IT was a cold, windy night in the month of March, 1876, when Mary Slessor stood at the entrance of the close, or court, in which she lived. Her face bore the traces of recent tears, and it was hardly to be wondered at, for the day had been a trying one. Early the next morning she was to leave Dundee for Edinburgh. The old life would lie behind her; and even though she felt sure that God was not only marking out her path, but guiding her step by step in it, she hardly knew how much she had learned to love many of her companions in the weaving shed (several of whom she had had the joy of winning for Christ), her fellow-workers in the Sunday school, or the boys and girls of her classes, till the time when she must say good-bye to them really came.
To one special friend who, anxious to have as much as possible of her company, had walked home with her, she said in a voice almost choked with tears, as she grasped her hand at parting, "Pray for me; oh! do pray for me.”
Parting with her much-loved mother and sisters was, we may be sure, no small trial; but her last evening in the old home was one long to be remembered. The hearts of all were too full for many words, but each found relief and comfort in prayer.
On reaching Edinburgh, and feeling herself quite a stranger in the crowded streets of the busy city, she turned her steps towards an address that had been given her before leaving Dundee. She received a kind welcome from Mr. and Mrs. Dearing, though other lodgings were found soon after for her with some members of their family and other christian workers whom she met during her stay in the Scottish capital, and with whom she formed warm and lasting friendships.
Miss Slessor sailed for Africa in August of the same year. Two Dundee friends went with her as far as Liverpool, and saw her on board the steamer "Ethiopia," by which she was to sail. It grieved her to see a large number of casks of spirits put on board. Turning to her friends she exclaimed sadly, "Only to think of it, scores of casks and only one missionary.”
So much of her life had been spent within the walls of the factory that the ever-changing beauty of sea and sky was a never-ending source of delight to her. When the headland of Cape Verde was passed, and she saw on the shores groves of tropical trees, she began to realize that every day and hour brought her nearer to the land where she had so often, even from a child, longed to be; and as the vessel passed the Gold Coast, the Slave Coast and the Ivory Coast, all she had ever heard or read of the horrors of the slave trade came back to her memory, and threw a shade of sadness over her naturally bright and hopeful spirit.
Duke Town was to be the first station of the young missionary teacher. Before leaving Scotland it had been arranged that she should live, while learning the language of the people among whom she had come to work, with an old and valued missionary and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Anderson, who had been among the first to carry the gospel message to the West Coast of Africa. They had been used by the Lord in blessing to many souls, and were much loved by the natives, who called them Daddy and Mammy.
At first Mary found her work very simple. She gave what help she could in the day school, and after a few weeks of patient, uphill work at the language began to visit the people in their huts and yards, finding, to her great delight, that she not only knew many words of Elfik (the native language of that part of Africa), but was able to understand many of the words used by the people themselves.
It was not till after, in company with three Kroo boys as guides, she had visited the out-stations of the Mission that she really began to understand what it meant to live and work among heathen. In some of the villages a "white Ma" was so strange a sight that on her first visit the children ran away screaming with fright, and the women gathered round her shouting, quarreling and fighting, till the chief drove them away with a whip.
Every village, yard or town, as these clusters of huts were sometimes called, was under the control of a chief who had a great deal of power. Every chief had several wives and usually a great number of slaves, who though as a rule were not badly treated, could be sold or even killed by the order of the chief. Though the British Government had tried many years ago, the time of which I am writing, to bring the tribes living near the coast into something like law and order, very little in the way of rule had been done; and the heathen clung to their old cruel customs, and made offerings of blood to their Jujus, or native idols, in some parts of the country called fetishes.
The journey to the out-stations had to be on foot, but as Mary was a good walker she did not mind. Much of the way lay through the bush, where the tall, graceful ferns and profusion of brightly colored flowers were a source of never-ending wonder and delight.
One of her duties while living with the Andersons was to rise very early, and going on to the hill on which the house stood ring a bell, the object being to call the native Christians who lived near to a simple morning service. Mary would sometimes wake tired and sleepy, and finding her room flooded with light would rise hastily, fearing she had overslept herself, and run out, only to find that she had mistaken the bright moonlight for daylight.