On the African West Coast by D. C. Babcock

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 4, 1909

On the African West Coast

By D. C. Babcock

I WOULD first of all disabuse any minds of a common impression that West Africa means a narrow strip of sparsely settled country along the coast. What is termed West Africa comprises thirteen countries, with a population of sixty-seven millions.

VIEW IN FREETOWN, SIERRA LEONE, HEADQUARTERS OF OUR WEST COAST MISSION

Our Freetown training-school has in attendance, I suppose, representatives of more than fifteen languages and dialects on the West Coast of Africa. We have a primary school at Waterloo, with forty-three attending, and one on the Gold Coast of about the same number. We have bright prospects before us for training native workers, and on the whole, we are greatly encouraged in our educational work.

Calls for help are coming to us daily. On a trip into the hinterland of Sierra Leone, urgent appeals were made on every hand for us to open our work. Owing to sickness, I was compelled to remain in one native village nearly two days. Here Chief Yamasu offered us all the land we needed, and to build us a suitable house, if we would open our work in his village, which is nearly two hundred miles from Freetown. The Niger Company in Northern Nigeria sent word to me recently that they would grant us all the land we need if we would open a station there. This is the home of the Hassa people, one of the high types of the Negro race. Calls come also from Gambia, where we have one worker, near Senegal, and from the Lagos country. A vast field lies before us, and there are millions to be warned throughout Africa during this generation.

GROUP OF WORKERS AT THE LAST SOUTH AFRICAN UNION CONFERENCE, CAPE TOWN

I believe we can begin to see our Heavenly Father's plan opening before us. The Spirit of God is moving upon the hearts of young men from the many tribes to give themselves to this message, and they in turn can return to their people to tell the glad tidings. D. C. BABCOCK.

Freetown, Sierra Leone.