INTO THE LAND .OF EGYPT.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXII, Issue 4666, 18 July 1938, Page 6

INTO THE LAND .OF EGYPT.

ONE0 NE night, as I was sitting in the

forward sanctuary after dinner, listening to the creaking of the lotus columns, for a storm had sprung up off Sicily, I heard voices singing on the deck below. They were English voices. They were singing “Jesu, Lover of My Soul.” Who were these English people who sang at night in the rising storm? In the windy darkness below I made out with difficulty three women and a man with a concertina, standing in a curious crowd of shadowy forms. They sang one or two hymns, but the storm was gaining on their voices. They concluded with one verse of “Auld Lang Syne”; then the crowd of fellow-passengers, among them many a jet-black African face, melted away. In the morning I went down to the forward deck to clear up this mystery. A man who looked English, and turned out to be a Jew from Manchester, told me that the women were missionaries on their way to the Belgian Congo. He knew them because they looked after his baby. He and his wife had an inside cabin with no port-hole, and the missionaries let him put the baby in their cabin, where it could get some fresh air. H E took me below deck and knocked on a cabin door. The three women were sitting there watching the baby. There was scarcely any room, but the young man took away the child, enabling a missionary to sit on a bunk, and I was able to squeeze into the cabin and sit on a suit case.

The woman told me that they belonged to the Heart of Africa Mission at Imbambi, in the Congo. They were returning after a visit home. There was Mrs. Harrison, of Edinburgh, who has been a missionary in the Belgian Congo for fourteen years; Miss Hainan, of Victoria, British Columbia, who has been a missionary there for ten years; and Miss Shaw, of Glasgow, who has been out in the wilds for nine years. The young concertina player, they told me, was a Mr. Davies, a Welshman, who was going out for the first time.

After Alexandria, they would have to travel for five weeks before arriving at their station. Their route lay through Khartum and Juba, and then they would have to journey 500 miles by motor truck to Imbambi. They talked about this motor truck as a great luxury. Only a few years ago the missionaries tramped every yard of the 500 miles. The told me the story of .their work with Pauline fervour. There are about forty-five missionaries scattered over

| a swampy jungle about the size of I England, Wales, and part of Scotland. ; Their nearest white neighbour at Im- [ bambi is 200 miles off through the bush. They showed me pictures of savages innocent of clothes, the women with bulging stomachs and the men with spindle legs and blubber lips. These were the people among whom they worked. “Would you change your lives for any other?” I asked. Oh, no—never,” they all exclaimed at once. “We are counting the days Until we get back.” They talked of magic and witchcraft, of spells and curses, of people who die when a whistle is blown behind them, and of people possessed of evil spirits. They told me of the secret society of Leopard Men who haunt the Congo swamps, masked with leopard skins, and armed with a five-pointed knife. This weapon makes a wound so like that of a leopard’s claws that, when a dead body is found in the jungle, it is often difficult to know whether a leopard was the cause of death, or whether the Leopard Man had “bumped off” an opponent, just like any European dictator. These women, who looked as though they should be going home together on a ’bus to a comfortable suburb and a nice cup of tea, refused to be impressed, as I was, by the nature of the scene of their endeavours. They talked about Leopard Men and witches with downcast eyes and an occasional sigh, just as I have heard ardent social workers refer to naughty Mrs. Jones, who pawns the baby’s clothes for beer. It was my regret that I met these interesting women on our last night at sea, for I should like to have asked them more questions about life in Imbambi. ’J'IIE next afternoon there was a general air of excitement about the ship. Everyone gazed to the south. At length someone cried,' “Land!” and someone else cried, “Egypt.” Far off on the horizon I saw a line of white, just like a sand-bar in the blue sea. Slowly the thin, fiat line of the Delta lifted itself from the water, and we passed tail-sailed fishing boats full of brown men. A few palm trees showed against the sky like tiny green starfish on poles. The white buildings of Alexandria rose from the waves, and the scent of Egypt came out to meet us from the land. (To be continued on Wednesday).