ALFRED SAKER PAUL'S love of Cltn"st, and steadiness unbn"bed, Were copied close in ltim, and well transcribed. He followed Paul: Ms zeal a kindred flame, His apostolt"c cltan"ty Ike sante. Like kim, cross'd ckeeifully tempestuous seas, Forsaking country, kz"ndred, friends, and ease: Like ltim lie laboured, and, like him, content T" 6ear it, suffered slzame wltere'er lie went. COWPER ALFRED SAKER. ALFRED SAKER Pioneer of the Cameroons BY HIS DAUGHTER E. M. SAKER SECOND EDITION LONDON: THE CAREY PRESS, 19, Furnival Street, E.C. 4 1929 CONTENTS CHAP. PAG11 PREFACE 9 I. EARLY DAYS • 15 II. THE CALL TO THE FIELD 24 III. FIRST EXPERIENCES OF AFRICA 34 IV. FIRST SETTLEMENT IN CAMEROONS. 41 V. IN PERILS BY THE HEATHEN 57 VI. IN LABOURS MORE ABUNDANT 80 VII. IN WE.A.RINESS AND PAINFULNESS • 95 VIII. THE CARE OF ALL THE CHURCHES • • 117 IX. CAST DOWN BUT NOT DESTROYED • • 142 x. IN JOURNEYINGS OFT • 167 XL MORE THAN CONQUEROR • 190 XII. NOT ALONE I • • 207 •.-1· ' ./ En(1s/, . h 'Ntles ' ' I ' I 40 so 0 10 20 _JO Efulen• FER'l"A'l"DO PO AND THF. C~ M. F.ROONS.• SHOWING THE STATIONS OF THE NATIVE CHURCH IN J922. PREFACE HE first missionary to the West Coast of T Africa was a chaplain sent out to Cape Coast Castle in 1752, by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. In 17 68 the Moravians sent missionaries to the Guinea Coast, but they all speedily succumbed to the West Coast fevers. Later, Scottish Societies sent out six men, of whom one was martyred, three died, and two returned home. In 1795, three years after its foundation, the Baptist Missionary Society sent two men, Messrs. Grigg and Rodway, to Sierra Leone, but that attempt also ended in withdrawal. Later the C.M.S., with other Societies, occupied that field, and are still carrying on in Sierra Leone Colony and beyond in British Mandated Territory. The work of the Baptist Society in Cameroons was an outcome of the freeing of the slaves in Jamaica. Many thousands of these freed slaves were members of Baptist Churches in that island, and the first-fruits of their new found liberty was the desire to help their own people in Africa, the land of their origin. They urged the Home Committee to this great venture, and two mess­ engers were sent out to seek a place suitable for a missionary beginning. These messengers chose the island of Fernando Po, in the Bight of Biafra, and work was begun among the aborigines 9 IO PREFACE of the island and the rescued slaves landed there by British warships. Fernando Po, however, was claimed by Spain, and in 1858 it became impossible to carry on Protestant work in the island. The mission­ aries therefore turned to the mainland of Cameroons, to seek on unoccupied territory a home-land for the more than two hundred Christian families, where they might worship God according to the teaching of our Lord and His Holy Word. As my story shows, this home was found in Ambas Bay, under the shelter of the Cameroons mountain range, and there the forest lands were cleared, and houses erected. This settlement was named Victoria, and to-day Christian Churches have been opened up for 300 miles inland. This work, both in Clarence, Fernando Po, and in the Cameroons River, lying to the East of Victoria, was opened up by the Baptist Missionary Society in 1843, and was carried on by them till in 1885 Cameroons was annexed by Germany. Since that period the native Baptist communities have flourished and extended their influence under their native pastors. Missionaries of the German Basel Mission also for some time worked there, and some American Baptists also did good and helpful work. The British Government influ­ ence to-day extends over the greater part of the 191,000 square miles known as Cameroons, though some part is included in French Equatorial Territory. PREFACE II y father went out as a missionary to Cameroons in 1843, and came home M :finally in 1876, after thirty-two years of unresting labour in a deadly clirµate. He saw the inauguration of the greater work on the Congo, which was the direct outcome of the Mission in Cameroons, but he did not live to see the events of 1885, when the work in which he had spent his life was surrendered into foreign hands. It is his story that I tell in this book. The memoir was first published in 1908, and has been out of print for some time. This new edition is issued by the request of the Baptist Missionary Society as one of its publications for the Jubilee Year of its Congo Mission. It was felt that the story of that earlier work might well be retold in this time of rejoicing. It was those brave men and women in the Came­ roons Mission who laid the foundations of the greater work, and laid them faithfully and well in patience, devotion and self-sacrifice. Thomas Comber and George Grenfell, the first messengers to the King of Kongo, were Cameroons mission­ aries, stationed at Victoria, when they received the order to explore the new waterway opened up by Stanley. The only other biography of my father was written by Dr. E. B. Underhill, a Secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society, who went out to Africa with my father and mother in 1869 to visit the Cameroons stations. During this visit he suffered the loss of his wife, who died at Bethel and was buried in the little Cemetery 12 PREFACE there, near the resting places of Mr. Saker's little ones. After his return, he often found his thoughts turning to that distant scene, and it was only fitting that he should be the first to write the life story of the man whom he admired and loved so well. His little book was a noble tribute as well as a history, and I had it constantly before me while I was writing mine. The account of my father's last hours, in Chapter XII, is from Dr. Underhill's pen. N re-reading the story I feel that in writing it I was guilty of an omission which may now O be repaired. I wrote fully of my beloved father's labours and achievements, and I do not feel that I have said a word too much. Unbiassed judges, indeed, have said much more of the man who founded Victoria and translated the whole Bible into the Dualla tongue. But I feel that I did not write enough about my mother, the gentle and heroic soul who was his comrade in all his labours, and who gave so much of her life to the welfare of the women and girls of the Dualla people. In addition to her unremitting toil in training women and children to be Christian wives and teachers, she had the burden of loneliness, and of anxiety for her husband, often absent on dangerous journeys, always overborne by the demands of his great work and his greater purposes. Let me say now that hers was a great spirit, and that her love for her chosen work was a great love. When the call first came to her it was a heart-breaking PREFACE r3 venture to leave all and follow ; but she did not · fail then, and she never failed in the years of hardship, peril and pain that came after. E all rejoice to-day in the noble achieve­ W ments of the Baptist Mission on the Congo, so ably described in Dr. Fullerton's The Christ of the Congo River: but none can rejoice more deeply than those who have close links with its beginnings, and who know how the Men of the Cameroons dreamed and hoped for the future of Africa. And I do not think I can close this Preface more fitly than by quoting the words spoken by my father at a farewell meeting held in London before the departure of Comber, Crudgington, Hartland and Bentley in 1878. For the words he spoke then are equally true in this day of Jubilee: "While .I: congratulate you to-night, and the Committee also, in the establishment, so far, of this Mission, I should like to utter just this word-that the enthusiasm of this hour will not suffice. We are but beginning a work which will test our fidelity, our faith, our zeal, and our hope. Yet we may go forth with confidence, because He that commandeth that we bear the Gospel to the heathen ha th Himself promised that He will be with us. It is not prospective: but He is with us. ' Lo ! I am with you alway, even to the end of the world'." Brighton, 1928. EMILY SAKER. ALFRED SAKER Chapter I EARLY DAYS Then--ttpward, onward, homeward tends T'/t,e chosen path, God led. The magnet 'JX)Wer of God extends Its influence-man is Jed By unseen channels. I/.e can scale The higli.Mt peaks-can bear The fiercest strain of h,ill or dale, He breathes in God's pure air. "G 0 ye," sa.id our resurrected Lord, " proclaim the good news." "Ye are my Witnesses," and " Lo, I am with you." His wondering, adoring disciples in Galilee heard the command, and obeyed. The subject of this Memoir also heard and obeyed, following on in the great succession of Witnesses. The 2lst of July, 1820, fouud a small boy lying under the shade of a tree in a meadow outside the hamlet of Borough Green, Kent.