Not only was Mary able to brush off warnings about her plans, but she was so enthusiastic that two of her new friends, both of whom also happened to be named Mary, were inspired to volunteer as missionaries! They were both offered posts in China. Together, the three women visited various churches in and around Edinburgh, speaking about the need for missionaries. They were soon dubbed the “Three Marys,” and they were enormously popular wherever they spoke. Mary herself did as little speaking as possible, however, leaving the other two to explain their missionary callings.
After Mary had spent twenty weeks at Canongate Normal School, the senior teacher was convinced that Mary had become a well-trained teacher and that it was time for her to return to Dundee and say good-bye to her family.
Since leaving her mother was of great concern to her, Mary was pleased to find her mother and her sisters all well and in good spirits when she returned. Sixteen-year-old Janie and twenty-six-year-old Susan had done a good job of taking care of each other and their mother. Mary spent three whirlwind weeks in Dundee, packing her trunks with her new “missionary uniform”—starched white blouse, dark woolen skirt, and sun hat—speaking at nearby churches when she could not avoid it, and squeezing in as much time as possible with her family.
Finally, the morning of July 30, 1876, arrived. It was a day Mary had both longed for and dreaded. Today she would say good-bye to her simple, predictable life in Scotland. Many people turned out at the train station to see her off. As the train lurched forward, Mary pulled down the window and waved. “Pray for me,” she wailed until the platform disappeared from sight and with it nearly everyone she’d ever loved.
Chapter 5
On African Soil
Mary peered out the coach window. She was getting close to her destination, the Liverpool docks. She could see the tall masts of ships rising above the warehouse roofs. Her heart beat faster as the coach rounded a final bend and the horses came to a stop.
“Well, here we are, and right on time,” commented one of two men from the Foreign Missions Board who had escorted her to Liverpool. He snapped his pocket watch shut and slipped it back into his vest pocket. “How are you doing, Mary?” he asked.
Mary didn’t know how to answer the question simply. She had so many thoughts and emotions swirling inside her. She was excited to be in the midst of such a bustling scene. Through the window she could see sailors, merchants, stevedores, and other assorted people. Her gaze fell upon the steamer Ethiopia, with its tall masts and smokestacks. The ship would carry her away from Britain and across a vast stretch of ocean to a place where malaria, yellow fever, and blackwater fever ran rampant, claiming the lives of many foreigners. The idea both exhilarated and frightened Mary. “God, guide me and use me as You will,” she silently prayed as she climbed down from the coach.
An hour later, her belongings were safely stowed in her tiny cabin and Mary had been introduced to the captain and Mr. and Mrs. Thomson. On deck, she stood and watched as the last of the cargo, including some huge kegs, was hoisted aboard and lowered into the hold.
Finally, at 3:15 p.m., August 5, 1876, Mary Slessor felt the large steam engine in the bowels of the ship begin to vibrate under her feet. The gangway was slowly lowered onto the dock. “Cast off forward, cast off aft,” yelled the captain.
Mary watched as the ropes that bound the ship to the dock were released. Within a minute or two, the Ethiopia was floating freely. Suddenly the water at the stern began to froth like boiling water as the ship edged away from the dock. A loud cheer went up from the people ashore as they bid farewell to the passengers aboard. As the Ethiopia steamed away down the Mersey River, the noise of the busy dockyard slowly faded in the distance.
Within an hour, the bow of the ship was bobbing in the turbulent waters of the Irish Sea. Mary soon began to feel seasick. She excused herself from dinner and went to lie down in her cabin. She unlatched her bunk and folded it down, leaving scarcely enough room in the cabin for her to undress.
Mary found it was much more difficult to rest than she had imagined it would be. The ship pitched up and down and rolled from side to side. She was glad she hadn’t eaten any dinner. Finally, sometime after midnight, she fell into a fitful sleep.
The following morning Mary felt more seasick than ever. She couldn’t bear to get out of bed. Mrs. Thomson visited her several times during the day, bringing her tea and rolls. It took three days for Mary to finally get her “sea stomach” and venture back up on deck.
The ship by then had long since passed Land’s End and was now in the open waters of the North Atlantic. The sails billowed overhead in the brisk southerly wind. The steam engine the captain had used to maneuver the ship out of Liverpool harbor was now silent. Mary wondered whether something was wrong with the engine, but at breakfast she learned it was fine. The steamer did not carry enough coal to run the engine for the entire trip. Instead, the ship was fully rigged with sails, which were used to move the ship along in the open sea. The engine was used for maneuvering in and out of port, in emergencies, and when the ship was fighting a strong head wind or current.
As Mary stood on deck that morning looking out across the steely gray ocean, she was filled with excitement as the reality of the moment swept over her. She was finally on her way to be a missionary. The next land she would see would be Africa!
The ship sliced through the ocean at ten knots. Mary passed much of the time with Mr. and Mrs. Thomson, who were returning to the Cameroon Mountains in West Africa to build and run a home for missionaries who needed care and rest during bouts of illness. The Thomsons would be disembarking with Mary at Duke Town and traveling on to their final destination from there. Mr. Thomson had visited the Calabar region several times before and was able to give Mary some idea of what she might face. It all sounded so unreal to Mary, like something from an adventure novel.
Dr. Thomson explained that there were many tribes in the area. The tribe that inhabited the coast of Calabar was called the Efiks. In the past, the Efiks had been the group who dealt with the slave traders. Now they dealt with European traders who came to buy palm oil to ship back to England. Since this was the first time Mary had heard of palm oil, one night at dinner she asked Mr. Thomson what it was used for.
“Well,” Mr. Thomson replied, “it has a surprising number of uses. It makes wonderful oil for machines, and the purer grades can also be used for cooking, making candles, and making soap.”
“And the Efiks are the ones who trade this?” Mary asked.
“Yes,” said Mr. Thomson. “They’re the middlemen. The other tribes bring them their oil, and they arrange to sell it, or if the trader is looking for high-quality oil, they will sell him the palm nuts to be shipped back to England for processing. The Efiks make a handsome profit, I might add.”
“And how do we pay them? Is it in English pounds?” asked Mary, wanting to know as much as she could about Calabar.
Mr. Thomson shook his head. “No, not pounds,” he said sadly. “English money is of no interest to the Efiks. There’s a currency in Africa that is much more valuable than money….” He paused for a moment and then continued. “Alcohol. This ship is loaded down with rum and gin. That’s what the captain will use to trade with the coastal tribes for palm oil.”
Mary’s heart sank. She remembered seeing the kegs being rolled down into the holds back in Liverpool, though she had no idea what was in them. She thought back to her father. She knew exactly what alcohol could do to a person and the person’s family, friends, and community. When she’d thought of Africa, she hadn’t imagined for a moment that her own country would use alcohol as a means of payment. She was disappointed and saddened at the thought of this type of trade.
“And what about the people the Efik trade with, the inland tribes?” Mary asked.
Mr. Thomson took a slice of bread and placed it on his side plate, then pointed to the bread with his knife. “You know, Mary,” he said, “Africa is a lot like this piece of bread. It has a thin crust around the outside. Europeans have been all around the outer edge of Africa. The coast is well mapped, and it has many white settlements. Some have been there for three hundred years or more. In fact, the Portuguese have been plying these coasts since the 1400s. But that’s only the outer edge of Africa, the crust. What’s in the middle of Africa? What are the people like? Who are they? What do they think? We really don’t know. Even when the slave trade was at its height, it was the coastal tribes that went inland and captured the inland tribes and brought them back to the coast to be traded. White men never went into the interior to get the slaves themselves. A few brave men like David Livingstone have gone inland, but not many of them have lived to tell about it. Those who have have seen only a little of what there is to see.” With that Mr. Thomson buttered his bread and topped it with marmalade.
“But surely the Calabar mission knows something about the inland tribes?” Mary probed.
“Well, in 1846 when the Reverend Hope Waddell started the mission at Calabar, white people had never been more than five miles inland.”
Mary was stunned. “Do you mean to say that the natives had been trading with white people for four hundred years and no one had ever gone more than five miles inland?”
“That’s exactly right. Until the missionaries arrived, the sailors didn’t even venture off their ships. Native canoes paddled up alongside the ships and traded their wares out on the water.”
“That’s amazing!” replied Mary. “Just what do we know? How far have the missionaries gone inland now?”
Mr. Thomson continued. “Let me see. I’d say about thirty-five miles inland. It’s still very dangerous, you know. The natives won’t even pass into each other’s territory. Most tribes kill outsiders on sight.”
Mary had a lot to think about, and she ate the rest of her meal in silence. The thing that troubled her most was that the people who obviously needed the gospel message the most were the ones who would kill anyone who brought it to them. She might be only a junior missionary, but right there, Mary Slessor set her sights on what seemed an impossible goal—going inland where no white person had been before.
The ship had been sailing for a week when Mary heard a sailor yell, “Land ho to port.” Mary and the other passengers rushed to the left side of the ship to catch a glimpse of the first land they had seen since England. Mary squinted into the distance, and there, above the horizon, she could just make out the outline of land.
“Cape Verde,” said Mr. Thomson, who was standing beside Mary. “That’s Portuguese for Cape Green. It’s the western most tip of Africa. Soon we will begin tacking to the east, skirting the coast of Sierra Leone, past the Ivory Coast, and on to Nigeria and Calabar.”
“I can’t wait,” smiled Mary, excited to have finally laid eyes on Africa. She could hardly wait to set her feet on African soil. She had never seen an African person before. All she’d seen were drawings from Livingstone’s books. Soon, though, she would be meeting Africans face to face and hearing their language in person.
“It will be easy to tell when we turn towards the coast,” Mr. Thomson went on. “We’ll be headed into a head wind, and the captain will order the engine to be fired up. The ship will need the extra power.”
As the passengers stood silently in the hot tropical sun watching Cape Verde slip by, Mary rolled up the cuffs of her white blouse. She was hot in her long brown skirt and blouse. Beads of sweat were trickling down her back, and her sunbonnet was making her scalp feel prickly. She untied the ribbon under her chin that kept the sunbonnet in place.
“Now, keep that on,” chided Mrs. Thomson. “A girl with your red hair and fair skin would burn to a crisp in an hour in this sun.”
