after all: some of the missionaries told her that much of the illness
was due to the lack of proper care, and there was even one who said he
preferred Calabar to Scotland.

She was impressed with the Mission. The organisation of church and
school, the regular routine of life, the large attendance at the
services, the demeanour of the Christians, the quiet and persistent
aggressive work going on, satisfied her sense of the fitness of things
and made her glad and hopeful. To hear the chime of Sabbath bells; to
listen to the natives singing, in their own tongue, the hymns
associated with her home life, the Sabbath school and the social
meeting; and to watch one of them give an address with eloquence and
power, was a revelation. She went to a congregational meeting at Creek
Town and heard King Eyo Honesty VII. speaking, and so many were
present, and the feeling was so hearty and united that it might have
served as a model for the home churches. She was attracted by the King;
a sincere kindly Christian man, she found him to be. When she told him
that her mother was much interested in him, he was so pleased that he
wrote Mrs. Slessor, and the two corresponded--he a negro King in Africa
and she an obscure woman in Scotland, drawn to each other across 4000
miles of sea by the influence of the Gospel.

It was true that the results of thirty years' work in Calabar did not
seem large. The number of members in all the congregations was 174,
though the attendances at the services each Sunday was over a thousand.
The staff, however, had never been very large; of Europeans at this
time there were four ordained missionaries, four men teachers, and four
women teachers, and of natives one ordained missionary and eighteen
agents; and efforts were confined to Duke Town, Old Town, Creek Town,
Ikunetu, and Ikorofiong--all on the banks of the rivers or creeks--with