RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Africa
Bishop Charles Frederick Mackenzie in 1861. The hostility of the slave-raiders and the rigors of the climate broke up the mission for a time, but it is now thoroughly established at Likoma Island in Lake Nyassa, and in some sixty villages on the east shore of the lake and among the Yao tribesmen in the eastern part of the Shir6 district. The Livingstonia Mission of the Free Church of Scotland, entered the country in 1875 and established its headquarters first at Cape Maclear at the south end of the lake, moving afterward to high land well toward the northern end of the lake, where the Livingstonia Institution now stands in a most salubrious spot overlooking the western shore. This mission has about 240 stations and outstations. The schools, printing-house, hospitals, and industrial training establishments of this mission are noteworthy for completeness and beneficent influence quite as much as for their conquest of the chaos which existed when the missionaries arrived on the field. The Church of Scotland founded a mission in the Shire' highlands in 1876. The site was chosen because the missionaries were too ill and exhausted to go farther than the little group of native huts which seemed a haven of rest. Close by that miserable village has arisen about the mission the little town of Blantyre, whose postoffice is now a recognized station of the Universal Postal Union. This mission has about forty stations and outstations and a fine group of schools and hospitals. The Zambesi Industrial Mission has taken up a large tract of land lying to the northwest of Blantyre and is teaching the natives to cultivate coffee and other valuable crops. It has about thirty schools in connection with its various settlements. The South African (Dutch) Ministers' Union of Cape Town established a mission in 1901 in the Angoni hill-country west of Lake Nyassa. It has seven stations and is winning favor among the people. All of these missions have been greatly aided by a commercial enterprise known as the African Lakes Corporation, formed in 1878 by Scottish business men with the definite purpose of cooperating with the missions in civilizing the people of the protectorate. It has organized a regular steamboat service on the lake and the Shire River to the coast at Chinde, and is at last on a paying business basis. The formal establishment of the British protectorate over the lake district took place in 1891. It is one of the marks of progress in the civilization of the tribes of the region that in 1904 a large section of the fierce Angoni tribe voluntarily accepted British control and British regulations. The missions named above have about 190 missionaries (men and women), 985 native preachers and teachers, 25,000 children in their schools, and about 16,000 professing Christians on their rolls. Several of the languages of the protectorate have been reduced to writing and the Bible is in process of publication in the Nyanja, several dialects of which, the Yao, the Konde, and the Tonga, are now being unified. The Angoni tribe, in the western part of the protectorate, being of Zulu race, are able to use the Zulu Bible, of which a considerable number of copies are brought from South Africa every year.
Nyassaland is carried on the lists of the Roman Catholic Church as a provicariate confided to the care of the Algerian Missionary Society. But beyond 10 missionaries, 2 schools, and 1,000 adherents little can be learned of the progress of the mission.
Dahomey: A French possession in West Africa having a coast-line of seventy miles between Togoland and the British colony of Lagos, and extending northward to the French territory of Senegambia and the Niger. The French gained their first footing on this coast in 1851. Area 60,000 sq. miles; population estimated at about 1,000,000, commonly of unmixed negro stock. Capital, Porto Novo on the coast. About sixty miles of railway have been built and 400 miles are projected. It is worth noting that of the whole value of the annual imports into Dahomey one-fourth represents the liquor traffic. A Roman Catholic mission has existed for some years under the direction of the Lyons Seminary for Missions in Africa. There are twenty-two missionaries and fifteen schools. The number of the Roman Catholics in the mission is estimated at about 5,000. The only Protestant mission is that of the Wesleyan Missionary Society with a central station at Porto Novo. It has two missionaries who are of French nationality and it occupies ten outstations in the interior. The number of professing Protestant Christians is about 1,000.
Egypt: A tributary province of the Turkish empire lying on the Mediterranean Sea east of Tripoli, and touching Arabia on the east at the Isthmus of Suez. Area (excluding the Sudan) about 400,000 sq. miles, of which the Nile Valley and Delta, comprising the most of the cultivated and inhabited land, cover only about 13,000 sq. miles. The country is ruled by a hereditary prince called the Khedive, under British tutelage and control. Population (1897) 9,734,405. Capital, Cairo. The Mohammedan population of Egypt numbers about 8,979,000. Of the Christians 648,000 belong to the Oriental Churches, 608,000 being connected with the Coptic or Old Egyptian Church. There are also 56,000 Roman Catholics and 27,000 Protestants. About 25,000 of the population are Jews. The Roman Catholic establishments in Egypt date from the beginning of the seventeenth century, being at that time connected with the orders in charge of the holy places at Jerusalem. The present apostolic vicariate of Egypt was established in 1839. Roman Catholic missions in Egypt are under the minor Franciscan friars and the Lyons Seminary for Missions. There are also Lazarists, Jesuits, and Sisters of the Order of the Good Shepherd, Sisters of the Order of the Mother of God, Sisters of the Order of San Carlo Borromeo, and Sisters of Our Lady of Sion. There are about ninety schools, besides orphanages, hospitals, and other benevolent establishments. Protestant missions are carried on by the American United Presbyterian Mission (1854), the Church Missionary Society (in its present form 1882), the North Africa Mission, the Egypt General Mission, the Church of Scotland Committee on Missions to the Jews, the London Jews Society, the American Seventh-day Adventist
Africa