Note J — THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON.

Capt. Canot, pp. 153, 180, 181. Wilson’s Western Africa, 75, 79, 92. Richardson’s Great Desert, II., 63, 129. Johnstone’s Abyssinia, I., 267; Allen’s Niger Expedition, I., 383. Du Chaillu, Ashango Land, xiii., 129. Barth, passim, especially (I., 310): “That continual struggle, which always continuing further and further, seems destined to overpower the nations at the very equator, if Christianity does not presently step in to dispute the ground with it.” He says “that a great part of the Berbers of the desert were once Christians, and that they afterwards changed their religion and adopted Islam” (I., 197, 198). He represents the slave merchants of the interior as complaining that the Mohammedans of Tunis have abolished slavery, but that Christians still continue it (I., 465). “It is difficult to decide how a Christian government is to deal with these countries, where none but Mohammedans maintain any sort of government” (II., 196). “There is a vital principle in Islam, which has only to be brought out by a reformer to accomplish great things” (I., 164).

Reade, in his Savage Africa, discusses the subject fully in a closing chapter, and concludes thus: “Mohammed, a servant of God, redeemed the eastern world. His followers are now redeeming Africa.... Let us aid the Mohammedans in their great work, the redemption of Africa.... In every Mohammedan town there is a public school and a public library.” He complains that Christianity utterly fails to check theft, but Mohammedanism stops it entirely (pp. 135, 579, English ed.).

For Asiatic Mohammedanism see Sleeman’s Recollections, II., 164, and compare Tennent’s Christianity in Ceylon, p. 330, and Max Müller’s Chips from a German Workshop, II., 351. The London Spectator, in April, 1869, stated that “Mohammedanism gains thousands of converts every year,” and thus described the activity of its organization, the statement being condensed in the Boston Journal: “Of all these societies, the largest, the most powerful, the most widely diffused, is the Mohammedan population. Everywhere it has towns, villages, temples, places within which no infidel foot ever is or can be set. Its missionaries wander everywhere, keeping up the flame of Islam,—the hope that the day is coming, is at hand, when the white curs shall pass away, and the splendid throne which Timour won for the faithful shall again be theirs. They have their own papers, their own messengers, their own mail carriers, and they trust no other. Repeatedly, before the telegraph was established, their agents outstripped the fastest couriers the government could employ. The government express was carried by Mussulmans, who allowed the private messengers to get on a few hours ahead. Every dervish, moollah, or missionary, is a secret agent. This organization, which has always existed, has of late been drawn closer, partly as the result of their great mutiny, which taught the priests their hold over the soldiery, partly by the expiration of the ‘century of expiation,’ and partly by the marvelous revival of the Puritan element in Mohammedanism itself.”