OBSTACLES TO AFRICAN EVANGELISATION. 557 



nent — after the flood, as they advanced into its virgin areas, what a hercu- 

 lean task lay before them ! What a struggle had they with their surround- 

 ings ! With miasma from its low, damp, alluvial fringe, like wet, green wood, 

 making the fire of life to burn low — with a prodigious vegetation, which to 

 this day they have never conquered, and with the other varied difficulties 

 which the people of such a region have to encounter ! 



" There need be no doubt that much of this dispersion into the unhealthy 

 tracts has been due to mutual violence, and not to a healthy emigration. 

 Within small areas, as in the region of the Old Calabar and Cross Rivers, we 

 find ten or twelve different languages, showing a jumbling together of tribal 

 fragments, which must be due to a violent disruption and dispersion. 



" And to these internal conditions we must add all that the superior races 

 have done for so many centuries to degrade and destroy the negro tribes. 

 Mahommedans, spreading themselves from the Mediterranean shores, from 

 Egypt and from Arabia, have overrun the healthier regions of the large 

 northern and central sections of Africa, inserting themselves like a wedge far 

 to the south, preying upon the Pagan tribes, crushing them piecemeal, enslav- 

 ing and selling vast numbers. And the Christian nations of Europe have 

 come on to the scene with a busy commerce, not to bless and save, but with 

 the offer of conveniences, ornaments, luxuries, and intoxicants, tempting them 

 through their intense avarice to prey on one another, in order to supply the 

 materials of the slave-trade. If we take a comprehensive and a fair view of 

 the history and circumstances of the negro race, we shall not be surprised at 

 their present and their past degradation. 



" Now these very difficulties, these causes of negro wretchedness, are also 

 very serious obstacles to the evangelisation of Africa. Look at the climate. 

 On the extensive western fringe, and in many interior parts, and not less in 

 large tracts on the eastern coast, the conditions are such as to make good 

 working health in Europeans the rare exception, while they intensify the 

 effects of the moral causes which make the natives inert and sluggish, without 

 pluck, and without enterprise. Vast uncultivated alluvial tracts, in which 

 heat and moisture force a most luxuriant vegetation; extensive lagoons of 

 half-stagnant water; a sparse population, confining agriculture to limited 

 areas, while the rest of the surface is covered with dense jungle and forest; 

 and mud-laden streams, flowing lazily over long levels — all tend to produce an 

 atmosphere laden with miasma. And no improvement can take place until 

 the population becomes numerous enough to occupy the soil, and intelligent 

 enough to grapple with the difficulties of the situation. 



" Yet commerce faces all this peril to gather wealth. Europeans are 

 found willing to go for trade to every part of this region of ' proved pestilence.' 

 They have long been living at places where no missionary had ever ventured 

 for the kingdom of the Lord. Our commerce is gathering profit where the 



