Page:Central African Mission.djvu/29

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Zanzibar and its Unhealthiness.
25

particular district of which it can be said that it is high and healthy. These facts were the ground upon which Bishop Tozer based his great plan for training native Missionaries. There is no use in dissembling the fact that Eastern Africa is exceedingly unhealthy, and that not on the coast only but in every part. It is only now and then that a man can be found with a constitution so adapted to the climate, that he can live safely in it for more than a few years at a time. Even in the case of those who are not attacked by any distinct disease, languor and incapacity for mental exertion are sure after a while to show themselves. It follows clearly that a white Missionary's proper work must be to train and to superintend native preachers. They must be the permanent Missionaries, and the regular pastors of the negro church. So long as it is expected of our Missionaries that they will stay, say ten years at least, in any particular district, so long, very possibly, the terrible mortality we all deplore may continue. We must arrange for frequent changes, and that place will be the best fitted for our centre of operations in which good medical advice, good lodging, and the comforts that are needed in sickness, are most easily obtainable; and, above all, from which it will be possible for the Head of the Mission to send away in time those who will surely die if they stay in Africa, and surely live if they can get to a more temperate region. These advantages are nowhere to be found so cer-