| Description | Predominantly from correspondents in Western Europe and North America, with a few items from elsewhere including Australia, the Azores, Baghdad, Brazil, Buenos Ayres [sic], 'Danish Accra', East Falkland, Mauritius, Penang, Pitcairn Islands, [Russia] (Archangel, Moscow and St Petersburg), South Africa, Sumatra, 'Tabreez', Valparaiso and the West Indies [Caribbean]. The letters are largely from CMS supporters and individuals, or organisations, with a shared interest in overseas mission work sending donations, requesting publications, appealing for help, urging the Society to extend mission work to particular areas, giving news of local CMS Associations or writing concerning translation work. There are also some letters from, and concerning, missionaries and prospective CMS candidates including letters of introduction, offer of service letters, testimonials and requests for financial assistance for former CMS missionaries and their families many relating to past and present students of the Basel and Berlin missionary training institutions. A number are in Latin, French or German with translations. The letters are endorsed with clerks' annotations giving date, name and location of correspondent and annotated with date of receipt.
Items of note include George William Emmanuel Metzger's description of the hostile response to his African wife in America in the 1830s and a few letters describing local inhabitants, customs and physical geography, such as, Leopold Butscher's account of parts of Western Africa 'inhabited by Mandingoes, Zumbias, Kanias, Susus, Nellos and Lantamers', 1830. |