546 LIFE OF DA VID LIVINGSTONE, LL.R 



them. We thus entered as friends; no such calamity as that of the late 

 Ashantee war opened the way for us ; and, going on their own invitation, 

 we could ask them to give ear to the message of divine truth which we 

 brought to them. 



" The mission embarked in a small vessel, the Warree, kindly supplied 

 by a Liverpool merchant, and, after a tedious and stormy voyage, entered 

 the Calabar river in the beginning of 1846. Mr. Jameson followed a few 

 months after, and Mr. Wad dell, after locating Mr. Edgerley and the native 

 agents, having come across in the Warree to Jamaica, to give an account to 

 his constituents of his procedure and how he had sped, I accompanied him on 

 his return, to take part in the work of the African mission. 



" On entering into the African wilderness, it was found necessary to 

 clear the bush and build houses ; for though our countrymen had been trading 

 with the natives for centuries, the traffic had hitherto been the slave-trade, 

 which, so far from doing anything to elevate them, was a terrible power, 

 necessarily sinking them into utter barbarism. Land was given us at our 

 choice on which to build, to be ours so long as we occupied it, but they 

 declined to give us absolute property in it. They could not sell their 

 country, they said ; nor amongst themselves do they know anything of 

 absolute individual property in the soil. It belongs to the community ; each 

 town has its part of it, and each family has its share of that which belongs 

 to their town, which the members of the family hold so long as they occupy 

 it. By this tenure all land is held. 



" In clearing the bush off the site chosen, it was found to be a receptacle 

 of dead bodies, thrown out unhurried, as the custom was; so that an applica- 

 tion had to be made to King Eyamba, who then held power, to prohibit the 

 practice so far as the mission ground was concerned. Ere long, houses were 

 erected at Duke Town and Creek Town, the principal seats of population, and, 

 through course of time, at Old Town, Ikunetu, and Ikorofiong, thus forming 

 five principal stations. With these are now associated a number of out- 

 stations, supplied by native agents, the two last formed of which have been 

 thrown into tribes beyond Calabar. From a lack of European agency, we 

 are still unable to proceed much into the interior from Calabar, as our base of 

 operations — a purpose we are anxious to carry out. 



" As a few of the natives, in trafficking with English ships, had picked 

 up our tongue so far, they use English words, according to their own idiom, 

 which seemed at first most barbarous, and hard to be understood. Meetings 

 were from the beginning held on Sabbath, for the preaching of the Gospel 

 through interpreters. The people, of course, knew not the seventh-day rest, 

 nor the mode of observance. They had, we found, an eight-day week, one 

 day of which was held in special honour by them as a sort of holiday — a 

 traditional remnant, no doubt, of the primeval Sabbath ; and they could not 



