MISSION STATION NEAR ZANZIBAR. 577 



and often adding that Mohammed found their forefathers bowing down to 

 trees and stones, and did good to them by forbidding idolatry, and teaching 

 the worship of the only one Grod. This, they all know, and it pleases them 

 to have it recognised. 



" It might be good policy to hire a respectable Arab to engage free 

 porters, and conduct the mission to the country chosen, and obtain permis- 

 sion from the chief to build temporary houses. If this Arab were well paid 

 it might pave the way for employing others to bring supplies of goods and 

 stores not produced in the country, as tea, coffee, sugar. 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, etc. 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 under- 

 gone a process which has spoiled them for life; though liberated young, 

 everything of childhood and opening 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 cala- 

 bashes 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, etc. 

 A great deal of power is thus lost in the Church. Fastings and vigils, with- 

 out a special object in view, are time run to waste. They are made to 

 minister to a sort of self-gratification, 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 una- 

 voidable hunger and thirst with a good grace. Considering the greatness of 

 the object to be attained, men might go without sugar, coffee, tea, etc. I 

 went from September, 1866, to September, 1868, without either. A trader 

 at Cazembe's, gave me a dish cooked with honey, and it nauseated from its 

 horrible sweetness, but at one hundred miles inland, supplies could be easily 

 obtained. 



"Expenses need not be large. Intelligent Arabs inform me that, in 



Y2 



