536 LIFE OF DA VTD LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



for their senseless murders, and each blamed the other for the guilt. Both 

 parties pressed me to remain at the peacemaking ceremonies ; and had I not 

 known the African trusting disposition, I might have set down the native 

 appeal to great personal influence. All I had in my favour was common 

 decency and fairness of behaviour, and perhaps a little credit for goodness 

 awarded by the Zanzibar slaves. The Manyema could easily see the Arab 

 religion was disjoined from morality. Their immorality, in fact, has always 

 proved an effectual barrier to the spread of Islamism in Eastern Africa. It is 

 a sad pity that our good 'Bishop of Central Africa,' albeit ordained in West- 

 minster Abbey, preferred the advice of a colonel in the army to remain at 

 Zanzibar, rather than proceed into his diocese and take advantage of the 

 friendliness of the still unspoiled interior tribes to spread our faith. The 

 Catholic missionaries lately sent from England to Maryland to convert the 

 negroes might have obtained the advice of half a dozen army colonels to 

 remain at New York, or even at London; but the answer, if they have any 

 Irish blood in them, might have been, ' Take your advice and yourselves off 

 to the battle of Dorking; we will fight our own fight.' The venerable Arch- 

 bishop of Baltimore told these brethren that they would get ' chills and fever;' 

 but he did not add, ' When you do get the shivers, then take to your heels, 

 my hearties.' When any of the missionaries at Zanzibar get ' chills and fever,' 

 they have a nice pleasure trip in a man-of-war to the Seychelles Islands. 

 The good men deserve it of course, and no one grudges to save their precious 

 lives. But human nature is frail I Zanzibar is much more unhealthy than the 

 mainland; and the Government, by placing men-of-war at the disposal of 

 these brethren, though meaning to help them in their work, virtually aids 

 them to keep out of it. 



" Some eight years have rolled on, and good Christian people have con- 

 tributed the money annually for Central Africa, and the ' Central African 

 Diocese' is occupied only by the lord of all evil. It is with a sore heart I say 

 it, but recent events have shown to those who have so long been playing at 

 being missionaries, and peeping across from the sickly Island to their diocese 

 on the mainland with telescopes, that their time might have been turned to 

 far better account. About 1868 there were twelve congregation of natives 

 Christians at the capital of Madagascar. These were the results of the 

 labours of independent missionaries. For some fifty years, the Malagasy 

 Christians showed their faith to be genuine by enduring the most bitter perse- 

 cutions ; and scores, if not hundreds, submitted to cruel public executions 

 rather than deny the blessed Saviour. The first missionaries had to leave the 

 island ; but the converts, having the Bible in their own tongue, continued 

 to meet and worship and increase in secret, though certain death was the 

 penalty on discovery. A change in the Grovernment allowed the return of the 

 missionaries, and a personal entreaty of Queen Victoria to the successor of the 



