Their taunts and gestures of contempt stung us, making the blood surge through our veins and causing us to go hot and cold by turns. With pale faces, compressed lips, and hands gripping tightly whatever came within our grasp, we listened patiently to their sneers. How easy it would have been to have taken our gun and made some display of helping them! To have walked among them, and to have fired a shot into the bush would probably have satisfied them and would have stopped their sneers; but we were there on behalf of the “Prince of Peace.” How could we, then, consistently help them in their fights? We were there professing that all the peoples of the neighbouring towns and surrounding districts were our friends; how could we then take up arms against any of them and expect them to believe our professions of good-will or trust again in our word? We were hoping to make our station a centre of peace, the meeting-place for all factions; how could we, then, with our hopes and prayers, embroil ourselves in their hatreds and wars, or join sides with them even in pretending to shoot down our other parishioners? It was very difficult, but strength was given to meet the emergency, to bear calmly the taunts, the sneers, and the contempt; and from that time we were regarded by all the towns of the district as belonging to no one place, but to all of them, as impartial in our judgments, and just in our dealings with all alike. About three weeks after the first outbreak of war the natives of the upper towns came to talk over the terms of peace. They landed at our beach as the only neutral spot, and tied their canoes to our posts. The deliberations were long, boisterous, and from the noise that came to our ears we thought two or three times that they were on the point of starting fresh hostilities. At last the palavering was over and the visitors returned to our station, and bidding us good-bye, they entered their canoes; but just as they were pushing off the Monsembe people became excited and threatening in their attitude, and seeing that a fight on our beach was imminent, my colleague and I picked up sticks and drove the Monsembe people back from the river front. We insisted on the neutrality of our station; we had bought and paid for the land, consequently it was ours, and we would have no fighting on it; if they wanted to fight they must go to another part of the beach.