An extract from a letter of Dr. Macklin’s, of 7th Dec., 1877, which was published in March, 1878, in the _Missionary Record_, will show that neither the Blantyre missionaries nor the Directors at home hesitated to espouse the cause of the slave:—“Some time ago there were two boys here supposed to be brothers: after they had been here some months their father came and took them home because they got no calico. Well, not a long time afterwards, one of them came back and told us he had run away, and wanted to stay with us; said he was not the man’s son, but a slave, and had been bought some years ago. He asked our protection, and I said, ‘You shall now stay with us, and no man can touch you’. Two days afterwards his father, as he called himself, came for him. I brought Evangeli out and confronted him with the man, and asked him the same questions which I had previously, and he gave the same answers. I then said to the man, ‘He is not your son, but a slave, and he has my protection, and is now free’. All this took place in public before a great many Yao men. The man said he did not wish to be an enemy, but that the boy was his. I told him we gave him his freedom and English protection.” _A Free Native Village._—Mr. Stewart, writing from Blantyre in November, 1877, says:—“I must mention another very interesting and promising circumstance. We have a native village growing up near us. The first-comers were three or four families from the neighbourhood of the Cataracts, who, on account of the insecurity of their village from Mangoni raids, but without having been actually hunted from their homes, came here, and spontaneously put themselves under our protection. Land has been given them, and a site for their houses. They are required to build substantial square houses; the size adopted is 20 feet by 14 feet. Four such are now being erected by their unassisted labours. They have been joined by one or two families from this district. The men are well built and athletic, with open, smiling countenances. They and the women frequently attend our meetings. They are, I think, a good beginning of our future tenantry.” Of the school he says:—“It fluctuates in numbers, and has not grown as fast as might be wished. Parents cannot be induced to leave their boys here for long at one time. The boys are docile, and willing to attend; the difficulty is with the parents.” Soon the children of these refugees became the main hope of the school: while their parents attended the religious meetings and formed a congregation. The state of progress by March, 1878, is summed up in these words, where special emphasis is given to the position on slavery:—“Our Mission at Blantyre continues to prosper in its various operations; the natives are friendly, and are impressed with a sense of its value; the school is well attended; the area of cultivation has much increased, and Blantyre has become an asylum for the slave.”