Abbeokuta Author:Sarah Tucker Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VII. Bet. n. Townsend's Visit To "Get yon up, and tee the land what It Il, and the people that rlwellelh therein — ruid be ye of good courage, and ... more »bring of the fruit of the land."— Main. mi. 17— SO " lt ui n.mp atonoe and poae It; for we are well able to otercomt h."— Ibid. xiL 90. The return of Mr. Schbn, Mr. Crowther, and their companions from their expedition up the Niger, was hailed with delight at Sierra Leone ; and the report they brought of the friendly disposition of the people they had met with, and their anxiety fot intercourse with the English, quickened the intense desire already felt by the Christian Negroes of various tribes that missionaries should be sent to their own different countries. This, however, was impossible, and the Church Missionary Society was obliged to refuse even the pressing intrcaties of the A"/i people, who, though few in number in the colony, had been so distressed at the account their brethren gave of the misery and degradation of their country, that they held meet- || bgs among themselves, subscribed to the amount of£10, and sent the money with an urgent appeal to the Society that they would not delay to send a missionary to Rabbah, which, though then in the hands of the Fellatahs, they still considered the capital of their own land. But the more the Committee heard of the textit{Toruba country, the more encouraged they were as to the practicability and desirableness of establishing a mission within its limits; and as the circumstances we have mentioned seemed to point out Abbeokuta as the most eligible spot, it was decided that Mr. Town- send, one of the Society's catechists at Sierra Leone, should immediately proceed thither to obtain tho necessary information. We may conceive the joy with which the Christian Yorubans...« less