But besides the arrival of the steamer there are other interruptions less welcome. While I am busy preparing my sermon for Sunday, in time stolen from other duties, a man appears at the door, and without waiting for recognition asks me to go with him to the mission store and get him a package of rat-poison—price about five cents. Shall I, or shall I not, go to the store? We are owing him this amount for produce he has sold us, and he holds a “bon” for it, which he can negotiate only at our store. He lives far away, and his friends are waiting for him. Besides, rat-poison itself is a kind of Gospel in this rat-ridden land. It ranks about next to soap. I get him his rat-poison. But I do not believe in mission stores. At some stations, of course, they are a necessity: at some, I know they are a serious hindrance to the real work of the missionary. It is vain to answer that some money (a small amount at the most) is thus turned into the mission treasury. I reply that missionaries are not sent out to make money; let those who stay at home do that: they are sent to spend it. I am glad to say that if I accomplished nothing else in Africa I finally sold out that mission store, and gave our trade to one of the trading-houses. And I am glad also to add that instead of a financial loss, we actually gained by dealing with the traders, not to speak of the great saving of time for the serious work of the missionary. The work of itinerating I regarded as my chief work, however much detained from it. For most men it is also the most interesting work, inasmuch as it brings one into contact with the people in their native condition. With all their savagery there is really very little danger of violence at their hands. But a drunken savage is to be feared. Not that he is much more bloodthirsty; but his greed overmasters him, and he might easily be tempted to kill for plunder. For if the white man had nothing but the suit of clothes which he had on him he would still be rich enough to inspire native cupidity. One Sunday at Nenge Nenge, a town sixty miles up the river, I left the launch at anchor and went on up the river several miles in a canoe borrowed from a trading-house located at Nenge Nenge. It was a very large canoe; and since the workmen were all idle, the trader gave me a crew of fifteen men. The West African trader is supremely generous in granting all such favours. It happened that a short time before this a white trader of Gaboon, a young man whom I knew very well, who had been in Africa less than a year, returning one night by boat from Elobey Island to the mainland, was drowned. The body was never recovered, and indeed, it is not unlikely that he was immediately seized and devoured by the sharks. Not one of the crew was lost, and although we could not formulate a charge against them, we more than suspected foul play on their part. No one will ever know the tragedy of that young man’s last hour.