Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

FAR, YET NOT FARTHEST, IN 37
getting up in December to break your fast in June. Even
the negro has caught the identical idea when by way of
sunrise greeting—his way of saying " Good morning !
this—he puts to you the phrase, " A night's a year !
The ghostly gloom is now a gleaming palace of life,
and the eerie stillness of the night is blotted into
oblivion by the million cries of the morning. The battle
of the day resumes.
So on and in we go. Picture our pleasure on finding
at Bailundu and Bihe a splendid type of mission worked
by our friends the Americans. Pioneered by one of the
"Bible" Bagsters, how suggestive that the family that
flooded England with Bibles should also have sent out
a living epistle to Africa. Messrs. Sanders, Stover, Fay,
Woodside, and Currie were men both winning and wise,
and they fought slavery here at its hard headquarters.
No wonder the Portuguese were exasperated, for as you
drew near these glad little centres of testimony, while
yet a long way oflf you could hear the Missionaries' names
fondled as a household joy ; the names " Sandle " and
*'Kole" being passwords that work like magic. The
same old song this, we ourselves afterwards found in
the Garenganze. For, in the teeth of many a hard-
mouthed denial from white men, the Missionary, having
advanced the claim that the African has as soft a heart
as his body is tough, must perforce prove his point. And
according to his faith on this " negro heart" subject, even
so is it unto him. Mr. Missionary wins the hearts of the
whole countryside, and that, too often, to the chagrin of