Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary | Page 9

bitter grief, and it turned her
thoughts more directly to the foreign field. Could she fill her brother's
place? Would it be possible for her ever to become a missionary? The
idea floated for a time through her mind, unformed and unconfessed,

until it gradually resolved itself into a definite purpose. Sometimes she
thought of Kaffraria, with its red-blanketed people, but it was always
Calabar to which she came back: it had from the first captivated her
imagination, as it for good reason captivated the imagination of the
Church.
The founding of the Mission had been a romance. It was not from
Scotland that the impulse came but from Jamaica in the West Indies.
The slave population of that colony had been brought from the West
Coast, and chiefly from the Calabar region, and although ground
remorselessly in the mill of plantation life they had never forgotten
their old home. When emancipation came and they settled down in
freedom under the direction and care of the missionaries their thoughts
went over the ocean to their fatherland, and they longed to see it also
enjoy the blessings which the Gospel had brought to them. The agents
of the Scottish Missionary Society and of the United Secession Church,
who, together, formed the Jamaica Presbytery, talked over the matter,
and resolved to take action; and eight of their number dedicated
themselves for the service if called upon. A society was formed, and a
fund was established to which the people contributed liberally. But the
officials at home were cold; they deprecated so uncertain a venture in a
pestilential climate. The Presbytery, undaunted, persevered with its
preparations, and chose the Rev. Hope M. Waddell to be the first agent
of the Society.
It is a far cry from Jamaica to Calabar, but a link of communication was
provided in a remarkable way. Many years previously a slaver had been
wrecked in the neighbourhood of Calabar. The surgeon on board was a
young medical man named Ferguson, and he and the crew were treated
with kindness by the natives. After a time they were able by another
slaver to sail for the West Indies, whence Dr. Ferguson returned home.
He became surgeon on a trader between Liverpool and Jamaica,
making several voyages, and becoming well known in the colony.
Settling down in Liverpool he experienced a spiritual change and
became a Christian. He was interested to hear of the movement in
Jamaica, and remembering with gratitude the friendliness shown him
by the Calabar natives he undertook to find out whether they would
accept a mission. This he did through captains of the trading vessels to
whom he was hospitable. In 1848 a memorial from the local king and

seven chiefs was sent to him, offering ground and a welcome to any
missionaries who might care to come, This settled the matter. Mr.
Waddell sailed from Jamaica for Scotland to promote and organise the
undertaking.
Happily the Secession Church adopted the Calabar scheme, and after
securing funds and a ship--one of the first subscriptions, it is interesting
to note, was £1000 from Dr. Ferguson--Mr. Waddell, with several
assistants sailed in 1846, and after many difficulties, which he
conquered with indomitable spirit and patience, founded the Mission.
In the following year it was taken over by the United Presbyterian
Church, which had been formed by the union of the United Secession
and Relief Churches.
In no part of the foreign field were conditions more formidable.
Calabar exhibited the worst side of nature and of man. While much of it
was beautiful, it was one of the most unhealthy spots in the world--
sickness, disease, and swift death attacking the Europeans who
ventured there. The natives were considered to be the most degraded of
any in Africa. They were, in reality, the slum-dwellers of negro-land.
From time immemorial their race had occupied the equatorial region of
the continent, a people without a history, with only a past of confused
movement, oppression, and terror. They seem to have been visited by
adventurous navigators of galleys before the Christian era, but the
world in general knew nothing of them. On the land side they were shut
in without hope of expansion. When they endeavoured to move up to
the drier Sahara and Soudanese regions they were met and pressed back
by the outposts of the higher civilisations of Egypt and Arabia, who
preyed upon them, crushed them, enslaved them in vast numbers. And
just as the coloured folk of American cities are kept in the low-lying
and least desirable localities, and as the humbler classes in European
towns find a home in east-end tenements, so all that was weakest and
poorest in the negro race gravitated to the jungle areas and the
poisonous swamps of the coast, where, hemmed in by the