t summer day you may have been wandering through a country
lane when you suddenly felt a whiff of perfume, fresh and sweet, and
wondered where it could have come from. You looked about, but there was
nothing save a tangle of green wood. You searched the hedges, and went
down to the brown stream below the bridge and along its banks. The
fragrance was still scenting the air, now strong, now faint, but you
could not find its source. Then suddenly you came upon it--a sweetbriar
bush, hidden away in a lonely and lowly spot.

Ma Slessor was like this modest briar bush. The influence of her
goodness spread far and near, and the fame of her doings reached peoples
who lived hundreds of miles away. They said to one another, "Let us go
and see this wonderful White Mother"; and they left their villages and
travelled through forests and across wide rivers and creeks, risking
capture and death at the hands of hostile tribes, to seek her advice and
help. Some of these visitors spoke languages Ma did not understand, and
they had to talk to one another in signs. Chiefs in districts she had
never heard of sent her messages: "Oh, Great White Mother, come and
dwell with us, and we will be God-men." Escaped slaves from cannibal
regions, who had been doomed to be eaten, fled to her for refuge. All
received from her a kind welcome and food, and, best of all, had a talk
about the Divine Chief who was to be the real Saviour of Africa.

There were other visitors to Okoyong she liked less, slave-dealers from
beyond the Cross River, who brought women and girls to sell. A slow fire
of rage had long been burning in Ma's heart against this cruel system,
and sometimes it burst into fierce flame. She would hear a sound of
bitter sobbing, and go out to see a string of naked little girls being
driven forwards by a man carrying brass rods on his head--the money
which the natives use. She would be so angry that she would shake her
fist at the trader and storm at him, but he would only grin and ask her
which girl she wanted, and would then describe their good points just as
if they had been so many fowls or goats. Sometimes there would be sick
ones, or ones suffering from ill-treatment, and these the dealers would
leave, and she would nurse them back to health, though she was always
very unwilling to let them go again into the awful whirlpool of
slave-life.

[Illustration]

She knew many of the dealers quite well, and often had long talks with
them abou