RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Africa
Protestants. The colony proper is limited to the Sierra Leone peninsula. It was the place whence in 1562 the first slaves were taken to the West Indies under the British flag. After slaves in England had been set free, in 1772, a district in Sierra Leone was set apart to be colonized by liberated slaves. Here, from 1786 on, freed slaves were landed and almost abandoned to their own resources except as to food — a great crowd of debased creatures from all parts of Africa, knowing no common language and having no principle of life except such evil things as they had picked up during slavery among Europeans. The situation of these freed slaves had a powerful influence in turning English missionary zeal to West Africa. The Roman Catholic establishment is under an apostolic vicariate erected in 1858 at Freetown. The missionaries are of the Congregation of the Holy Ghost and the Sacred Heart of Mary. The number of Roman Catholics is 2,800.
The Protestant missionary enterprise was commenced in the latter part of the eighteenth century by missionaries from Scotland; three having died soon after their arrival, the mission was given up. The Church Missionary Society sent missionaries to Sierra Leone in 1804; but they were instructed to go north and begin their mission in the Susu country on the Rio Pongas in what is now French Guinea. They were all Germans, chosen because of the difficulty of securing ordination of Englishmen for this society. The mission came to naught through the hostility of the slave-dealers, and was finally transferred (1814-16) to Sierra Leone. Here a solid work was soon organized among the freed slaves, and has grown ever since. The Protestant missionary societies now working in that field are: the Church Missionary Society, the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, the Wesleyan Methodist Connection of America, the United Brethren (U. S. A.) in the Mendi region, and the Christian and Missionary Alliance (U. S. A.) in the eastern part of the protectorate. The Church Missionary Society field is almost wholly in the protectorate, the congregations in Sierra Leone being self-supporting and independent. Together the mission stations and outstations number about 131. There are 42 missionaries (men and women), 117 schools, and about 45,000 professed Christians connected with the missions. The English Bible is used in the colony. The New Testament has been translated into Temn6 (1866); parts of the New Testament into Mendi; and single Gospels, into Bullom and Kuranko. The Yoruba mission of the Church Missionary Society was an outgrowth of the society's work among freed slaves at Sierra Leone. See below, III., Lagos.
Somaliland (British) : A British protectorate on the east coast of North Africa, lying between Abyssinia and the sea and between French Somaliland and Italian Somaliland. It is administered by a consul-general. Area about 60,000 sq. miles; population (estimated) 300,000; religion, Mohammedan. Most of the people of this district are nomads and very fanatical in their intolerance of Christians. The English government has been at a considerable expense in money and men to
pacify the tribes of the interior, who have attempted to drive the English from the country on religious grounds. No missions are reported in this district.
Somaliland (French) : A French protectorate on the eastern coast of North Africa, near the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, between the Italian colony of Eritrea and British Somaliland, extending inland to the Abyssinian border and including the colony of Obock. Capital, Jibuti. Area about 46,000 sq. miles; population about 200,000, mostly Mohammedans, with some 40,000 pagans, and in the colony of Obock about 8,000 Christians. A railway has been constructed from Jibuti to the Harrar frontier in Abyssinia. There has been for many years a Roman Catholic mission conducted by the French Capuchins who have two or three schools at Obock and Jibuti, and are reaching out toward Abyssinia.
Somaliland (Italian) : An Italian possession on the eastern coast of North Africa, lying between the Gulf of Aden and Abyssinia, and between British Somaliland and the mouth of the Juba River, the frontier of British East Africa. The sovereign rights of the Sultan of Zanzibar over this coast region were bought by Italy in 1905. Area about 100,000 sq. miles; population (estimated) 400,000, chiefly Mohammedans, with about 50,000 pagans. There are no records of missions established in this wild territory.
Sudan : This term is here limited to the Egyptian Sudan, the Western and Central Sudan being absorbed in the main into French spheres of influence to which other names have been given (see Senegambia and the Niger, above). The Egyptian Sudan is a territory extending south from the frontier of Egypt to Uganda and the Kongo Independent State, and west from the Red Sea to the unmarked boundary of the French sphere of influence. It is nominally a possession of Egypt, but in fact is ruled for Egypt by the British. English and Egyptian flags are used together throughout the territory. Area about 950,000 sq. miles; population (estimated) 2,000,000. The population of the country was much reduced during the sixteen years' rule of the Mahdi and his dervishes, who as ardent Mohammedans wished to show the world how a country ought to be governed. General Gordon having been killed by the Mahdi's party in 1885, one of the first acts of the English on recovering the land in 1898 was to found a great " Gordon Memorial " College at Khartum, the scene of his murder, and now the seat of the new administration. The majority of the people are Mohammedans, with an uncertain number of pagan tribes in the southern districts. A considerable number of Greek, Coptic, and Armenian traders is found in the Khartum district. Roman Catholic missions exist at Khartum and Omdurman and among the pagans at Fashoda; a mission of the American United Presbyterian Church has been founded on the Sobat River; and the Church Missionary Society has established missionaries (1906) at or near Bor in the vacant pagan country between the two first-named missions. All of these missions are too newly established to have any visible fruit except attendance at schools.
Africa