Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 76, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 June 1901 — Developing the African. [ARTICLE]

Developing the African.

Harper’s Round Table states the well known fact that one hindrance to the progress of clvftbattion in Central Africa is the inability of the average white man to deal tactfully with the natives. Some few men, however, have been able to do so, as the following well illustrates: In this regard Missionary Scott, of the Shire Highlands, is probably the most remarkable man in Africh; at least the results fee has produced are most astonishing. Able to inspire the blacks with his own zeal and enthusiasm, he has taught many of them to become really skilled as brickmakers, masons, carpenters, plasterers and lumber-sawyers. Under his superintendence these men, who had never heard of a white man before Livingstone discovered their great lake, Nyassa, and who lived in a state of barbarism, have built a church at Blantyre, which many whites have said is the most wonderful object they have seen in Africa. They made the brick, burned the lime, sawed and hewed the timbers, and erected the edifice to the driving of the last nail. The natives had the capacity, and it was evoked by the genius of Missionary Scott. It stands in what was recently savage Africa, a handsome edifice, with many graceful points of architecture, an apse, a double-tow-ered front, a dome and many tasteful adornments.