FROM SLAVE BOY TO BISHOP.

Otago Witness, Issue 2056, 20 July 1893, Page 42

FROM SLAVE BOY TO BISHOP.

Captain Mockler-Ferryman, in hia recent volume, "Up the Niger," give 3 a pleasing account of his visit to "the small, clean settlement of the Church Missionary Society, where tbe Bishop of the Niger, Samuel Adjai Crowther, and bis son, the archdeacon, had their headquarters, and were striving hard to civilise the miserable heathens." The worthy bishop's life was full of striking and romantic experience?, some of which are thus recounted by Captain MocklerFeiTyman :— Adjai was a native of the kingdom of Yoruba. At the age of 13 he was captured and carried away into slavery to the town of Isehun, where he was separated from his mother and became the property of the chief. Shortly afterward he was bartered for a horse and marched off with a gang to a neighbouring slave-market. Here, to his intense delight and astonishment, he encountered his mother, and had the satisfaction of liviDg in daily intercourse with her for threa months. Then they parted, as both thought, for ever. The boy was sold and carried away toward the coast, and after a varied experience of masters fonnd himself at work in a store at Lagos.

Thence he was by-and-bye shipped, with 180 fellow slaves, for America; but shortly after the vessel left tho coast two English cruisers captured it and carried oft tho human cargo, to be freed at Siorra Loono. Here Adjai was received into tho mission school and taught the trade oil a oarpontor. He showed himself a diligont niudout-, and was baptieed in 1825 Aider tho ntuuo of Samuel Orowther.

At the age of 18 he visited England, whoio he remained almost a year. Thon ho returned to Sierra Leone, and becamo first a studeiit and afterward a teaoher in tho Foutah Bay College.

In 1841 he went to England again, and after a period of study was ordained by the Bishop of London, and returned to the west coaet as a missionary. A few years lator he accidentally met his mother in tho marketplace, after a separation of 25 years. In his journal he describes the meeting :— "When she saw me she trembled. She could not believe her eyes. We grasped one another, looking at each other with silence

and astonishment, bi<? tears rolling down her emaciated cheeks. She trembled as she held me by the band, and called me by the familiar names by which I well remember I used to be called by my grandmother, who has since died in slavery. "We could not say much, but sat still, and cast now and then an affectionate look at each other— a look which violence and oppression had long checked, an affection which had been nearly extinguished by tbe long space of 25 years." In 1864 Mr Crowther, after much devoted missionary service, was consecrated first bishop of the Niger in Canterbury Cathedral. The University of Oxford about the fame time conferred upon him the Degree of Doctor of Divinity. He died at Lagos in December 1891.