CONGO FREE STATE. 



CONGREGATIONALISTS. 



191 





in.: a quantity of munitions and several hun- 

 iln-ii prisoners. Sofu and Rashid, who had 

 joined forces here, retreated to the fort at Ki- 

 IMIH^I-, wliirh was strong enough to offer a 

 serious resistance. Soon afterward ('apt. Pon- 

 thiiT reached Stanley Falls with 500 men and 

 several cannon. He relieved Cant. Tobbak of 

 the commund, and ut the end of June set out in 

 canoes with 300 men and a Krupp gun arid 

 easily reduced Kibonge. By this victory the 

 entire country involved in the Arab insurrection 

 was cleared of the enemy. 



In connection with the Arab revolt the Congo 

 State had serious complaints to make of violations 

 of the general act of the Brussels Conference by 

 one or more of the signatory powers. Among 

 the arms left on the battlefield by the Arabs at 

 the various engagements on the Sankuru. the 

 Lomami, and the Lualaba were many breech- 

 loading rifles. The spoils taken at Stanley Falls 

 included 100 kegs of powder. The Arabs in 

 their slave raids are known to be extremely 

 wasteful of gunpowder, and yet seem always to 

 have had a never-failing supply. These muni- 

 tions could only reach them by way of German 

 East Africa or British Nyassaland, or through 

 the Portuguese possessions on either the east 

 or the west coast ; and such importations could 

 not take place without the connivance or ex- 

 treme remissness of the European customs au- 

 thorities, although the Antislavery Conference 

 imposed on the governments the duty of taking 

 all necessary measures to insure the fulfillment 

 of the prohibition against the importation, sale, 

 and transport of firearms and ammunition, as 

 well as to prevent the entry or exit thereof by 

 their inland frontiers or the passage thereof to 

 regions where the slave trade is rife. 



Boundary Questions. The French and the 

 Congo Government have both sent expeditions 

 to occupy the region of the upper Welle, and a 

 sharp dispute arose regarding their conflicting 

 claims, which the Congo Government proposed 

 to refer to arbitration in accordance with the 

 terms of the Berlin general act. In January, 

 1893, M. Ribot, receding from some of the French 

 demands, proposed to the Comte de Grelle Ro- 

 gier, the Congo plenipotentiary, an acceptable 

 compromise. According to this arrangement, 

 the Mobangi or Ubangi and the Welle form the 

 boundary up to the confluence of the Welle 

 and the Mbomu, and then the latter river up to 

 the point where the Shinko. an important tribu- 

 tarv, flows into it. in about of north latitude 

 and 24 of east longitude ; and east of that all 

 the territory south of the Shinko, up to its 

 course in the Bahr-el-Gazal territory, was con- 

 ceded to the Congo State. From this arrange- 

 ment M. Ribot afterward receded, and his suc- 

 cessor was still more unwilling to acknowledge 

 any Belgian rights beyond the Welle or north of 

 4 of north latitude. 



The delimitation of the frontier in Lunda, 

 west of the Kassai. the only part of the Portu- 

 guese boundary that remained undetermined, 

 was carried out by the Rev. G. Grenfell, com- 

 missioner for the independent State, and Col. 

 Sarmento, acting for Portugal. They began 

 their operations " on the spot on Dec. 20, 1892, 

 and the convention was signed at Lisbon on 

 May 25, 1893. 



CONGREGATIONALISTS. The "Congre- 

 gational Yearbook " for 1893 gives statistics of 

 the Congregational churches in the United 

 States of which the summaries are as follow: 

 Number of churches, 5,140 ; of ministers, 5,003 ; 

 of members, 542,725; of members of Sunday 

 schools, 644,782, with an average attendance of 

 897,201 ; of Young People's Societies of Chris- 

 tian Endeavor, 3,195, with 157,678 members; 

 number of additions during the year by confes- 

 sion of faith, 31,582; number of baptisms, 14,- 

 040 of adults and 10,357 of infants ; number of 

 families, 364,350. Amount of benevolent con- 

 tributions, so far as reported : For foreign mis- 

 sions, $441,948; for education, $252,699; for 

 church building, $137,770; for home missions, 

 $593,974 ; fcr American Missionary Association, 

 $148,805 ; for Sunday schools, $54,974 ; for the 

 New West Educational Commission, $47,091 ; 

 for ministerial aid, $26,326 ; for other purposes, 

 $948,305 ; benevolent contributions of the Sun- 

 day schools, $148,376. Of the churches, 3,723 

 are returned as " supplied with pastors " and 

 1,417 as ''vacant"; of the ministers, 3,279 are 

 in pastoral work, and 1,724 "without charge." 

 The 7 theological seminaries at Andover, 

 Mass., Bangor, Me., Chicago, 111., Hartford, 

 Conn., Oberlin, Ohio, Oakland, Cal. (Pacific), 

 and New Haven, Conn. (Yale) return 52 pro- 

 fessors, 38 instructors or lecturers, 11 resident 

 licentiates or fellows, 29 advanced or graduate 

 students, and 545 undergraduate students. Of 

 195 students in the Chicago Seminary, 68 are 

 marked special, of whom 11 were in the German, 

 17 in the Dano-Norwegian, and 40 in the Swed- 

 ish departments. 



The total receipts in all departments of the 

 American College and Education Society for the 

 three years ending in 1892 were $414,045 ; of this 

 sum, $152,941 were for the young men, and 

 $261,104 were for the colleges. The amount re- 

 ceived for the colleges during the previous three 

 years was $162,727 ; so that an increase is shown 

 for the last three years of $98,377. 



The New West Education Commission re- 

 turned, July 1, 1892, 28 schools of all grades, 

 with 68 teachers and 2,812 pupils ; of whom 742 

 were Mormons, 585 " apostates," and 287 Mexi- 

 cans ; with 21 Sabbath schools, having 2,000 pu- 

 pils. This society was to be united with the 

 College and Education Society, under the name 

 of the American Education Society. 



The American Congregational Association re- 

 turned the value of its Congregational House, 

 Boston, in 1892, as $501,000 ; its income for the 

 year was $23,104 ; and its indebtedness was 

 $165,000. The library contained 31,800 vol- 

 umes, of which nearly 1,000 had been added 

 during the past year 57,448 pamphlets, and 37,- 

 567 unbound numbers of periodicals. The chief 

 specialty of the library is the early Congrega- 

 tional literature of New England, with its sources 

 in the mother country ; and it collects portraits, 

 town histories, biographical sketches, etc. 



The total income of the Congregational Sun- 

 day School and Publishing Society for 1892 was 

 $80,249, of which $67,316 was available for im- 

 mediate use. 



Congregational Church Building: Society. 

 The fortieth annual meeting of the Congrega- 

 tional Church Building Society (formerly Ameri- 



