The World of Waters, Or, A Peaceful Progress O'er the Unpathed SeaOsborne, David, Mrs. (Fanny)
General
The World of Waters, Or, A Peaceful Progress O'er the Unpathed Sea
Osborne, David, Mrs. (Fanny)
Geography -- Juvenile literature; Voyages and travels -- Juvenile literature
GRANDY. "What fearful arrogance and presumption! It sufficiently
testifies their direful state of ignorance, which ignorance, I
trust to hear, will soon be effectually removed; for there are now
missionary establishments on this coast, which, since the year 1834,
have been progressing. At first, the ministers were much dispirited,
owing to the evil effects of the climate on the European
constitution, for after a year or two they were cut off by death;
and, in order to continue the mission, other pious men and their
wives were obliged to be sent out. Again, these died; but yet the
work prospered; and now, blessed be God! the few whose lives have
been spared, are enabled to report that many natives have turned
unto the Lord their God. Every Sabbath morning, public worship is
celebrated in the chapel at Cape Coast Town, when the beautiful
liturgy of our Church is read; and the decorum which is observed by
the natives, who read the responses, appears in striking opposition
to the wild irrational service which they formerly offered at the
temple of their fetish."
MRS. WILTON. "The unconverted believe in a Supreme Being; but they
have a curious tradition respecting the creation, which has
prevailed among them from the earliest period of their history. They
believe that, in the beginning of the world, God, having created
three white and three black men, with an equal number of women of
each color, resolved, in order that they might be left without cause
of complaint, to allow them to fix their own destiny, by giving them
the choice of good and evil. A large box or calabash was placed upon
the ground, together with a sealed paper or letter. The black men
had the first choice, and took the calabash, expecting that it
contained all that was desirable; but, upon opening it, they found
only a piece of gold, some iron, and several other metals of which
they did not know the use. The white men opened the paper, and it
told them everything. All this is supposed to have happened in
Africa, in which country it is believed God left the blacks, with
the choice which their avarice had prompted them to make, under the
care of inferior or subordinate deities; but conducted the whites to
the water-side, where he communicated with them every night, and
taught them to build a small vessel, which carried them to another
country, from whence, after a long period, they returned with
various kinds of merchandise to barter with the blacks, whose
perverse choice of gold in preference to the knowledge of letters
had doomed them to inferiority."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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