INTRODUCTION. 
If intimate acquaintance with the facts to be presented and 
an intensified interest in the subject: to be treated constitute any 
part of the essentials requisite for authorship, then the writer 
of the following pages ma^ lay more than ordinary claims to 
this qualification. At eight different times he crossed the ocean 
to visit the lands and the people of which he writes, the first 
voyage being made near thirty-one years ago. Since then the 
mission at that time organized has occupied his unceasing 
thought and care ; and no other man is so intimately acquainted 
as he with its history, through all the stages of its development 
to the present time. Mr. Flickinger has long cultivated habits 
of close observation, and, when traveling, is thoroughly wakeful 
to everything that transpires about him. His sketches of the 
people of western Africa — of their habits, customs, modes of 
life superstitions, and idolatries, — are drawn from notes made 
on the ground. His ability to acquire so close a knowledge of 
African life was largely gained through the influence his official 
position secured for him with the native African chiefs. The 
sketches are vividly drawn, and frequently give us in the fewest 
words strikingly distindl impressions of the scenes described 
