The Natives Every Where Long For Intercourse
With The Whites, And Eagerly Seek The Products Of Civilized Labor.
In regions
where no white men had ever been seen the cottons of Lowell and Manchester,
passed from tribe
To tribe, are even now the standard currency.
Civilized nations have an equal interest in opening intercourse
with these countries, for they are capable of supplying those
great tropical staples which the industrious temperate zones must have,
but can not produce. Livingstone found cotton growing wild all along
his route from Loanda to Kilimane; the sugar-cane flourishes spontaneously
in the valley of "The River"; coffee abounds on the west coast; and indigo
is a weed in the delta of the Zambesi. Barth also finds these products
abundant on the banks of the Benuwe and Shari, and around Lake Tsad.
The prevalent idea of the inherent laziness of the Africans must be abandoned,
for, scattered through the narratives of both these intrepid explorers
are abundant testimonies of the industrious disposition of the natives.
Livingstone, as befits his profession, regards his discoveries
from a religious stand-point. "The end of the geographical feat," he says,
"is the beginning of the missionary enterprise." But he is a philosopher
as well as a preacher, recognizing as true missionaries the man of science
who searches after hidden truths, the soldier who fights against tyranny,
the sailor who puts down the slave-trade, and the merchant
who teaches practically the mutual dependence of the nations of the earth.
His idea of missionary labor looks to this world as well as the next.
Had the Bakwains possessed rifles as well as Bibles - had they raised cotton
as well as attended prayer-meetings - it would have been better for them.
He is clearly of the opinion that decent clothing is of more immediate use
to the heathen than doctrinal sermons.
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