t seemed impossible. What was the good of an
engineer among the lakes and forests of Central Africa?

On the table by the side of Stanley's _How I found Livingstone_ lay a
newspaper, the Edinburgh _Daily Review_. Mackay glanced at it; then he
snatched it up and read eagerly a letter which appeared there. It was
a new call to Central Africa--the call, through Stanley, from King
M'tesa of Uganda, that home of massacre and torture. These are some of
the words that Stanley wrote:

"King M'tesa of Uganda has been asking me about the white man's
God.... Oh that some practical missionary would come here. M'tesa
would give him anything that he desired--houses, land, cattle,
ivory. It is the practical Christian who can ... cure their
diseases, build dwellings, teach farming and turn his hand to
anything like a sailor--this is the man who is wanted. Such a one,
if he can be found, would become the saviour of Africa."

Stanley called for "a practical man who could turn his hand to
anything--_if he can be found_."

The words burned their way into Mackay's very soul.

"If he can be found." Why here, here in this very room he sits--the
boy who has worked in the village at the carpenter's bench and the
saddler's table, in the smithy and the mill, when his mother wished
him to be at his books; the lad who has watched the ships building in
the docks of Aberdeen, and has himself with hammer and file and lathe
built and made machines in the engineering works--he is here--the "man
who can turn his hand to anything." And he had, we remember, already
written in his diary:

"Livingstone died--a Scotsman and a Christian--loving God and his
neighbour, in the heart of Africa. 'Go thou and do likewise.'"

Mackay did not hesitate. Then and there he took pen and ink and
paper and wrote to London to the Church Missionary Society which was
offering, in the daily paper that lay before him, to send men out to
King M'tesa. The words that Mackay wrote were these:

"My heart burns for the deliverance of Africa, and if you can
send me to any one of those regions which Livingstone and Stanley
have found to be groaning under the curse of the slave-hunter I
shall be very glad."

Within four months Mackay, with some other young missionaries who had
volunteered for the same great work, was standing on the deck of the
S.S. _Peshawur_ as she steamed out from Southampton for Zanzibar.

He was in the f