866 LIFE OF DA VID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



adapted to the wants of the nation. The sending of one or two missionaries 

 unassisted by secular aid who could expect to do no more than make one or two 

 individual conversions, would, he ventured to think, do very little to advance 

 the Kingdom of God in that part of the world. The formation of establish- 

 ments on the coast for the reception of freed slaves was a good and blessed 

 work, and he had no doubt such a work would be as blessed in East Africa 

 as it had been in the West. But more than this was required of them, and 

 if they would make their mission work productive in wide-spread and pro- 

 minent results, they must deal with it in a comprehensive manner, and they 

 must have thoroughly organised missions at the head-quarters of some power- 

 ful tribe, where they might be cities of refuge for the distressed and centres 

 of civilisation and evangelisation for the district around. They must teach 

 Christianity, not only as a religion of doctrine and {recept, but as a religion 

 of life-work. They must lay the foundation not only of Christian Churches, 

 but of Christian nations. 



Commander Cameron, C.B., D.C.L., was received with enthusiastic cheer- 

 ing on taking his place at the rostrum. He observed that the part of Central 

 Africa through which he travelled was at present entirely virgin field for 

 missionary labour. The races there were in great measure ignorant of the 

 outside world, and abandoned to barbarous and cruel customs. The chief of 

 one of the largest territories — as large as the whole of Germany, Austria and 

 Hungary — indulged in the greatest atrocities, mutilating and torturing the 

 people, and plundering the villages subject to him on the most frivolous pre- 

 texts. These people were very different from the natives of the West Coast. 

 They were the pure; unadulterated negro, with no false graft of civilisation 

 on them. The negro on the West Coast had been contaminated by the influ- 

 ence of the slave trade ever since the days of Queen Elizabeth; but the origin 

 of the slave trade on the East Coast was lost in obscurity, though it was 

 known that Arabs went down there in search of slaves as early as the com- 

 mencement of the Christian era. The question arose, how was the centre of 

 Africa to be approached for the work of the missionary ? 



There were several routes open from the East Coast, but owing to the 

 policy of annexation pursued by the Khedive the country could not be ap- 

 proached from the north except by a very large armed force. The road was 

 also open from the south. How were these different routes to be utilised : 

 It was no use placing missions where they would be cut off from the outside 

 world. The only feasible plan was to begin by establishing a station, say 

 one hundred or two hundred miles from the coast. This would become a 

 basis of operations from which another might be established two hundred 

 miles further on. Working from both sides of the continent in this way four 

 or five stations from each coast would complete a line of communication right 

 across. Offshoots could then be made north and south, and by degrees they 



