanga had arrived on 
 the scene to cook the old man's food so that he would 
 not be unduly hurried out of this world by any of his 
 forty more or less devoted wives. So Mukonyerwa 
 and her little sister, Nenu, came with the mother. 
 
 Shikanga' s daughter, Basi, her niece, Gumba, an- 
 other one of the cousins, Shakedi (whom I was continu- 
 ally confounding with Shakeni so I called her by her 
 second name of Metapudzwa) and other girls spent 
 the half of their time with me. So when the new 
 cousin arrived, they rushed her off and the whole 
 crowd came around the corner of the big boulder 
 with loud shouts and boisterous laughing to introduce 
 her to the Missisi Mufundisi. 
 
 Of the group of girls, all of whom were grand- 
 daughters of the old king, Mukonyerwa was the least 
 prepossessing. She was then at the awkward age, 
 large of frame, coarse featured, bold and brazen. 
 Whenever the girls were around, her voice could al- 
 ways be heard above all the others. She was as 
 wild as an unbroken colt, running and racing hither 
 and thither about the kraal, in marked contrast to 
 
 118
 
 o 
 
 H 
 
 UJ 
 
 w 
 ffi 
 
 H
 
 Mukonyerwa 119 
 
 her younger brother who carried himself with the 
 quiet dignity of a prince, indeed. 
 
 Her clothing consisted of a single piece of cotton 
 cloth so dirty that I do not know if it had originally 
 been white or coloured. Her whole person was dirty 
 and unkempt. 
 
 After I went back to the mission, she used to come 
 and visit me from time to time as did the other girls. 
 Once when she had an ulcer under the eyelid she had 
 to come down for Dr. Gurney to treat her. She 
 stayed with me two or more weeks at that time. She 
 had on two kinds of cloth then, a piece of dark blue 
 which was tied around her body just under the arms 
 and another most fantastically designed red one 
 which tied around her neck and hung down in the 
 back. The sister was dressed the same way. The 
 two girls happened to be present at Watapa's wed- 
 ding and were in a photograph taken at the time, the 
 large designs being the most prominent thing in the 
 picture. 
 
 By this time the girls had cleaned up considerably 
 and I enjoyed their company and missed them when 
 they were gone. Evening after evening they would 
 come into my study as soon as their supper was 
 eaten, sit down on the floor near my feet and say, 
 "Missisi, won't you show us some pictures?" And 
 then I would get out some Sunday-school cards or 
 the like and tell them stories until I was completely 
 talked out. 
 
 I shall never forget the keen, intense interest of 
 these two girls as they listened night after night to 
 this same story. 
 
 But it was four years before Mukonyerwa came to
 
 12O Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 us and said she wanted to stay and attend the school. 
 I was very ill in bed but when they told me that she 
 had come, I rejoiced greatly. She had another girl 
 with her. 
 
 The next day two of Mtasa's men came to the 
 mission and asked if the girls were there. We told 
 them they were and called the girls out. They tried 
 to persuade the girls to return when, with a dash of 
 the old roughness, they told the men to "voetsak" 
 (footsak) a term of indignity used properly only to 
 dogs. It has been rightly said that there are few 
 white men or natives in South Africa and not a 
 single dog who do not know this word. 
 
 Sweating under the indignity, the two men went 
 away and a couple of days later Gumba's stepfather, 
 Chimbadzwa, Nsebe, who was the king's counsellor, 
 and another man came down to try and persuade the 
 girls to go back with them. It is a rather odd thing 
 that Chimbadzwa did not make any protest against 
 Gumba's staying. He was bitterly opposed to mis- 
 sion work but I never knew of his trying to get 
 Gumba away from us. 
 
 However, they argued and threatened Mukonyerwa 
 and her friend until the girl who came with Mukon- 
 yerwa went along with them. But Mukonyerwa was 
 obdurate. She said she had made up her mind that 
 she wanted to learn and nothing could induce her to 
 go back. 
 
 A few days more and Mtasa himself with Muledzwa 
 and some thirty of the king's retainers armed with 
 spears appeared on the scene. It began to look 
 serious. Mtasa asked that all the missionaries on 
 the place be assembled and that there be an open
 
 Mukonyerwa 121 
 
 hearing. Doubtless he thought that his display of 
 arms would make an impression. 
 
 The court was called and the girl came fearlessly 
 before them and stoutly reiterated her determination 
 to remain where she was. She told them frankly 
 that she had not taken the step hastily but had been 
 meditating coming to the mission for a long time. 
 
 Muledzwa in hot temper charged the mission with 
 having sent Kaduku to preach in the kraal and then 
 secretly induce the girl to come to the mission. This 
 Mukonyerwa denied. "I love Kaduku," she said 
 candidly, "and I mean to marry him. But I did 
 not come here because he was here. I had made up 
 iny mind to come in any case before he spoke to me 
 about marriage. And I should stay here just the 
 same even if something should prevent my marrying 
 him." A statement which she afterwards proved. 
 
 Finding she could not move her daughter either 
 by appeal or by threat, Muledzwa turned and went 
 off up the road raging in true heathenish fashion. 
 She filled the air with her imprecations and threat- 
 enings. 
 
 The king, on the other hand, while he was angry 
 and chagrined, saw a row of lemon trees which 
 aroused his cupidity. He was an inveterate beggar 
 whenever any opportunity presented itself. So now 
 he pocketed his wrath in his smart riding suit which 
 was his favourite attire and humbly asked for a 
 lemon. Of course he got several as did all of his 
 men. 
 
 In the meantime, Kaduku had come to Mr. 
 Springer and asked permission to consider Mukon- 
 yerwa as his finances. The consent being given, he
 
 122 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 took the famous trip to Umtali to buy her some 
 clothes worthy of civilization. 
 
 I used to regret the tendency of the girls to get at 
 once into European clothes. Clothed they surely 
 needed to be but it seemed to me this could better be 
 accomplished by some oriental style of dress more 
 hygienic than our occidental one. 
 
 I think now that the existing circumstances and 
 the contact the Africans have with white women, not 
 only justify but commend a European style of cloth- 
 ing. One bright, highly educated young woman of 
 another part of Africa said that she had never 
 known a mission girl to go back to heathenism as 
 long as she wore her foreign clothing. But if she 
 lapsed, the first sign of it was a return to the native 
 garment or loin cloth. 
 
 Six months later Mr. Springer was passing through 
 Muledzwa's kraal. She was in her gardens and 
 when she saw him, called out. She told him she 
 was very glad, indeed, that her daughter was in 
 the school. She was proud of the girl's sewing (and 
 it was something any mother might be proud of). 
 Was he going back to Old Umtali now? She 
 would show him a better ford than the one he came 
 by and she went in person a mile or so to do it. 
 Later on she asked that a native teacher might be 
 sent to her kraal and she wanted Mukonyerwa. 
 However, her wish was not granted. Her son Jacob 
 was sent there instead. 
 
 The path of true love did not run smooth for 
 Mukonyerwa and the end of her first romance came 
 at Kaduku's death. But she kept her word and re- 
 mained in the mission, refusing all of the many other
 
 Mukonyerwa 1 23 
 
 offers of marriage made to her during the next year. 
 She also continued to wear the red blouse sometimes 
 hooked up in front and sometimes in the back 
 until her cousin Benjamin, who had a better knowl- 
 edge of how white people dressed, invested in a 
 black satine blouse, a black skirt and black petticoat 
 which he gave her, a costume as unbecoming to the 
 dark-skinned maiden as it was gloomy. 
 
 Finally she settled on one of her many lovers and 
 spoke the comforting word to Stephen who at once 
 hastened to tell Mr. Springer who had also been be- 
 sieged by the disappointed suitors to intercede for 
 them until he was weary of them. 
 
 Two years ago she and Stephen were married and 
 have since been in charge of an out station. In one 
 of his last letters, Solomon, in giving the general 
 news, wrote, " Mukonyerwa he got son."
 
 KADUKU, THE LITTLE ONE 
 
 KADUKU, as we called him, bad the distinc- 
 tion of being the first boy in the school. 
 Small beginnings must not be despised by a 
 missionary. Mr. Greeley started the school at Old 
 Umtali in 1900 with the one pnpil, a youth who was 
 working as second boy in his kitchen. Long Jake 
 soon doubled the enrollment. The next year there 
 were six or more. Then came a lot of piccaninnies 
 from Mtasa's and so on until the last report in 1908 
 showed about one hundred and twenty-five boys and 
 seventy-five girls. 
 
 Kaduku was not the first convert : that blessing 
 was Charley Potter's. But he was one of the first 
 converts and certainly one of the noblest Christian 
 characters we had. 
 
 He came to the mission straight from the kraal and 
 wanted to work. He knew nothing about school, but 
 he did know about money and wanted it. So he was 
 engaged and set to scrubbing floors, which he did with 
 the same energy which was manifested in everything 
 through his short life. Soon he got to be the cook in 
 the house and the interpreter in the mission, the first 
 one we had. He was wonderfully clever in his studies. 
 No boy could come near him in his knowledge of 
 English. He was hopeless in mathematics, and 
 Daniel, who only knew half as much and taught by 
 main strength, was worth two of him as a teacher. 
 
 124
 
 Kaduku, the Little One 125 
 
 He was a funny shaped little fellow. In a nice 
 shirt and snowy loin cloth, he passed as a fine look- 
 ing boy. But the rusty black suit and not too well 
 fitting pants exaggerated his peculiar build and made 
 him almost grotesque in appearance. 
 
 His was one of the sunniest dispositions I ever 
 knew. He was always cheerful and laughing up to 
 the time he became formally engaged to Mukon- 
 yerwa whose tall, well built figure accentuated his 
 own shortness. 
 
 The trouble was that her mother and uncle being 
 of the royal family, did not consider Kaduku, who 
 was the son of a common man, as her equal. More- 
 over there had been some difficulty in years gone by 
 due to an intermarriage of the two families, and the 
 feud had been handed down. Kaduku' s own people 
 were the first to raise their voices against the match. 
 His father and mother and uncle came down to the 
 mission to see him about it for they feared the king 
 would make trouble for them. Then they wanted 
 Kaduka to come up to his kraal where the matter 
 could be talked out. He went up with them, a dis- 
 tance of twenty-five miles, and he was not very used 
 to walking on the trail. That night when he ought 
 to have slept, they all gathered round him, and the 
 whole family history was rehearsed over and over 
 again. They told him that if he married Mukonyerwa 
 they must give his sister to Mtasa for one of his wives. 
 They told of threats of the king which had reached 
 their ears. They related most horrible stories of 
 blood-curdling witchcrafts which had been known to 
 be visited on those who committed a similar offense 
 to that of Kaduku marrying Mukonyerwa.
 
 126 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 Could he but have laid down and snatched even an 
 hour's sleep, his sunny spirit and faith in God would 
 have risen above it all. Perhaps they knew that, so 
 they kept tormenting him until he promised that he 
 would go back to Old Umtali the next morning and 
 cancel the engagement. 
 
 It was almost dusk when he arrived, his whole body 
 shaking with nervousness, his eyes bloodshot and his 
 talk almost incoherent. It was impossible to follow 
 what he said. He knew no English to express the 
 situation and even tripped and stumbled over his 
 mother tongue. 
 
 We did our best to help him and get affairs straight- 
 ened out but it was useless, as we knew afterwards. 
 That fifty mile walk and that horrible night had got 
 in their work. He complained continually of being 
 tired and often showed signs of being very dull. We 
 could not think what was the matter with him. To 
 all outward appearances, he and Mukonyerwa were 
 on as good terms as ever. With her usual strength 
 of character, she had refused to pay any attention to 
 the objections of her mother or uncle, and after a while 
 both families withdrew all objections to the marriage. 
 
 But Kaduku began to decline rapidily in health 
 until Mr. Springer finally sent him to the best phy- 
 sician in Umtali, who gave him a thorough examina- 
 tion but could find nothing serious the matter with 
 him. Still he continued to droop. He no longer 
 was able to take any pleasure even in his old bicycle 
 which had been his most boyish delight. 
 
 It is more than probable that the curses which his 
 people kept hanging like Damocles' sword over his 
 head began to affect his brain which in a few months
 
 Kaduku, the Little One 127 
 
 gave way entirely. We gave him the best treatment 
 we could at the mission but without avail. 
 
 Then his father and mother arrived and said that 
 once he had had a similar attack before ever he came 
 to the mission and they could cure him. Muledzwa 
 came also and urged that he be allowed to go home 
 with his parents. She seemed most solicitous for him. 
 So we let him go. 
 
 A week or so later a messenger came in with a note 
 from Benjamin who had been sent up to see how 
 Kaduku was getting along. "We got here just in 
 time to see Kaduku die. We want you to come 
 quick. We do not want Kaduku to have heathen 
 burial. We want him taken to Old Umtali." 
 
 A half hour later, Mr. Springer sprang into the 
 saddle and pushed the mule with all possible haste to 
 the kraal where the loyal mission boys were staying 
 with Kaduku' s body. The next morning they bore 
 his corpse onto the mission grounds amid a great hush 
 of sorrow which swelled every heart. 
 
 That afternoon we gathered in the little chapel 
 where Kaduku had so often acted as interpreter. 
 There were not only our own mission boys and girls 
 but a large number of visitors from Kaduku' s neigh- 
 bourhood, natives who were attending a Christian 
 burial for the first time. 
 
 The coffin was covered with plain white muslin and 
 heaped with beautiful flowers gathered and placed 
 there by the pupils themselves. The hymn was an- 
 nounced and the congregation solemnly rose to its feet 
 and began singing in an exquisite minor, "Thou O 
 God art Saviour," but the tune wavered and at times 
 almost broke as one after another voice failed.
 
 128 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 Emotion nearly overcame the preacher as he started 
 to give a short talk at this his first native Christian 
 funeral. Mukonyerwa's head was bent and she was 
 weeping silently. 
 
 As I sat there in that crowded church, my mind 
 went back to the first native funeral I had seen at 
 Mtasa's, four years previously. I had been living for 
 weeks in Mtasa's kraal in the midst of the drunken, 
 fighting, wrangling crowd, so that when the first 
 shrieks pierced the air that morning, I paid very little 
 attention. Screaming women were no novelty. 
 
 Soon, however, the screams were taken up by scores 
 of women and girls, who were hurrying past my hut, 
 and I hastened out to see what could be the matter. 
 Every one in the upper end of the kraal seemed to 
 be rushing in one direction and the air was pierced 
 with the peculiar scream of the women. 
 
 I put on my hat and joined the procession, which 
 soon took me to the hut of a young man by the name 
 of Benzi, a son of the old king. Here were rapidly 
 congregating men, women and children the men and 
 boys silent and solemn ; the females were all shriek- 
 ing in an ear-splitting chorus with the tears rolling 
 down their cheeks. 
 
 I sat there in their midst and looked in wonder. 
 This was a new phase of kraal life to me. There was 
 Miss Impudence, one of the boldest, cheekiest, most 
 shameless girls in the whole community, with streams 
 of tears running down both cheeks. Was it sorrow ? 
 Her love for her cousin could hardly be as deep as all 
 that. The Bantu are a very tender-hearted people 
 and easily moved to sympathy along certain lines, so 
 there was doubtless much genuine feeling in the girl's
 
 Kaduku, the Little One 129 
 
 violent demonstration of grief. But it wasn't all 
 grief. There was something else. 
 
 Now came the Imp and the Terror ; they were little 
 girls, and at times almost little fiends. But the pres- 
 ence of death had subdued them and they joined in 
 the frantic howling of their friends and -relatives. 
 And just here another fact was impressed upon me ; 
 the crowd was mostly made up of relatives. Why, 
 of course. The old king had forty wives then living 
 and no one knows how many he had had in his long 
 reign, so of children and grandchildren, their wives 
 and husbands and their relations there were so many, 
 that as a matter of fact they were all related to each 
 other. 
 
 On they came in fresh relays by tens and twenties 
 and thirties, each new set of arrivals being the signal 
 for a fresh outburst of tears and screams. It was 
 more than grief; it was the superstitious scream of 
 primitive man trying to frighten off the evil spirits 
 which had at last seized upon poor Benzi, lest they, 
 too, his hapless relatives, be carried off with him. 
 
 After a while I went into the hut with the mourn- 
 ers, not out of curiosity, but from pure sympathy and 
 sadness. I had liked the bright young fellow who 
 had made himself acquainted with us the first day of 
 our arrival. And I could hardly realize that he who 
 but two days before had attended the Sunday service 
 and had asked several interested, intelligent ques- 
 tions was thus snuffed out like the flame of a candle. 
 
 So I went in, expecting to see the body. Imagine 
 my horror to see only a large roll of cloth. For no 
 sooner had the breath left the dead man's body than 
 they had brought his knees up to his chin and tightly
 
 130 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 bound the whole body in yards and yards of un- 
 bleached cotton cloth. 
 
 I got out quickly into the air and sunshine. Ah ! 
 there was no mistaking this for anything else but 
 heathenism. Oh, how I did wish I could talk to the 
 people and comfort them ! Alas ! At that time 
 there were no words which could have conveyed the 
 sentiments I wanted so much to express, for no words 
 were to be found in their language for them. These 
 words all had to be coined outright or else thoroughly 
 remodelled by the missionaries. 
 
 So I could only sit in silence, showing my sym- 
 pathy by my presence, while the morning hours 
 rolled away and the men were digging a grave. At 
 last, about high noon, the grave was ready and so 
 was the hastily improvised litter on which to carry 
 the body. For an hour or so there had been com- 
 parative quiet except for the wife, mother and sister 
 of the dead man. These three had sat disconsolately 
 just outside the hut wailing softly most of the time. 
 
 But as the litter approached, once more the women 
 lifted their voices and the air was again rent with 
 their screams. And when the body was brought out 
 of the door there was one frantic, agonized outburst 
 of woe which would have moved the hardest heart. 
 
 Benzi was to be buried under the shadow of a big 
 rock not far away. Half-way up there, the frenzy of 
 the women reached its height. They threw them- 
 selves on the ground before the corpse and then jump- 
 ing up, leaped into the air beating themselves in a 
 very paroxysm of grief and terror. 
 
 Then the procession moved on amidst the wild 
 cries and gesticulations until they came to the rock.
 
 Kaduku, the Little One 131 
 
 Here it was found that the grave was not big enough, 
 so we all sat and waited about an hour for the work 
 to be finished. As the natives had no shovels and 
 the digging had to be done with native hoes, it was a 
 slow process. 
 
 The wild cries ceased almost suddenly and the 
 women sat down .in hopeless stolidity. At last the 
 body would go in, and so it was placed in the hole 
 made for it and the hole was well walled up with solid 
 stone so that the prowling leopard or scavenger hyena 
 could not dig it out. And then they all quietly dis- 
 persed, cheerless, comfortless, apathy written on the 
 faces of the chief mourners. 
 
 Just one month would be allowed the wife and 
 mother in which to bemoan BenzPs death. Then 
 they became the property of the next of kin. 
 
 Three weeks later I passed the hut where Benzi 
 died (Charley Potter said he had been murdered in a 
 drunken dance at his hut the night before the fu- 
 neral) and it was being torn down. No one would 
 live in the same hut in which he died. The hut des- 
 troyed, the poor mother and wife treated as human 
 chattels without souls or feelings, no hope for the 
 world to come, this was indeed the rule and reign 
 of evil spirits ! 
 
 Kaduku' s funeral was a touching scene. And yet 
 how different from that heathen funeral we had wit- 
 nessed at Mtasa's where frantic hopelessness had held 
 sway. As we turned back from the newly made 
 grave, there was still ringing in our ears, " I am the 
 resurrection and the life : he that believeth on Me, 
 though he were dead, yet shall he live." 
 
 We planted a scarlet hybiscus on his grave in
 
 132 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 token of our hope. Nearly every week Mukonyerwa 
 placed a bouquet of flowers there. He being dead 
 yet speaketh and his testimony in his death may 
 have been more forcible than any sermon he might 
 have preached had he lived.
 
 XXIV 
 SUNDAY AT GANDANZARA'S 
 
 THEY have a splendid native out-station at 
 Gandanzara's now and Daniel is in charge. 
 He has had great success. Daniel was sure 
 to have success. As I said once before, he literally 
 taught by the sweat of his brow and preached hell- 
 fire and brimstone. But he was thoroughly good as 
 well as desperately in earnest. He was no ranter. 
 
 He was not with us that first time we came to 
 Gandanzara's kraal. Although only thirty -two miles 
 from Old Umtali, we had never heard of the kraal 
 before as it lay in a most out-of-the-way place tucked 
 in among the mountains. We were looking for 
 M'koni's kraal and found Gandanzara's. 
 
 As we approached the fields of grain near the 
 kraal, a well-dressed young man came to meet us and 
 learning who we were, volunteered at once to show us 
 a good camping place. He had attended a mission 
 night school once himself for a few months at Salis- 
 bury and was unfeignedly glad to see us. 
 
 He led us more than a mile beyond the kraal up a 
 very steep mountain where there was a fine stream of 
 beautiful cold water. His choice of a camp site for 
 us showed that he knew missionaries liked clean 
 grass and plenty of pure water. Having had to 
 camp the night previously on a waterless plain, we 
 appreciated our blessings the more. 
 
 133
 
 134 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 As the boys began cutting the grass to clear a 
 place for our tent, one of them suddenly gave a cry 
 of alarm. He had almost stepped on a spotted puff 
 adder, a painting of which Sir Harry Johnson has 
 rightly named, " Death." The boys soon killed it, 
 but after that they worked a little more carefully in 
 the tall grass. ; , , 
 
 The people were very friendly from the first. 
 They said that we were the first white missionaries 
 who had ever come to their kraal. As it was Satur- 
 day night, Mr. Springer got the young guide to tell 
 them that we wanted food and would not buy on the 
 morrow. So in only about an hour's time after our 
 arrival, there came a stream of sellers and soon we 
 had more food than we could use and had to turn 
 some of them away. The young man remained with 
 us till late that evening and acted as spokesman to 
 the people. Through him, Mr. Springer announced 
 that he would hold a public service at the kraal the 
 next morning. 
 
 The chief was away when we arrived on Saturday 
 but Mr. Springer met him the next morning. He 
 was a fine appearing young man of about forty. He 
 called his people to the service and fully two hundred, 
 mostly men and boys, seated themselves in a large, 
 open space to hear for the first time the Gospel mes- 
 sage. They listened with marked interest and respect. 
 
 After the service, Gandanzara expressed his pleas- 
 ure that we had paid him a visit. He said that no 
 other missionary had ever come to his kraal before 
 and asked if we could not send him a native teacher 
 to come and live there among his people all the time. 
 
 Before starting out on this evangelistic trip, the
 
 Sunday at Gandanzara's 135 
 
 question of presents to the native chiefs had been 
 discussed. We had no money to put into blankets, 
 loin cloths, etc., and we decided that we would try 
 another plan. "We had some new Gospels of John, a 
 translation by Mr. White, a Wesleyan of the Salisbury 
 District. These were in large print and gayly bound 
 in scarlet. So we decided to present each of the 
 chiefs with one of these (if they would take it) telling 
 them what it was, who we were, to see if we might 
 not thereby arouse curiosity if not interest. 
 
 Our boys laughed at the idea and insisted that the 
 chiefs would only use the books to light their pipes 
 with if they accepted them at all. So it was purely 
 an experiment and this was the first opportunity to 
 put it in operation. 
 
 But for some reason, Gandanzara refused to take 
 the unusual gift. He might have thought it would 
 bewitch him or he more likely wanted something 
 more useful. At any rate he refused to accept it and 
 the boys looked as much as to say, " We told you 
 so." However, that afternoon he sent up one of his 
 head men and said he should be very glad to accept 
 the Book if we would send it down to him. 
 
 While Mr. Springer and all the eight boys were 
 down at the kraal, a crowd of women came up and 
 routed me out of the tent before I was dressed. They 
 had peanuts, potatoes, meal, pumpkins and all sorts 
 of things for sale. I told them I could not buy from 
 them as it was Sunday but I would sing for them and 
 teach them to sing. Perhaps they couldn' t be blamed 
 if their savage breasts were not soothed with my 
 singing : I don't pose as a soloist but I did the best I 
 could. No they wouldn't sing nor would they listen
 
 136 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 to me. They were disappointed because I would not 
 buy from them and so after about an hour's time 
 during which they sat chatting (whether I was talking 
 or not) about me and the camp and sundry items of 
 kraal gossip while the babies alternately howled and 
 drew on the maternal supplies, they took themselves 
 off. 
 
 I hastened then to finish my toilet rather crestfallen 
 at my failure. But when the women got back to the 
 kraal and heard all the men talking about this new 
 teaching they had heard that morning and even the 
 chief discussing the sermon seriously, I fancy their 
 curiosity led them to wish they themselves had kept 
 quiet and heard what the Mufundisi had to say. 
 
 Mr. Springer returned at nine o'clock with a troop 
 of boys and young men at his heels. We hardly had 
 opportunity to eat our breakfast when they began to 
 ask for more singing. By ten the women were all 
 back again begging the Missis to sing for them. 
 They atoned for their earlier conduct by trying to 
 learn a hymn themselves. We always calculate that 
 more good can be done by teaching the natives to 
 sing one verse themselves than by singing the hymn- 
 book through from cover to cover for them. One of 
 the women said to me apologetically, "Teach our 
 daughters here the hymn ; they are young and can 
 learn it; we are too old." There was quite an ele- 
 ment of truth in what she said. 
 
 This reminds me of Bishop William Taylor's famous 
 story he used to tell to illustrate the need of boarding- 
 schools for the training of the native leaders of both 
 sexes. 
 
 He said that at one time the fishes came to the con-
 
 Sunday at Gandanzara's 137 
 
 elusion that it was their duty to teach the lobsters how 
 to swim straight ahead instead of backwards. So 
 they had a meeting and subsequently invited all the 
 lobsters to come to swimming school. 
 
 After a week they had another meeting and were 
 unanimous in their opinion that they must change 
 their methods. The old lobsters were not good pupils. 
 They were set in their ways and stiff in their joints 
 'and didn't want to learn the right way of swimming 
 anyhow. 
 
 So they said, " We won't bother much with these 
 old lobsters. If they want to come in, all right, but 
 we will devote most of our time to the little lobsters." 
 
 So they started a primary school and the little 
 lobsters turned out in full force, and as they were 
 limber, nimble and quick to learn, by the close of the 
 first day their teachers dismissed them proudly as they 
 started off for home swimming straight ahead. 
 
 But alas ! When they came back the next morning 
 from their caves and nooks, every last little lobster 
 was swimming backwards. And so it was every day 
 for another week until at the end of it the fishes had 
 another conference, when there was another unani- 
 mous motion carried that if ever they were to train up 
 these young lobsters as they ought to be trained, they 
 must establish a boarding-school where the little lob- 
 sters couldn't go home every night. 
 
 We have learned in Africa, as well as elsewhere, 
 that there is no limit to God's saving power. He can 
 save the oldest or the vilest sinner and many of them 
 have been saved. Moreover, we find that the day- 
 schools do an immense amount of good. Not only are 
 there thousands of children saved by means of the day-
 
 138 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 schools, but they in turn often lead their parents to 
 Christ. 
 
 But it is true that in order to train up young men 
 and women to be soul winners and leaders among their 
 own people, we must have the boarding-schools where 
 they will not be continually in the atmosphere and 
 influence of heathenish practices and superstitions 
 during the time of their training. 
 
 By eleven o'clock there were nearly a hundred 
 natives seated around all anxious to sing. I sung 
 myself hoarse and talked myself out and then called 
 Mr. Springer. He held forth for another hour and 
 then called Charley. Philip then led the singing 
 and the other boys took turns in preaching until 
 after four o'clock when the most of the crowd de- 
 parted, only a few of the young men staying until 
 late in the evening again. 
 
 A few weeks later three little boys from that kraal 
 canie to the mission school, but only one stayed. 
 The next term a few of his little kraal friends joined 
 him. Each vacation the boys were sent back to sow 
 the seed they had gotten at the mission : each term 
 there were new reinforcements. 
 
 Two years later Daniel took his bride up there to 
 live. They have had a great revival and a strong 
 native church will be the result. The women are 
 learning to make decent dresses for themselves after 
 the pattern of the clothes worn by the preacher's 
 wife. A work of grace begun in the heart never fails 
 to manifest itself in the outward appearance.
 
 XXV 
 
 WATAPA'S WEDDING 
 
 WATAPA'S only distinction was that he 
 was the homeliest, best-natured boy in the 
 school and that he was the first one to 
 have a wedding, and a church wedding at that. 
 
 He took his wedding in a most matter-of-fact way, 
 as if it were an every-day occurrence. The cere- 
 mony was to be at five o'clock, but he did not let 
 that interfere with his attending the afternoon session 
 of school. 
 
 We gathered promptly at the hour named in the 
 little chapel. Every boy was there, all the married 
 women and a few girl visitors. Among the very first 
 to arrive was Watapa and his bride Mulefu, who 
 took their places on the front seat with great solem- 
 nity. The audience, likewise, appeared to have come 
 to attend a funeral. There was not the shadow of a 
 smile, not the faintest trace of mirth on a single 
 countenance. 
 
 Watapa had been helping me translate the marriage 
 ceremony for a week, so if the translation was far 
 from perfect as to the letter, he thoroughly under- 
 stood the spirit of it. 
 
 He had purchased a new white pique" dress for the 
 bride consisting of a skirt and jacket which was 
 closely buttoned over a dirty gauze undervest cov- 
 ered at the neck by an old white silk handkerchief. 
 Watapa was arrayed in a new white duck suit and 
 
 139
 
 140 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 wore a large bunch of pink and white cosmos in his 
 coat lapel. 
 
 The contracting parties having been thoroughly 
 drilled previously, the ceremony passed off nicely 
 without any breaks. After the ceremony, it was 
 necessary for papers to be filled out to send in to the 
 government. 
 
 While this was being done, the boys filed out 
 quietly and stood in two solemn rows on either side 
 of the church door. As Watapa and his wife came 
 out of the church, the solemn lines broke and showers 
 of rice fell on the newly wedded pair amidst yells 
 which fairly rent the air. 
 
 Watapa tried to maintain his decorum for a few 
 seconds only to give way at last, take to his heels 
 and bolt ignominiously for the boys' dormitory leav- 
 ing his bride to wend her way alone. This, however, 
 did not seem to strike her as being any reflection on 
 him or breach of courtesy to herself. 
 
 She and her two girl friends went back to my 
 kitchen where she had put herself in bridal array, 
 stayed there perhaps half an hour and then went over 
 to where her husband had fled for refuge. 
 
 I had given them some tins of biscuits, tea, milk 
 and sugar and told them to have a jolly time. Soon 
 I went over to see how they were getting on. A 
 table was covered with a white cloth in the small 
 room Watapa had shared with a half dozen other 
 boys, and Daniel was making tea. But they stoutly 
 refused to open either the milk or the biscuits. They 
 informed me that they wanted them for the feast. 
 
 So they drank their tea and sang hymns until after 
 nine o'clock when Mulefu and her two friends re-
 
 Watapa's Wedding 141 
 
 turned and said they wanted to sleep in my kitchen, 
 though there was a hut all fitted up for the bridal 
 couple. No, they wanted to stay with me, so the 
 three girls slept in my kitchen and Watapa remained 
 at the dormitory as usual. 
 
 Imagine my dismay, however, when I found the 
 girls performing their ablutions in my dish pan the 
 next morning ! 
 
 That was in the middle of the week. For three 
 days there was a little brown goat tied out in front of 
 the boys' dormitory by day and inside by night, 
 bleating out to the passers-by that he was to be the 
 main feature of the wedding feast. 
 
 On Saturday, the tables were spread in the school- 
 room, covered with unbleached muslin and gayly 
 decorated with flowers. All the biscuits were opened 
 and the wash-boiler was impressed into service for tea. 
 Between the two front windows a small table was 
 again laid with linen and china furnished by Philip 
 from my dining-room, for the Wafundisi (teachers) 
 for whom a special pot of tea and plate of biscuits 
 were served. Another table was set at one side for 
 the girls and women. The bride sat at this and the 
 bridegroom got as far away as he could. Indeed, 
 after every one else had arrived they had to send out 
 and hunt him up and bring him in. 
 
 Whether he was overcome with a sudden fit of 
 bashfulness, whether he was afraid of the boys' merry 
 rallying or whether it were possible that he had 
 actually forgotten the event, is hard to say. It could 
 hardly have been the latter, as every other native on 
 the place had remembered and was promptly on 
 hand.
 
 142 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 But like some other bridegrooms, he had to be 
 hunted up and escorted to the feast. However, when 
 he got there, nothing could induce him to sit at all 
 near his bride. Neither would he take a seat at the 
 head of the table. He insisted on sitting among the 
 other boys at the side of one of the long tables in as 
 inconspicuous a place as possible. 
 
 For the first half hour, the wedding party were all 
 busy over plates of piled up rice, small chunks of 
 goat and swimming gravy. But when it came to the 
 biscuits and tea, they prolonged their pleasure by 
 singing hymns. It is one of the marks of the transi- 
 tion period from the old to the new that the boys and 
 girls sing hymns when they do not know what else 
 to do. 
 
 Under the old regime, festal occasions consist chiefly 
 of dancing and drinking intoxicants. The dancing is 
 to the accompaniment of the big drum and heathen 
 songs. 
 
 So when we eliminate the dancing and beer, the 
 first things to take their place are the Christian hymns. 
 This accounts for many an otherwise ludicrous incon- 
 gruity. To see Daniel marching his little band out 
 to the field, their hoes on their shoulders in military 
 style, lustily singing " Onward Christian Soldiers," 
 might provoke a smile at first. But what else could 
 they sing ? And when that troop of girls came flying 
 out to welcome us home after our two months' absence 
 on an evangelistic tour north to the Zambesi River, 
 they at once broke into a familiar hymn which had 
 nothing to do with the occasion whatever. The boys 
 heard it from afar and joined, finished that hymn 
 and were well launched into the " Christian Soldiers,"
 
 Watapa's Wedding 143 
 
 by the time they too gathered around us to the be- 
 wilderment of poor Jacky who thus feeling himself 
 called upon to make some reply opened his mouth 
 and brayed so lustily that the singing was completely 
 broken up in laughter. 
 
 So at the wedding, there was nothing else to do but 
 to sing. Toasts were beyond them as yet so they sung 
 the hymn-book through from cover to cover inter- 
 spersing their songs with fresh cups of tea and a fresh 
 biscuit. It was a clean, merry, happy celebration. 
 
 Unfortunately, Watapa had to interrupt his course 
 and leave school and the mission for a time to earn 
 money with which to pay for his wife or, in other 
 words, to purchase peace from his wife's relatives 
 who were vexing his soul daily for the usual "lo- 
 bolo " which the natives insist is only a proper gift 
 which the son-in-law tenders as a mark of respect to 
 his wife's father. 
 
 Two years later I received a letter. Watapa had 
 written it at Mulefu's dictation. It is packed away 
 in my goods in Africa. I wish I could quote it ver- 
 batim, but I can't. It was such a pathetic little note. 
 She wanted the Missis to know that the little baby 
 had died and she wanted the Missis to pray for her ? 
 And would the Missis send her a book to comfort her. 
 She would try to learn to read a primer (she had been 
 hopelessly thick-headed) now the baby was dead. I 
 sent her the Gospel of John and a primer containing 
 the Twenty-third Psalm. 
 
 Just as our carriage was crossing the mountain range 
 for the last time on our way to Umtali with our faces 
 turned homeward, we passed a transport wagon at 
 Christmas Pass. Some one called, and as we stopped
 
 144 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 the mule a woman came running towards us. It was 
 Mulefu with Watapa close behind her. She wanted 
 to tell ine how glad she was for the Book. We were 
 deeply touched by their sincere regrets at our depar- 
 ture and the gratitude they expressed for our having 
 come. Missionary work has, I think, the richest 
 compensation in the world.
 
 in 
 W
 
 XXVI 
 
 SWEET SIXTEEN 
 
 MY Black Lassie arrives at the mission 
 clothed in a single garment of uncertain 
 age, guiltless of an acquaintance with soap 
 and water. She announces that she "has arrived 
 and wants to learn." In nine out of ten cases she 
 has run away from her kraal. This means that she 
 will be followed by irate parents and other relatives 
 who will keep her and the powers that be in the 
 mission interested for a week or so. In the end they 
 usually depart and time works reconciliation. 
 
 If she has any friends in the school, they will im- 
 mediately lend her their clothes and the next day she 
 comes out rigged up in the most absurd style but 
 feeling very proud of herself and of her new book 
 and slate and eager for instruction. 
 
 Everything is so new, so delightfully new and 
 fascinating ! She has stepped from the grimy, smoky, 
 filthy darkness of the kraal life into a fairy-land where 
 the people live in amazing houses and the men eat with 
 their wives. It all seems so odd ! Her whole being 
 thrills with girlish happiness and she is a transformed 
 girl. Her laugh rings out merrily in chorus with the 
 others, and the laugh of Sweet Sixteen in any land 
 defies imitation. 
 
 She joins heartily in the singing, not at all ham- 
 pered by the fact that she knows neither the tune nor 
 
 145
 
 146 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 the words. She will learn them both in half the time 
 it took her brother, who is in the boys' school, to 
 do so. 
 
 When she hears the other girls pray, she wants to 
 pray too ; for she has the intuitive feeling which she 
 could not define that it is prayer which makes the 
 school what it is and the girls what they are. So it 
 will be but a few weeks before she will be praying in 
 public herself. Happily, to her, prayer is prayer 
 and she has not come to the point of making excuses 
 for not seizing all opportunities for it as they come. 
 
 In short, she is ready to learn to do anything the 
 other girls do. She is even willing to do her share 
 of the hoeing and digging : though having had little 
 else to do before in her life, she likes that least of all. 
 
 But oh ! how much there is for her to learn ! To 
 be prompt, and quick and clean and truthful ! To 
 learn the value of time ! Ah ! Her teacher needs 
 infinite patience on that score ! It will take years 
 for her to learn some of these lessons. She is not 
 built that way, nor were her mothers before her for 
 countless generations. 
 
 She learns to read and write with remarkable ra- 
 pidity. A few months' lessons with the needle will 
 enable her to excel many an American girl of her 
 age. For Sweet Sixteen' s sewing lessons are prac- 
 tical dressmaking, darning, mending and fine 
 needle-work. 
 
 Sweet Sixteen also likes the boys after the most ap- 
 proved fashion. She wants to marry one of these 
 handsome young schoolfellows. And who can blame 
 her 1 They are far to be preferred to the dirty old 
 heathen in the kraal, to whom she has likely already
 
 Sweet Sixteen 147 
 
 beeii sold by her parents. Most likely she fled to the 
 mission as to a city of refuge to escape being forced 
 into such a marriage. But she is very discreet in her 
 conduct before these youug men. When the young 
 men are around she is the soul of demureness and 
 often appears quite unaware that there is such a 
 thing as a boy in the whole universe, let alone in her 
 vicinity. 
 
 Nevertheless, when she gets on her best Sunday- 
 go-to-meeting clothes, I fear her mind is not always 
 on the sermon, as ours used to be, you know. A 
 sly little Puss is Sweet Sixteen whether she be black 
 or white. 
 
 So the brief term of her school-days flits by as a 
 dream. There are at least a half-dozen suitors for 
 her hand. No dirty, heathen wife for our Chris- 
 tian boys, thanks ! So in two or three years at the 
 most, she has a Christian wedding and goes out with 
 her husband to win other girls and women to the 
 Master whom she has come to know and serve. 
 
 Sweet Sixteen at school ! May her numbers in- 
 crease!
 
 Xxvn 
 TO BE OR NOT TO BE 
 
 HAMATOTE tightened his belt to lessen the 
 consciousness of his lack of a morning meal 
 or any other meal for forty-eight hours. 
 At least the tightened belt would stop that awful 
 gnawing. He seized his walking stick, grasped his 
 stout knobkerrie and spear and walked out of the 
 tumble-down little kraal with a look of determina- 
 tion on his face. 
 
 The sun was just rising when he started on his 
 journey: the eastern sky was all alight with the 
 glorious afterglow of the setting sun when he reached 
 his destination, the chiefs kraal where he knew there 
 was food. 
 
 His look of determination had given way to an air 
 of indifference which ill fitted his lean frame and the 
 natural haggardness which comes with starvation. 
 The native African is an adept at playing a part but 
 there was hunger in the land and all men knew it only 
 too well to be deceived. 
 
 Hamatote joined the usual group of men at the dali, 
 or general loafing place, a place also where court is 
 held and where many a life has hung in the balance 
 either to be acquitted or convicted of witchcraft. He 
 now came forward, squatted on his heels and went 
 through lengthy greetings, all the while softly clap- 
 ping his hands. The other men knew at once his er- 
 rand and so, one by one, they got up and went away 
 
 148
 
 To Be or Not to Be 149 
 
 until he was left with the Shylock with whom he had 
 to deal. 
 
 The fact that the chief was dirty and clad only in 
 a couple of filthy old goatskins did not impress 
 Hamatote. He had been used to such all his life. 
 But his courage almost failed as he looked into the 
 hard, merciless, grasping, hideous face before him. 
 But his stomach was empty and hunger is bold. 
 
 Softly clapping his hands in obeisance, he asked, 
 li Might the Ishi have any more grain? " The Ishi 
 shrugged his shoulders. ' ' Where should he see grain 
 when there was no rain and only hunger covered the 
 land?" 
 
 Hamatote laughed as if appreciating the Ishi's 
 humour. The old man felt that he had really made a 
 witticism and laughed himself. It put him in quite 
 a pleasant frame of mind, for him. 
 
 Seeing the advantage of the chief s self-satisfaction, 
 Hamatote began, " I will tell the Ishi all that is in my 
 heart. The Ishi knows I have only two wives, my 
 son and one daughter left. The cattle are gone, the 
 sheep are gone, the goats are gone, the fowls are gone 
 and even the girl has been sold for food. We have 
 nothing more to sell and death waits at our door. 
 We are already dead. Give me grain and it may be 
 that the gods will give me another daughter and then 
 shall that daughter be yours. But if the child be an- 
 other son, then shall he give you his daughter when 
 he is grown. We are as dead men before the Ishi : 
 will he not hear his slave's prayer? " 
 
 The old wretch chuckled. He had made many 
 such bargains. Fully a score of girls of all sizes had 
 already been bought up by him : he would risk one
 
 150 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 other even though it were unborn. His sensual old 
 soul already gloated over another fair, fresh, young 
 victim and the deal was closed. 
 
 They called the child Amundibayi (he-will-not- 
 slay-me). Hamatote did not long survive the famine. 
 When pneumonia attacked his gaunt frame, there was 
 no resistive power left and he died leaving his eldest 
 son to see that the chief's debt was paid. 
 
 Sixteen years passed swiftly away and then the old 
 man sent word that he wanted to claim his bride. He 
 was sixteen years uglier and more wicked and sensual, 
 that was all the change in him. 
 
 Poor Amundibayi ! She loathed the very sight of 
 him and vowed she never would marry him : she'd 
 commit suicide first as many another girl had done. 
 But the older brother was merciless. If she did not 
 marry the chief, he must go to work and pay the debt 
 himself. Such a thing was not to be considered. Of 
 course she must marry the chief. So he alternately 
 argued and stormed while the mother scolded and 
 pleaded and threatened. 
 
 Just then a bright thought struck the girl : Why 
 not go to the mission? Her half-sister was there. 
 One of the young men had redeemed her from the 
 bondage into which she was sold and had married her. 
 Why couldn't she go there too? The more she 
 thought of it, the more favourable the plan seemed to 
 her and she grew so cheerful that the mother and 
 brother thought she was yielding. 
 
 But one day they missed her and then they knew 
 the cause of her change of countenance and hastened 
 after her with all possible speed but were too late to 
 overtake her on the road.
 
 To Be or Not to Be 151 
 
 When they came to the mission, they made a 
 proper row. The mother threw herself at my feet 
 and told me how she was dying of starvation be- 
 cause she had no daughter to cook her food for her. 
 The brother stormed and threatened, all to no avail. 
 
 Then they went over to the native commissioner 
 where the young man said that his wife had run 
 away from him and that the mission authorities re- 
 fused to let her come back to him. So he returned 
 and triumphantly handed me a note which ran, 
 " This man says that his wife is at the mission and 
 this is to authorize his taking her away with him," 
 or something to that effect. 
 
 "Where is your wife ? " I asked the young man. 
 He looked startled. ' ' This letter says that you want 
 your wife : where is she f I do not know any woman 
 who is your wife here." He was completely taken 
 aback. He was not versed in the powers of pen and 
 ink and never dreamed that his lie would be so 
 quickly unearthed. 
 
 Amundibayi was there with us but still refused to 
 go with her brother. The mother and brother went 
 away and came back a week later. They wanted 
 Amundibayi to go with them to the native commis- 
 sioner. Certainly : I had not the least objection. 
 But I called her brother-in-law and told him to go 
 along too to see that no foul play took place. When 
 the commissioner heard the case, he only said, 
 " That's the law : she cannot be compelled to marry 
 that old man and I cannot drive her away from the 
 mission. She has the right to make her own choice. " 
 
 And so at last, after two or three weeks of trouble, 
 they left her in peace.
 
 152 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 One day Charley Potter had a long talk with Mr. 
 Springer. Subsequently he had an interview with 
 Amundibayi. He sat down on a soap box and awk- 
 wardly fingered his hat. She sat on an another soap 
 box on the other side of the kitchen table and folded 
 and unfolded a tea towel. 
 
 "What are you going to do when you get through 
 school? " asked Charley. 
 
 "I don't know," she answered shyly, her eyes 
 glued on the tea towel. 
 
 "Will you go back to your kraal ?" he continued. 
 
 " Kwete," was the emphatic negative. 
 
 "What will you do? If you will not marry the 
 man your folks want you to marry, they will not find 
 you another husband." 
 
 Her head bent over the tea towel and her voice was 
 barely audible as she replied, " I suppose I shall 
 have to get one myself." 
 
 "Do you think I would do?" he asked a bit 
 nervously. 
 
 Evidently she did, for the engagement was an- 
 nounced forthwith. The course of their true love 
 had a rather crooked course and I do not know if it 
 is straightened out yet or not. But she will surely 
 marry some Christian boy in our school. 
 
 So the question of her marriage as to whether she 
 shall be sold or free is settled. Not so with thousands 
 of her kraal sisters. 
 
 "To be or not to be" free, that is the question 
 which we must decide for the most of them. They 
 are ready for freedom if we will only place it 
 within their reach.
 
 PERPETUAL BLISTERS 
 
 THERE are four principal means of trekking 
 in Africa by foot, by ox wagon, by don- 
 key or mule back and by hammock which 
 last named conveyance is also known as a machilla 
 or tipoa, two Portuguese words which have come into 
 current use. 
 
 In Southern Rhodesia, the hammock or machilla is 
 seldom seen. But in Northwestern Ehodesia where 
 the tsetse fly is death to the domestic fowl and brute, 
 the machilla is in great demand especially for ladies 
 of whom there are hardly more than a dozen north 
 of the Kafue River. 
 
 We studied the pros and cons of travel long and 
 well. At first I decided to take Jackie with me, 
 shipping him by freight to Broken Hill, but learning 
 of the tsetse fly, I saw that I should only lose my 
 donkey in so doing. He might have gone through 
 the whole trip and he might have died in a week, so 
 there was no use to risk it. 
 
 I have always been a good pedestrian and had al- 
 ready walked some hundreds of miles on the trail 
 but I could not contemplate a trip of at least 1,500 
 and possibly 2,000 miles with forced marches, on 
 foot. So at last we decided on a compromise : we 
 got a machilla and a half of a team (eight men) so 
 that I could ride at least half the way if I needed to. 
 
 153
 
 154 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 And but for Terrible Tim, I should not have had 
 that. Mr. Springer had engaged a machilla at the 
 Africa Lakes Store but when he went to get it, they 
 told him they had just received a telegram of a large 
 hunting party on the way up from the Cape and so 
 they couldn't let him have it. 
 
 Tim had been a sailor for years and when he 
 learned of our dilemma, came to the front and offered 
 to make the machilla for me. So we got the stoutest 
 canvas to be had and in two days the hammock part 
 was done and hung on a palm leaf stem sixteen feet 
 long. Over this was another piece of green, water- 
 proof canvas which closely covered the hammock to 
 protect the occupant from the bushes, thorns, grass 
 and other jungle as well as a shade from the burning 
 sun. 
 
 Possibly a hammock sounds like a comfortable 
 thing in which to ride. In some sections of Africa 
 where they have cleared roads, it isn't so bad. But 
 on native paths, it gets to be almost unendurable. 
 Two men start off with it on the dog-trot for they 
 cannot walk with so heavy a load. It seems almost 
 impossible for them to turn every corner of the 
 tortuous path in the great forest carefully. So the 
 unfortunate victim in the machilla is jolted along at 
 a back-breaking pace as the carriers merrily sing 
 
 Gongo, gongo, 
 
 Warm wa mayi walila ho, 
 
 Gongo, gongo, 
 
 while the hammock bangs against the trees, thumps 
 on stumps and ant-hills. All the while the occupant 
 is sweltering under the blaze of the sun on the canvas
 
 Perpetual Blisters 155 
 
 or shiver iug from the cold wind if the sun doesn't 
 shine. There's no happy medium : it is either un- 
 comfortably hot or cold. 
 
 It was my plan, therefore, to start out in the early 
 morning on foot and walk as many miles as possible 
 before I got into the machilla, seldom under seven 
 miles and more often nine or ten. Four miles of be- 
 ing carried was about the most I could endure at one 
 time. Then I would get out and walk again to rest 
 my back. 
 
 I took three pairs of boots with me and it was a 
 lucky thing I did. I took them so that if one pair 
 wore out, I would have another. But I soon found 
 that I needed all three for rotative wear. Each pair 
 made a distinct lot of blisters on my feet. So when I 
 had worn one pair until I was quite crippled, I 
 changed and put on another pair. These gave the 
 first set of blisters time to recuperate while the second 
 set were forming. Then when I could no longer 
 walk in either of those pairs, the third lot came into 
 service. 
 
 I had hoped that the more I walked, the easier it 
 would be and that my feet would get hardened. Not 
 so : I kept up the regular round of blisters from start 
 to finish and at the last, not only was the surface of 
 my feet sore, but every joint in my feet and body. 
 
 The last ten days were particularly hard ones. 
 We were almost out of food and even the sour mush 
 was hard to obtain. Moreover the water was inde- 
 scribably bad. We frequently had to use a most 
 nauseating, opaque, liquid mud from stagnant pools 
 in which, frequently, the cattle had waded. It was 
 undoubtedly the lack of good water which affected
 
 156 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 us the most. In addition to this we had to make at 
 least twenty-five miles a day. My machilla men 
 were so weakened by hunger, so footsore and worn 
 that they could only carry me ten miles a day at 
 most. We were in one of the most desolate countries 
 ever cursed by the rum and slave trade. Slaves in 
 their chains and heavy yokes were seen in the vil- 
 lages through which we passed, ready to be sent to 
 the market or shipped off quietly. The trader and 
 rum were everywhere in evidence. Graveyards were 
 the most prominent feature of the landscape while 
 here and there a trader's whitewashed house or a 
 flourishing ram mill stood out like grim tombstones 
 in this depopulated region. It seemed, indeed, a 
 country full of dead men's bones. 
 
 What wonder that the splendidly built Bachokwe 
 tribe stoutly refuse the white man residence in their 
 country. According to their version, the European 
 represents rum, slavery, death. And so they will in 
 Portuguese territory until the missionary comes in to 
 dwell among them and show to them the better way.
 
 THE CAMP NEAR THE "5012th" ANT HILL 
 
 KANSHANSHI COPPER MINE IN 
 
 N. W. RHODESIA, AFRICA 
 The ditch in the foreground shows ancient copper workings
 
 XXIX 
 
 BICYCLING IN CENTRAL AFRICA 
 
 GIFFOED had got his notice that the mine 
 was closing down and in one month's time 
 his valuable services would no longer be 
 required. At first he thought of going south of the 
 Zambesi, but as the hard times were at their worst 
 there, he decided he'd "chance it" and go north 
 with us. Perhaps there would be an opening for him 
 in the Tanganyika Concessions. 
 
 It was then the discussion arose over his bicycle. 
 One said, take it ; another said, leave it ; no two 
 agreed as to the practicability of taking a wheel onto 
 a native trail. He tried to sell it, but since the mine 
 was closing and all the white men were leaving, there 
 was no one to buy. At the eleventh hour, in a fit of 
 desperation, he concluded to take it along. 
 
 Then the trouble began. A new cone was needed 
 to make it usable so he wrote at once to Bulawayo 
 for it. After the letter had been gone a couple of 
 days, he sent a telegram to make sure. But on the 
 morning of our departure, said cone had not appeared 
 and the fate of the wheel hung in the balance. 
 
 At the fifty-ninth second, Terrible Tim came to the 
 rescue and offered a whole front wheel. So while the 
 caravan was being formed in line and loaded, Gifford, 
 Terrible Tim and a newly arrived missionary who 
 
 157
 
 158 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 had once kept a bicycle shop, whisked around the 
 corner to repair the lame machine. The caravan 
 started off and an hour later, Gifford caught up to us 
 with the coneless wheel hanging over the handle bars. 
 
 Henry Drummond once wrote, "For straightness 
 in general and crookedness in particular, commend 
 me to an African trail." Let it be added that the 
 trail is usually from nine to twelve inches wide, often 
 worn down six or more inches below the rest of the 
 country, bordered with small ant-hills, circumscrib- 
 ing big ones, thickly bestrewn with stones, stumps, 
 fallen branches, obtruding roots and other obstacles. 
 
 However, the country from Broken Hill was, for 
 the most part, flat and heavily wooded, which was an 
 advantage over tall grass. Gifford and Mr. Springer 
 both suffered from badly blistered feet at the outset 
 so they took turns riding the wheel and for a few 
 days were rather glad they had it along. Each 
 would ride until his eyes ached and his nerves were 
 all awry and then he would walk on leaving the wheel 
 standing against a tree by the side of the path for 
 the other fellow. 
 
 It was on the afternoon of the third day out, that 
 Gifford was delighted to see his wheel waiting for 
 him. The sun was very hot and his feet very sore. 
 He mounted and rode along, mentally composing an 
 argument in favour of his machine, but he had hardly 
 ridden five minutes when he came to an open, swampy 
 vlej (pronounced flay) where the grass grew to six or 
 eight feet in height on either side of the path and 
 interlocked in the centre of it. 
 
 He dismounted and tried to push through the 
 tangle. The sun shone down blisteriugly and the
 
 Bicycling in Central Africa 159 
 
 thick jungle permitted not so much as a breath of 
 air. The wheel balked, turned, twisted and got 
 snarled up in the grass. The insult to the injury 
 came when swarms of tsetse flies were stirred up by 
 the commotion and settled themselves on Gifford's 
 bare neck and arms, puncturing him as with red hot 
 needles, raising great itching welts which were almost 
 maddening. 
 
 However, while the enthusiasm over the bicycle 
 waned daily, in consideration of the blistered feet it 
 was agreed that on the whole the wheel was a rather 
 good thing. At any rate it made good time. There- 
 fore on Saturday it was settled that Gifford should 
 ride ahead, cover the twenty miles in two or three 
 hours at the most and let the brethren of a certain 
 mission know that we were on the way. 
 
 He started off in high feather to make the trip in 
 the cool of the morning. But he had hardly got out 
 of our sight when he struck soft sand through which 
 he had to walk and push the wheel for about two 
 miles. Eeentering the forest where the path was 
 solid, he mounted and hurried forward. But his rest 
 was short-lived for he soon came to a clearing where 
 there were more stumps than trees. Here he jumped 
 on and off the wheel until familiarity bred contempt, 
 for the dangers and leg- weariness made him reckless. 
 The next thing he knew, he picked himself up, looked 
 to see if there were any broken bones, nursed his 
 bleeding knee which protruded through the torn 
 pantaloons and lastly examined the buckled wheel to 
 see if it had come to a violent end. 
 
 He found it bent beyond repair at that time, so 
 setting it in the path he ran it on its hind wheel,
 
 160 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 limping painfully behind it for at least fifteen miles, 
 only reaching the mission a half hour ahead of the 
 caravan. 
 
 It took two men all of Monday to get the thing 
 into working order again and even then the front 
 wheel rubbed the fork badly. Moreover, the machine 
 was very wabbly and had to be pushed so much 
 that a boy was taken from my machilla team to at- 
 tend solely to it. 
 
 The path got worse and the fork badly worn, so 
 when we reached the mining camp of Kanshanshi it 
 took several other hours and two men working on it 
 with the result that the old wheel was removed en- 
 tirely and replaced by another hind wheel so that the 
 bicycle reminded one of the small boy in the home- 
 made trousers, you couldn't tell which way he was 
 going. 
 
 Between the two mines of Kanshanshi and Kam- 
 bove there is a bicycle path one hundred and ten 
 miles long. It was on this path one day that Gifford 
 came abruptly around a large ant-hill and nearly ran 
 onto a leopard which was about to lie down in the 
 path. He had just time to dismount when the huge 
 beast bounded off into the forest without even look- 
 ing up to see what the click it heard was : and Gif- 
 ford sat down to meditate and wait for the rest of the 
 caravan. 
 
 By the time we reached Kambove, the saddle was 
 worn out and several other small items needed atten- 
 tion and once more and for the last time, the wheel 
 was pronounced fit for the trail and did good service 
 part of the way to Euwi. The trouble now was that 
 the trail was not fit for the wheel. Eough, rocky,
 
 Bicycling in Central Africa 161 
 
 steep hills, large rivers and big swamps left little 
 room for bicycling. 
 
 The end came just beyond Euwi, when Mr. Springer 
 took a double-header over a root on a vlej where there 
 wasn't a tree in sight, nearly broke his own neck and 
 completely finished the bicycle. 
 
 But in that fly-infested country the bicycle is al- 
 ready playing an important part auioug the mining 
 men. It will also play an important part in the 
 evangelization of that wild country. The missionary 
 must use it wherever he can to save time and to 
 spread himself out over as great a district as possible 
 in an immense area where to-day the harvest is great 
 and the reapers are none.
 
 XXX 
 
 THE BUFFALO AT THE 501 2th ANT-HILL 
 
 NOETHWESTEEN EHODESIA might be 
 called the land of ant-hills. Not that they 
 do not exist elsewhere but that here they 
 particularly predominate. For at least 500 miles of 
 our journey, we enjoyed a continual panorama of ant- 
 hills and always sought to pitch our tent close to one 
 at night. In certain sections, the ant-hills were 
 heavily timbered with big trees, the ants which built 
 up the symmetrical little hill having gone elsewhere. 
 Then we struck a region where all the big, round ant- 
 hills were overgrown with delicate green, graceful, 
 lacy bamboo. After that, their character changed 
 again. This time they were covered with a short, 
 coarse grass which resembled nothing else so much as 
 a thatched hut roof. Then for two or three days, we 
 found most peculiar and fantastically shaped products 
 of the termite. Some were tall like the chimneys which 
 stand after fire has destroyed the rest of the house. 
 
 Together with these big ant-hills, there were always 
 a multitude of little ones which had been formed 
 about some bit of dead wood. Often on treeless 
 plains, we found thousands of lesser ant-hills, which 
 looked like giant toadstools, two or three feet in 
 height. 
 
 The 5012th ant-hill (the number is taken at ran- 
 dom ; I never was good at figures) was one of the big, 
 round kind, fifteen or twenty feet high and covered 
 
 162
 
 The Buffalo at the 501 2th Ant-Hill 163 
 
 with bamboo. We were going along in the early 
 morning ahead of the caravan looking for meat. 
 
 Suddenly Mr. Springer halted until I came up to 
 him when he pointed down to the other side of the 
 vlej where a large bull buffalo stood in the short 
 grass. Now the African buffalo has the worst repu- 
 tation for fierceness of all the animals of the veld. 
 They are considered without exception the most dan- 
 gerous beast in all Africa. And the lone rover bull 
 which has been turned out of the herd because of its 
 bad disposition is the worst of the lot. 
 
 " Isn't it a pity ? " whispered my husband. 
 
 "What's a pity ? " I asked. 
 
 "That I can't have a whack at him," he replied. 
 
 " Why can't you?" came back in the same tragic 
 whisper. 
 
 "Because I couldn't endanger you," he retorted in 
 surprise that I should ask. By this time my remote 
 Indian blood was fired and though naturally one of 
 the most cowardly of mortals, always deathly afraid 
 of a gun or even a firecracker, the sight of that splen- 
 did beast and the knowledge that our men needed 
 food thrilled me with an excitement I had never 
 known before. 
 
 " You must shoot," I whispered excitedly. "You 
 go over to that ant-hill where you will be hidden in 
 the bamboo. I'll go over here and hide behind this 
 old skerm. The buffalo will charge the ant-hill, if he 
 charges at all and you can always climb a tree. So 
 I'll be safe enough." I gave him an impatient push 
 as he further hesitated, doubting the wisdom of my 
 sage counsel. "Go on: hurry," I repeated and 
 skulked off for the skerm.
 
 164 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 He made his way cautiously towards the ant-hill 
 and I watched from my hiding-place but in my ex- 
 citement not doing much better in concealing myself 
 than the fable of the ostrich and the sand, quite for- 
 getting until afterwards that I had on a bright blue 
 blouse. Had Mr. Springer lost his head as completely 
 as I lost mine, I should probably not have been here 
 now to write this story. 
 
 Bang ! And the immense beast instead of charg- 
 ing started to go back on his own tracks. It is more 
 than likely he was blind and went by instinct and 
 smell. Another shot would probably have finished 
 him, but alas ! he was making in the direction of the 
 skerm and another shot might have brought him upon 
 me, so on he galloped undisturbed. 
 
 We remained in hiding some minutes, for the buffalo 
 is treacherous. Then the native who was with us and 
 who had climbed a tree where he could watch pro- 
 ceedings in safety, gave the signal and we came out. 
 We found that the animal had been badly wounded, 
 so Mr. Springer followed him for four miles but in 
 vain. 
 
 I think I was the more disappointed over the loss. 
 It was the first time I had ever felt the spirit of the 
 chase, that primitive nature which lies so near the 
 surface in all of us, which centuries of culture and 
 learning cannot drown. In fact, I could not be recon- 
 ciled until one day Mr. Springer bagged a couple of 
 fine wart hogs which were much better eating, and 
 the tushes of which were much easier to take along 
 with us than the enormous horns of the buffalo would 
 have been, the buffalo at the 5012th ant-hill.
 
 XXXI 
 
 THE LAND OF SOUR MUSH 
 
 IT was not the land of corn and wine neither was 
 it the land of milk and honey. Honey there 
 was no doubt but the only evidence of it was in 
 the abundance of native beer made from it. The man 
 who drinks honey beer will walk miles hunting for 
 trouble till he finds it. The tribe that imbibes, 
 makes it exceedingly dangerous for the passing 
 traveller. 
 
 When we heard the dull booming of the distant 
 drums, we knew we were nearing a village where a 
 native dance was in progress and most of the people 
 would be drunk. One night we had a camp close to 
 such a kraal. When Mr. Springer went to buy food, 
 he found the people very surly. They were all hide- 
 ously painted up for one of their devil dances. 
 
 When we went to bed the dance was in full swing 
 as the wild yells of the people evidenced. Every 
 now and then through the night the wind would veer 
 and bring the frenzied yells nearer and we would 
 think for an instant that possibly the natives were 
 making an attack. Surely had not that unseen Guard 
 been about us, I fear that we should all have been 
 deported before morning to that land from whence 
 none may return. Conscious of the fact that the 
 Guard was actually there, we slept the sleep of the 
 weary only rousing when the terrible din became too 
 loud to admit of sleep. 
 
 165
 
 i66 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 It was the land of sour mush, a few beans and 
 honey beer, the Bachokwe country or the hinter- 
 land of Africa's rich Province of Angola. Nor 
 could we get plenty of the sour mush. The natives 
 sold us at an exorbitant price very small quantities 
 of the cassava meal of which we made the mush. 
 Their whole attitude was sullen, defiant and sus- 
 picious. 
 
 The meal is made from the cassava, or manioca, 
 tuber. There are two kinds of cassava, the bitter 
 and the sweet. The bitter has in it more or less 
 Prussic acid and serious cases of poisoning have come 
 from eating it raw. The natives cultivate the bitter 
 almost exclusively in that interior region. Possibly 
 they hope some of their slave-raiding enemies will 
 eat thereof and die. 
 
 In order to use the bitter cassava, the women first 
 soak it for eight or ten days, which seems to take 
 out all the poison. And though there are plenty 
 of clear, running streams of water in that country, 
 the natives rigidly eschew them for the soaking proc- 
 ess and select some miry place or stagnant pool 
 from which there is emitted a never-to-be-forgotten 
 pig-sty odour which proclaims a cassava patch long 
 before it can be seen. Drawing near, one may see 
 the surface covered with a green slime and large bub- 
 bles which tell of the fermentation going on below. 
 
 Often as we marched along, we could see the al- 
 most naked women wading in these pools, sometimes 
 standing to their thighs in the mud, taking out the 
 buried roots, peeling off the outer bark and placing 
 them in large baskets skillfully poised on their 
 heads. At such times the stirring up of the waters
 
 POUNDING GRAIN 
 
 A HAND GRIST MILL
 
 The Land of Sour Mush 167 
 
 makes the smell more pronounced and lessens the ap- 
 petite for the supper which will have undergone the 
 same preparatory treatment. 
 
 Coming to a kraal, we may see the cassava in the 
 next process of drying as it lays spread out on the 
 roofs of the squalid huts where all the dust of an ex- 
 ceedingly unsanitary village blows upon it the while 
 rats, lizards and chickens race over it at will. 
 
 And somewhere in that same kraal, standing near 
 a hut or rolling around in the dirt among the dogs, 
 pigs, goats, fowls and children, is the village mortar 
 in which the dried root will be pounded into flour. 
 
 There was one scientific straw to which we desper- 
 ately clung, that boiling kills all germs, thus saving 
 us from the ravages of the bacilli, schizomycetes, bac- 
 teria, or other rampant microbes which undoubtedly 
 lodged in our dirty food and ofttimes equally dirty 
 water. 
 
 But though encouraging from a scientific stand- 
 point, the method of cooking did not increase its gas- 
 tronomic properties. First the water was brought to 
 a boil in the large pot and then the flour was sifted 
 in and stirred vigorously with a big stick until ihe 
 mass was so thick that it could hardly be stirred. 
 Surely the last germs could not be boiled but we 
 hoped that they were steamed into a state of inof- 
 feusiveness. If, however, any did have enough vital- 
 ity to revive, we prayed that they might be peace- 
 ably disposed. 
 
 Hunger is a specific remedy for Epicureanism. And 
 we were hungry. We were none of us Epicureans 
 either. But when that big, grayish ball with a con- 
 sistency of African rubber and smelling like a mass
 
 i68 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 of decayed vegetables in the garbage can came be- 
 fore us, it took more than an ordinary appetite to get 
 it down. 
 
 It took skill too. A reasonably-sized chunk was 
 dipped into half-cooked bean soup, then popped into 
 the mouth and swallowed without chewing. To hes- 
 itate was to be lost, verily. Once the teeth got into 
 the sticky ball, there was trouble. 
 
 Any kind of soup or gravy would have served the 
 same lubricating purpose. It was not a matter of 
 choice on our part that we had only bean soup night 
 and morning for weeks. Necessity gave birth to no 
 inventions that time. The game of the country had 
 been practically exterminated by the natives who 
 were armed to a man with flint-lock guns bought 
 from the Portuguese. There were but few domestic 
 animals in the kraals and the exorbitant prices asked 
 for them were simply prohibitive for us. 
 
 So we sat down to our sour mush every morning 
 and struggled with a big slice of the sticky stuff, 
 dipped it into the chocolate-coloured bean pur6e and 
 gulped it down with the satisfaction that it was won- 
 derfully nutritious and strengthening and that we 
 would surely need all we could possibly eat in order 
 to walk ten or twelve, perhaps fourteen, miles before 
 we ate our frugal, cold lunch. 
 
 Every evening we sat down to our soap box table 
 and gave thanks in sincerity for that which was to us 
 life and health. True, our stomachs fairly flopped 
 over at the sight and smell of it, but it kept us from 
 starving and we were thankful to have it. 
 
 But no one can imagine how thankful we were, 
 when we reached Angola, to get bread and butter,
 
 The Land of Sour Mush 169 
 
 even rancid, tinned butter again. And yet, we 
 shall eat the sour mush again. Not with jam, 
 heaven forbid ! But we would rather, if necessary, 
 go back and live on the sour mush than remain in 
 America living on the fat of this fattest land in the 
 world, knowing that out yonder tens of thousands of 
 souls are starving, dying in heathen darkness, un- 
 reached by any Christian voice or hand.
 
 xxxn 
 
 SOUR MUSH AND SWEET JAM 
 
 WE had bad a surfeit of swamps. We had 
 waded swamps, cold, frosty, deep swamps 
 in the morning ; slimy, boggy, sluggish, 
 fetid swamps at the noonday ; often more swamps in 
 the afternoon ; and again slumpy, humpy, noisome, 
 stagnant, miry swamps just at the close of the day's 
 trek. 
 
 Such was the case on the ever- to-be-remembered 
 day of sour mush and sweet jam. After twenty-two 
 miles we had decided to camp at the first water and 
 accordingly picked out a nice sheltered spot under 
 some large trees only to find it was a native grave- 
 yard. That wouldn't do. So we looked about for a 
 better place and found another swamp just ahead of 
 us and boldly determined to cross it then and there 
 rather than in the cold of the morning. 
 
 But on the other side there seemed not a tree in 
 sight for fire- wood or shelter and we spent a good 
 half hour hunting for that necessary commodity 
 wherewith we might cook our frugal sour mush sup- 
 per. In the search we left the main trail without 
 cutting it off with a mark or a bunch of fresh leaves 
 to let our carriers who were far behind know where 
 we had stopped. When we did think of it, it was 
 too late. Already more than half our men had 
 missed us and gone by on the trail we had left 
 
 170
 
 Sour Mush and Sweet Jam 171 
 
 Then we took account of stock for no amount of 
 search and halooing brought any response from the 
 missing carriers. We had fifty pounds of cassava 
 meal, a box in which were some jam and cheese, two 
 jack-knives, two teaspoons, a wash-basin, one small 
 tent and a few blankets. Our eight Angoni carriers 
 had the only cooking pot of any description. It was 
 their own and to my certain knowledge had not been 
 washed for two months. 
 
 Travel on the veld discourages aestheticism as well 
 as Epicureanism. We were thankful that there was 
 even the sour mush, the jam and the kaffir pot. If 
 the pot still bore the remnants of two months' cook- 
 ings, why the water from the swamp drained one 
 graveyard as we knew and perhaps dozens of others 
 where ignorance was bliss. It isn't practical to dwell 
 upon such matters. After all, we can die but once 
 and as Livingstone said, " We seem to be immortal 
 until our work is done." 
 
 So when the Angoni had finished cooking their 
 supper, Benjamin did his best to wash out the pot 
 with the limited supply of dirty water on hand and in 
 due season brought us the big grayish, sour-smelling 
 ball, with which we had grown familiar, in the wash- 
 basin. We ate it with the use of the two jack-knives 
 and the two teaspoons. 
 
 Shades of sauerkraut and sweet preserves ! Only 
 sauerkraut is accommodating enough to slip down 
 one's throat without sticking and the sour mush 
 won't. It had to be lubricated with the jam. 
 
 We ate it and ate heartily for we were hungry and 
 we encouraged each other that it wasn't half bad. 
 Indeed, it might have been much worse. If we had
 
 172 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 had no jam how could we have ever eaten the mush ? 
 And that would have been lots worse. 
 
 We ate close by the fire of the one log we had 
 found and then wrapped ourselves in all the cloaks 
 and rugs and blankets we could find to keep us warm 
 through the half- wakeful night wherein we were con- 
 scious of a mixture of sour mush and jam in the 
 epigastric region. 
 
 With the morning, came another large ball of sour 
 mush and the remnant of a tin of jam. We looked 
 at it and then at each other. There was a tramp of 
 twenty miles or more ahead of us and we could not 
 afford to start out on empty stomachs. But we were 
 all unitedly and individually agreed that our stomachs 
 were not empty. Surely the sour mush and sweet 
 jam of the night before was all there and nature 
 rebelled against insult being added to injury. 
 
 Just then we heard a wild whoop and looking around 
 saw one of the lost carriers. Those who had gone on, 
 went three miles ahead, and then finding that they 
 had missed us, turned back and the irony of it was 
 that they had slept not more than a five minute walk 
 ahead of us. 
 
 It is, indeed, a blessed thing that a man's life con- 
 sisteth not in the abundance or the lack of the things 
 which he has to eat. It is even better to have a diet 
 of sour mush and sweet jam in the path of duty 
 than the table of the Epicure and not know the joy of 
 taking the Bread of Life to famishing souls.
 
 WXTTT 
 
 THE SOUL OF A CHICKEN 
 
 WE had had a twenty-two mile trek on the 
 7th of August. Our course had led over 
 and along three high ridges of land with 
 the necessary going up and down between, so that we 
 were a tired caravan when we reached Kapungu's 
 kraal about four that afternoon. 
 
 The people were still Bachokwe though we were 
 getting near the borders of the Songo country where 
 we were hoping to get better treatment than among 
 the surly and sullen Bachokwe. To our surprise here, 
 Kapungu came out to our camp in person to give us 
 a hearty welcome and a present of a fowl and some 
 meal while the people were effusively warm in their 
 greetings. It was hard to say which was the most 
 embarrassing, the defiance of the rest of the tribe or 
 the suspicious effusiveness of these. 
 
 They assured us they were delighted to see us and 
 would show us the only place thereabouts that we 
 could possibly camp where we could be handy to the 
 water. Was there not a place beyond their kraal 
 where we could get water 1 Nay, they were sorry to 
 assure us there was none for a long, long distance. 
 
 We had made it an unbroken rule up to the pres- 
 ent to always camp on the farther side of a kraal. 
 There are several advantages in so doing, one being 
 that if trouble should arise with the natives during 
 
 173
 
 174 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 the night, escape would be much easier. This time 
 the plausibility of the lies and the fact that we were 
 all so weary that further investigation seemed impos- 
 sible made us the more easily taken in. 
 
 For a while all went well. The women brought 
 out more food than we had seen for a long time and it 
 really seemed as if our men would get a full supper, 
 even though back of all the protestations of friend- 
 ship there was a disposition to extort outrageous 
 prices. Moreover, we soon discovered that many of 
 the men were partly intoxicated, a fact that made us 
 not a little uneasy at once. 
 
 In the midst of the buying, a man came rushing up 
 saying that one of our carriers had killed his chicken. 
 Mr. Springer asked the offender how it happened. 
 
 ' t It was this way, ' ' he went on to explain. ' ' I was 
 cutting down some fire- wood, and just as I was bring- 
 ing my axe down, the chicken popped its head out 
 from under the log but I couldn't stop quick enough 
 to save it." 
 
 It was a lame tale and might have been humorous 
 at another time. It was serious now and the man 
 received a severe reprimand while the owner of the 
 half-grown bantam was offered two yards of cloth, 
 worth in that district at least fifty cents. He rejected 
 the cloth at once : that could not begin to pay his 
 loss. His dead brother's spirit was in that fowl and 
 he could not be compensated by such a small amount 
 of cloth for the insult done to his brother's ghost. 
 
 Mr. Springer appealed to the chief. " Isn't this 
 the right amount for me to pay your man ? " he asked. 
 The chief said it was all right. After that of course 
 he would pay no more. Still the native kept up his
 
 The Soul of a Chicken 1 75 
 
 complaint until Mr. Springer asked the chief, "Is 
 your brother's spirit in the cock you gave me? " and 
 there was a general laugh. Every one knew that 
 the talk about his brother's spirit was all nonsense, 
 merely an excuse for extortion. 
 
 The wrangling broke up the buying. Finally all 
 the men took themselves off to their kraal and dark- 
 ness fell. A little later we heard women's voices 
 among our carriers whom we had instructed to camp 
 close to our tent that night as we feared foul play. 
 Mr. Springer went to them at once and ordered the 
 women away. They said that they had merely come 
 down to sell a little more food. He replied it made 
 no difference and gave orders that if any women were 
 seen thereabouts, the carriers were to let him know at 
 once. For this is a trap too often set for unwary car- 
 avans. 
 
 The situation that night was the most serious of any 
 night on the trail, so far as we knew. The natives 
 were drunk, they were treacherous, they were mani- 
 festly trying to find an excuse to plunder us of what 
 little trading "goods we did have and they had led us 
 to camp where we should have to go through their 
 kraal in order to pursue our journey. Every male in 
 the kraal was armed with a gun, so if we were to pass 
 through with our lives, it must be by some other 
 force than our three rifles. So we prayed. 
 
 About midnight, I heard a stealthy step near the 
 tent and wakened my husband. We listened with 
 bated breath as the steps softly approached the front 
 of the tent and then moved away. Looking out, he 
 saw one of our carriers going off with a steamer chair 
 while on the other side of the path, the camp-fires
 
 176 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 were burning brightly and the natives were all astir. 
 Going out to find the cause of the disturbance (we 
 had slept in our clothes that night in case of an at- 
 tack) he found the foes were none other than an army 
 of red ants which had turned half of the caravan out 
 of their quarters. These red soldier ants are much 
 smaller and more vicious than their large black 
 brothers. Burying their mandibles in the flesh, they 
 will not let go even though their heads are torn from 
 their bodies and the torture of their bites is madden- 
 ing. 
 
 Fortunately the army did not cross the path that 
 night and those of us on the upper side were left in 
 peace. 
 
 The next morning at four o'clock our camp was 
 quietly awakened and silently made ready for the 
 trail. Just as the first gray streaks of dawn showed 
 in the sky, our caravan glided silently through the 
 kraal, leaving the disputed chicken lying under a 
 tree with the two yards of cloth. Some of the vil- 
 lagers were awaking but no opposition was made to 
 our departure and we took a long breath of relief as 
 we got away. 
 
 We had no guide so had to follow the compass to 
 the next kraal seven miles away over a very rough, 
 mountainous trail. As we entered the kraal, my 
 husband exclaimed in an undertone to me as I came 
 up to him, "There's the man and his chicken !" 
 Sure enough ! There on a stone in the centre of the 
 kraal were the fowl and the two yards of cloth. 
 Near by sat the owner and around him were a half 
 dozen men whom he had called for counsel. This 
 looked even more serious than ever.
 
 The Soul of a Chicken 177 
 
 Mr. Springer at that point became hopelessly 
 stupid. He utterly failed to understand anything 
 that the complainant said to him. Apparently he 
 thought the man had had some scruples against tak- 
 ing the cloth and keeping the fowl. He would set 
 his tender, conscientious heart at rest on that point. 
 So in the most benignant way, he answered all that 
 was said with the words, " That's all right ; you can 
 keep the fowl and the cloth too. I'm perfectly will- 
 ing that you should eat the fowl if you wish." 
 
 Again and again the old rascal would try and state 
 the serious side of his case to win the superstitious 
 sympathy of his tribesmen only to be interrupted 
 with the irrelevant assurance that he was welcome to 
 eat the fowl. At last the apparent idiocy of the 
 white man appealed to the risibles of a graceless 
 young buck who knew the old man's pretended piety 
 was all a humbug, and he laughed outright. This 
 broke the spell and we felt the danger was over. By 
 this time all of our carriers were at hand and had laid 
 down their loads to hear the end of the matter. 
 
 Mr. Springer now arose and gave the order for 
 them to pick up their loads and march which they 
 did with amazing alacrity and we got out of that 
 kraal as fast as we could without showing the fear 
 that we felt. 
 
 A shouting soon halted us. The owner of the fowl 
 was running after us calling us to stop. At first we 
 paid no attention but he kept shouting, " You're on 
 the wrong trail, you're on the wrong trail." He 
 then showed us the right one which we followed, 
 fearful that he might be leading us into some new 
 trap. But he wasn't. Having found himself com-
 
 178 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 pletely outwitted in his little game of blackmail, he 
 showed the African's good-natured acknowledgment 
 of his defeat and was ready to do us a good turn at 
 once; an excellent illustration of, "half-devil and 
 half-child."
 
 XXXIV 
 
 JOHN WEBBA 
 
 IT might have been twenty years ago, for the 
 natives of Africa have no way of keeping track 
 of the passing years, that there was a great 
 commotion in a little village far up on the Congo 
 River. A trial for theft had been held and the theft 
 proved. Now the law of that tribe required that 
 the thief should restore fourfold. 
 
 A caravan passing down the river loaded with 
 ivory and rubber had seen a pig which had strayed 
 farther from the native village than was safe for a 
 black, razor-backed porker. It is safe to say that 
 the said razor-back was eaten bristles and all, no 
 part of him being wasted nor undue time spent in 
 the cooking. 
 
 But retribution followed swiftly and now the 
 guilty men were condemned and payment demanded 
 of their chief. He was not a cannibal not in the ac- 
 cepted sense of the word though he would not have 
 hesitated to eat an enemy who had fallen in battle, 
 and, very likely, had done so. But not to the extent 
 that he would deliberately kill and eat a slave. In 
 settlement for the stolen pig he decided to give one 
 slave instead of the four pigs. For charity's sake, 
 we will believe that he hadn't the pigs. 
 
 The name of the little slave was Vweba, a name which 
 few Europeans could pronounce and so in time they 
 
 179
 
 180 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 called him Webba, just as our good friend Spears 
 called Tsaranamayi Sammie Myers, because it was 
 easier. 
 
 Vweba was but a lad of perhaps ten years of age 
 that morning when his fate was sealed and they took 
 him away from his mother and his brothers and sis- 
 ters. He wept loudly and clung to his mother until 
 they dragged him away from her, while she followed 
 after him along the path with bitter wailing until 
 the men turned around and drove her back. It was 
 the last time they ever saw each other and the heart- 
 rending scene burned itself into the child's brain, 
 never to be forgotten. 
 
 All day they walked until the tender-footed child 
 who had only played about the kraal was hardly able 
 to proceed further. But in that country a man had 
 no mercy on his own son, much less on a slave, and 
 so the poor little creature was driven forward in spite 
 of his swollen, blistered feet. The result was that 
 one foot subsequently ulcerated and for weeks it 
 looked as if the child would lose his leg, if not his 
 life. But after many months, the sore gradually 
 healed though it left a slight lameness that would go 
 with him through life. 
 
 This misfortune did not, be assured, endear the 
 slave to his master who was a most calloused brute. 
 He hated the boy for his affliction. It looked to him 
 like a dead loss. 
 
 Three or four years passed and then a missionary 
 went to live at Isangila, some ten miles away from 
 this man's kraal. Now the missionaries were consid- 
 ered at that time a fool lot, though the time came 
 when the suffering tribe came to regard these same
 
 John Webba 181 
 
 missionaries as their only friends. So this man took 
 his slave to the mission and left him to work for the 
 missionary who paid the chief about two dollars' 
 worth of cloth a year for his services. 
 
 There were fourteen other boys at the mission, but 
 Vweba outshone them all in his studies. It did not 
 take much effort to do that either. But he was really 
 a very bright boy, and what was stranger still, honest 
 and reliable. None of these things were character- 
 istic features of the Bafiote. 
 
 Vweba had been three years at the mission when I 
 first saw him. He was my cook and native teacher. 
 Every day he spent one or two hours with me teach- 
 ing me the Kifiote. All went well for months and 
 then there came on an epidemic of stealing which 
 spread throughout the boys' school like the measles 
 or whooping-cough. Vweba withstood the tempta- 
 tions set before him by the other boys for a long 
 time, but at last yielded to their sneers, and ate one 
 stolen egg. 
 
 From that time on, he was perfectly miserable. 
 He knew the other boys were stealing, for not seldom 
 they came into his cook-house to fry their stolen 
 eggs. He grew careless and stupid in the school- 
 room and his cooking was utterly degenerate. We 
 could not imagine what was the matter. He never 
 smiled any more and always looked sullen and angry. 
 
 At last it all came out and Vweba confessed with 
 a glad heart. He was greatly relieved, when the 
 teacher knew everything. But while this was un- 
 doubtedly a relief, it did not take away the moral 
 burden which had been laid upon him. He con- 
 tinued, to wallow in the Slough of Despond.
 
 182 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 One bright moonlight evening, as we sat out on 
 the veranda of the tiny grass house which we called 
 home, viewing the majestic sweep of the river as it 
 roared past and down over the Isangila Falls, we 
 called Vweba to us and his teacher gave him a tender, 
 loving heart-to-heart talk after which we had a season 
 of prayer. Then Vweba prayed. Such a simple, 
 childlike prayer, which I shall never forget ! 
 
 11 Oh, Lord," he prayed, " I'm so sorry I stole and 
 lied. I want you to forgive me. But I can't stop 
 lying and stealing of myself. "Won't you take all the 
 lie and the steal out of my heart for the sake of Jesus 
 who is our Saviour?" 
 
 The next morning I caught sight of a figure run- 
 ning past the house early in the morning. It was 
 Vweba, whom I had not seen run for weeks. He 
 was running now with a firebrand in his hand towards 
 the kitchen. On his face was the radiance which 
 comes only from within. 
 
 11 How is it with you, Vweba I " I asked as soon as 
 an opportunity was afforded for asking. 
 
 "Oh, I'm so happy!" he exclaimed. "I felt so 
 badly when I left you and the master last night. I 
 went to the boys' hut and laid down and tried to 
 sleep but I couldn't, for I was so wretched. Then 
 after all the other boys fell asleep, I got up and 
 prayed. I just opened my heart and the happy 
 came in. I know Jesus has forgiven me." 
 
 He had opened his heart to Jesus and the happy 
 came in ! And the happy shone out through his face 
 which glowed with his new-found joy. He wanted 
 to be baptized at once and arrangements were made 
 for this when there came an unexpected setback.
 
 XXXV 
 
 TRIED AS BY FIRE 
 
 AS soon as Vweba "received the happy back 
 into his heart," he began to tell his expe- 
 rience and try and persuade others to enter 
 into the same joy. This effort was met by some of 
 his schoolmates with ridicule, others said they would 
 think about it, while a few were openly hostile. In 
 some way the word soon reached the chief's ears. 
 
 It was about a week later when the chief appeared, 
 having two or three men with him all armed with 
 their guns. They demanded an interview with the 
 missionary at once, even though he were sick with 
 fever. They were in a most unreasonable and un- 
 reasoning rage. The missionary tried to bring them 
 to calmness and talk sense with them, but they were 
 too excited for anything but fierce denunciations and 
 angry threats. Then his Norse blood was aroused 
 and, sick as he was, he rose up and gave them to un- 
 derstand that they could not frighten him by any of 
 their threats of, personal violence. Moreover, he 
 wanted them to clearly understand another thing, 
 and that was that they were not to do Yweba any 
 harm. He would not yield to their demand that the 
 boy leave the station. He was under contract to stay 
 a year and they should not drag him off now. If 
 they did any mischief whatever to the boy, he would 
 as an extreme measure inform Bula Matadi. 
 
 183
 
 184 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 Then he sank back exhausted and the cowardly 
 Bafiote, seeing that he could not be intimidated, 
 calmed down at once. 
 
 Their next effort was to work on Vweba, which 
 was more easily done. He did not fear for himself, 
 but when his chief told him that unless he left the 
 mission and came back to the kraal, he would come 
 in the night and burn the grass house down over the 
 missionary's head, the boy began to weaken. He 
 dared not tell us what the chief had threatened and 
 so gave us no little concern about himself when he 
 began to beg that we would let him leave and go back 
 to his master's kraal. 
 
 It was only a few days, however, before his beloved 
 teacher took the long last journey and through those 
 dark days Vweba forgot all else than his devotion 
 to the teacher's wife and baby who also went down 
 close to those same gates of death, but did not enter. 
 Subsequently they were taken down to Vivi and two 
 other missionaries came to Isangila. 
 
 Then the chief began to intimidate Yweba again 
 insisting that the only thing that would prevent his 
 burning the missionaries up alive in their house was 
 for Vweba to return with him to the kraal. Had the 
 missionaries known all this they would probably 
 have done the unwise thing of interfering. They did 
 not and were pained exceedingly when Vweba pleaded 
 so hard to go that they could not refuse. 
 
 The chief was triumphant. "Now," he said to 
 his slave, "now, I'll show you to live as a heathen 
 should live." 
 
 It makes one shudder to think of the temptations 
 which were set in that boy's way during the next
 
 Tried as by Fire 185 
 
 nine months. There was the palm wine, the awful, 
 indescribable, sensual devil dances, not to mention 
 all the indecencies of daily kraal life. The three 
 Hebrews of old had no hotter fire through which to 
 pass. 
 
 But God cares for His own. One day the chief de- 
 cided that Vweba was strong enough now to carry 
 loads on the trail and so sent him over to the govern- 
 ment station with some other men to carry rubber and 
 ivory down to Matadi. This caravan, for some rea- 
 son, came to Vivi first, to the station where I had in 
 the meantime been transferred, and I was surprised 
 one day while sick with fever to see Vweba walk in. 
 It was on this trip that he learned that the Vivi Mis- 
 sion House was made of stone and so his chief could 
 not burn it and during the next few weeks he made 
 up his mind as to his course of action. 
 
 The next time his chief sent him down with loads, 
 the caravan went to their usual camping place three 
 miles from Vivi down the river. Vweba turned over 
 his load but did not wait for another. Seizing his 
 opportunity, he slipped away and made for the mis- 
 sion. There was no path he could follow and the 
 jungle was almost impenetrable in places. Moreover 
 he had to follow high precipices at a dizzy height 
 above the roaring, rushing, seething, mighty Congo 
 into which he would surely fall if he made a single 
 misstep, to be eaten by the greedy crocodiles which 
 swarmed its banks. 
 
 He also had to force his way through ravines 
 where tall trees, thick underbrush and great rocks 
 made the place the haunt of the leopard and boa con- 
 strictors. Three white men have told me at different
 
 i86 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 times that this three miles was more to be dreaded 
 than a sixty- mile trip to Isangila. 
 
 But at last he succeeded in gaining his refuge 
 though torn and scratched, bruised and bleeding. 
 
 There were also at Yivi a brother and sister, Mal- 
 afine and Sala, the latter a girl about twelve or thir- 
 teen years of age. 
 
 A year passed by during which there was a change 
 of leaders in our mission work for Africa. That 
 heroic man of God, Bishop William Taylor, so fre- 
 quently called a second Paul, had reached the end of 
 his active service. The Church and the world will 
 need the perspective of a few decades to see that 
 grand old man in his true light. How true it is that 
 if a man have a hundred successes and one failure, as 
 a rule the world sees but the one failure and forgets 
 the many successes, just as a copper coin held close 
 to the eye entirely obscures the most magnificent 
 landscape. 
 
 "William Taylor had a vision of the great principle 
 underlying God's plan for the extension and estab- 
 lishment of the Gospel among all nations, the devel- 
 opment in every land of a self-supporting, self-propa- 
 gating church. He was not always able to work out 
 the details of such a plan since his was the type of a 
 seer, a prophet and an evangelist rather than that of 
 a twentieth century business man. So his demon- 
 stration of that plan, as far as his work in Africa 
 was concerned, was perhaps faulty, and he failed to 
 realize his great hopes. 
 
 But he did accomplish the feat of drawing the 
 attention of the whole civilized world to the prin- 
 ciples and problems of self-support. He set men and
 
 Tried as by Fire 187 
 
 churches thinking and many of these have solved the 
 problem for themselves in local fields. It is as yet 
 too early a date to say which of these methods is 
 applicable everywhere, but the indications are that 
 of necessity some tried and proved methods embody- 
 ing these principles are being more and more gener- 
 ally adopted. 
 
 Bishop Taylor's scheme for establishing large in- 
 dustrial centres is becoming more and more popu- 
 lar. But his plan for his missionaries to have all 
 things in common was not a success, though there are 
 not a few Eoman Catholic and Anglican missions 
 which are run on that plan. These, however, con- 
 sist of celebate orders, and not of groups of families, 
 which latter Bishop Taylor especially approved of 
 in his missions. But even in these celebate orders, 
 there are serious handicaps thereby. Moreover, his 
 hope that the missionaries would soon be able to 
 support themselves as well as their boarding pupils 
 was not realized. But the large industrial centres, 
 which were so strongly advocated by David Living- 
 stone, and later by William Taylor, have been proved 
 a great success in Africa. There is also a marked 
 advance in the development of self-support among 
 the converts in all foreign lands. And if the Chris- 
 tian people at home could only be persuaded to give 
 their money for the sending of double and treble the 
 number of missionaries to the foreign field, instead 
 of insisting on paying for the support of orphans, 
 pastor-teachers and Bible-women, that desirable end 
 would be hastened considerably. 
 
 It is a remarkable thing that though William 
 Taylor made the great stir that has almost revo-
 
 i88 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 lutionized missionary methods, yet it was left to other 
 denominations to approach most closely to the ideal 
 of self-support, the work in Korea under the Pres- 
 byterians and of the Anglicans in Uganda being 
 notable illustrations of the practical working out of a 
 self-supporting plan. 
 
 But this is a digression. It was about the time 
 that Vweba made his last heroic break for liberty of 
 conscience that Bishop Taylor was retired and Bishop 
 Hartzell was elected in his place. And when the 
 new Bishop made his first episcopal visitation to the 
 Congo, he found Vweba and the girl Sala waiting for 
 his coming in order to receive Christian baptism. 
 
 They were baptized in the Congo, whose waters 
 had been music to their ears from earliest childhood. 
 That was a simple, picturesque and impressive scene 
 on that 25th day of April, 1897. There were the 
 little group of children, with Miss Hilda Larson, 
 their devoted teacher, whose days of earthly service 
 were already nearly numbered. Behind them rose 
 the high, north bank of the river, almost sheer for 
 about two hundred feet. In front of them was a mile 
 of swift, swirling, eddying, yellowish river, mighty 
 and dangerous, its opposite shore, also high and 
 mountainous, veiled with a soft blue haze. Above 
 the sky was overcast and dull, as was usual in the dry 
 season, making it safe for the Bishop to stand there, 
 his snowy head uncovered as an outward recognition 
 of the Divine Presence. This was the first Christian 
 baptism he had been privileged to perform in his 
 new field of labour and it had for him more than the 
 usual significance. It seemed to him a token that 
 during his administration, the Great Father would
 
 Tried as by Fire 189 
 
 give him thousands of other souls for his hire, thou- 
 sands of other black diamonds for the Master's crown, 
 a token which has already come to pass. 
 
 When the Bishop had completed his first tour of 
 Africa and faced the fact that only $7,000 was allowed 
 for the work in the entire continent, he consulted 
 with the missionaries and with the powers that be, 
 with the result that the Congo work and property 
 were turned over to the Swedish Missionary Society, 
 whose field was adjacent to ours. 
 
 So Miss Larsen took the four children who were 
 living at Yivi and went to Angola and took up her 
 work at Quessua. Here they joined the church and 
 it was only a day's march from here that I found 
 them again.
 
 AFTER MANY DAYS 
 
 F I ^HE long 1,500 mile trek across Africa from 
 Broken Hill was near its end and we were 
 
 JL now enjoying the fellowship of Christian 
 workers. After so long a period travelling through 
 unrelieved heathenism, we were the better able to 
 appreciate the work done by those heroic men and 
 women in Angola. 
 
 It was near the close of the day as we drew near 
 Nenzele and the sky was alight with all the splendour 
 of a tropical sunset when my men carried me over the 
 last miry stream and I saw coming towards me on 
 the other side a beautiful young native woman. 
 
 Could that lovely creature be Sala, the scrawny, 
 homely little girl I left behind at Vivi twelve years 
 before? I couldn't credit it. And yet who else 
 should be coming out to meet my machilla? Calling 
 to my men to stop, I got out and this girl ran to me, 
 threw herself into my arms exclaiming, in English, 
 11 My mother ! Oh, my mother ! " 
 
 We walked up the hill together chatting in English 
 over the wonderful experiences we had had, her neatly 
 clad two-year-old boy running along at our side. At 
 the top of the hill I saw a neat cluster of buildings 
 and soon Vweba, a splendid, tall, manly fellow, came 
 striding towards me with, " Well, bless the Lord ! If 
 He hasn't given us to see our mother again ! I never 
 thought we would have had this pleasure ! " 
 
 190
 
 After Many Days 191 
 
 His English was almost perfect and his wife's only 
 a little less so. He spoke Portuguese quite as well. 
 It was rather an amusing fact to all of us that we had 
 all three forgotten the Kifiote in which we had con- 
 versed altogether on the Congo and which was their 
 native tongue. 
 
 We went into their little mud and pole house like 
 the one we ourselves had occupied at Broken Hill 
 and the natives crowded around us to greet their 
 teacher's white friends from afar. What a contrast 
 these two were to the dirty crowd of half-clothed 
 heathen to whom they had just come as "foreign 
 missionaries" ! The hut was so clean and so tidy. 
 John Webba (for such he had been baptized) had 
 built the house and furnished it by his own super- 
 vision and helped with his own hands. There were 
 two little beds he had made covered over with quilts 
 of Miriam's handiwork. There was a small table 
 covered with a clean, cheap cloth. As soon as we ar- 
 rived, Miriam made lemonade for us in a clean glass 
 pitcher and served it in spotless glasses of which they 
 only had two. The three children stood or sat 
 quietly around with bright eager faces, but too well- 
 behaved to interrupt the conversation. It was simply 
 wonderful to me to see how the inward change had 
 wrought the outward. 
 
 But what astonished me the most was the keen, in- 
 telligent interest manifested by Webba in our trip 
 across the continent. With true missionary spirit 
 and zeal, his own heart had been burning for those 
 untouched tribes in the interior. Now and then he 
 had met Lunda, Songo or Bachokwe carriers who had 
 come to Malange with their wax and rubber for sale.
 
 192 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 He had discovered that their language was not so 
 different from the Kimbundu but that he could 
 soon have made himself understood by them. He 
 had been enquiring of them and the Wambundu 
 concerning that interior country and moreover had 
 been making that a subject of earnest prayer. 
 
 He was now opening up new work among a new 
 tribe, the Jingas, I think, who wore their hair in 
 long curls down their backs. These curls were 
 heavily laden with black clay and palm oil with 
 which their scanty garments also seemed saturated. 
 There was no mistaking them for anything else than 
 dirty heathens. 
 
 And here was this boy who had been a dirty 
 little heathen himself only valued by his people as 
 worth four pigs, as their missionary and teacher ! 
 
 Yet it is thus the Gospel leaven works and must 
 'work. It is idle for us to talk about the necessity of 
 thoroughly manning all the old fields before we open 
 new ones. It can never be done. The Gospel seed 
 must be scattered broadcast and a few of the natives 
 trained to be leaders but the great work of evan- 
 gelization must be done through the natives them- 
 selves. Moreover, it must be done by self-supporting 
 churches. 
 
 We must care for the infant churches and not only 
 teach them to walk but train them to work. But 
 there is a danger sometimes that we hold them in the 
 leading strings too long. Like our own offspring, 
 the time must come for them to set up housekeeping 
 for themselves and to assume their own responsibili- 
 ties while we turn our efforts and money to the un- 
 touched fields which remain.
 
 After Many Days 193 
 
 Bishop Taylor failed to find self-support for his 
 white missionaries on the Congo and the experience 
 of nearly all missions has been to prove that with 
 rare exceptions the foreign missionary cannot main- 
 tain himself and at the same time effectively carry on 
 his work for Christ in heathen lands. But the with- 
 drawing more and more of foreign funds and the 
 leading of native churches and primary schools to 
 support their own pastors and teachers is steadily in- 
 creasing in favour among missionaries although there 
 is still a large minority which is in favour of raising 
 all the support for native work in America and Eng- 
 land. 
 
 To our minds, this does not seem wise. In Africa 
 the natives have great resources. They can always 
 earn money and in most places they can make large 
 wages working in the towns or in the mines. There 
 are hundreds of cases of self-supporting native 
 churches among all denominations in South Africa. 
 
 Let us then no longer cry out that we must not 
 open any more new fields until the old ones are thor- 
 oughly evangelized but let us enter the open doors 
 and in every tribe and nation spend the most of our 
 energies in training up a band of Christian workers 
 who in twenty or twenty-five years will be able to do 
 far more than we can in propagating the Gospel. 
 
 As we sat there looking at Webba and his wife, 
 miracles of God's power to save and to use the 
 native, our minds ran back to that dark interior 
 through which we had been passing. There among 
 those savage, sullen peoples are hundreds of boys 
 and girls who are ready to become shining witnesses 
 of Jesus' love in even five years' time can they but
 
 Snap Shots From Sunny Africa 
 
 have the chance. They would not be the polished 
 products, nor the exceedingly able and competent 
 workers that Webba and his wife are, but they 
 would be quite ready for the work at their hands. 
 
 "Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for 
 they are white already to harvest. . . . The har- 
 vest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few ; 
 pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He will 
 send forth labourers into His harvest." 
 
 "And Jesus came and spake unto them saying, 
 All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth. 
 
 "Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them 
 in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
 Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things 
 whatsoever I have commanded you : and, lo, I am 
 with you alway, even unto the end o/ the world."
 
 1990 
 
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