1872.] ADVICE TO MISSIONARIES. 211 



The first porters had better all go back, save a couple or 

 so, who have behaved especially well. Trust to the people 

 among whom you live for general services, as bringing 

 wood, water, cultivation, reaping, smith's work, carpenter's 

 work, pottery, baskets, &c. Educated free blacks from a 

 distance are to be avoided : they are expensive, and are too 

 much of gentlemen for your work. You may in a few 

 months raise natives who will teach reading to others better 

 than they can, and teach you also much that the liberated 

 never know. A cloth and some beads occasionally will 

 satisfy them, while neither the food, the wages, nor the 

 work will please those who, being brought from a distance, 

 naturally consider themselves missionaries. Slaves also 

 have undergone a process whiclj. has spoiled them for life ; 

 though liberated young, everything of childhood and open- 

 ing life possesses an indescribable charm. It is so with our 

 own offspring, and nothing effaces the fairy scenes then 

 printed on the memory. Some of my liberados eagerly 

 bought green calabashes and tasteless squash, with fine fat 

 beef, because this trash was their early food ; and an ounce 

 of meat never entered their mouths. It seems indispensable 

 that each Mission should raise its own native agency. A 

 couple of Europeans beginning, and carrying on a Mission 

 without a staff of foreign attendants, implies coarse country 

 fare, it is true, but this would be nothing to those who, at 

 home amuse themselves with fastings, vigils, &c. A great 

 deal of power is thus lost in the Church. Fastings and 

 vigils, without a special object in view, are time run to 

 waste. They are made to minister to a sort of self-grati- 

 fication, instead of being turned to account for the good of 

 others. They are like groaning in sickness. Some people 

 amuse themselves when ill with continuous moaning. The 

 forty days of Lent might be annually spent in visiting- 

 adjacent tribes, and bearing unavoidable hunger and thirst 

 with a good grace. Considering the greatness of the object 



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