So that the result of her evening’s entertainment, after she had read
her inspiring chapter in the Bible and said her bedside prayer, she
might have defined in precisely the same words as she had spoken to
her friend Ella when Ella had asked her, immediately on entering the
carriage, what she thought of Herbert Courtland.
“He is the bravest man in the world at present.”
She did not fall asleep for a considerable time.
CHAPTER XI.
I’M AFRAID THAT I MUST HAVE PRINCIPLE ON MY SIDE.
“It is quite ridiculous, besides being untrue,” said Phyllis, when she
had read the article in the newspaper to which her father called her
attention one morning, a week after the criticism on “Cagliostro” had
appeared. The article was headed:
“DYNAMITE VERSUS EVANGELIZATION,”
and it came out in a weekly paper devoted to the interests of
Nonconformists.
“It is with the deepest regret that we have to call the attention of
our readers and the public [the article ran] to the series of charges
brought by the Revs. Joseph Capper and Evans Jones, the eminent pioneers
of the Nonconformist Eastern Mission, against a gentleman to whom
a considerable amount of honor is just now being given by the Royal
Geographical Society, the Ethnological Institute, the Ornithological
Association, and other secular organizations, on account of his
exploration in the Island of New Guinea. It is scarcely necessary to
say that we allude to Mr. Herbert Courtland. The position which has been
occupied for several years by the two distinguished ministers whose self
sacrifice in endeavoring to spread the Light through the dark places of
the tropical forests of a savage land is well known to the subscribers
to the N. E. M., precludes the possibility of a mistake being made in
this matter, and yet they declare in a letter which we publish this
morning that the manner in which Mr. Courtland pursued his so-called
explorations in the forests which line the banks of the Fly River has
practically made impossible all attempts at mission work in that region.
In several directions it is not denied that Mr. Courtland entered into
friendly relations with some native tribes; but instead of endeavoring
to make the poor benighted creatures acquainted with the Truth, he
actually purchased as slaves over a hundred of them to aid him in
penetrating the Kallolu forest, where, it will be remembered, he
succeeded in shooting the much illustrated meteor-bird, as well
as several other specimens which will delight the members of the
Ornithological Association rather than professing Christians. Our
distinguished correspondents state, and we have no room to doubt their
word, that Mr. Courtland purchased his slaves by a promise to assist
the head man of their tribe against his enemies belonging to another
tribe--a promise which he only too amply fulfilled, the result being an
indiscriminate slaughter of savages who, though avowed cannibals, might
eventually have embraced the truths of Nonconformity. The elephant
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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