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

1. The Scot’s Laddie
2. The Errand Boy
3. The Tame Man
4. The King of Spades
5. The Sower
6. The Finished Task
7. The Aged Worker
8. The Accepter of God
   

Dan Crawford. The Central African Mission

• Preface

1. The Boatman’s Child
2. A Novel Apprenticeship
3. A Venture of Faith
4. An Untrammelled Start
5. Mushidi, an African Napoleon
6. The Wheels of God
7. The Aftermath of Strife
8. A Pioneer Prospector
9. The Village on the Lakeside
10. 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]