in the Congo River . 313 
the wilder races. Probably the best ground for 
the trial would be the Island of Zanzibar, where 
we can completely control its operations. And 
what should lend us patience and courage to meet 
and to beat down all difficulties is the considera¬ 
tion that success will be the sole possible means, 
independent of El Islam, of civilizing, or rather of 
humanizing, the Dark Continent. The excellent 
Abbe Proyart begins his “ History of Loango” with 
the wise and memorable words: “Touching the 
Africans, these people have vices,—what people is 
exempt from vice ? But, were they even more 
wicked and more vicious, they would be so much 
the more entitled to the commiseration and good 
offices of their fellow-men, and, should the mission¬ 
ary despair of making them Christians, men ought 
still to endeavour to make them men.” 
The “ Free Emigration” schemes hitherto at¬ 
tempted have been mere snares and delusions; 
chiefly, I hold, because the age was not ripe for 
them. In 1844 three agencies were established at 
Sierra Leone for supplying hands to British 
Guiana, Trinidad and Jamaica. As wages they 
offered per diem $075 to $1, with leave to return 
at pleasure; the “liberated” preferred, however, 
to live upon sixpence at home, suspecting that the 
bait was intended as a lure to captivity. Nor 
were their fears lulled by the fact that the agents 
shipped amongst 250 “ volunteers” some seventy-six 
