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
There was also the further incentive that African adventure—missionary
and political—was again becoming fashionable and attracting attention.
Stanley was starting to find Emin Pasha; others had embarked or
threatened to embark on the same quest. More and more missionaries were
going out. It was rumoured that Ann Jamblin had announced her intention
to take up a missionary career. Lucy wrote a little anxiously to
inquire. Ann admitted she had toyed with the idea as she believed
herself capable of teaching and even of preaching to the savage. But if
she did go it would probably be to West Africa where the climate was
even more deadly than in the South and East, and such a sacrifice might
be more acceptable before the Heavenly Throne than the comfortable and
assured position of a missionary’s wife, not expected to do more than
make a home for her husband.
John’s first Unguja letter said that Thomas, Bayley, Anderson and
himself had been very kindly received there by the Commercial Agent to
the East African Mission—commercial because from the first it had been
decided that a reasonable degree of trade should go hand in hand with
fervent propaganda and Brotherhood work. The Mission must strive to
make itself self-supporting in the long run as it had no rich church
behind it. So there were to be lay agents who traded in the products of
the country and whose stores would prove an additional attraction to the
native visitor and inquirer. The Agent at their Unguja depôt—Mr.
Callaway—had been a trader on the West Coast of Africa, agent there to a
great distilling firm; who had become so shocked at the effects of cheap
intoxicants on the native mind and morals that he had thrown up his
employ and enlisted under the banner of a Trading Mission, pledged not
to deal in alcohol or gunpowder. Mr. Callaway had "got religion" and
"found Christ" (in Liverpool), but in spite of that—the naïve John wrote
thus unthinkingly—was a very pleasant fellow who had soon picked up the
native language and got on good terms with the Arabs of Unguja. The
latter fully approved of his teetotalism—avoidance of alcohol being one
of the few good points in their religion. John described with unction
the prayer meetings and services they held in Mr. Callaway’s sheds and
go-downs on the shore of Unguja’s port; though he had to admit that his
fervour had been a little modified by the rancid smell of the copra[#]
stored in these quarters and the appalling stench that arose from the
filth on the beach. But there was plenty of good Christian fellowship
at Unguja. The representatives of the great Anglican Mission
established there—with a Cathedral and a Bishop and a thoroughly popish
style of service—had shown themselves unexpectedly good fellows. One of
them, Archdeacon Gravening, had presented the four young recruits for
the East African Mission to the Arab sultan, and they had seen him
review his Baluchi and Persian troops at the head of whom was an English
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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