vi 
PREFACE. 
The following pages tell a wondrous story of Christian 
martyrdom, although the story does not end with the 
death of the sufferers. Those martyrs who were per- 
mitted to seal their testimony for Christ's truth with their 
blood, have by no means always suffered more severely 
than the Christian witnesses whose experiences are re- 
corded here. 
We see them enduring a tedious captivity, full of most 
cruel privations, in one of the darkest territories of 
heathen superstition, under a sanguinary despotism, the 
like of which, even in Africa, exists only in places few 
and far between. With the abominations and fiendish 
barbarities of such a government daily before their eyes, 
their own lives in constant peril, and at the mercy 
of a despot who played with the persons of his prisoners 
as though they were puppets — in the midst of constant 
fluctuations between fear and hope, the prospect of re- 
lease again and again held out, only to be dashed to the 
ground — till at length their peril reaches its climax, to- 
gether with the political jeopardy of their tormentors. 
At length the judgment which breaks in upon the tyrant 
is the means of restoring them — though weak and ex- 
hausted- — to safety, in answer to the unceasing prayers of 
their friends at home. Assuredly this is no easier martyr- 
dom than the quicker process of laying down one's life 
on the block or at the stake. The fact, moreover, that 
these sufferers are still in our midst, only deepens the 
sympathy which we feel in the story of their captivity. 
But the interest attaching to this simple journal of the 
German missionaries is manifold. It excites not only 
personal sympathy, such as every Christian owes to the 
sufferings of a brother. It awakens not merely the 
