72 
GOD'S BLACK DIAMONDS. 
many) that she actually ran away and appealed to 
Mr. Christie for shelter and redress. For the most 
part public opinion was against her. It was wrong 
for a young woman to show such independence ! 
At Jamestown a poor drudge of a wife came to see 
me about her trouble. She was actually shedding 
tears ! — a sight very seldom to be witnessed in 
Africa. A woman in tears is about as rare an 
occurrence as an earthquake ! When I listened to 
her sad, piteous story, and looked at her back 
wStriped with wounds — the result of her husband's 
flogging with a whip — I no longer marvelled at her 
tears. She was one of three wives it turned out, 
and her husband had brought a fourth to the com- 
pound or house, and thenceforward studiously neg- 
lected the other three. When she spoke for her- 
self and companions, and appealed for fairer treat- 
ment, the flogging was all the reply she received. 
I really believe that the rankling sense of injustice, 
coupled with her feeling of utter helplessness to alter 
it, being a woman, caused the tears even more than 
the pain inflicted by the whip ! Where the Gospel 
is preached for any length of time, a change in the 
standing and treatment of women slowly but surely 
follows. At a fishing town on the opposite bank 
of the Mbo River from Jamestown, the women left 
their husbands in a body, took canoe and came to 
stay at Jamestown until their overlords and masters 
were prepared to give them fairer treatment. It 
was something new and unheard-of in that part of 
the world, that wives should go on strike ! But it 
did good. It was one of those strikes I found my- 
self in full sympathy with. When men and women 
yield to the Gospel invitation and become out-and- 
