was forced to drag the sack along to the hole, where I put the body in and covered it up. Although this poor soul had relatives not far from the station, yet no inquiries were made after her case, and no one cared what became of her. I did not know that her relatives lived near until some time afterward.

While a native gets out of the business of burying strangers if he possibly can, yet if it happens that he is forced to bury one, and the relatives of the deceased are near at hand, he can make these relatives pay him as much as fifty dollars for the job. If I had wished to make the relatives of this poor old woman pay me fifty dollars for my work, I could have done so, according to native law. I felt that the hard-hearted relatives ought to be punished, but let the matter drop. Had I pursued it further the natives would have assumed that I was one with them in their superstitious notions regarding the uncleanness of dead bodies, whereas I wished to show them that, so far as any evil consequences were concerned, there was nothing more in the burying of a dead human being than in the burying of a sheep.

At one time while visiting through the kraals my attention was called to a woman, the second wife of one of the natives. She had been sick several months, with a most painful wasting disease, and when I saw her she was almost gone. Anyone looking into the hut would have seen an awful sight. The poor creature was lying on the ground rolling in filth, her emaciated frame almost naked, while her unfeeling relatives looked carelessly on. Her husband, a most repulsive looking heathen, refused to allow me to take her to the Portuguese hospital in town, so the only thing I could do was to pray for her and send her some nourishment and some simple remedies. I endeavored to point her to Jesus, but, like thousands of others, she died without Christ and without hope.

When one comes upon those who are so sick, it is hard to direct their attention to Jesus. They are generally in such a desperate condition in regard to temporal affairs that spiritual matters can find no place in their minds. Neglected by relatives, their bodily wants not attended to, and with no hope either of getting well or of entering at death upon a bright future, they sigh and groan themselves to death.

One woman I found was of the Bachopi tribe. She was afflicted with something like St. Vitus dance, or paralysis, which caused her to shake so violently that she was unable to help herself. She lived in the remnants of an old shed or hut, and when I came across her she was in the most filthy and abject condition, her diet consisting mostly of cocoanuts which fell off the trees and which some one would open and grate for her. It was the case of the rich man and Lazarus over again. The man who owned the land on which she lived was the richest man in that country. He had thousands of pounds, had many houses and much property, and fared sumptuously every day; but I never heard that this poor woman got any of the crumbs that fell from his table. She got some of the cocoanuts that fell from his trees, but as any passing stranger could lift these, it was no credit to Dives, and counted for nothing with God. Some poor woman in the neighborhood helped her a little, and grated her cocoanuts for her. As she could not put her hand to her mouth, her food had to be put on a sack, or something soft, when she would put her hands behind her back and bury her face right in the food. Then, through eating, her face would be all besmeared with what she had been feeding on. Many people thought that Mawelele (this was her name) had a devil, and they were afraid of her.

We had her removed to Cherene, where she stayed for several years. She is now at another mission station where she is being looked after. Some objected to my taking her to Cherene; they did not want any such dangerous looking character around. When her hair was long, as I could get no one to cut it, I had to perform the operation myself. I once offered a boy a little money to do it, but he positively refused to have anything to do with it. When we wished to give Mawelele a drink she would lie on her back and we would pour the water into her mouth. As she would sometimes shake quite violently, we had to watch our chance and pour the water in when she was a little steady. We finally got a partly paralyzed man of the same tribe, and he would cook her porridge, build a fire for her, etc. They are both living at this writing, and are being taught about Jesus. Both have been slaves, and are very degraded, but we have great hope that we shall meet them

in glory and together "worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.''

While at Cherene Mr. Agnew was reinforced for a short time by the arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Desh. Unfortunately, they went at a wrong time of the year, and when Mr. Agnew was not prepared for their arrival. Moreover, neither of them was in any fit condition physically to go to such a country. They had some fever, and two months after their arrival at Inhambane they were on their way back to Natal. The following, from the pen of Mr. Desh, gives a little account of some of the demands and difficulties of the work in the region about Inhambane, as also the reasons for their early departure from that field:

At Inhambane the harvest is white and laborers are few. It seems as if we had just arrived in Africa [they had been in Natal several months]. Bro. A's house is under the cocoanut palms. It is lovely, but there are sights which sadden the heart and drive one to his knees. The heathen are a very degenerate class, but they have souls to save, and we have come to reach them with the blessed gospel of Christ who is the Saviour of even such. Not a day has passed at this mission [Cherene] but what from one to three have been to us for some kind of treatment. I have just put some salve on a young man's arm where he had burned it, and his fingers and toes are eaten off with leprosy. These are a fearfully afflicted people.

My diary has been much neglected, owing to attacks of African fever. One afternoon, while wife was sitting in the chair, an adder three feet long fell from the roof of the hut at her feet. She remained quiet until it crawled under my trunk. After a long search we found and killed it. A few days after this, while catching a chicken, I ran over a puff viper five feet long. It got away before I could kill it. * * *

It is with regret that we are called upon so soon to leave this people, without doing much for them except to heal some of their wounds, aches and pains. This is a good field, but it

takes an iron constitution to stand the climate; we cannot stand it.

Again he writes:

We are now on our way to Durban. About nine weeks at Inhambane sufficed to prove to us that we cannot stand the climate. At present there is not a white missionary in all the region of Inhahbane, except Brother Agnew. Wife and I were sick almost constantly. * We are glad to escape with our lives.

* *

"This is a mournful picture," writes Mr. Agnew, "but all the blame cannot be laid at the door of African fevers. If one has some latent disease in the system. the fever is almost sure to bring it out, so that only those who are sound physically should go to such malarious spots. Still, even those who are sound in body have just such trouble, and it sometimes happens that those who look the most robust are the first to succumb. If one has a real call of God to a place, it enables him to press forward under even great difficulties; if he have no such call, he is quite sure to get disheartened soon and quit the field."

The foregoing relation of the difficulties incident to the missionary work in the vicinity of Inhambane serves to show us something of what Mr. Agnew had to brave and endure throughout the years spent by him in that malarious and death-breeding region. And how heroically did he brave all those difficulties and perils! Only an iron constitution such as he inherited could survive in such a place for so long a time. And even his iron constitution succumbed at last, as we shall later see, so that his words, "Still, even those who are sound in body have just such troubles, and sometimes those who look the most robust are the first to succumb," were in part prophetic of what was to befall himself at last.

CHAPTER XXIII.

WORKING AT INHAMBANE-TRANSLATING AND PRINTING-SUFFERING FROM JAUNDICE-LAROR

ING WITH THE PORTUGUESE.

Considerable has already been said about Inhambane town, and the last chapter told of Mr. Agnew having erected a small corrugated iron house there. As he operated in and about this town a good deal for some years, the present chapter will give a more detailed account of the work done there than has been heretofore attempted.

In addition to the corrugated iron house, a large native hut and necessary outbuildings were also erected, after a little, and here the missionary was fairly comfortable. While he remained continuously in one place he had less trouble from the fever. It was only when he ventured into the interior, slept on boats, waded through swamps and ate questionable food that he would have more frequent and severe attacks of malarial trouble.

While settled at Inhambane the need of a hymn book in the native tongue was increasingly impressed upon him. He had purchased a printing press and type from the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, and this, with some other type he had purchased in Natal, enabled him to make a beginning in the matter of printing a new hymn book and catechism. There was already a hymn book and catechism in the Gitonga language, which had been printed by the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Mis