subsequently "enabled to do a grand work for God in Uganda." They were members of the missionary band presided over by good Bishop Hannington who, by most cruel torture, fell a martyr to the work of God in Uganda.

The party had for the most part a pleasant passage. The ship stopped over at Lisbon on the way to Cape Town long enough to admit of their getting a fine view of the Portuguese Capital and to make some purchases of fruit, which was very plentiful there. Referring to what they saw in Lisbon Mr. Agnew wrote as follows:

Many things of interest are to be seen there, including the king's palace. Bull fights, they told us, were still occasions of interest, and we were informed that two men had been killed in one of them the Sunday before we arrived. The city is built partly on the shores of the River Tagus and partly on three larger and four smaller hills. Lisbon is said to have been founded by the Phoenicians, and was a flourishing city, the capital of Lusitania, when first visited by the Romans. It was taken by the Moors in A. D. 712, from whom it was recaptured by Alfonso I. in A. D. 1147. It has been frequently visited by earthquakes. That of 1755 destroyed a great part of the city and 60,000 inhabitants. In the eastern and older part of the city the streets are steep, narrow and crooked, but the newer portions are well and regularly built. We visited the American consul there, in order to see about getting passports, but as the steamer was soon to sail there was no time to secure them.

Upon their arrival in Cape Town they set about studying all the literature they could procure bearing upon the character and conditions of that part of Africa whither they were bound. On their finally reaching Natal a difference of opinion arose as to where they should locate. Mr. and Mrs. Shemeld were fully decided to halt permanently at Natal, and,

declining to proceed farther, separated from the rest. of the party there.

Mr. and Mrs. Kelley and Mr. Agnew here met for the first time the Rev. and Mrs. E. H. Richards, of the Inhambane mission, established by the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions. They represented the needs of the Inhambane work and. urgently requested the newly arrived missionaries to enter that region as a field of operations. For this they were in time reproved by their committee at home, according to Mr. Agnew's statement, the American Board regarding themselves quite capable of providing for the spiritual wants of the thousands at Inhambane. "Such a policy on the part of any board," says Mr. Agnew, "is a very narrow one, and was especially so in this case, as, in course of a few years, the board entirely abandoned the field after accomplishing comparatively little towards the evangelization of the Inhambane tribes."

The party felt that the invitation from Mr. and Mrs. Richards was of God, the more so in that they found themselves without sufficient funds to warrant undertaking to reach Lake Tanganyika, several hundred miles farther inland, and establish a mission there. Accordingly, leaving Natal, they proceeded to Delagoa Bay, or Lourenco Marques, as the port is called. Here they purchased three donkeys, the service of which animals would be necessary in exploring the more interior regions of the continent. Getting the donkeys aboard the ship, they thence proceeded on their way to Inhambane, arriving June 17, 1885.

The Rev. W. C. Wilcox, an American Board missionary, had a boat in waiting for Mr. and Mrs. Rich

ards, and into it the whole party entered and sailed up the bay for Mongwe mission station. The wind and tide being against them, they made such poor headway that they were finally compelled to go ashore and pursue their journey on foot. It was strange scenery that greeted the eyes of the new missionaries on reaching the shore. It was a moonlight night, and, as all around them were palms and other tropical trees by the hundreds, made the more weirdly picturesque by the pale, shimmering light of the moon, the party found no difficulty in realizing that they were indeed in a strange land. They reached their destination about midnight, tired, sleepy and glad to be at their journey's end.

INHAMBANE:

CHAPTER VII.

ITS APPEARANCE, SITUATION, POPULA

TION, ETC.

"Beautiful for situation."

Inhambane is in the province of Mozambique, nearly on the tropic of Capricorn, and is about 580 miles north and east from Natal, 280 miles north of Delagoa Bay, 250 miles south of Beira and perhaps 600 miles from Mozambique. The province of Mozambique has been a Portuguese possession for about four hundred years. But Portugal, although so long in possession of this province, has as yet done comparatively little in the direction of improving its condition. Inhambane is not only the name of the port, but also the name of a district extending one hundred and fifty miles south and about the same distance north from the port. Because of the low and marshy condition about Inhambane bay, it is very unhealthful. Many Europeans have died there, while most of those who manage to live are said to have a decidedly sallow, malarial-fever-like appearance.

As seen from the steamer, to give Mr. Agnew's own description of the town, it is very pretty. When one goes ashore, however, much of its beauty vanishes. Through lack of proper sanitation and on account of its proximity to malarial swamps, it is a pestiferous place, although matters are now somewhat improved as compared with former conditions. The healthier lands are all across the bay, where, being higher, it is not so marshy.

The town itself has a mixed population of about four thousand, most of them natives and half-castes, with some Hebrews

and Mohammedans. There are but few Europeans, probably forty or fifty, which number also includes a few agents of European firms. The place boasts of a Roman Catholic church,

where mass is said regularly for the repose of the souls of some of the biggest sinners that ever lived, and sinners who died totally unrepentant. The "padre" is also the schoolmaster for