EAST BENGAL MOTOR BOAT "MESSENGER." MISSION LAUNCH "DINA" (TRUTH) FIJI ISLANDS.
The Missionary Afloat
IN the discussion of the missionary campaign at a European conference the “missionary army” had often been spoken of. Then a good brother, skipper of a missionary launch doing service in the harbor of Rotterdam, rose up, saying: “I have heard a great deal about the missionary army; is it not time some one said something about the missionary navy?” He was invited to tell of his part in spreading the good news among those who “go down to the sea in ships.”
We have not at hand a picture of the Rotterdam boat, but we reproduce the photographs of a few others, representing what our good brother called the missionary navy.
In New York Harbor
Daily the ships of all nations are found discharging and taking on cargo in the port of New York. For its work among the seamen afloat, our Greater New York Conference has provided the trim little yacht “Liberty,” and Capt. J. L. Johnson, whose heart is in the work of selling and distributing books and tracts and periodicals in the various languages among the sailors, is skipper and missionary evangelist. “I meet your people and their publications in nearly every great port of the world,” said one sea captain as he purchased yet further publications for study on the voyage.
Mission Launch “Dina,” Fiji Islands
Our Fiji superintendent, A. G. Stewart, writes us that the word Dina means “truth” in the Fijian tongue. “Dina” is the principal boat of our Fiji Mission, we believe, though one or two others have also been in service among those islands. The workers must go to and fro from island to island, and oftentimes have had to breast stormy seas in the little craft.
On the Rivers of East Bengal
The many-mouthed Ganges pours its flood of waters into the ocean in Bengal and East Bengal. The whole country is a veritable network of rivers and connecting streams and canals. Brother W. R. French, of the Bengal Mission, sends a picture of the motor boat “Messenger.” Its name in the Bengali language is “Barta Ba, Hica,” meaning message bearer, or messenger. “For five months in the year,” Brother French tells us, “this section of Bengal is flooded, and even at other seasons the only means of transportation is by boat.” So along these waterways the “Message Bearer” takes the living messengers in search for souls among the jungle villages of East Bengal.
On the Victoria Nyanza
Two mission schooners are operated by four missions on the great Victoria Nyanza, Central Africa, and are proving to be useful heralds of the truth.
