Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1880-10-06
Some Reasons for Eyangelizing Centra
Africa.
BY REV. JOHN o. MEANS, D. d.

The magnitude of the field md The naul-
titldeS 10 be redched. The material mag
nitudes OF countries and the number of
human beings to be reached are legitimate
considerations in Christian missions. They
may become decisive considerations when
the demands upon us exceed our re-
sources. The handfuls of helpless savages
who maintain precarious existence on the
atolls of coral islets in the South seas are
not to be forgotten; it is Christian and
blessed deed for noble men and women
to traverse oceans and starve their lives
out in making known to these attenuated
and raveled fringes of humanity the
eternal life prepared for all men in Jesus
Christ our Lord. But do the claims of
Tonga or Norfolk islands equal the claims
of Japan, with its teeming mvriads? !?
While Christians must listen to the cry
ringing out of Heaven that summons
them TO muster their forces for the con-
quest of the islands of Japan, with their
thirty millions of people, shall they be
deaf to the summons to 20 in and possess
a Continental world which holds in its
mysterious depths materials ont of which
may be made half dozen Japans or
Great Britains?
Five thousand miles in extreme length
and breadth, Africa has probably more
habitable land than any other quarter of
the globe. Asia exceeds it in square
miles, but Asia has vast territories, in the
frozennorth and spreading over inaccessi-
BILE mountain ranges, while the great
deserts of Cobb and Arabia and the steppes
of Tartary equal the vast breadths of the
Sahara and the kaahari deserts of Africa.
Lying squarely beneath the equator,
every inch of land under tropical or tenn
perate climates, with such elevations of
table lands. rolling ridges and snow
capped mountains rs supply moisture and
prevent the torrid sun from scorching up
vegetable life, habtable Africa probably
exceeds i'll extent habitable Europe and
North America and Australia combined.
The fact speaks for itself that savage Eu-
rope, savage America and savage Aus
tralia We're thinly populated; civilization
was necessary to fill them with inhabitants.
The natural forces in these continents
needed to have their rigors subdued and
pliabilities augmented by human enter
prise, in order TO make il possible for
mankind to multiply and replenish their
wildernesses. But Africa, in its savage
rudeness, is so kindly disposed for human
existence that it gives homes spontaneous
ly to nearly one-siXlh the human race.
Savage Africa to-day supports o-thirds
as many men and women as Europe and
America assisted by all the appliances of
modern civilization.
There is as great variety in the popula-
tions Of Africa as in the populations of
Europe. The Scotchman differs appreci-
ably from the Turk, though both are white
men, so called. Africans are black men,
bat to call all Africans negroes is like call
ing all Europeans Scotchmen or Turks.
From the Indian ocean, below the straits
OF Babel Mandeb, over the highlands of
Abyssinia down the lower Nile, along the
Mediterranean, and sweeping around the
curve OF the Atlantic ocean to Cape Boja-
dor, and thence across to the Red Sea are
swarthy, coarse-haired, oval-faced, snewy
limbed people of Shemic and Hamic
stock, cousins of the Arab and the Jowf
| From the Senegal eastward and south o,
| the Sahara are tall, robust, straight-nosed
thin Tipped, curly-headed Mandngoes and
Foolahs, veritable Appollos as to physical
manlness. In the parallels south of these,
around the gulf of Guinea, and the vast
water ways of the Tuorra and Binne and
The lower Niger, congregate the immense
herds of thick-lipped, protuberant juwed,
slack-muscled, loose jointed negroes.
Mingling with the negroes, south and east
| of them, and bordering on the Somalis and
Gallas who dwell above Victoria Nyanza,
are the vigorous, athletic Bantee race, of
whom the Zulu kaifir is u type. They
cover Central Africa from the Ogowe and
| { lnpO IN tho "a iDla MI and nnx wa apH
TO Zanzibar; they reach southwark across
the Zambesi and Limpopo almost to the
Cape of Good Hope. Distinct from all
these are Hottentots, i'll favored, scrawny
skeletons. Distributed among the other
races, Africa has still stranger people,
pygmies-brave, alert, quick-wtted little
men and women four or i've feet tall, with
top heavy heads and protuberant bodies.
And, last of all, race OF yellow-wooled,
saffron faced, ,pink-eyed, scared savages was
met with in Kibogui, by Major de Serps
Pinta, and also by Ladislaus Magyar.
In this mysterious continent, of such
wonderful physcaI features and diversified
productions, teeming with populations
which in some parts herd like animals and
feed on one another, and in other parts
are gathered in villages and towns which
are centers of rude industries, and in wall
ed cities which contain hundred thou
sand, hundred and fifty or two hundred
thousand people, whose inland
commerce replenished the Golfers of their
merchants with wealth that would once
have bought Christian princedom, in
this wonderful world of Africa there is
scope and there is a demand for the most
abundant labors of all Christians, by what
ever name they are named.-Missionary