HOW A MISSION WORKS 159 
can find natives here on the Ogowe who can read, write, 
and handle figures, and who are to a certain extent 
reliable ? ” He had no reply to make to that. 
* 
He Hi 
But how is a mission carried on ? With what must 
it be provided, and how does it work ? In Europe 
many people picture it as a sort of village parsonage set 
down in the virgin forest, but it is something much 
more comprehensive than that, and more complicated 
too ; it may be said to be the seat of a bishop, an 
educational centre, a farming establishment, and a 
market ! 
In an ordinary mission station there must be one 
missionary as head, another for the mission work in the 
district, a man to teach in the boys’ school, and a 
woman for the girls’ school, with one or two practical 
workers, and, if possible, a doctor. Only a mission 
station of that size can accomplish anything worth 
mentioning ; an incomplete one only uses up men and 
money with no permanent result. 
As an illustration of this take Talagonga, where at 
the beginning of my time here there was a splendid 
evangelist working, Mr. Ford, an American, but the 
station had no practical workers. There came a time 
when it was absolutely necessary to repair the floor of 
the house, built upon piles, in which Mr. and Mrs. Ford 
and their children lived, because mosquitoes found their 
way in through the holes in it, and, as fever carriers, 
endangered the lives of the inmates. So Mr. Ford set 
to work at the job and finished it in about two months, 
during which time the neighbourhood was left without 
any spiritual direction. A practical worker would have 
