“When at length the ship left England I watched and watched the retreating tow-boat,” he continues, “until I could see it no longer, and then hurried down below.  Indeed, I felt for the moment as one paralysed.  Now is the time for reaction—­to ’cast all your care upon Him’.”

Strangely enough, both his missionary journeys in Africa failed in their original aim, which was to reach the kingdom of Uganda.

In the first journey the expedition started from the coast at the end of June, 1882.  After two months’ difficult marching into the interior, amidst the constant difficulties which beset the African traveller, he writes on 1st August:  “I am very happy.  Fever is trying, but it does not take away the joy of the Lord, and keeps one low in the right place”.

On, on they went.  Fever was so heavy upon him that his temperature reached 110 degrees; but still he struggled forward, insisting upon placing a weary companion on the beast which he ought himself to have ridden.

By 4th September they reached Uyui, a place which was still far distant from Lake Victoria (or Victoria Nyanza); and now he was at death’s door.  So intense was the pain he suffered that he asked to be left alone that he might scream, as that seemed to bring some relief.

Notwithstanding this suffering, the expedition started forward again on 16th October, Hannington being placed in a hammock.  They reached Lake Victoria, but the leader could go no further.  He was utterly broken down by continued fever; and, though the thought of returning to England without accomplishing his mission was bitter to him, it was a necessity.

By June, 1883, he was again in London.  How favourable was the impression Hannington had already made upon the Missionary Society is apparent from the fact that the bishopric of East Equatorial Africa was offered him.  He was consecrated in June, 1884; and, after visiting Palestine to confirm the churches there, he arrived in Frere Town on the west coast of Africa in January, 1885, and spent several months of useful work in organising.  By July, 1885, he was ready to attempt the second time to reach the kingdom of Uganda.

He determined to try a different route from that taken before, in order to avoid the fevers from which the previous expedition had suffered so terribly.

After surmounting many difficulties in his passage through Masai Land he had by October reached within a few days’ journey of Uganda; but there, on the outskirts of the kingdom he sought to enter, a martyr’s death crowned his brief but earnest mission life.

On 21st October, 1885, the bishop had started from his tent to get a view of the river Nile when about twenty of the natives set upon him, robbed him, and hurried him off to prison.  He was violently dragged along, some trying to force him one way, some another, dashing him against trees in their hurry, and bruising and wounding him without thought or consideration.  Although the bishop believed he was to be thrown over a precipice or murdered at once, he could still say, “Lord, I put myself in Thy hands; I look to Thee alone,” and sing, “Safe in the arms of Jesus”.