often
to put his watch under his arm-pit to keep it dry. His good ox Sindbad
would never let him hold an umbrella. His bed was on grass, with only a
horse-cloth between. His food often consisted of bird-seed,
manioc-roots, and meal. No wonder if he suffered much. Others would not
have all that to bear. Moreover, if the fever of the district was
severe, it was almost the only disease. Consumption, scrofula, madness,
cholera, cancer, delirium tremens, and certain contagious diseases of
which much was heard in civilized countries, were hardly known. The
beauty of some parts of the country could not be surpassed. Much of it
was densely peopled, but in other parts the population was scattered.
Many of the tribes were friendly, and, for reasons of their own, would
welcome missionaries. The Makololo, for example, furnished an inviting
field. The dangers he had encountered arose from the irritating
treatment the tribes had received from half-cast traders and
slave-dealers, in consequence of which they had imposed certain taxes on
travelers, which, sometimes, he and his brother-chartists had refused to
pay. They were mistaken for slave-dealers. But character was a powerful
educator. A body of missionaries, maintaining everywhere the character
of honest, truthful, kind-hearted Christian gentlemen, would scatter
such prejudices to the winds.

In instituting a comparison between the direct and indirect results of
missions, between conversion-work and the diffusion of better
principles, he emphatically assigns the preference to the latter. Not
that he undervalued the conversion of the most abject creature that
breathed. To the man individually his conversion was of over whelming
consequence, but with relation to the final harvest, it was more
important to sow the seed broadcast over a wide field than to reap a few
heads of grain on a single spot. Concentration was not the true
principle of missions. The Society itself had felt this, in sending
Morrison and Milne to be lost among the three hundred millions of China;
and the Church of England, in looking to the Antipodes, to Patagonia,
to East Africa, with the full knowledge that charity began at home. Time
was more essential than concentration. Ultimately there would be more
conversions, if only the seed were now more widely spread.

He concludes by pointing out the difference between mere worldly
enterprises and missionary undertakings for the good of the world. The
world thought