14 The Crowning Year 1894

Chapter 14 THE CROWNING YEAR

1894 AT Efulen all was animation and action in the spring of 1894. Dr. Good and Mr. Kerr were out with native workmen, making a road around swamps, the worst place on the route to the beach, and bridging the Kribi River at a point twenty miles from the station, by felling an immense tree across it. He doubts whether there is a pastor in New York City who could have done four such days’ work "without feeling inconvenience." A school-house is finished in May, the first in all Buludom; and now that they have promise of recruits from America, Mr. Kerr’s saw is in motion again, and great bales of bark and other materials are gradually gathering and seasoning on the premises for a second missionary dwelling. In late April Dr. Good is up and away on the march, most of the time with two carriers only, all comforts necessarily reduced to the lowest notch. At the same time his order is on the way home to the Board for one hundred dollars, earned with his indefatigable butterfly net, " to aid in opening the second station." The object of this trip is to find a site for that station and to study the field in general. His course, directed as usual by his pocket compass, was south by east as far as the Nlobo River, two hundred and ten to two hundred and twenty miles from the coast. There he was within three days of the Ja, into which it flows, and the Ja is an indirect tributary of the Congo. This journey determined in general the scope of the field which had been entered. Its eastern limit must be the Ja, for across that live the savage Ntem, a people wholly different from the Bulu. To the south one would soon drift into French territory; but to the north Bulu towns stretched for a hundred miles, and, for no one knows how much farther, those of other tribes having a cognate speech. Dr. Good tramped on this journey four hundred miles, a great part of the way where the foot of white man never trod before. The weather was cool, generally fine. Sometimes from a hilltop he would catch a view of wooded hills rolling away as far as the eye could see; and when he reached plateaus twenty-six hundred feet and more above sea-level, the air was as pure and the sky as blue as among the well-remembered Pennsylvania hills.

It was plain that " a vast population looks to us for the gospel." But the Bulu manner of life forbade denseness of population, and their method of building was such as to give the appearance, from a distance, of unbroken forest even in thickly settled parts. Bulu towns, composed of three to thirty villages strung along a path at intervals of fifty to several hundred yards, might extend for miles. Each village has its one straight street, lined on either side with low bark houses, and a palaver house across both ends. Between these lines of villages are intervals of bush or forest, or oftener clearings called gardens, where corn, cassava, groundnuts, and plantains grow. Cultivation of these is entirely the women’s work, but is done so inefficiently that they get only two or three crops in ten years. Dr. Good pitied the poor drudges, who lose their good looks and are old women when they ought to be coming to their best years. He marked them carrying the daily food of the family on their backs from garden to house, and the basket of firewood, besides, with which to cook it. He watched the wife on the road, staggering behind her husband under a load of food, goods and rubber, perhaps fifty pounds’ weight, while her liege lord burdened himself with a single gun. "One of the saddest sights I ever saw was women toiling through deep forest under their heavy loads, perhaps in pouring rain, with a crying baby slung in a strap under one arm." Even maternity receives but little consideration. Among some African tribes, the Galwa, for example, the mother goes, before the birth of her child, to her own people and remains till it is one or two years old. Here there is no such relief. As soon as her child is a month or two old the Bulu mother must go to work as before.

He saw the men, after their desultory hunting and barter, loafing in the palaver houses, eating, smoking, talking palavers and politics, or taking care of the baby at home. " One of the most amusing sights I recall was an old chief trying to pacify three or four hungry babies whose mothers were away in the gardens." The men wear themselves out by their viciousness at middle age, and Dr. Good saw scarcely any old people on this trip. As usual, he makes light of habitual hardships. It has come to be almost a matter of indifference whether his feet are wet or dry. Swamp of all depths and degrees, bad food, icy-cold streams to be waded, a smoky hut at night with a bed of poles on which to spread his blankets ― all this he can bear, like a born pioneer, with equanimity; but there was one trial almost beyond endurance.

"I wish I could somehow make you eye and ear-witnesses of what I experienced. Imagine me emerging from the bush, unannounced, upon the first village of a Bulu town. Some child first catches sight of the apparition, and takes to the bush. Grown people often looked indifferently at first, only remarking, ’ It’s an albino.’ But soon somebody would divine the truth, or some one who had followed from the last town would make the harmless remark, ’It’s a white man.’ The result I can compare to nothing but the bursting of a dam. Out of the palaver house come the men, as if they were being fired from some sort of repeating weapon. Women rush to the doors of their houses, take one look, disappear again for a moment while they set a pot off the fire or catch up the baby, and then pour into the street, often with a remark to the effect that nobody is going to get anything to eat to-day while this wonderful thing is to be seen. The children, who ran screaming at first, soon regain courage enough to come back and join the procession. People from near gardens, hearing the racket, rush home, and men of the next village snatch up their ever-ready weapons and come running to see if it may be an attack. As I go on from village to village the crowd increases, until they swarm behind and on both sides, forming a half -circle, of which I am the center.

" As all are talking at the highest pitch of their voices, the noise is simply distracting. Out of the babel I catch such exclamations as my mother! ’ Is it really myself? ’ And am I dead! ’ Isn’t he a beauty? ’ and others that will not bear repetition. These from the ladies. The men are more dignified, but more disagreeable. They would crowd into the places next me, and as we went on through the towns would act as if they had me in charge, telling me when to stop, and giving all sorts of directions. To the crowds of new-comers they would shout information about me and the object of my journey, so absurdly false that I often felt bound to stop and try to correct the impression they were giving. This was not easy. If I said, ’ I have come to tell you about God, and not to buy rubber or ivory,’ some one who had heard rumors of what we teach would begin shouting an outline of our teachings, but such a caricature of the truth as made me shudder.

" Disgusted at last beyond endurance, I would attempt to silence the worst offender, usually the man who was following close at my heels, who for the last half-hour had been shouting information into my ears. I would turn and tell him that he knew nothing about me and that I should myself stop in a little while and talk to the people. At this he would laugh as much as to say, I have gotten the " thing " started to talk,’ and then shout to the crowd behind what I had said, as if it had been the performance of a parrot. By this time I was getting out of humor, and would request him in plain terms to keep quiet. At this he would laugh again, and shout to the people behind, He says, keep quiet.’ Then I would explain, ’ It is not the people behind whose noise is troubling me; it is you who are walking close to me and shouting in my ears.’ But it was useless; he would turn to the crowd and abuse them for making such a noise, shouting, if possible, louder than ever.

" Then, if I was wise, I gave it up and’ went on, allowing him to say what he pleased. But sometimes I was too angry to be wise, and I would get after the fellow and make him think, at least, that I was going to chastise him. Then he would at last realize that I meant him and would not speak above a whisper and would try by gestures to keep others from doing so. Dead silence followed, save the noise we made in walking. Meanwhile we had arrived at another village, and you can imagine the result of the whole crowd walking in silence and by frantic gestures giving the village the impression that I was some sort of a monster that might be rendered dangerous by the least noise. This was worse than noise, so I would explain that I had no objection to talking, if they would not yell. Then they would start again, softly at first, but little by little the volume increasing till there was the same babel as before.

"Then the crowd clamor for me to stop, that they may take a good look at me. As I have reached the center of the village, I accede to their request. Standing in the middle of the street, they form a circle around me, men in front, women for the most part behind and trying to steal up close to examine something without being observed. I turn my head, and at once there is a scream and stampede; but only for a moment; they soon return, but more cautiously. Silence, or something approaching it, follows, while all indulge in one long, intense stare, during which only a camera could depict the various expressions in their faces. Then we have a dog-fight. Every man’s cur from all the villages we had passed followed his master, and the dogs of the village in which we are stopping object to their presence.

" Meanwhile the chief is not being noticed, and must make himself known. Stepping into the middle of the circle and raising his staff as if to chastise the crowd, he begins, in what seems a fearful passion, to abuse everybody for treating the white man in such outrageous fashion. As he is only talking for the white man’s benefit, I silence him.

" Then comes a request to remove my hat, that they may see my hair. This reasonable request I always grant, and am rewarded by a chorus of complimentary exclamations. Next, no matter how much I had been talking, some one would ask, Can he talk?’ This question I would answer by some trivial remark, which would be received with a volley of laughter. Then they ask questions just to get me to speak. Then follow requests to take off my shoes or other parts of my clothing, that they might see whether I was really like one of themselves; attempts to induce me to buy ivory or rubber, offers of marriage, requests for gifts, to show my trade goods, compass, note-book, etc.

" When I thought their curiosity had been sufficiently sated, I would attempt to tell them why I had come among them, and to give them some idea of the gospel and their need of it.

" These scenes, with numberless variations, are repeated as we pass through town after town, till at last we must stop for the night. If only one could escape the noisy crowds then, that would nerve him to endure the babel of the day. But the worst is to come. I get a house, put my goods and carriers inside, and in order to give them a chance to unpack and prepare supper I stay in the street, talking to the people. At last I am tired, and tell them they must go home and let me rest. Needless to say they do not go. As soon as I am inside the house they crowd around the door. If I shut it (the only opening in the walls of a Bulu house) it is quite dark; besides, the cooking is being done over an open fire, and the smoke is suffocating. But it may as well be shut as blocked by heads and shoulders of the crowd.

" Sometimes I try reasoning with them. ’ I want to be quiet and rest.’ But we want to see you,’ they reply. ’ Is this a proper way to treat a visitor? ’ No,’ they all agree. Then why don’t you go away and leave me? ’ We want to see you.’ So I shut the door, preferring smoke to the crowd. Sometimes I go out into the street and call to the people whether I am to have a house, or whether I must go on to the next town.’ By this means I gain my point. At last I am in my smoky den, and the crowd shut out. But I am not hidden yet. When I light my tallow candle every crack and crevice becomes a peep-hole; and I eat my supper knowing that eyes are watching every movement.

" Gradually the noise subsides, and apparently they have become tired and gone away; but only apparently. A few are waiting to see the white man go to bed, and they do not attempt to conceal their disgust when he blows out his candle before undressing.

" Now I can stand this sort of thing for three or four days quite philosophically, but after about a week of it I become nervous and irritable. Certainly, if I should ever visit a menagerie again, and see a monkey with a crowd around its cage, exclaiming, as it scratches its head or takes a bite of food, How funny! How very human! ’ I shall profoundly sympathize with the monkey.

" But I cannot stop here, or I shall give a false impression. All this is curiosity, not hostility or dislike. Impertinent and selfish it undoubtedly was, but everywhere the intention was to treat me well. And when I have been able to walk, with only two carriers, more than two hundred miles going and coming, through a part of Africa where a white man was never before seen, without meeting the first symptom of hostility, certainly I ought not to complain if the people were unpleasantly curious. This trip has convinced me that any prudent man can go as far as the Bulu language extends and preach the gospel without hindrance."

Dr. Good alternated his journeys with translating at his desk ― the " same humdrum work " of which he had more than enough on the Ogowe. But it cannot be done too soon. By the end of March a considerable Bulu dictionary was finished and John’s gospel begun. This was resumed after his journey of a month, and again interrupted by an arrival from the coast. A committee of the mission came up to decide jointly with him upon the site for a second station. They made a twelve days’ trip together, retracing a part of his previous journey; and, as in the case of Efulen, one place offered such superior advantages that the brethren had no hesitation in their choice. They bought land for a station in the district of Ebolowo’e, sixty-eight miles east by south from Efulen. The site was on a low hill, at an elevation of twenty-four hundred feet above the sea. The town proper had only about eight hundred inhabitants, but six roads led out in as many directions to other towns, from a twenty minutes’ walk distant to an hour, and one might continue on for a whole day, or days together, through a succession of villages and a large aggregate population. To a novice in Africa the people would seem wild enough: powerfully built, almost naked, smearing the whole body with red powder, their hair decorated with buttons, beads, shells, and feathers; they were always at war; they held human life at a discount; nearly every girl was sold for a wife before five years old. Fifty or a hundred of them at a time, each armed with gun, knife, or spear, they surrounded the missionary group, prying curiously into all their few possessions. This was heathenism. But the tiger tooth around the neck, the charmed antelope horn over the shoulder, their " medicine " for guns, their grotesque ngee and organized robber band, especially their speech, to those who understood it, were a revelation of deeper darkness. The whole Bulu world lay under the paralyzing power of the fetish. Our missionaries longed to give this land to Jesus Christ for his possession; and, as they traveled back towards Efulen, they talked of what the mail from America might bring. How soon would the new men be coming? When could they begin to build upon the new-bought property? How long before they might proclaim liberty to the captive there? At present not a Bulu from Efulen dared to carry up their loads. One year from that time the people of Ebolowo’e entrusted five boys to the mission school at Efulen. The name eventually given to the second station, Elat, intimates a compact of friendship. The mail came from America and brought ― delay. So far only one man had offered for the service. "Our mission," wrote Dr. Good, " has been forty years seeking a door by which to enter the interior of Africa. Now when this one has opened so widely, is it thus we propose to enter?" Letters complimentary to himself in no wise abate his disappointment. He tells his wife that " the soft soap is coming in " till he might be tempted to think himself a hero, only he knows better; " if any heroism is being displayed, it is by you." His accounts of the new field, of which Efulen is " only the outer edge," go home by every irregular opportunity. " We need many things, but none more than the prayers of God’s people." In countries which, like China or India, possess an old civilization and sacred books, missionaries have sometimes preached the gospel for years before a soul would admit its power. Not so on Efulen Hill. The forest people, gathering there with an increasingly respectful demeanor from one Lord’s day to another, had been all their lifetime in bondage of fear from merciless and ubiquitous spirits, and there was, to some ears, a welcome sound of deliverance in the Word. Nor had they the scholar’s pride in concealing their interest. By March one village was " stirred up" on the subject of religion, one middle-aged man was coming for special instruction, an inquiry class would soon be "in plain sight"; and when a palaver broke out, in which three men were killed, the people were " ashamed " because they " prided themselves on having given up war since we came." In July a number were expressing the wish to be Christians ― "too soon to begin to count them." As time went on: " Of some we have good hopes"; but many would-be inquirers were warily held off. The missionary had "no confidence" in them. He had seen a great many Africans. Not every one who came with a pair of white mans shoes on his feet or a cast-off overcoat, in which he appeared equally ridiculous and uncomfortable, was bound for the kingdom of heaven. Motives had to be probed. Some of them lay on the surface. The honor of receiving special instruction, alone, from the white man was enough to raise up some followers. And when, desiring to grapple with a thoughtful hearer, Dr. Good, in order to avoid the hangers-on who would devour wayside seed by provoking a laugh or a quarrel, took the man into his own bedroom, alas for his theories of an object-lesson in simple living! There were a table, a typewriter, shelves containing medicine bottles, and less than twenty indispensable books. But this was a World’s Fair to a Bulu, when seen for the first time. His mind wandered; his gaze was fixed now on the machine, now on what seemed a giant volume, the United States Dispensary"; and "I might as well try to preach to people while an earthquake is going on as to my inquirer in such surroundings." And there was Zanga. It proved that he was absent from Sabbath service because he was hunting for an animal that he had wounded the evening before. When told that Christians do not work on Sunday, he replied, " Why, hunting is not work." Then the matter is made plain to him. But a Sabbath or two later, as the missionary is holding afternoon meetings out in the towns, he comes across Zanga busy hewing out pieces of wood to make a sheath for one of the large sword-like knives which the Bulu carry. When his attention is called to the way he is keeping the Sabbath, he replies in amazement, " Surely you don’t call this work? " Then Zanga is instructed in the doctrine of the Sabbath once for all. That day week, passing again, there was Zanga, a smile of self-approval on his face, sitting on a piece of wood, which he was holding in place while another man with an adz was hewing it into a board, evidently for the door of Zanga’s unfinished house. " I simply made a remark to the effect that I saw he was busy on his new house. ’It is not I,’ he replied cheerfully; this man is doing the work, and he is not a Christian.’ "

There was nothing surprising in the childishness of such ideas among people born in the heathenism of Africa, to whom the gospel story was wholly a novelty. The missionary was encouraged by their hearing ear; but he longed for the Holy Spirit " to make clear what we can make them only dimly understand. What would we not give for a little group of earnest Christians among them to set the example for the rest of what Christianity is! "

Dr. Good was rapidly identifying himself with the people of the district. There were chiefs and witch-doctors, but he was the influential citizen of all Nkonemekak. In cases he was umpire. All the time he sat as if Judge on the Supreme Bench against every form of prevalent and condoned wickedness. He protested to the black traders against bringing up rum and gin. He used arguments which they could appreciate ― that it would be no financial advantage to them, and would work physical wreck. He was out in the midst of the people, mixing in the everyday life of the towns, and a bystander at their palavers. Once he looks so shocked at the conclusion they have reached that the men apologize. At times they try to cover up facts which they are ashamed to have him know. In most out-of-the-way places people were quoting, " Mr. Good says " don’t do this or that. He took up the cause of the needy and them that have no helper ― the poor women, lazy, impudent, vile though they were. "What toil, patience, discipline will be necessary before Bulu women can stand where the gospel aims to place them! " But he believed the old gospel which redeemed womanhood in Europe and America would be a sufficient remedy for them. Again and again he reproved men for cruel treatment of their wives, and for giving young girls as readily as a sheep for pledges in palavers.

One Sunday afternoon in August, the strident sound of beating drum and incessant firing of guns fretting the air warned him that mischief was brewing. So he strolled down to the nearest town, where he was met by a typical Equatorial Africa scene. The corpse of a leading Bulu lay under the burning sun, and his seven wives huddled about it. They had been stripped of even their usual scanty dress of grass and beads, while the body was decently wrapped in new calicoes. Through the long afternoon they lay there with eyes closed, pretending to be asleep, and other women, encircling the centerpiece, kept up a low moaning. Right in the middle of the street, where men only are allowed burial, was the open grave; and, getting a hint that one of the wives had been charged with causing her husband’s death by witchcraft, and was destined to go with him into that grave, the white citizen determined to stand by and if possible prevent the deed. Late in the evening the post-mortem examination came on, and they found, true enough, ― what they were looking for ― a witch. " The only unbeliever present pronounced it a small, oval, fleshy tumor, about an inch long, lying just inside the spinal column. I felt somewhat elated, for I thought the woman was safe now; but I soon found they wanted to kill her, and the witch business was only an excuse." Dr. Good persisted. He " buttonholed " the leading men, expressing his "strong disapproval " of their cruel custom; and at last he had the satisfaction of seeing the dead safely buried alone. Thus an efficient blow was struck at witchcraft in Bululand. At this time burial of women, alive or dead, in the grave of their husbands was a common event. Within two years after, three witch-doctors in the district abandoned their calling, and went to work building bark houses like other men; and for miles around Efulen belief in witches had received, not its death-blow, but an incurable wound. His advances towards the people were reciprocated. " You are one of us," they said. After Dr. Good’s death, out from Efnlen perhaps twenty miles, Bulu men stopped the missionary, as he was passing, to express not only their sorrow, but ― high proof of savage friendship ― a wish to go to Ebolowo’e and kill those men of another clan whose witchcraft had shortened their white man’s life. In order to acquire colloquial expressions and a limber vocabulary. Dr. Good engaged the more intelligent of the men in relating to him their folk-lore stories. In August he writes to his little son about his evening school of a dozen or more boys from the town: " Very good boys for this country, and anxious to learn." In lieu of books, Mr. Kerr has fastened strips across the face of a board, and the teacher inserts between them small blocks of white wood upon which letters and figures have been stenciled, so by a sort of word game teaching the class to read and count.

While this various, active contact with the people was unremitting, Dr. Good’s industrious pen was accumulating for them a durable treasure. His systematic habit was to rise at six o’clock, get to his desk at seven, translate till noon, again two hours in the afternoon, and, after that, daily go into the near towns and preach. In June four hymns were written. By the end of July the gospel of John was translated, and seven chapters of Matthew. September 19 the gospels by Matthew and Mark entire are added to that by John, and the same day manuscript of the first Bulu book, a primer, is mailed to America to be printed. One month later the dictionary has passed under careful revision, and the pen is laid down at the last line of Luke’s gospel. The first Bulu proverb which Dr. Good thought worthy of transference to his notebook is the following: "E mous me yen, osui ndim ― Behind I see, before [is] unknown." Each week marked off, each day, was swiftly narrowing the margin between him and that " unknown."