Another factor in the extermination of the Mpongwe is the demoralization of domestic life incident to methods of trade.... White traders all along the coast employ the Mpongwe as middlemen between them and the interior people, who possess the export products. The white man gives the middleman a certain quantity of goods on trust. With these he goes to the interior and establishes a small trading-post in one or several towns.... He has a wife or wives at Gaboon, and he takes to himself a wife or two at each of his interior trading-centres....
This demoralization of domestic life is even worse for the Mpongwe women than for their absent husbands. There is a large settlement of white men in Gaboon, most of them government officials.... Nearly all the Mpongwe women become the mistresses of these men.... The marriage tie in Gaboon has long ceased to be a “tie.”... The Protestant Christians of Gaboon are a very small community; but they are the best Christians I have known in Africa. They alone of the Mpongwe have good-sized families of healthy children. They are the living remnant of a dying tribe.
[Sidenote: The sufferings of motherhood.]
Two outstanding facts make the experience of motherhood in non-Christian lands a time of almost intolerable anguish, both physical and mental. The first of these facts is the absence of skilful, intelligent care previous to and during childbirth, and the second is the presence of innumerable superstitions that envelop the mother and her little one and the whole household.
It is a most interesting study to learn how customs differ in various lands and swing to extremes, from Persia, where the time of childbirth is the occasion for a large neighborhood gathering of women and children, to certain regions of China, where we are told that there is an absolute interdict on seeing mother or child for forty days after the birth, and during that time many and many a little one mysteriously disappears, never to be heard of again. In China the mother who loses her life before being able to give birth to her child is consigned by popular opinion to the very lowest hell, which is said to be reserved for the worst criminals. In a large Buddhist temple on a hill outside of Ningpo hangs a huge bronze bell, over which are tied numberless bunches of hair of women who have died in childbirth. When the bell is rung, the motion is supposed to pull the poor women out of the place of punishment. Among the Lao a woman dying in childbirth is not allowed to be cremated, for her death is supposed to have been caused by evil spirits and the victim is blamed and is not deemed worthy of cremation wherein is _merit_. These suffering mothers feel as if an angel from heaven had come to their aid, when the loving face of a missionary physician stoops over them, and her skilful hands minister to their needs. A few words by Dr. E. M. Stuart of the Church Missionary Society, at work in Ispahan, Persia, give a vivid picture of the need for women physicians and nurses to do this work,--a need that exists not only in Mohammedan harems, but in the zenanas of India and in the homes of other lands where women live in seclusion.