I will conclude with a few words about that area as a missionary field. I need not tell you that the poor people are densely ignorant of Christianity, as they are of all religion. I need not tell you again that like all savages they make each other as miserable as they can with their poor knowledge of the art and means of war; or that the slave-traders and the Khedive’s troops are adding daily to their capacity in that way. I hardly need tell you that I believe them to be human beings whose happiness might be increased by teaching them peaceful industries and by inducing them to give up idleness and fighting. In short, there is no doubt that the condition of the people of Central Africa and the Soudan is deplorable, and there is a possibility that Christian missionaries might make it better. The question is how and where you can do the most with the means at your command. Probably the most can be done by working steadily up the Nile, and to moderate distances east and west of the water-way, with a base in the more healthful regions of the north, and a steamer to carry people back and forth. I believe it would be a mistake to plant an isolated mission anywhere south of the swamp region. The essential thing is to be able to take a man away as soon as you find that he can no longer resist the fevers, recruit him in the desert air, and then hurry him back before he and his people have forgotten each other. If you plant a colony in the heart of Africa and leave it for three years, at the end of that time there will probably not be a man of it living—almost certainly he will not be living and working there. But it will take an ordinary man at least three years to fit himself for really good work amongst a people whose language and ways are so new to him. A valuable lesson may be drawn from the experiences of Gordon and Baker in the same country. Baker isolated himself in Unyoro, with no base and no line of communications. He was obliged to burn his baggage and retreat, with great courage and skill it is true, but with the absolute waste of his expedition. Gordon kept up fortnightly steamers to Khartoum, established his little garrisons step by step, and when he left the Provinces the power of the government was firmly fixed there. The idea of the Roman Catholic mission is excellent so far as it goes. They have built comfortable houses at Khartoum and El Obeid; have established schools, gardens and hospitals; have a corps of people trained in Arabic and some of the negro dialects, and somewhat acclimated, and—there they stop and sit in their gardens. They are capital financiers, and their mission will not be apt to break up for want of money or recruits; but as a means of practical good in Africa, it is nearly worthless without a chief of heroic fibre.