The diminishing number of the Mpongwe, the hostility of the climate, the insistence by the government that French must be the language of the schools, the great difficulty of procuring a corps of French-speaking missionaries, the curse of rum, the presence of a large community of white men and the natural irresponsibility of the white man in Africa—all these have combined to limit the work of our mission among the Mpongwe and to make it exceedingly difficult. And besides, there is, especially, the strong opposition of the French Jesuits who have a large mission in Gaboon and any number of missionaries that the work may demand. Their hostility makes coöperation impossible. Their methods, of course, are Jesuitical. We have the authority of certain historians for the statement that in the early days of missions among the American Indians the Jesuit Fathers taught the Iroquois of Canada that Jesus was a big Indian Chief who scalped women and children. If that was ever true—and I doubt it—their object of course was to gain first the outward adherence of the Indian, submission to their authority, with the intention of afterwards instructing him in the full content of Christianity, as they understood it. The French Jesuits, perhaps with the same good intention, have baptized nearly all the polygamy, drunkenness, immorality and fetishism of Gaboon, and they call it _Christianity_. But I believe it is more inaccessible to moral and spiritual influence than it was before. One day shortly after the news of the death of Pope Leo XIII reached Gaboon, and before I had heard of it, I was passing along the beach when I heard in a small village the _ululu_ of women who were wailing for the dead. Their mourning has usually a local occasion, and I had no doubt but that somebody was dead in their own village; so I hurried over. The mourning ceased abruptly at my approach—a triumph of curiosity over grief. When I asked who was dead, the leader answered: “The Pope!” She followed the answer with a prolonged howl in which they all joined, and the tearless mourning proceeded. That is how I learned of the death of Leo XIII. The Protestant Christians of Gaboon are a very small community; but they are the best Christians, and the dearest people, I have known in Africa. They alone, of the Mpongwe, have good-sized families of healthy children. They are the living remnant of a dying tribe.