cottage thatch, they are found, with the sea-born love
of adventure in their veins, able to command and
ready to obey, with the same earnest sense of duty,
just, in the main, according to their lights, brave,
strong, and merciful. And when that call of duty
comes, there is no moments hesitation, no ties how-
ever dear ivill hold them back; whether it be to
tropic sands, or into the winter zone, it is enough
that their country needs them, and round the ivorld
they go. Such ivas the bi'ood which built our island
Empire, and became of old knights-errant of the sea,
founders of new nations and pillars of their own.
Such there are still ready, as every year bears
ivitness cot all that Empires outposts and round the
35o THE MISSION TO UGANDA
perilous coasts of a hundred treacherous seas. And
such ivere these two brothers ; eagerly and with a
frolic welcome they accepted this hard service, and
leaving all that gladdens life, they gave their youth
and the promise of their years to their country.
Speech is vain, and sounding words seem out of
place, therefore we do not dwell on these things, but
we feel them none the less, and their country is proud
of them and will not forget them.
But it is not alone of those who died and now sleep
sound that we must think, and, ere we close the pages
in which ive read their manly record, a tribute of silent
sympathy is justly due to those that are left behind,
who surrendered husband, son, or brother, in whose
homes are the vacant chairs and the sorrow that does
not pass. To these their country's love and honour
too, for theirs ivas the greater sacrifice.
What is hidden in the mists of the future we may
not tell; we dare not prophesy how soon the great
Dark Continent vrill enter into light and draw the
life-springs of the teeming Northern lands into her
ample heart. But slowly, after the night of centuries,
the dawn of a new sunrise is breaking into promise
over that God-forgotten world, and the message of the
pioneers is eagerly interpreted by hope.
If some day on those eastern ranges a new race
shcdl quicken into life, when peace and goodwill have
supplanted internecine feud Is in the child-heart of the
savage, when the greed of the white has ceased to
seek for profit in the damnation of the black man's
body and sold, ivhen the story of the slave-raider is
EPILOGUE
only a sullen page in the past, then one would
wish to dream maybe that, as they reap the
harvests that are still unsown, men will speak with
an almost mythic reverence of the goodly man who
came in the beginning from the white Queen to give
the country peace, and that the first traditions of a
land which has no memory yet, may gather round
the grave on Namirembe hill.
THE END
Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh
Date Due
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