THE EMPEROR AND EMPRESS OF JAPAN.

BY THE REV. JOHN PIPER, Tokio.

HE readers of the GLEANER have had the Ainos of Japan brought to their notice twice-once in October, 1875, and again in May, 1877. As the As the interest and prayers of the friends of Missions have been sought by presenting them with pictures of the lowest subjects in Japan, it has occurred to me that photographs of the Emperor and Empress the highest personages in the empire-may not unsuitably find a place in the GLEANER gallery representing scenes and persons from every heathen land. I send herewith two photos, which are good and faithful ones. I can testify to the faithfulness of that of the Emperor, as I had the honour of being invited to the Imperial Naval College when his Majesty came to make his annual inspection, January 11th, 1876. I was near him about an hour, and had thus a good opportunity of studying his features; and those who have seen the Empress say that the photo of her is an equally good one. It will be observed that he is in military uniform, and she has her hair dressed in a somewhat foreign style.

Some time ago I met the Emperor in his carriage, accompanied by some of his horse guards. I stood amongst a few Japanese till his Majesty passed. When he reached where I was standing, I took off my hat and gave him a respectful bow,

which he very kindly and graciously returned. I think he could hardly fail to observe the respect which I showed him, as compared with that of his own subjects around me, for they simply stood gazing vacantly at the carriage and soldiers. Thus from the sense of divine honour which was formerly paid to him, this people have gone to the other extreme, and scarcely notice him when passing through their streets.

The Emperor, whose name is Mutsuhito, was born in November, 1850, and is consequently twenty-seven years of age. He is the 123rd Mikado in the line of imperial rulers from Jimmu Tenno, who lived (so says Japanese history) about 660 years before Christ. He succeeded his father in 1867, and in 1868 married the daughter of a noble of the first rank. She is seven months older than he is.

Let me ask the readers of the GLEANER to pray for the heads of this land. I believe that, as a rule, pictures of the Red Indians of North America, naked savages of Africa, dwarfed Esquimaux, or the lowest tribes of India, strike the feelings of Christians at home more easily and more deeply than do those of the more civilised heathen, who cannot in any sense be called barbarous savages. It is natural, and perhaps right, that man's sympathies should be more readily drawn out towards the degraded of our race. But there is some danger of forgetting that both high and low, the more or less polished heathen as well as the savage, equally need our pity and prayers. I often think

that the Emperor and Empress of this land are even more to be pitied than the lowest subjects in their dominions. The latter can go and hear the Gospel's joyful sound, whilst the heads of the empire in many senses are far removed from such a privilege. The Emperor of Japan, like the Emperor of China, is styled Tenshi (son of heaven), but all Christians know that if he is ignorant of the true God, the title is an empty and false one. I hope all the readers of the CHURCH MISSIONARY GLEANER, though they may not possess any grand earthly title, can joyfully say, 'Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God." Pray, then, that the Emperor and Empress of Japan may be able from their hearts trustingly to say the same blessed words, and as an encouragement to make such a petition to Almighty God, take with you these words from God's own Book, "The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of water; He turneth it whithersoever He will."

[We must explain that after receiving Mr. Piper's photographs, we ascertained that copies had already been engraved in this country, and these engravings we are enabled to present.-ED.]

SKETCHES OF THE PUNJAB MISSION.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "MORAVIAN LIFE IN THE BLACK FOREST," &C. VI.-Amritsar.-The Native Town.-A Visit to the Lady

Lawrence School.

ND now will you accompany us on an early drive to the Native town of Amritsar? We do not live within its walls, but about a mile away. The buggy awaits us; we are going with Mrs Keene to visit the Lady Lawrence School in the city. "Bisi" feels that a light hand holds the reins, and frisks us along the Batala Road at full speed. The syce girds himself up and runs before till we are fairly on our way, when he takes an early opportunity of jumping up behind, till we reach the city gates; then down he comes, and, gesticulating and shouting, makes way for us through the crowded, narrow ways of the bazaar. As we drive on, we see a great many things of which we should like to stop and ask the names and uses. Merchants sit cross-legged or on their heels amid their wares, their fruits and native sweetmeats, their cowries and their cloth, their baskets of parched corn, piles of hot chupatties, and earthen bowls of 66 cowa,' or coagulated milk. A little way on we see a knot of people collected in a listening attitude, and soon we can discern a voice reading. It is that of Edward the catechist. He is reading from the Punjabi Testament. To attract the passers-by he has chosen the text, "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come, buy wine and milk, without money and without price." One of the missionaries is with him. He is about to preach to those who have assembled.

A bye-way leads us from the crowded bazaar thoroughfares, with their dense and motley assemblage of vendors and buyers, smokers, loungers, chatterers, and bargainers, to the quiet quarter in which the girls' school lies. It is a day-school for heathen girls, founded as a memorial to the late Lady Henry Lawrence, who in her lifetime took a deep interest in the question of Native female education.

There were few children present on the day in question. The woman employed to go round and collect the scholars every morning had brought word to Susan, the catechist's wife, who acted the part of mistress, that one was stopping at home "to wash her head," and that the rest of the absentees were gone to a mela," or Native fair.

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Those who had come read to us, and showed their writing, and very fair it was. The three youngest children were bright, merry little creatures of eight or nine years old; a fourth was a great girl of fourteen or fifteen, whom we much wondered to see

there, as the girls are generally taken away to be married long before that age. One of twelve years old, whom Mrs. Keene inquired for, was, we were told, just about to enter the wedded state, for which reason her mother, the woman who collected the children, was desirous of having a month's leave, in order that she might go from house to house to beg or borrow food and clothes for the occasion.

The children looked picturesque in their extraordinary little coloured Punjabi trousers, which are made very full at the top, and narrow gradually towards the ankle, where they are almost tight, although, being cut very long, they are curiously puckered up above the instep. The remainder of the female costume consists of a little loose vest or jacket, which is sometimes dispensed with altogether, and the "chaddah," a white or coloured cloth of muslin or other material, which covers the head and a considerable portion of the person. It is brought under the chin, and thrown over the left shoulder, so as to form very graceful drapery, if of a proper size. The children had their ears full of ornaments, as many as twenty pendants hanging from the rim of each ear, causing it to fall forward in a very ugly manner; in their noses, too, they had gold and silver rings, and upon their arms, ankles, and necks.

Some women came in with their little naked infants perched astride on their shoulders or sides, curious to see and hear the Mem Sahibs. The bright-eyed little scholars darted gleefully hither and thither, looking very pretty and happy.

Year by year female education has gained ground in the Punjab; the scholars, formerly counted by units, have increased to hundreds, and that one little school has sent out branches all over the city. Normal classes have been added, from which well-trained teachers have gone forth, and in which Susan, now an able and experienced Bible-woman, gives a weekly ScriptureIn 1875 lesson to a group of eager and earnest listeners. these schools numbered twenty-two. They contain," wrote Miss Tucker, who had then just joined the Mission, “Hindus, Mohammedans, and Sikhs, those who would, without this teaching, probably know nothing of religion but the fallacies of Islamism, or the more revolting mummeries of idol-worship. The power of teaching the Bible in twenty-two Native schools seems to me a wonderful power for good."

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In 1877, 750 scholars were under the influence of this teaching. There are now Mission girls' schools, not only in Amritsar, but in the out-stations of Batala, Taran-Taran, Jandiala, and Fatehgahr. Let us give our readers a hasty peep into one of each of the different schools-a Mussulmani, a Hindu, and a Mehtrani, or "Sweeper's" school, showing them as they now are, in the words of the present lady superintendent:

In the first the girls are arranged in four classes, each sitting before a low bench, and moving their fingers over the books arranged on it. The first class are reading Line upon Line, and for secular reading they have the Takmil-ul-Talim, containing descriptions of animals and other useful teaching. babies, and some who look rather more than babies, are placed before the The second and third classes read elementary books; and the blackboard, while the monitor is teaching them the letters. All we want is to give them the power of reading any tolerably easy Urdu book without difficulty. The four simple rules of arithmetic and a general acquaintance with the maps of India and the Punjab is all we can expect from girls who are considered "finished" at eleven or twelve years of age, and whose school-life is interrupted with perpetual holidays. Still, in spite of the difficulties, something is learnt. The Ten Commandments, and a catechisin in rhyme, besides several hymns and texts, are repeated. Two or three little songs with movements, such as "Do you know how doth the peasant ?" "We all stand up together," are gone through with great merriment, and then we leave the school amidst a chorus of salaams. We go on to the next. Here are Hindu and Sikh children, as we soon see by the very bright faces, the Rasida-worked chaddahs, and the Gurmukhi books lying before them. They can answer many questions on the miracles and teaching of Christ; and the elder girls, and many of the little ones too, can read fluently. They are always anxious to get something new, and A.L.O.E.'s charming little books are hailed with great delight. They willingly give their price for the coveted possession.

Now for a Mehtrani school. This is open later in the day, as the girls have to be out in the morning at their work. Dirty as they are, nowhere do we see such eager, intelligent, happy faces as in this school. Running about all day in the fresh air makes them far more lively and energetic than the poor children who are more pent-up. Yes, and there is more than head-work going on here. The fact of their having no caste, and feeling themselves despised, makes these girls more ready to hear of One who embraces all within the arms of His love. Our Native pastor, the Rev. Mian Sadiq, kindly took the Scripture examination for us this year, and these sweeper girls outdid all the others in the readiness with which they gave their answers. We have three Christian teachers amongst our number, all converts from the schools. We still keep up the singingclass. We shall greatly miss the help of Bibi Hannah,* whose sweet, clear voice and knowledge of Native tunes, was a great help to us.

I have no space to speak of the village schools, though they are, if anything, more interesting than the city ones. Four years ago, one girls' school was opened in Batala, now there are seven, and thirty-three zenanas visited. There is a dense jungle of ignorance to be cleared away, but every stroke is doing something; and when ready to faint, we are cheered on by the thought that we are at least gathering out some of the stones, and in some degree helping to fulfil the command, "Prepare ye in this desert a highway for our God."

BISHOP CROWTHER: HIS LIFE AND WORK.

VII. ON THE NIGER.

OST great rivers have been discovered at their mouths, and their course traced up stream. It was not so with the Niger. That there was such a river somewhere in Western Central Africa was known in the last century; but in the edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica published in 1797, it was confounded with the Senegal, which flows westward into the Atlantic Ocean. On July 21st of that very year, however, Mungo Park struck its upper waters near Segou, the capital of Bambarra. "I beheld," he says, "the long sought-for majestic Niger, glittering in the morning sun, as broad as the Thames at Westminster, and flowing slowly to the eastward." But thirty-three years more passed before its whole course was determined. Park was killed in the attempt to complete the explorations; Clapperton died in making a similar attempt; and it was not till 1830 that the brothers Lander, having travelled overland through the Yoruba country to Boussa, where Park met his death, descended the river from that point to its mouth in the Gulf of Guinea.

Lander's discovery was received in England with enthusiasm; and a mercantile enterprise was set on foot by Mr. Macgregor Laird, with the view of introducing profitable commerce into Central Africa by the new highway. Two steamers with that object ascended the river in 1832; but the attempt was not successful.

In 1841 the British Government fitted out the celebrated Niger Expedition, the main purpose of which was to aim a fresh and effectual blow at the slave-trade. "It is proposed," wrote Lord John Russell, then Colonial Secretary, under whose auspices it was undertaken, “ to establish new commercial relations with those African chiefs and powers, within whose dominions the internal slave-trade of Africa is carried on, and the external slave-trade supplied with its victims. To this end, the Queen has directed her ministers to negotiate conventions or agreements with those chiefs and powers; the basis of which conventions would be: 1st, the abandonment and absolute prohibition of the slave-trade; and 2ndly, the admission, for consumption in this country, on favourable terms, of goods, the produce or manufacture of the territories subject to them." In this project, Prince Albert, then a young man, took a lively interest; and one of the three steamers of H.M. Navy fitted out for the expedition was named after him.

The Church Missionary Society saw in this scheme an opportunity for inquiring into the openings for the spread of the Gospel which the great river might present. Many of the Christian liberated slaves at Sierra Ieone were natives of the territories through which the Niger flowed. Could they not be utilised to tell throughout those territories the wonderful works of God, "every man in his own tongue wherein he was born"? Permission was obtained for two agents of the Society to accompany the expedition; and the men selected for this service were the Rev. J. F. Schön, an experienced Sierra Leone missionary, and Samuel Crowther.

Thus Christianity and industry were to go hand in hand; and the motto of all Crowther's work on the Niger from that time to this has been the pregnant phrase of one of the leading promoters of the expedi

* The second wife of the Rev. Mian Sadiq, who died at Amritsar, January 19th, 1878, leaving one little boy behind her.

tion, Sir T. Fowell Buxton, when he summed up the needs of Africa in these two words-the Gospel and the Plough.

Samuel Crowther was then still a young schoolmaster, thirty years of age. We have gone back from our last chapter sixteen years, in order to tell the story of his connection with the great river from the beginning. The three steamers composing the expedition, the Albert, the Soudan, and the Wilberforce, sailed from Sierra Leone, on July 2nd, 1841, under the command of Captain (afterwards Admiral) H. D. Trotter. The ascent of the Niger was begun August 20th. Through the slimy mangrove swamps, with their fever-breeding miasma, for the first twenty milesthen through a region of dense tropical forest, palms, bamboos, and gigantic cotton-trees-then past the first plantations of plantains and sugar-cane, with here and there a mud hut-the three vessels slowly steamed up the principal channel of the river; the natives in terror running away from the wonderful floating towns. At Ibo, 100 miles up, the expedition was warmly received by Obi, the king. Simon Jonas, the Christian Ibo from Sierra Leone whom we mentioned in the last chapter, and who acted as interpreter, read to him some verses of Scripture, which astonished him greatly. That the white man should read was natural enough; but that one of his own people should be able to do the same was more than he could believe. He seized Simon's hand, and exclaimed, "You must stop with me and teach me and my people." Both with him and with the King of Idda, another 100 miles further up, treaties were concluded for the suppression of the slave-trade and of human sacrifices, and for the promotion of lawful commerce. At the highest point reached by the expedition, Egan (pronounced Egga), it fell to Crowther to communicate its objects to the king:

After a hearty salutation, by shaking of hands in the name of the king of the ship, and telling him the reasons why the ship could not then come near, I commenced my message: That the Queen of the country called Great Britain has sent the king of the ship to all the chiefs of Africa, to make treaties with them to give up war and the slave-trade, to encourage all their people to the cultivation of the soil, and to mind all that the white people say to them, as they wish to teach them many things, and particularly the Book which God gives, which will make all men happy. I added, likewise, that there are many Nufi, Haussa, and Yoruba people in the white-men's country, who have been liberated from the Portuguese and Spanish slave-ships; that they are now living like white men; that they pray to God, and learn His Book; and consequently are living a happier life than when they were in their own country, and much better off than their country-people are at present. To this many of them said that they could judge of their happy state merely by my appearance. I added, moreover, that our country-people in white-men's country had written a letter to the Queen, who lives in Great Britain, expressing their wish to return to their country, if she would send white men along with them; but the Queen, who loves us all as her children, told them to stop till she had first sent her ships to the chiefs of Africa, to persuade them to give up war and the slave-trade; and if they consented to her proposals, she would readily grant the request of our country people. The ships are now come; the King of Ibo, and the Attah, King of Igalla, had consented to all that the Queen of Great Britain sent the king of the ship to say to them; and that all the other chiefs would consent to do the same, they would soon see their people, whom they had lost for many years, and supposed to have been dead, come up in this river with their property, and some even in their own ships, to carry on legitimate trade with them, as they do in the white-men's country.

But the expedition closed in sorrow and disappointment. A deadly fever struck the crews, and 42 white men out of 150 died in two months. Egan was only reached by one of the steamers, the Albert, the other two having been sent back to the sea full of invalids; and at the very time when Crowther was delivering his message, only three of the Albert's crew had strength enough to work the ship. The sentence seemed to have gone forth, "Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further"; and the Albert, following the track of her disabled companions, drifted downstream, and crossed the bar on October 16th.

Simon Jonas had been left with King Obi while the expedition went up the river, and was treated by him with every kindness; and another Native interpreter, Thomas King (afterwards an ordained missionary at Abeokuta), was left in charge of a model farm, which was started near the confluence of the two branches of the Niger; but both were soon afterwards withdrawn. The Niger Expedition became a byword as a conspicuous and hopeless failure. Yet it taught some valuable lessons, and so paved the way for the more successful enterprises of later years. It showed that the people were ready to welcome teachers; and that the liberated Africans of Sierra Leone could be employed to teach them. No one doubts this now; but many laughed at it then. In another respect the fruits have been reaped since. Mr. Schön was enabled to collect materials for the closer study of the Haussa language, into which he has since translated portions of the Scriptures, besides compiling a dictionary, grammar, &c.

But for more than twelve years public opinion allowed no further exploration of the Niger. In the meanwhile Samuel Crowther was ordained, and became a missionary to his Yoruba fellow-countrymen, as related in previous chapters; and at Abeokuta he gained the ministerial experience which was in after years to be put to so noble a use on the great water-way of Western Africa.