Page:The future of Africa.djvu/128

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the progress of civilization

some two or three hundred miles apart; namely, Cape Coast Castle, Accra, Badagy, and the important town of Lagos, which bids fair to be the New York of West Africa. At all these places the English have chaplains; missions are planted by the Church of England and the Wesleyans; schools are sustained, and the whole work of evangelization is vigorously prosecuted.

I close this part of my subject with this brief summary of the results of labor, on the West coast of Africa, during the last 40 or 50 years; the several items of which I have gathered from divers sources.

Over 150 churches have been erected; nearly 200 schools are in operation; 20,000 children have been instructed in English; nigh 20,000 baptized persons are members of different bodies of Christians; 25 dialects have been reduced to writing; between 60 and 70 settlements have been formed—the centres of civilization, English-speaking our tongue, with schools, and churches, agricultural operations, and commerce.

The facts I have stated serve to bring before us a few marked principles and conclusions:

1. The whole of Negroland seems, without doubt, to be given up to the English language, and hence to the influence of Anglo-Saxon life and civilization. It is a most singular providence that that very people, who have most largely participated in the slave-trade, should have been brought, by the power of God's dealings, and in the workings of His plans, to bear the weighty burden of lifting up this large