Page:West African Studies.djvu/636

 been established in their principal town for the best part of fifty years, it was a common thing to see human flesh offered for sale in the market within a very few years of the establishment of the British Protectorate.

In judging the result of missionary effort in this river, or, in fact, any other part of Western Africa, one is apt to exclaim, "What poor results for so much expenditure in lives and money!" The cause is not far to seek if one knows the native, and has sufficiently studied his ways and customs as to be able to understand or read what is working in his brain.

The upper or dominant classes, consisting of the kings, the chiefs, the petty chiefs and the trade boys (the latter being the traders sent into the far distant markets to buy the produce for their masters, and it is from this class that many of the chiefs in most of these rivers spring) are all, to a man, working either openly or secretly against the missionaries. Even when they have become converts and communicants, in very many cases they are as much an opponent as ever of the missionary. I can fancy I see some enthusiastic missionary jumping up with indignation depicted in every feature to tell me I am not telling the truth about his particular converts. Well, as I expect to be called a liar, I have taken care to admit that a very few converts are not opposed to the missionary, in order that I may say to any missionary that particularly wishes to wipe the floor with me that perchance his special converts are included in the minority that is represented by the very few cases where the convert is wholly and solely for the mission.

What are the causes that lead these people to work against the missions? First and foremost is Ju-Ju and its