Africa, Central -- Description and travel; Africa, East -- Description and travel; Natural history -- Africa; Slave trade
The Established Church of Scotland has three ordained missionaries in
the Shiré Highlands, one medical man, a male and a female teacher, a
carpenter, a gardener, and other European and many native agents.
The Free Church of Scotland on Lake Nyassa has four ordained
missionaries--three of whom are doctors--several teachers and
artizans, and many native catechists. The Universities Mission
possesses a steamer on Lake Nyassa, and several missionary agents;
while the African Lakes Company, as already mentioned, has steamers
both on the Shiré and Lake Nyassa, with twelve trading stations
established at intervals throughout the country, and manned by
twenty-five European agents. All these various agencies, and that of
the brothers Buchanan at Zomba, are well equipped with buildings,
implements, roads, plantations, and gardens; and the whole represents
a capital expenditure of not less than £180,000. The well-known
editor of Livingstone's Journals, the Rev. Horace Waller, thus sums
up his account of these English enterprises in his _Title-Deeds to
Nyassa-Land_: "Dotted here and there, from the mangrove swamps at the
Kongoné mouth of the Zambesi to the farthest extremity of Lake
Nyassa, we pass the graves of naval officers, of brave ladies, of a
missionary bishop, of clergymen, Foreign Office representatives,
doctors, scientific men, engineers, and mechanics. All these were
our countrymen: they lie in glorious graves; their careers have been
foundation-stones, and already the edifice rises. British mission
stations are working at high pressure on the Shiré Highlands, and
under various auspices, not only upon the shores of Lake Nyassa, but
on its islands also, and, by desperate choice as it were, in the
towns of the devastating hordes who live on the plateaux on either
side of the lake. Numbers of native Christians owe their knowledge
of the common faith to these efforts; scores of future chiefs are
being instructed in the schools, spread over hundreds of miles;
plantations are being mapped out; commerce is developing by sure and
steady steps; a vigorous company is showing to tribes and nations
that there are more valuable commodities in their land than their
sons and daughters." This is the vision which Livingstone saw, when,
in the last years of his life, he pleaded with his fellow-countrymen
to follow him into Africa. "I have opened the door," he said, "I
leave it to you to see that no one closes it after me."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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