The missions of Equatorial Africa, the object of which is at the same time the deliverance of the unhappy negro from the spiritual slavery of heathenism and devil-worship, and his rescue from the oppression and brutality of the Moslem slave-hunter, owe their rise, under the providence of God, to the movement which several years ago first directed the attention of the whole civilised world to the continent of Africa.

‘One only needs,’ Mgr. Lavigerie writes in 1880, ‘to cast one's eye on the map of Africa, in order to see how the whole of the long line of sea-coast of this vast continent has been taken possession of by the nations of the Old and New World. From the provinces conquered by France in the north to the great English colony at the Cape, all along the western coast, we find settlements of almost every nation, who have acquired for themselves a portion of territory of greater or less extent; while the treaties concluded with the Sultan of Zanzibar have secured free trade to Europeans from Natal to the mouth of the Red Sea.

‘And while the Christian nations with their armies and flotillas have blockaded the coast of Africa, the missioners, the pacific soldiers of the Cross, have also landed their victorious forces and established their spiritual dominion.