Life Stories of Robert Moffatt and Dan Crawford
This book contains a brief account of the lives of two significant missionaries to Africa: Robert Moffatt and Dan Crawford. It appeared as part of a series called “Men and Women Who Have Moved the World” published by Pickering & Inglis. My thanks to Redcliffe College for providing a copy of the book for digitisation. This title is in the public domain.
James Joseph Ellis [1853-?], Pioneers in African Wilds. The Life Stories of Robert Moffatt and Dan Crawford. London: Pickering & Inglis, [1935]. Hbk. pp.96. [Click to download the complete book in PDF]
Contents
Robert Moffatt. The South African Pioneer
- The Scot’s Laddie
- The Errand Boy
- The Tame Man
- The King of Spades
- The Sower
- The Finished Task
- The Aged Worker
- The Accepter of God
Dan Crawford. The Central African Mission
- Preface
- The Boatman’s Child
- A Novel Apprenticeship
- A Venture of Faith
- An Untrammelled Start
- Mushidi, an African Napoleon
- The Wheels of God
- The Aftermath of Strife
- A Pioneer Prospector
- The Village on the Lakeside
- Out of the Long Grass
Robert Moffatt: Chapter 1: The Laddie Who Kept His Promise
How fair the Firth of Forth shines in the morning sun; like a sheet of pure silver, shot with purple and gold! Yonder, too, is Queensferry. Rest your blue bundle upon my parcels; we have still time for a crack, mother dear.”
The speaker was a tall, slender youth, with dark hair, and eyes of the same hue, singularly handsome in their liquid pathos. A broad high forehead, slightly shaded by scanty black hair, gave promise of considerable intellectual power; a large full nose above a mouth whose lips uncovered by moustache or beard, were tremulous with kindly humour and suppressed feeling. Altogether a face sweetly winning by its suggestions of sleeping smiles and ready sympathy. Evidently a youth to be trusted and loved. “Aye, laddie, ‘Kindness creeps where it daurna gang,’ says the proverb. ‘Tis but little I can do now; but, oh, it goes sore to my heart that ye must go south. England is a bonny place, but it is like rending the flesh from my bones to see ye depart. ‘Tis the Lord’s will, and must be accepted.” [Continue reading]