Page:The future of Africa.djvu/94

88 Of course, we could not do such a work as this in a brief period, but we could agree upon a system, and system seems the main thing in all great projects; and such a system would give our merchants plenteous hides from the interior for shipment; vast quantities of oil, which would be their own, without foreign competition, as on the coast; new discoveries of and, and especially would it lead to the settling of civilized men in the interior, and the wide cultivation of great staples; and all the while important revelations would come through us to the world, as we pressed further into the heart of the continent, of the tribes near the mountains of the Kong, if not, indeed, of the dwellers at the sources and along the valleys of the Niger. And in this way we should be meeting the demands of science, aiding in the work of civilization, extending Christianity, and doing our work as a Christian state. But there are two great works which are our special duty and mission, and which we should never lose sight of:—

First, We should be opening a highway for the gospel of Christ Jesus into the far interior, and thereby competing with the missionaries of England and America in the gracious rivalry as to who shall first reach the needy tribes living under the shadow of the Kong Mountains, and make more musical than ever, by the voice of salvation, the sweetly flowing streams from those mountains, which are, doubtless, the tiny sources of the Niger. Next, A matter of highest import: by these in-