Various

“ Men will live in Fashoda, and draw good salaries to suppress the slave trade. When a steamer comes in, like ours, from Khartoum, they will come on board and look for slaves! While right back of them is a regular caravan route, over which thousands are carried every year, and they go on their way, and no questions are asked! It looks well to have an officer in uniform examine government steamers, and make a show of great things! ”

“ As it is going now, let the old colored mechanics pass away, and the skilled artisans coming from Europe will press in to fill the demand; and then the Africo-American citizens will be driven to the wall and forced back to be mere hewers of wood and drawers of water. The first demand upon our schools was to open the doors of knowledge to millions of starving intellects; [293] but now, more and more, must we push industrial training to help the people in the coming crisis, which they do not forecast as readily as do their friends who have studied the problem of their bondage and their freedom. ”

“ The training of the teachers is the wholesale business in the process of education. Then, it is of the utmost importance that these teachers of the millions should themselves have that moral and religious preparation which our missionary institutions seek to impart, so that the lessons of morality, and virtue and piety shall be taught, along with the elements of a common education. The House committee, in their report, state that, according to the census of 1880, 4,715,395 persons at the South over ten years of age, or 70.56 per cent., are not able to write. ”

“ NATIONAL AID FOR NATIONAL EDUCATION.
The title is its own argument. It is the instinct of self-preservation. If one member suffer, the whole body suffers. Congress has adjourned without passing the proposed law. It was to appropriate $10,000,000 annually for five years, and to distribute the same among the States and Territories in the proportion of illiteracy. There is no doubt that some such bill will yet be passed. At this ratio, the former slave States would receive seven and a half millions out of the ten. That the North heartily agrees to this has been a grateful surprise to the South. ”

“ National aid for public schools will still leave upon our institutions and the like the great business of the higher education. For a portion of the people this is demanded. If they are to maintain themselves in their citizenship they must have the first quality of education in their preachers, professors, lawyers, doctors, journalists, scientists. In their general advancement they are already requiring more and more of cultivation in their preachers. ”

“ The more intellectual preaching of the younger educated men is ill suited to the tropical and impulsive nature of the colored people. Their life is far more a matter of instinct than of thought, and to attempt to teach religion to them by means of appealing to their reason is to disarm religion at once of all its potency. ”

“ The men were at work during the night cutting wood, and we have a fair supply. Saw the encampment of a slave caravan on the west bank, a little north of Gebel Owlee. The suppression of the slave trade is a farce from beginning to end. The first sight of Khartoum was a welcome one. It seemed almost like getting home. How grand its mud houses looked too, after the straw huts to which our eyes had become accustomed. There is quite a fall in the White Nile just above its confluence with the Blue. ”

“ Greater effort is likely to be made, for a long time to come, for the education and improvement of the negroes than for the advancement of the poor whites; and yet the class is not at all so degraded or so worthless as is popularly believed. These people are primitive in character, and in the conditions and methods of their life, but they are not degraded. There is, however, great danger that many of them will be debased under the changed conditions of the new order of things in the South. ”

“ Our schools need to be increased ten-fold. Each school needs a training department as an annex, for mechanical ability is to play no small part in the progress of the colored man. Some people in the South say, “Keep the colored man where his vote will be useful.” The American Missionary Association has recognized him as a brother, and says, “Give him a man’s chance.” We thank the American Missionary Association for that; and under the inspiration of just such treatment we mean to stay in the South and fight it out. ”

“ A Class with No Friends.
The negroes are being educated more rapidly, in large portions of the South, than are the people known as “poor whites,” More interest is felt and greater efforts are made in behalf of the negroes than for this class of white people. The negro has the advantage of being in the world’s eye and mind. He is somewhat picturesque, and occupies a position of historic interest. He has powerful friends. The poor whites have no friends: there is no picturesqueness, no historic interest, connected with their situation. ”

“ No other class in that portion of our country is so little understood, or would better repay careful study. It is highly important that the attention of thoughtful, philanthropic and patriotic men, both North and South, should be directed to their position and probable tendencies in relation to the new life of the country in which they live. In blood and inherited qualities they are not, generally, vicious or low. But they have no friends, no sympathy, either North or South. ”

“ With some congregations even now only the most thorough classical and professional training can satisfy the demands of their pulpits, while in the other professions nothing else can succeed. The public schools will prepare the material, and make the greater demand for the higher institutions, such as we are developing. And so we find that national aid, if granted, will only be a national call for our scheme of advanced education. ”

“ Whatever may be the extent to which idleness prevails among them, it is certain that the negroes perform a vast amount of labor which is not only necessary or convenient for their employers, but highly profitable as well. The labor of the colored people is at present an important and, indeed, indispensable factor in the chief wealth-producing industries of the South. ”

“ They can get no supplies, and are actually afraid to go more than a few steps beyond their zeriba. Kaka is thus threatened both by the Shillooks and the followers of Mohammed Achmet, and there is much fear expressed on all sides. This whole section of country is considered very dangerous and unsafe. We are repeatedly told: “It is well that you are armed; don’t go on shore without your arms.” There certainly seem to be perilous times ahead, for things are constantly getting worse, and the government has delayed to act until action means war. ”

“ Scarcely any of the young men are now learning trades, for the reasons that white mechanics will not take them, that the colored tradesmen have not capital enough to employ them, and that too many of them have seen enough of working for board and clothes in the case of father and mother, not taking into the account the large and steady wages to come by and by. ”

“ As we approached Fashoda the mounted guard, now always on the alert and fearing an attack from Mohammed Achmet at any time, spied us coming at full speed, and thinking something might be wrong, rode out to meet us. There is a constant fear that at any moment the place may be attacked, and a most [306] vigilant watch is kept. We rode around the town, took a photograph of the market place and then returned to our lodgings on the steamer. Here we were waited upon by a number of men who had all sorts of favors to ask. ”

“ Some of the colored preachers in most parts of the South are ignorant, fat, lazy and licentious. Many of them use intoxicating liquors freely. The influence of such men is of course a curse to the colored people, and is the cause of much immorality among the married women who are members of the “colored churches.” But it would be most unjust to allow my readers to infer that colored ministers generally belong to this class. Here, as in the description of all classes of people in the South, discrimination is necessary. ”

“ Does the colored man sit with folded arms, while the North, Great Britain and Africa—let me repeat Africa—contribute for his civilization? I say Africa, because, sitting in the old Midway Church, in Liberty County, Ga., sometime ago, I heard read, in the list of donations, “One dollar contributed by a church in South Africa for the civilization of the heathen in America;” ”

“ There is a class of colored men in the South who are laying the foundations of a better state of things than now prevails, by sheer industry and devotion to money-making. I found a conspicuous illustration of this type in the person and work of a negro in one of the old Southern States. ”

“ If the negroes could be brought to understand existing conditions and tendencies in the regions which they inhabit, they might soon greatly improve their fortunes, and secure for themselves and their children most important advantages from opportunities which are likely soon to pass away, never to be presented again, or at any rate, not during the reign of the influences which are now becoming dominant in the South. ”

“ In the same class was a married man who earned money to support his family, kept up with his class in school, preached for three country churches, helped edit a readable newspaper, and graduated with honor. In one of the schools across the city, an American Missionary Association school, there is a woman who entered the night school, finished that, entered the day school, has plodded on from class to class, to-day in the graduating class holding [296] a place of honor, and she has earned her living and has purchased a home by sewing at the same time. ”

“ But are the colored people idle? In one of the classes which graduated from the Atlanta University not long ago, were two married women who did their own house-work, walked more than three miles through the red mud of Georgia to school, were punctual in attendance and graduated with honor. ”

“ Fashoda is considered by everybody to be one of the most unhealthy spots on the White Nile. * * The town is surrounded with a thorn zeriba, and is built up, outside of the fort and the officers’ quarters, of round cane huts smeared with mud and thatched. The Shillooks, who come from the neighboring villages to trade and visit, are tall and well built. The faces of the men and women are much alike, as the men carefully pull out all the beard they have. The women generally wear the skin of some animal loosely suspended from the left shoulder. ”

“ Hundreds of such examples might be given, even in the district schools taught by the students—examples of work and of sacrifice upon the part of both parents and scholars. What would you think of a man fifty years old going to school that he might learn to read the Bible, earning his living by bottoming chairs at night by the light of a pine-knot fire? No, my friends, the colored man is not idle ”

“ So then, along with books and the art of school teaching, we must train the girls to the trades of cooking, of dressmaking, of nursing, of type-setting, of running knitting and sewing machines; we must teach the boys carpentry, blacksmithing, shoe and harness making, agriculture, the raising of improved stock and the running of machinery. ”

“ After attentively studying the subject everywhere, I am convinced that there will soon be mixed schools, for white and colored children, in many parts of the South. There are already a few such schools, and the effect of considerations of convenience, cheapness and practical efficiency are likely, I think, to cause a rapid increase in their number. ”

“ The only thing that can be predicted with any certainty is that there will be a general muss, and probably an Anglo-French intervention. In the Soudan there can be no peace till Mohammed Achmet is taken. Giegler Pasha is preparing an army, such as it is, of about 3,500 men, to march against him, but the result is very doubtful. It is reported that there is considerable fever in town. One of our visitors had it upon him while he was calling on us, and there is a lady at his house, who it is feared is dying with it. We sent Ibrahim to see if our rooms were ready for us at the consul’s. ”

“ At the Indian Training and Industrial School at Carlisle have been gathered together, during the last year, 295 Indian boys and girls from 24 different tribes, speaking as many different languages. In age these children range from eight years to maturity, the average being about 15 years. From 60 to 70 of the older children give evidence of sincere conversion to the Christian religion, and most of those who have professed conversion give evidence, in improved life and manners, of a change of heart. ”

“ To raise up the qualified teachers for this illiterate mass will tax the resources of all the institutions founded in that region by the benevolence of the North.
Government aid will still leave another demand upon our style of schools, viz., that which shall furnish industrial training. The old-time colored mechanics, who had been taught trades, which greatly increased their value in the market, are passing away. ”

“ More and more will the privilege of returning be prized by those who go back to their native land for with a temporary stoppage of the immigration there will come a relative diminution of the supply, and a consequent increase in the compensation of Chinese labor. ”

“ It is with profound sorrow that we note the death by drowning of two adult sons of Rev. J. A. R. Rogers, now the pastor of a Presbyterian Church at Shawano, Wis. All our readers are familiar with the heroic labors and endurance of Mr. Rogers before and after the war, in building up the college and church at Berea, Ky. The names and birthplaces of the sons are historic. William Norris was born at Berea in 1859, and Lewis Fairchild was born in Ohio, while the family were in exile on account of the war. ”

“ The leading white men of the Southern States, democrats, seem [302] to me to feel a more kindly interest in the negroes than in this class of poor people of their own race. They know much more about them. ”

“ We stopped to spend the night and get wood on the east side, just beyond or north of Waldochone Island. There is said to be good hunting here, and we are preparing to enjoy the sport while the men are getting the wood in the morning. This is the only variety our life affords, and helps to keep us in good spirits. ”