The Man Who Did the Right Thing: A RomanceJohnston, Harry
General
The Man Who Did the Right Thing: A Romance
Johnston, Harry
British -- Africa, East -- Fiction; Missions -- Tanzania -- Fiction
Unguja,
_August_ 26, 1889.
DEAR CAPTAIN BRENTHAM,—
Mrs. Stott and I, we thank you very heartily for your kind remembrances
of us. The generous present of tea you sent us as soon as you got back
to England reached our good friend Callaway a little while ago and I
found it here waiting for us when I arrived from the interior.
Captain Wissmann has had a wonderful series of victories over the Arabs
and Wangwana, which in the good providence of God have cleared the way
between Ugogo and the coast. I heard something of this in the Happy
Valley last April; so, as we were running terribly short of supplies and
as we felt "seed time was come" and that the Lord desired us to reopen
our Burungi Station, and establish his tabernacle strongly in this
glorious place—Manyara—"ripe unto harvest"—I felt my way cautiously up
the Valley and through the Irangi country to Burungi. The place was not
any worse treated than when you left it—you made a great impression on
the Wagogo—so, as their elders begged me to rebuild the station I left
some of our trained workers to do so. Besides that, Captain Wissmann,
whom we met near-by, has lent us two German sergeants—biddable men and
clever with their hands. They’d been sick, and wounded in the legs and
he said it would do them good to have a spell of quiet sedentary life.
He also put under their orders a guard of five Sudanese soldiers to
guard the station whilst it is being rebuilt. So here I am at the
coast, chopping yarns with Mr. Callaway, and laying in great supplies
which I have been able to buy out of the price of that ivory you shot
for us.
Captain Brentham, you don’t know what a mine of wealth the Happy Valley
is, and the cliffs and mountains on the western side (Iraku and Ilamba).
I am an Australian, and before I found Christ I had a course of
instruction as a mining engineer. The rocks in and about the Happy
Valley tell me at first sight more than they would an ordinary
Englishman. I suppose some one will have to find out this, sooner or
later. I’d much sooner it were _you_. You may yet get it taken over by
Great Britain. At any rate, if you came out here and prospected you
would see what I mean. What did you do with the specimens you took away
with you for analysis? Did you lose them on your way to the coast?
Maybe if the Happy Valley is to come under the Germans they would give
you a concession. This Captain Wissmann seems to like you, and he said
it was far from his Government’s intention to drive away English
missionaries or English capital. He likes the English very much and
speaks English very well.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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