THE METHODIST MISSION 



The missionaries were striving to take advantage of this open- 

 ing, and were teaching the natives blacksmith's work, carpentry, 

 reading, writing, and better methods of agriculture. 



After leaving Ngao I reached Borabini or Golbanti, where 

 I found Dr. Mackinnon staying in the mission - house as 

 the guest of the Rev. Mr. Edmonds. Harris had left that 

 morning for Witu, while the flotilla of maus, bringing up 

 the ammunition, arrived in the evening. At my request the 

 cartridges were landed and stored in the mission-house, and 

 the canoes sent back for goods which would be a less tempting 

 bait to the rebels. The mission-station was a strong stone 

 building surrounded by a powerful stockade ; the house was 

 provided with an iron roof so that it could not be set on fire, 

 the windows were protected by iron shutters, and the walls were 

 loopholed. A stand of arms also showed that the Methodist 

 Missionary Society does not belong to the peace-at-any-price 

 party. These precautions, however, are necessary, for the founder 

 of the station and his wife were both massacred by Masai.^ 

 The mission-station is now so well fortified that our 61,000 

 cartridges were quite safe, the more so as the garrison was 

 reinforced by 150 of our own men. 



I spent a most interesting evening with Dr. Mackinnon and 

 Mr. Edmonds, neither of whom had I previously seen, and next 

 day continued the journey down the Tana. The country became 

 one vast swamp, and sank below the level of the river. The 

 water was pouring through the banks by numerous gaps, natural 

 and artificial, and was thus irrigating the rice-fields on either 

 side. Some of these had been already sufficiently flooded ; so 

 the water had been cut off, and the ground was green with the 

 young rice shoots. At two o'clock we reached Charra, a group 

 of huts beside a grove of cocoa-nut palms, the farthest point 

 from the sea at which they occur in this district. Here we left 

 the Tana and entered the Belezoni Canal. This is a narrow 

 ditch connecting the Tana and the Ozi. The mouth of the 

 former river is closed by a bar, so that dhows cannot enter it 

 except with great difficulty and at certain states of the tide. 

 The Tana runs actually parallel to the sea, which is at a dis- 

 tance of only a few hundred yards ; yet the river flows on for 

 some miles before it succeeds in bursting through the sand- 



^ This incident is referred to in Rider Haggard's Allan Qiiatermain. 



