IIBRARY OF PRINCETON FEB -92005 j THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY LIBRARY OP PRINCETON FEB-92005 THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY h WHAT'S O'CLOCK? ^ Jirlisf^jionain Book foi lions aiiti iL^iiis. GEORCINA A (,()LL()( K Author of " /./«,'/// //// Our Lesson^ i Willi i'Ki:FACK \\\ rill. HISIloP OF OSSORV i'oiulon : CHrk( 11 MISSIONARY SOCIKTY, SALlSHirkY Sc^UAkK. E.C. ''f> 1 894. SECOND EDITION. fly AUTHOR'S PREFACE. THE pleasure of writing this little book has been unexpectedly thrust into some four or five weeks already filled with other literary work. This must be the apology for many evident short-comings both in matter and in style. If the simple chapters make the great Heathen and Mohammedan World, and God's workers in it, more real to boys and girls, our end will have been gained. Warmest acknowledg- ments are due to the friends whose help in the preparation of the matter and the revision of the proofs has been so cordial and so extensive that I almost hesitate to call myself "The Author." TO THE READERS OF THIS BOOK, "\ Ary DEAR YOUNO FRIENDS,— This book is specially intended for ^^ " the young, and I have been asked to introduce it to you. But I really think it does not need any introduction ; for it can introduce itself, and you will soon find out that it is a very interesting com- panion. IJoys and girls like to meet people who can tell them about distant lands, and strange countries and curious customs, and this book is just like such pleasant folk, and it will be able, more- over, to show you pictures of the things that it describes. I confess that the first title of the book somewhat puzzled me — " W/iafs o Clock V What could it mean? and the children on the stairs seemed to be puzzled too, and the children who were looking over the screen were evidently trying to find out.* But when I saw the second title of the book — '' A Missionary Book for Boys and Girls,'' then I began to guess how it could become a Missionary Book ; and I remembered that there was once a schoolmaster called Mr. Carey, and that one day, as he was teaching geography from a big map of the world, he began to think about the heathen who lived in the far-off regions of the earth, and of the millions and millions who worshipped idols, and never heard of the true God, or of the dear Saviour who died for them ; and then the thought came into his mind that he would like to be a missionary, and go out to tell them " the glad tidings of great joy." It was God who put that thought into his heart, and in due time he went out to India, and became one of the greatest missionaries that the world ever saw. So you see that the map became a kind of Missionary Book to Carey ; and who can tell but that some boys and girls who read this book may be set thinking about the heathen too, and even if they are not led in future days to be mission- aries themselves, they may learn to help those noble men and women who go forth in God's name to fulfil Christ's last command — ''Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature." I have heard of a little boy who went to a missionary meeting, and when it was over he went up to the clergyman who had been telHng about the heathen, and handed him a penny to put into the collection. * The buys and girls un the cover are not seen in the doth edition of " What's o' Clock /" vi " Children of the Kingdom ^ "Is that all you have to give, my boy?" said the clergyman. '"That is all, Sir," replied the boy. " Would you not like to give yourself to be a missionary when you grow big ? " inquired the clergyman. And the boy replied very thoughtfully— " Yes, Sir, I would." The good clergyman placed his hands on the lad's head, and said, " Well, my dear boy, I pray that if it be God's Will, He will make you one in His own good time." Cxod heard that prayer, and the little boy, who had only the one penny to give, devoted himself in after days to the work of Missions, and carried the riches of the Gospel to the poor benighted heathen. But even if God does not call you to that blessed work. He can enable you to help it in many other ways. But you must first deepen your interest in it by increasing your information concerning it, and this will draw out your prayers and efforts on its behalf. We trust that this little book may in this way be a real missionary book to you. And I know that this was what the author of it had in mind when she wrote it. But let me remind you of something that is of primary importance if you would effectually help the missionary cause. There is a saying of the Lord Jesus which is often overlooked, and it is this : "The good seed are the children of the kingdom." We are all ready to remember the other saying of the Lord Jesus that " The seed is the Word of God," for we know that His Holy Word, whether it be by the preaching of the Gospel, or by the circulation of the Holy Scriptures, is the chief and precious seed with which the field of the world is to be sown in order to produce the glorious harvest of the Church of God. But we sometimes forget that Christians are not only to sow this seed, but that they are to be seed them- selves ; that their presence and influence in the world are meant to be a means of life and blessing to all around them. O what a help and furtherance it would be to the missionary cause if all who profess and call themselves Christians were them- selves a seed, whose life "was in itself after its kind," tending to produce fruit in others to the glory of the Great Husbandman, and the benefit of mankind. My dear young friends, let me impress upon you that the best and surest way to help the cause of Missions is, first of all, to give your own selves to God ; to receive the Lord Jesus into your hearts as your Saviour and your Friend, and thus by the grace of His Holy Spirit to become " the Children of the Kingdom." Then by your lives, as well as by your words, you may win others to the Lord ; and thus, wherever your lot is cast in life, whether at home or abroad, whether amongst the heathen in dark and benighted lands, or here amidst the full blaze of Gospel privileges, you will be preparing the world for the blessed day when the Son of man shall come in power and great glory, with His golden crown upon His head, and His bright sickle in His hand, to gather in His own abundant harvest. The Palace, Kilkenny, Wii.ltam P. OssoRV. CONTENTS I. TwtLVE oClock Land; or, Here ank Elsewiiekk . II. One o'clock Land; or, Things Old and New III. Two o'Cloik Land; or, Heroes and Heroism . . . . IV'. Three and Foik o'Cloc k Land; or. 1'erm, and PERSE(rrioN \'. Five o'Ci.oi k Land; or, Indian Jeui.i.s . . . . . \'I. Six o'Cloi k Land; or. Amonc. Straniie Peoi'les . \II. Seven oClock Land; or, A Ciiai ahoit China \'III. Nine oClock Land; or. Peeps .\t Japan ... IX. Ten o'Ci.ot k Land; or. Mother and Daiohiek X. Mid-Night Land; or. An 0( ean Story XI. D.w-Daun Land; or, The Red Mans Rest . . . I •4 26 46 53 71 81 .)6 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Time Chart of the World. . Frontispiece St. Bride's Church as seen from the Editor's Window .... 3 Village on the Upper Niger . . .4 Natives of the Niger .... 5 The Brass and Bonny Missions . • 6, 7 Lokoja from the River .... 8 N.-W. Marina, Lagos . . . .10 Faji Market, Lagos . . . . 11 Annie Walsh School, Sierra Leone. . 13 A Turkish Lady 16 Street Scene in Constantinople . . 17 An Arab Dinner ..... 20 A Dealer in Poultry . . . . .21 Crossing an African River — Boat-building 22 African Idols . . . . . 24, 25 An Arab Shop 28 Coffee and Tea Plants . . . . 29, 60 A Witch-Doctor . . . . -30 Washing the hands after meals . . 31 Mwanga, King of Uganda . . -32 Types of African Races • • ■ 33 The Mission Station at Usambiro . . 36 God's Acre at Usambiro • • • 37 Persian Ladies in Indoor Dress . . 40 Persian Orphan Boys . . . . 41 Travelling in Persia . . . .44 The Traveller's Tree .... 45 Mohammedan Warriors of North India . 47 Indian Girls in School. ... 48 School at Palamcottah . . . .49 Mehri and her Father .... 50 Medical Mission, Kashmir Buddhist Priests .... A Praying Wheel A Thibetan at Prayer . Thibetans with their Flocks • 51 53.56 ■ 54 55 Travelling in Thibet A .Street in China " The Perfectly Dutiful Boy " . Chinamen Persecuting Christians Chinese Boats .... Opium Smokers .... Buddhist Wcjrship ... A Merchant in a Jinricksha Good Night ! — Japanese in bed . Mount Fusiyama .... Taking Home a Blossom Branch. A Japanese Artist .... An Artistic Japanese . Japanese Peasants coming to Town A Pleasure Boat in Japan . An Ainu Girl ..... Japanese Mother and Child. PAGE • 58 61 • 63 64 65,67 . 66 69 • 71 72 • 73 74 • 75 76 • n 78 • 79 80 57 Natives of Australia . . . 81,83 Portraits of Mr. Eugene Stock and Rev. R. W. Stewart 82 New Zealander at Prayer . . .86 Maori Chiefs 87, 88 Fortified Pah, New Zealand . . -89 Bishop Selwyn of New Zealand . . 90 Heathen Maori Girls . . . -91 Landing of Missionaries ... 92 South Sea Islanders' Canoe . . .94 Last Resting-Places of the Red Man . 97 Among the Eskimo . . . . -98 Dog Train on the Ice .... 99 Indians in a Canoe ..... 100 An Indian Medicine-Man . . . loi C.M..S. Station, Kincolith, Naas River . 102 'View on the Skeena .... 102 C.M.S. Mission, Aiyansh, Naas River . 103 Miscellaneous i, 14, 23, 26, 33, 38, 46, 59, 62, 71, 78, 96, 104 WHAT'S O'CLOCK? ^ TWELVE a CLOCK LAND ; OR, HERE AM) ELSEWHERE. WHAT'S O'CLOCK?" Listen ! Ojie, two, three — the dear old stair-case clock has begun to strike— ^/bz/r, five, six — slowly and clearly the chimes ring out — seven, eight, nine — count carefully each solemn stroke — ten, eleven, TWKLVE ! Now the echoes die awa)', and the steady tick, toek, tick, goes on again, as second after second hastens b}'. It is noon, or mid-day here. l^ut suppose that at this moment you could ask a missionary in East Africa " What's o'clock?" his answer would not be the same as ours. He would have to sa)', "Two o'clock," or if he was in the coast district, "About half- |)ast two." If you asked the question still further ra'^t, in India, the answer would be. "About fu'c 2 Very Puzzling ! o'clock," and in China you would find it was seven o'clock in the evening when it is noon with us. In Australia at this moment boys and girls would be too sleepy to answer your question, and in New Zealand you would be scarcely able to ask it, for it is mx'^-nigJit there when it is m\^-day here, and all sensible folk would be in bed. If you want to know how this strange thing comes to pass you must ask father or mother, or some kind wise friend to explain it to you. They will tell you that the world rolls round from west to east on its axis in twenty-four hours, and that it is always twelve o'clock (noon) where the sun is right overhead. Japan, for instance, is directly under the sun each day long before England is rolled round to him, so it has come to be quite late (about nine o'clock in the evening) in Japan when it is mid-day here. Does this seem very puzzling ? I thought it would ! Just run off and ask some one to explain it to you, and then come back to read all the missionary stories in our book. I can promise you will understand tJiem ! This first chapter, as you see, is called " Twelve o'Clock Land " ; what does that mean ? Look at our frontispiece ; it is an outline map of the world, and if you want to know what o'clock it is in any part of the world when it is twcvlc o'clock here you have only to look at the lines marked on the map. You see the line running down through England, marked at the top with a large XII ? Follow it from top to bottom of the map ; all that strip is Twelve o'Clock Land. Now can you find One o'Clock Land ? And Two o'clock Land, and all the others ? \Vc are going to talk about these great strips of land in our chapters, and perhaps many of you will remember the names of missionary friends in the different countries as we go along. I have found it such a help in praying for God's dear servants far away to know just what o'clock it was with them, and what the}- were likely to be doing. But now about Twelve o'Clock Land. It is twelve o'clock exactly on that one long line ; it is a little after twelve in the places on the right-hand side, and a little before twelve in the places on the left-hand side. But it does not do to be too i)articu]ar, so you and 1 will consider England, Ireland, and Scotland, to be in Twelve o'Clock Land, though they really spread a little on either side of it ; and also we must include all those parts of West Africa where the C.M.S. is at work. Behind the Scenes. 3 First, you must peep with me intf) a lar^^e room in the C"hurch Missionary House in London. Crimson haiiL,n'nLjs brii^hten the walls, and portraits of well-known missionary workers look gravely at us. Here we find a number of earnest men, most of them past middle life, listening to some one who is speaking, or readin^r a letter from the Mission Field. By-and-by they all go down on their knees, and one of them lays the matter in prayer before (iod. That is a missionary committee. \ pce[) into another room would show us a wise and kind-hearted clergyman talking to a young man or \oung woman who wants to be a missionary. In other rooms we should see men (and women, too!) busy over piles of papers, and letters, or else counting carefully the money given to help God's work abroad ; and here, in the Editor's room, if you step for one moment to the window, you will see through the telephone and telegraph wires a view of St, Bride's Church, where the C.M.S. Anniversary Ser- mons are preached ; and, farther off, the beautiful *■ dcme of St. -^s SEfc•^f -— i"'.., ", ^>i%Ji 4 Hard at Work. Paul's. There, is no idleness in this part of Twelve o'Clock Land. It is all real hard work. I think you will quite believe this when I tell you that all the central work of the C.M.S. is done in these busy rooms. This great missionary society is ninety-three years old. It has 327 Mission stations in different parts oi the world. It has 613 ordained missionaries, European or Native, and 71 unordained European missionaries. It has 349 European lady missionaries, married and unmarried, and 4,207 Native Christian teachers. That is to say, it is more or less responsible for the work of 5,240 people in the Mission Field ! Besides all these workers abroad there is the great army of workers at home — I could not possibly V1L1..\GH 0.\ THE UPPER NIGER. {See p. 'J.) ''Sleep Money" NATIVKS ON TllK N'IGF.K. {ScC />. g.) number them ! — and these all, directly or indirectly, mean somethinc^ in the form of work for those at the CM. House, thouj^h they mean, too, a great deal of welcome help. You must remember that this house we have been visiting is only one among many. In other places, too, earnest workers are trying to set forward the Kingdom of Jesus Christ in foreign lands. Not only in London, but all over England, and in Scotland and Ireland as well, are wise hearts toiling gladly for the cau.se they love. Even boys and girls are helping — in gifts, in work, in prayer. I have read a lovely story of a little girl — quite poor, and with no money of her own — who gave a gentleman i/j. 6(/. for foreign Missions. He asked her how she could give so much, and then she told him she had earned it all. a halfpenny at a time, by getting up to wake her neighbours, who had to be very verf early at work. She had gone round shivering with cold, in the dark winter mornings, that she might earn this money for God's work. She called it her " sleep money," and gave it quite simply, as if she had done an ordinary thing. The gentleman's heart was so touched that he added ;:{^ioo to her little gift before he sent it on for the missionaries. Thank God there is even one such child as that little loving girl ! Please Stop But oh ! before we leave this part of T \\' e 1 V e o'clock Land, we must look into home a f t e r home where iiotJiing is being done; we must mourn over the men and women, and tlie boys and girls, who seldom give to God's missionary work, or labour for it, or pray for it. I want the boys and girls who read this book to STOP when they get as far as this, and to ask, "What am I doing ? Am I giving, and work- ing, and praying? or am I only living to please myself? " But we must hasten on, or this first chapter will fill up our book. North of England, our Twelve o'Clock line passes right up into the Arctic Ocean without ever touching land. But when we follow it southward we find ourselves in France, where the brave Huguenots were massacred long ago, and where many men and women are doing true missionary work to-day, leading souls out of the darkness of atheism, or Roman Catholicism, into the pure Gospel of Jesus Christ. Next, our line takes us through proud, beautiful Spain, just waking from the spiritual slumber of ages, and stretching out her hand for the Word of Life. Oh, what missionary stories I could tell you about work in France and Spain ! Why, this is like one of those provoking raihvay journeys, in which every place looks so {Sec p. L).) * __ More than Sand in the Soudan. nice that you long to get out at the nearest station, and }-et you have to go on to the place for which your ticket is taken ! Just at present our ticket is for West Africa, so we must follow our line, not only past France and Spain, but across the blue Mediterranean, through the fertile belt of country on the African coast, and right across the dread Sahara desert until we come to the broad Niger River, flowing eastward and southward to the sea. The Niger is 2,000 miles in length, and was first discovered in 1797 by a traveller named Mungo Park. It flows through the southern part of the great Soudan, Here, though many of the people are black, others are a light brown. They arc not naked, like savages, but wear graceful, flowing robes. They are not idolaters, worshipping hideous idols or fetishes, but Mohammedans, who worship the False Prophet, and hate both Christians and heathen alike. Some of these people are very fierce and warlike, others are more peaceful, and keep flocks and herds. There are large, strong towns on the river banks, and merchants from many places come to buy and sell. And all this is in the place where }'ou and I used to think only sand could be found ! Has no one tried to take the Gospel of Jesus Christ to all these people far up the Niger River? Yes, indeed. Ever since 1841 the C.M.S. has wanted to reach these " regions beyond." Bishop Crowthcr, who died in 1891, was, with others, sent up the Niger more than once when he was a young man, but though Native teachers were placed here and there, the Mohammedans of the interior were ne\er reallv reached. Then in the si)ring of 1890 the C.M.S. >? , > }, sent out a party of brave, earnest men and women "'^^X-^ \\ to the Soudan. They were stationed at Lokoja. a % -— -^^^.-Oi' town marked on the map, where the Niger and the Binue rivers meet. Some of them quickly learned the languages needed, and people from further up the river &:'^^^^' :\y:' V ^ ■'*^" Housts * BCLONQING TO TH "' .l*'" C.M.S. Mission. {See p. 9.) Sorro2V at Lokoja. ' *"' ' ' ' Kit. I' , ^!«2U!»-_ tile very Moham- medans whom they wanted to reach, began to come in and ask questions, and listen to what the missionaries had to say. But soon difficuUies arose in Lokoja. Ilhiess came ; from one cause or another various members of the party had to come home ; the Rev. J. A. Robinson, who had worked with ceaseless energy, died, and at last Mr. Graham Wilmot Brooke was the only white missionary left at Lokoja. Then he, too, was taken ill of fever, and died with no European near him. only a few faithful Native Christians to nurse him and lay him to rest. Thus the Upper Niger was once more left without a single European missionary to tell of the love of Jesus for the millions of the Soudan. But those two lonely graves are proof that we have not seen the end as yet. Life always comes out of death, and God's victory after .seeming defeat. The great Soudan is part of the " world " which He " .so loved," and in it, as elsewhere, the Gospel piusl be " preached as a witness " before the Lord Jesus comes. Now we must voyage down the Niger to the sea, leaving Lokoja behind. The people are not well-clad, haughty Mohammedans, but regular African savages, with, in some places, a savage magnificence of their own. There are just myriads of them ; we meet them in their great canoes, we .see their towns and villages on the river banks. Notwithstanding all their A Dismal Delta. 9 savage ways and cruel practices, they have immortal souls, and the Lord Jesus loves them. Why do not more missionaries go out to tell them of His love ? Perhaps you know that 140 miles from the sea the Niger forms a delta — that is, instead of being one great river it divides up into a number of streams, each one of which finds its own way to the sea. This Niger Delta is an awful {)lace. The sluggish streams creep along through black, dismal mud, out of which mangrove trees spring up ; fever haunts the anxious traveller ; the people are most degraded savages— cannibals until just of late ; and all is gloomy, noisome, and still. Yet in and near this delta missionaries are at work. True, they go there with their lives in their hands, but is not that worth while if even one soul can be won } There are many true Native Christians in the Niger Delta to-day, and places where hideous human sacrifices were offered have now neat and simple churches, filled with men and women who have learned to worship God, As we come out of the Niger Delta, and see the Mission stations of Brass and Bonny (see pictures on pages 6 and 7). where the C.M.S. has long been at work, we find ourselves on the Atlantic Ocean, quite a long way to the east of our Twelve o'Clock line. As we hasten towards it, pass- ing all the many mouths of the delta streams, we come to Lagos, a large town of .some 80,000 inhabitants, built on a sandbank, with a lagoon between it and the mainlantl. Lagos is the port of the Yoruba countr\-, where the C.M.S. has had a Mission since 1843. The missionaries in the inland districts have often been in great danger, for the native tribes are ver\- quarrel.some, and sometimes it has not been possible to get from Ibadan, an inland town, to the coast, because .some warlike tribe blocked the way. Ihis happened last in the spring of 1S92, and our missionaries there were only able to write to us because a Native Christian made his wa\- through the disturbed district with their letters at the risk of his life. Lagos u.sed to be a great centre of the slave-trade, but that ceased when it was annexed by England in 1861. It has now got an English Governor appointed by the Crown. There are very few Europeans in Lagos, only the missionaries, and some business men and traders, but there are many rich natives who wear European dress, and live in large houses, and are well educated. Nearlv all these are Christians in name lO Life at Lagos. and some arc so in heart. Besides these there arc several thousand Mohammedans, and numbers of heathen, very poor and ignorant, who Hve in sin and misery, and worship idols. I don't think you would care to live in Lagos. It is very very hot, and I am afraid the town is very very dirty. Then the poorer natives eat a great deal of palm oil, and that has what wc consider a most unpleasant smell. They delight in "palm oil chop," that is, a kind of oily stew, into which they put any kind of meat they can get — rats do nicely ! When the tide is low, the mud in the lagoon smells strongly, and the missionaries get out of health and have to go for a little change. It is much too far to come home to England, except when they are seriously ill, or when it is their proper holiday time, so they have a little house or hut, down on the beach a few miles away, to which they sometimes go. It is not quite a seaside lodging such as you or I would like. It is very bare, and very lonely, and though the big ocean waves break in, the air is not fresh and bracing as it would be here at home. And as to the sand-flies and other torments, they simply devour a white visitor when they can get one, and the rats — oh, at night the rats just run riot, and they are not nice neigh- bours in the dark. People cannot keep well in a hot climate without exercise, and as they are often not strong enough for much walking, riding is very good for them. The natives in West Africa are much alarmed if they see a white lady riding, and often say, '' Pelc ! pclc !'' (softly! softly !) as she goes In along. M. ^"3^ ^M\ N.W.^\V^m^ /.Aqoon Wd'h Lagos horses are very cheap, but I %1^^A scarcely won - ^ ^ der at it, for they are cer- tainly very ill-mannered. Two of them will rush at one another Love endures in the street, riders and all, and begin to ri<;lit as dogs migiit. When they do this, the Nati\c riders cleverly slide off, and get out of the \va\'. There is no grass or ^ ^ green food in Lagos, so those who keep a horse ha\'e to send a man in a boat to the mainland, and he climbs up a hill and cuts some grass, and brings it back in his boat, and so the horse gets his dinner. Do )'ou wonder w/ij' missionaries ever go to a place like this ? I think if you asked them, they would say, " The love of Christ constraineth us." No one forces or even begs them to go to West Africa ; if they made the tiniest objection to go there they would be sent somewhere else. But they know the Lord Jesus loves the people in Lagos, and in all the Voruba district, and so the missionaries go there for His sake. Besides this, the\' learn to love the people thcmelvcs and the work. I have had an almost heart-broken letter from a missionary at Lagos who was afraid of being obliged to come home to Lngland altogether, from ill- health, and I have heard that same missionar\' tell stor\' after stor\- of the Lagos Christians until I ha\e learned to love them myself. The C.M.S. has six European clerg\-mcn and five European lady missionaries in the Yoruba Mission, of whom two clergymen and three ladies are at Lagos. There are schools both for boys and girls, and training institutions for teachers as well. One more C.M.S. Mission in West Africa, and then we have done with T\\ clve o'Clock Land. Though we name the Sierra Leone Mission last, it was reall\- the first of the three, as it began in 1816. Sierra Leone 12 " TJie White Man <; Graver itself is a fertile peninsula about twenty-six miles long by twelve wide, but the Mission includes other districts round it. When the English men-of- war rescued poor slaves who were being carried out of Africa they used to land them at Sierra Leone. It would have been much nicer to send them home, but as they came from many distant places that would have been difficult, and besides, all their homes had been destroyed. So they were settled at Sierra Leone, and after a time missionary work began among them. You can imagine it was not easy at first. About one hundred languages were spoken in the little peninsula, the people were terribly ignorant, and so unwilling to be civilised, that when clothing was given to them they would tear it up or throw it away. Besides this, the climate proved so deadly that the place was known as " the white man's grave." But through toil and suffering God's work went on. Many poor dark hearts were lit up with heavenly light ; boys and girls flocked in to be taught ; raid the little colony began to grow rich and prosperous in earthly things, had many churches, and real worshippers, too. Now the Africans in Sierra Leone are no longer poor and needy and ignorant, but well-to-do men and women, able to support Native churches of their own. They have an English Bishop and many Native clergymen, and regular parishes ; the people, too, are trying to reach out to others round them who have not yet heard of God's great gift. The C.M.S., however, has still a Mission to Mohanmiedans in Sierra Leone, a very important college for training natives for the ministry known as Fourah Bay College, and a large girls' school called the Annie Walsh Memorial Institution. Many of the girls educated at the " Annie Walsh," as we generally call it, go out to be teachers afterwards, so you may be sure the lady missionaries long to see them true followers of Jesus Christ. Some of the black girls are very naughty ; others are loving and good. In fact, in this and many other ways they are very like the white girls whom you and I know at home. The missionaries do all they can ; but there is another Worker in the school to Whom they look for aid. The Holy Spirit of God is working among these dear dark sisters of ours just as much as He is in any English school, and it is such joy to hear sometimes that He has been specially stirring the girls to long for the forgiveness of sin, and the power to lead a new life. Bishop Cr Old her. 13 Till-: AWIK W.M.SH MKMOKIAI. SCHOOL, SIKKKA I.KONK. I think the easiest wa)' to remember our three Missions in Twelve o'clock Land is by groupin. They are not the only Missions the Lord Jesus ' loves ; there are many other societies just as dear to Him, and the Holy Spirit is just as much with other missionaries as He is with those of the C.M.S. If we want to be like the Lord Jesus, we must be full of love for all who go forth in His name. I said the C.M.S. had no stations now in One o'Clock Land, but they were very busy there some seventy-five years ago. It is an old story, but I want you to know it all the same. If you find the Island of Malta, you will see it is pretty well in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. Looking towards the East from Malta, you see on the map the countries of Turkey and Greece, the islands of the Archipelago, and the coast of Asia Minor and Palestine. Under Turkish control. 15 In these lands the Gospel of Jesus Christ had its earliest home, and the seven Churches spoken of in the Book of Revelation were situated there. All these countries — except the Island of Cyprus, which has latcl\- become part of the British I^mpire, and Greece, which is an independent kingdom — are under Turkish control. That means a great deal where missionary work is concerned. The Turks are hard and often unjust masters to the j)eople over whom they rule. They are very bigoted Mohammedans, and though "religious liberty" is supposed to be given the people arc not really free. There are still many Christians members of the ancient h^astern Churches — living in these lands ; but instead of having a good influence upon their Mohammedan neighbours, I fear they have taught them to despise the very name of Christianity. These Eastern Churches have grown cold and dead and superstitious, and have lost the true Light. They do not read the Bible, and they mi.x up much super- stition with their worship of God. Early in this century the C.M.S. looked longinglx' at the Mohammedans, in the countries on the eastern Mediter- ranean shores. It was felt that while the P2astern Christians ought to be missionaries among them, they really made missionary work almost impos- sible, by degrading the religion of Jesus Christ into a worship which the Mohammedans felt to be much worse than their own. So in order to get at the Mohammedans it seemed as if the first thing was to try to help the poor, dark Eastern Churches back into the light they had lost. The C.M.S. therefore made Malta their head-quarters, and sent out wise and patient workers to make friends with the leaders of the Eastern Churches. For a time this fascinating work went on, man)' visits were paid all round the coasts, man}- books were issued from the printing-press in Malta, man)- children were taught. But presentl}' it became quite clear that the JCastern Churches did not desire to be reformed, and shrank from the light of God's Word, and finally the attempt was given up. Some years later, the C.M.S. started a Mission in Constantinople (see picture on page 17) among the Mohammedans. Ikit the converts were exposed to terrible persecution ; they were imprisoned and even beheaded. Things grew brighter once or twice, but one day when the Mission seemed most prosperous, the Turkish police suddenly attacked the premises of the C.M.S, and closed them b}- force. From that da}- onward there was steady, i6 Hidden Bibles. watchful opposition to all missionay work ; spies were set, and inquirers were persecuted. A European missionary could not visit in a Turkish house without rousing suspicion ; no church for public Christian service had any chance of being authorised by Govern- ment ; no missionary school for young Mo- hammedans would be tolerated ; and even Christian books were seized and burnt. At last, in 1877, when the work still continued to be beset with difficulty, the Constantinople Mission was given up, and the C.M.S. has now no work in One o'Clock Land. Now I want you to look up our line until it brings you into Austria ; the little province of Moravia, though not marked on the map, is there. Perhaps you have heard of the Moravian Church of the United Brethren ; this province was their early home. There was an ancient Christian Church in Bohemia and Moravia, true in practice and in doctrine to the Word of God. The wonderfully thrilling story of the bitter persecu- tions which beset it and the heroic endurance of its teachers and members, is one you ought to read if you can. At last all outward tokens of its existence were swept away, but God had still true followers in the land, and they were able secretly to worship Him. Here and there a precious Bible was hid in a cellar, or in a hole in the wall, or in a space beneath a dog-kennel. Sometimes the farmers would bring a pastor hidden in a load of hay in a cart, that he might preach to them on the Sunday ; sometimes a man in woodman's dress, with axe in hand, would walk quietly through the forest, and only the true Christians knew that he was a pastor come to hold a service at the risk of his life. How different to our open worship, and quiet gathering at church ! A TURKISH LADY. A Potter and a 17 But in the year 1722 a great wakening came, so deep and so real that it could not be hid. It was impossible to serve God openly whore they were, so the brethren who had been stirred by the Holy Spirit resolved to leave home and friends and go to a place called Herrnhut, about fifty miles from Dresden, where Count Zinzendorf was ready to welcome them, and found a little colonx' there. Party after party followed these first pilgrims to Herrnhut, antl finally they settled down into an organized Church. Ten years later, when their little company only numbered 600 souls, the>' began foreign missionary work. That was in 1732, sixty-seven years before the Church Missionary Society was founded. A potter and a -r^_ ^ -**5!S<^;^i;»^ STREET SCENE IN CONSTANTINOPLE. (See p. 15.) 1 8 " His partikler Hymnsy carpenter set out from lierrnhut, with a bundle apiece as their luggage, and about a pound in money, to make their way to the Island of St. Thomas, in the West Indies, in order to begin work amongst the slaves. In the next year, 1733, the Moravians sent out missionaries to the Eskimos; in 1734 to the North American Indians; in 1735 to the South American Indians ; in 1736 to the Hottentots in South Africa ; and within twenty-four years of the time when the potter and carpenter went out, eighteen different Missions had been started. " Will you go to-morrow to Greenland as a missionary ? " said Count Zinzendorf to a Moravian brother who had had no previous idea that so startling a question was about to be asked him. He hesitated for just a moment, and then answered, "If the shoemaker can finish the boots that I have ordered of him by to-morrow, I will go." This was the spirit in which these men faced missionary work. Here are two stories about the first Moravian Mission in the West Indies, which will show you what the converts were like. An aged slave woman, one of the Moravian converts, had been ill, and was threatened with punishment by the overseer for absence from work. '■ Master," she said, " the earth on which I must stretch myself to receive blows is the Lord's, and, if you have me killed, my body will be all the sooner at rest. My soul, which you cannot slay, will go to the enjoyment of blessedness with my Lord Jesus." Like most coloured people, the West Indian converts are very fond of hymns. One dear old Native helper used to keep his hymn-book crammed with slips of paper, blades of grass, dried leaves, cane-tops, and bits of rag as book-markers. One day the missionary suggested that it would be better to take them out or the back of the book would burst, but Jacob would not hear of such a thing, exclaiming, " Oh, massa ! dem vac partikler hymns ! " The Moravian Church has never been rich or great, but it has always held the foremost place in foreign missionary work. More than 2,000 missionaries were sent out by the Moravians in 150 years. You have often heard it said that out of every 5,000 Protestant communicants only one goes to the Mission Field ; but the Moravian Church sends one out of about every fifty of her communicants. I have read of one little Moravian community, settled in the Black Forest, and numbering only 418 souls, DezvitcJiiiig CJiihircn. 1 9 who, in 1882, had twenty-one of its sons and daughters in the Mission Field. Most of our city churches have conj^regations as large as that whole com- niunit}', but is there one among them which has )'et sent out twenty-one missionaries ? Now we come to One o'Clock Land in Africa. Again we cross the Mediterranean Sea, but this time we cannot pass down through North Africa without a word about the workers there. All along this northern coast numbers of Arabs live, only a few days' journey from London. Our pictures on pages 20 and 21 show you a little what they are like. They are all Mohammedans, and great patience is required for the work among them, for the\' are afraid to listen, and very slow to own that they believe in the Lord Jesus, because they know it means persecution if they take an open stand. Much work is done by visiting the women in their homes, and trying to teach them, and the children too. The Arab children are most bewitching little things ! The missionaries lose their hearts to them, and write home descriptions of their pretty ways and beautiful dark eyes. One missionary friend of mine used to carry some " sweeties " with her, and when she saw a little Arab girl peeping through a doorway she would pop a bon-bon into her hand. Of course the little girl's mother liked this, and the missionary was sometimes asked to come in and have a talk, which was just what she wanted, in return for her sweeties. The missionaries working all along this African coast, most of them sent out by the North Africa Mission, have inany trials and difficulties ; I think we ought often to pray for them, don't you .'* Next we come to the River Congo and the Congo Free State, and all the wonderful Central African things that come into One o'Clock Land. This Congo is the second largest river in all the world. It has — if you include the rivers that flow into it — no less than 22,000 miles of river- bank, more or less peopled with Native villages. The Congo has not got a delta like the Niger ; the lower part of the river is a broad estuary, but some distance up from the sea there are tremendous cataracts. The river rushes through narrow gorges, forming grand foaming rapids, and prevent- ing any boat from going up or down. A railway is now being made beside these cataracts, which will do a great deal to open up the Congo to the outer world. At present everything has to be carried from Yellala to AN ARAB DINNER. {See p. ig.) Stanley Pool (a distance of many miles) by African porters, which is an expensive and unsatisfactory proceeding, especially if one's luggage happens to be a boat ! as in our picture on page 22. A ton of luggage can be sent from England to the lower river for about £2, but it used to cost about jCyo to get it to Stanley Pool, above the rapids. You must surely have heard of Mr. Henry Stanley, the great traveller, and of all his explorations on the Congo. Perhaps you know, too, some- thing about the Congo Free State which he helped to form, and over which Leopold II. of Belgium rules. A great deal is being done to encourage trade, and to pacify and govern the natives. They are greatly impressed when the neat little Free State steamer glides up the river and anchors near a town. They think the engineer is a cook, and the boiler of the steamer a big pot, and when they see all the wood (there is no coal avail- able at present) being put into the fire they imagine some very wonderful medicine is being prepared, which takes a long time to make. As to how the wheels go round they are completely puzzled ! Travellers on the Upper Congo tell us terrible things of the Arab slave-raiders whom they meet there. Although the export slave-trade has been stopped on the West Coast and greatly checked on the East Coast, the slavery of Africans in Africa is still going on. The people enslave -/ rnb Slave- raiders. 21 one another, but bad a^ that is, it is as nothin^r compared with the terrible cruelties of the Arab slave-raiders, who ravage the whole heart of Africa, leavinij ruin in their track. A passion for <,rain possesses them. They will do an\'thing to be ricli. Thev come inland to hunt for ivor>', but when they have got it, the great elephant tusks cannot walk to the coast ; there are no trains, no waggons, they must be carrieil on the shoulders of men and women if they are to bring money to the men who care for money most of all- Now it would be costly work to pay porters to carry the ivory to the coast, so the Arabs attack the Native villages, burn the houses, kill the men who resist them, and carry ofT all the inhabitants who survive to bear their treasures to the coast. The weak and sickly die ; man)-, cruelly ill-treated, are killed on the journey ; and finally the wretched survivors are sold, like the ivory, when they reach the coast. Perhaps )'ou think the Arabs attack a fezc villages, and onl)' steal a Jew natives for this work. Listen! When .Mr. .Stanley was on the lift''-'*" 'iwit ^ ..-V .\ DEALER IN POL'I.TRY. (Serf). iq.\ 22 A /I Aiuful Talc. Upper Congo something floated past the little steamer one day. They touched tlie mass with a boat-hook, and saw two Native women, dead, tightly tied together with rope. Round the next turn in the river the Arab slave-raiders' encampment came in sight. This one party had been out for eleven months, they had been through a district much larger than Ireland, spreading fire and death wherever they went ; Mr. Stanley found they had destroyed ii8 villages along the river banks, and they had 2,300 natives chained together in cruel captivity. Oh, boys and girls ! you and I have got to finish the fight our forefathers so nobly began. We "an E\P1 NSIVI \ND I NS^TlSh \CT0KY PROCEEDING ESPECI \LL\ W ()\hS LUOG VCE ,^ - ^£^^^ HAPPLNS TO BF A BO M ' ^ ^^^l^f {Sii p 20 ) f^^. Lower Congo (be- now they are pusli- on the upper river to Europeans in irmy of martyrs " " Vcrj', VERY /o;/^ a^(K" must not cease to toil and watch and pray until this bleeding sore of poor, poor Africa is healed. There are about 130 missionaries on this great River Congo. Some of them come from Sweden, some of them from America; the largest number come from England, but none of them belong to the C.M.S. They began work on the tween the rapids and the sea) in 1878, but ing fast inland; planting station after station and its tributaries. The climate on the lower river is deadly many parts. A goodly number of the " noble have laid down their lives there. On land, too, there are scorpions and serpents, and in the water crocodiles and alligators abound. A small canoe crossing the river near one of the Mission stations was attacked by alligators, the side of the canoe smashed in, and one of the three natives in it carried off by an alligator to make a feast for himself and his friends. The people are very ignorant ; they live in terror of various superstitions and they worship hideous idols, like those in our pictures on pages 24 and 25. It is most difficult to teach them, they are so degraded and dull. For instance, they have no idea of time. A missionary began to teach them about Adam and Iwe, who, he said, had lived very, vaj, VERY long ago. They thought over this, and then pointing to their old chief (since dead) said inquiringly, '-When iMakokilo was a little boy.'" Their minds could go no further back than that! But now the Native Christians in that same place have a new way of measuring time. They often say things happened before, or after, "the Holy Spirit came." This does not refer to the Day of Pentecost, of which we read in the Second Chapter of Acts, but to a wonderful work of the Holy Spirit which was done among these poor Congo savages in 1S.S5. For about si.K years a missionary had been at work among them, and had not seen a single one really seeking Jesus Christ, l^ut at last results began to come. The missionary's own heart was filled with the Spirit of God, who also worked 24 A Wonderful Change. upon the people. One came, then another came, and then twos and threes, and then Httle groups, and finally companies of people, convinced of their own sin, and longing for a Saviour who could cleanse them and set them free. Many, many from among them really gave their hearts to the Lord Jesus, as was proved by their changed lives and their steadfast witness to His grace. The poor women, who before were treated like beasts, and were always miserable and downcast, were lit up with new joy, and went out with their husbands to tell their neighbours what God had done. The dreadful idol songs were heard no longer, Gospel hymns echoed along the roads, thieves became honest, liars spoke the truth, and the poor naked women, ashamed for the first time of their condition, began to long to be clothed. One, who had just become a Christian, said piteously to the lady missionary who had taught her, " Now I want some clothes ; I don't like having my skin outside." The husbands do all the sewing in Congo land, and as soon as they become Christians they make their wives a dress ! Every day at one o'clock— that is just when it is twelve o'clock here ! — they used to stop their field work and have their mid-day meal, and then gather eaoerly to be taught. And they took a great deal of teaching, because, you see, they had grown up without ever trying to learn, and so their minds were very slow and helpless. But the Spirit of God had wonderfully quickened them, and day by day He opened their understandings, to take in the thino-s of God. Now do you wonder that the natives date everything from the time " the Holy Spirit came " } Far up the Congo river men still eat their fellow-men. Sometimes they regu- larly fatten their victims before they have a feast. Yet even on this upper river brave men — and women, too — are to be found living and labouring for Jesus Christ, and already in far Balolo land there have been true converts baptized. As we follow our line further south- wards our own Cape Colony brings us to the end of One o'Clock Land. There is a great deal to tell you about the Kaffirs, and AN AFRICAN IDOL COVERED WITH HUMAN SKIN. One Story. Hottentots, and Bushmen, and about the past and present state of South Africa. But we must hasten on. One story only you shall have, and that is about the first Christian missionary to South Africa, a Moravian named George Schmidt. He was only twenty-seven years old when he started for South Africa, but he had already spent six years in a Bohemian prison because he was true to Jesus Christ. He arrived in Cape Town in 1737, that is, si.xty-two years before the C.JVI.S. was founded. He was re- ceived with scorn by the Dutch, who were then in possession, but the Hottentots gathered round him, and by degrees man)- of them became true children of God. With opposition and coldness round him, George Schmidt laboured on, quite alone, the only Christian missionary in the zuholc continent of Africa. Then the Dutch colonists themselves, Christian though they were in name, took alarm at seeing the Hottentots taught, and raised to the level of men. So George Schmidt was forbidden to baptize any more converts, he was compelled to leave South Africa, and he was never able to obtain leave to return there again. He worked as a home evangelist for some time, in Silesia, then he became a day- labourer, and finally a sexton and grave- digger. One day, when he was seventy-six years of age, after working in his garden a little in the morning, he went to his room to pray in private, as usual, for South Africa. There, a little later, he was found, still upon his knees, but his spirit had gone home to God. Hi mil i DEATH, CHAPTER III. f% /j \ TWO a CLOCK LAND; OR, HEROES AND HEROISM. GIVE THEE TWO O'CLOCK LAND! That means Palestine, and Arabia, and Egypt, and Abyssinia, and the whole of Eastern Equatorial Africa, including the great inland seas ! First for a word about Palestine. You know what a little country it is, yet it has been the spiritual centre of the whole wide world. It was the home of God's chosen people ; it was the scene of our Lord's life and death ; it was the place where the Holy Spirit was poured out upon the infant Church ; and from there the first Christian missionaries went out. In our roll of missionary heroes we place first and foremost men like the Apostle Paul, who, called and separated by the Holy Ghost, and then by the Church, went forth to preach the Gospel of JesLis Christ to the Gentiles. Who has had more adventures or braved more dangers than he .? Is there any scene in which a modern missionary faces a heathen king which is more stirring than that of St. Paul before Agrippa } Is there any bold yet wise exposure of heathen error more ring- ing than that given by the Apostle on the Hill of Mars } But all the missionary interest in this little land of Palestine is not connected with the past. Since 185 i the C.M.S. has had a Mission there, round which a great deal of loving, longing prayer has centred. This Holy Land, where God was once the King, is now under Mohammedan power, and, as elsewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean, this means great hindrance to all missionary work. Then again, the Christians, who form a Learning and Listening. 27 large part of the population in Palestine, are members of a Church which has lost her light, and mixes up dark superstitions with the worship of God. The Mohammedans scarcely dare listen to the Gospel, and those who come to Mission schools or even to talk to the missionaries are suspected and watched. The lady missionaries have seen the little Moslem scholars rush to hide themselves in cupboards when they have seen a Turkish spy come into the courtyard, liut through all the difficulties God's blessed work is going on. Moslems do come to learn and listen, homes long shut to the lady missionaries are now opening their doors, and many men and women in Palestine have learned to love and follow the Lord Jesus Christ. Ik-autiful stories of encouragement come to us month by month, and if only we who have the true light shine on bravely and push forward into the darkness, many, many souls, both among the Moham- medans and the Greek Christians in Palestine, will be won for Christ. The C.M.S. has thirty European missionaries in Palestine, of whom sixteen are ladies; but other societies have missionaries there as well. A <^reat deal is being done by schools for the dear winsome children, over 1,700 of whom come to C.M.S. schools; and Medical Missions are also most useful in reaching the people. I want you often to pray for the work and the workers in Palestine, asking God, for the Lord Jesus' sake, to make it a Holy Land once more. South of Palestine lies Arabia. Half of it is really in Three o'Clock Land, but as we cannot make "two bites" of it, we shall just finish what there is room to say about it here. Arabia is the very centre of Mohammedanism. A great part of it is desert, but it is said to have a population of sixty millions. It is the only large country in the world besides Thibet into which missionaries have not yet penetrated. Mecca is the capital of Arabia, and the holy city of the Mohammedans. PLach Mohammedan who can do so makes a pilgrimage to it, and wherever he is, he turns towards Mecca when he prays. The Arabs are great merchants, and large caravans bring dates and coffee and other merchandise to the coast. In our picture on page 28 you see an Arab .shop, and on page 29 a "coffee picture." In the southern jxirt of Arabia is the town of Aden, which belongs to PZngland. It is used as a coaling station for Indian shi[)s, and is an important possession. It is 2- others who lived and died for God. Then, too, you will want to know what the country and the people are like. Well, our pictures must tell you that, while I talk about one ICast African hero whose story you ought to know. On page 30 you see a picture of a witch-doctor, who has terrible power over the people in several districts ; on this page you see a native of the Giriama country washing his hands ; he has the water in a hollow gourd, which he holds in his mouth b>- the handle, and lets the precious water trickle over his hands. MVVANGA, KING OF LUANDA. Then here as you see, you liave a picture of Mwanga, King of Uganda, the man who caused Bishop Hannington to be murdered, and on the opposite page you see some natives called Wanyamwezi ; please to admire their head-dresses and ornaments ! Thus our pictures help to tell you what I must leave unsaid. The name of our hero is John Ludwig Krapf. In a little German village, quite early in this centur)', we see a farmer's son, busily engaged in learning I'Vench and Greek and Latin and Italian, \ \ \ the director of the nary at Basle hoiiestly heart must first be rc- later there is no doubt heart" has been given comes a missionary student. We pass over several years, and many incidents, until we come to February, 1 837 (just four months before Queen Victoria Cjfltit, l^rfiiJU Sfnif/i^'-f- Races. and poring over a map of Africa, especially the blanks left for unexplored districts south of the Red Sea. Boy- likc, he wonders if there are any hy;enas there. Two years later the lad hears /^/- the first tiiiu- of the heathen, and in- stantly longs to become a mi.ssionary. But in his own heart he knows he is not fit, because he has not yet given himself t(j the Lord Jesus. However, the desire grows, and at last, when he is fifteen years of age, great missionar\- semi- tells him that his own ncwed. Two years but that the " new lini. and Krapf be- ascended the throne), when John Ludwig Krapf set out as a C.M.S. missionary \o Ab\ssinia. Journe\-- ing in remote i)arts of the world was very different t he n from now; sailing ships bore the traveller to Egypt, and a camel took him across the Suez isthmus, where there now 34 A Voice froi/i t/ic Grave. is, as you know, a canal. Then we find Krapf in an Arab vessel, which takes twenty-two days to voyage from Suez half-way down the Red Sea. We cannot follow him on into Abyssinia, back to Egypt, round again by sea to the province of Shoa, then up to Egypt, then off again with his wife in another attempt to get into Abyssinia, back to Aden when repulsed, and at last down the African coast to Zanzibar. Presently we find the " good man who wishes to convert the world to God," as the Sultan of Zanzibar called him, settled on the Island of Mombasa. Here a furnace of trial awaits him. Fever lays hold first of him, then of his wife. As he lies close beside her, weak and prostrate him- self, her spirit passes away to be with God, and he is hardly able to raise himself to see whether she is really dead. A few days later, his motherless infant dies of fev^er too. Does he now think of coming home, of giving up the work ? Nay ! He writes to the Committee : — " Tell our friends that there is on the East African coast a lonely grave of a member of the Mission cause connected with your Society. This is a sign that you have com- menced the struggle with this part of the world ; and as the victories of the Church are gained by stepping over the graves of many of her members, you may be the more convinced that the hour is at hand when you are summoned to the conversion of Africa from its eastern shore." As he lays there slowly recovering from his illness, we find him planning, not retreat, but a great forward movement into Africa, until " a chain of stations " should reach from East to West, Presently a helper, Rebmann, is sent to him, and the two noble men, both ill of fever, set off to found a station on the mainland at Rabai. From this station they make many remarkable journeys, some of them to places where no European has ever been before ; they send home tidings of a wonderful inland sea, and Rebmann discovers the great snow-clad mountains in the heart of Africa. Next, we must picture Krapf, who had come home for rest and con- ference, laying his great plans for Africa before the Committee of the C.M.S. Do they tell him it is impossible .^ Do they laugh at him as a man who dreams ? No ; for God has given the workers at home the same faith as the workers in the P^ield. They discuss his projects, face every difficulty, and finally with v.'ords of counsel and confidence, send him back with a little band of helpers to begin the chain. In 1851 Krapf finds, on Lost! 35 his return to Rabai, that there has been pro^jress in the work. But soon the fair prospect clouds over. One of the Httle band, onl\- a few weeks after their arrival, is carried off by fever. Three others of the party — mechanics — lie ill of fever for two months, and Krapf i)aticntly nurses them, but at last he is free to set forward into thj lon^^ed-for interior. Only a few weeks later ;— and who is this solitary man, hastenint,^ throujrh the depths of the African forest, footsore, huni^ry, lost ? He has been feeding on ants and on tree-shoots, and has tjladly shared the scanty water in a pit which some monkeys have dug in the sand. It is Krapf, driven back by robbers, and compelled to settle down at Rabai once more. But not one whit is he shaken in his conviction that "the chain of Missions will \'et be completed when the Lord's own hour is come." B>--and-by — and we can scarcely w^onder at it — Krapf's health can stand the strain no longer, and he returns to England. He goes back to his German home, not to rest, but to toil hard on behalf of Missions, and ere his life closes he sees " the chain of Mission stations " well begun. We have touched on many scenes in the life of Krapf, but none is more beautiful than the last scene of all. He went to his bedroom one night as well as usual ; in the morning he was found still kneeling at his bedside — dead. George Schmidt, Krapf, and Livingstone, were thus found prasing when God called them to the land of praise. Come with me now to a lonely graveyard {sec p. },J ) in the heart ot the Dark Continent. It is that at L^sambiro, where some of God's Mission heroes are at rest. Simple wooden monuments surmount the stony cairn raised to keep hyaenas from the graves. In the distance the blue expanse of the Victoria Nyanza is seen — that lake round which has centred the thrilling story of Uganda, and the men who went there in the name of Christ. The troubled questions which distract the land are working slowly to their answer ; but here, in peaceful slumber, lie God's blessed dead, past the strife and conflict, waiting in His presence for the resurrection da)'. Heroes' graves they are. indeed : -Blackburn, Bishop Parker, Mackay, Hunt, and Dunn. ( )ne a veteran missionar\'. who had clone noble service in other lands before he took the head of this vast African di(icese ; one — Mackay — a man of noble character and striking mental power, who for fourteen long years stuck to his post, toiling often face to face with death ; the others, 36 TJte Worker and His Tools. THE MISSION STATION AT USAMBIKO. {Frinu a Sketch by Bishop Tucker.) men cut down almost on the threshold of service, having given promise of useful service in the field ; and all — true heroes of the Cross. You must not be discouraged because God so often calls away His workers before they seem to have begun their work. Have )'Ou ever watched a carver working on a piece of wood ? He takes up one tool, uses it for a moment or two, and then lays it down. The work is not finished — oh, no. But the special touch that tool could give has been given, and another tool is better for the next bit of the work. Thus God, the Great Master-Worker, does to-day with the men and the women who give themselves for His use. As long as He needs them He keeps them at work ; then He lays them down. His great work has never really stopped because a missionary died. Sooner or later the next tool was taken up, Leuothcuiu^ " the Chniiu' 37 and the beautiful, patient carving carried on. Look at what has been done in PLast Africa by the C.M.S. alone since Krapf bef,Mn his work at Rabai. There are now several district Missions, with forty-seven mission- aries, nine of whom are ladies ; in the coast district the C.M.S. has stations at Frere Town, Mombasa, Jilorc, and Rabai ; and further inland, near the great white mountains discovered by Rebmann and Krapf, and at Mamboia and Mpwapwa (there is a real African name, with real African spelling!) and Kisokwe the Gospel is being preached. Then Nassa, not far from the south end of the Victoria Nyanza, is certainly a link in the " chain," and on the other side of the great Nyanza is Uganda, where Bishop Tucker found a thousand worshippers gathered one Sunday in church. Yes! — "God buries His workmen, but carries on His work." <.R.\\KV.\Rn .^T IS.\MBIR(V ^ Frr.m n Sketch by bislir [^ I utker .\ CHAPTER IV. THREE AND FOUR O'CLOCK LAM); OR, PERIL AXD PERSECUTION. ^. ^ I "^HE world is such a large place, and there is X so very much to say about some parts of it, that it is quite a good thing to find we can manage two " hours" in one chapter to-day. You see the upper part of Three o'Clock Land is in '^ '^^^ ^^§'^7^f'''<>-^^ Russia, where there is little missionary work, and '„^i ^ ^ JK^Pmv, -' |&^ ti-,e lower part, except the Island of Madagascar, is nearly all in the Indian Ocean, so we can manage to fit in Four o'Clock Land as well. That gives us Persia, Madagascar, and Mauritius to think about ; Arabia, as you remember, we included in Two o'clock Land. Persia is about three times the size of France ; great part of the country is desert, but there are many wonder- ful valleys among the high mountains, where rare and luscious fruits grow, and beautiful trees abound. The climate varies greatly ; in some parts summer and winter are equally mild ; but in the desert region the inhabitants are scorched in summer and frozen in winter. Travelling is very difiicult, as there is only twenty-six miles of railway in the whole of Persia, and most of the journeying has to be done by riding, often over dangerous mountain paths (see picture on p. 44). The Persians, as a whole, are very poor, and the Government is most oppressive. The houses of the people are wretched. You never find a chimney ; a hole is made in the roof, and a fire is lit under it in the centre of the room. As there is no coal a kind of dried fuel is used, and this makes a blinding smoke. The houses are built of mud, with flat mud roofs. On the HoHsc-top. -in A roller is often kept on the roof in order to roll it after rain. In hot weather the roofs— round which there is very often no parapet— are turned into bedrooms by the natives, who come up and sleep there. Indeed, the missionaries themselves sometimes do this— not exactly in Persia, but in Baghdad, which counts in as part of the same Mission. The heat at Baghdad is so great that the roof is the best place to spend the night for four months in the year, l^ut sleep is almost impossible. The dogs bark- all over the city, the jackals howl by the river, the frogs croak so loudly that it is scarcely credible that they are only frogs, the donkeys bray, sometimes two or three together, the cocks in the city (and they can be numbered by the thousand) suddenl>- begin to crow, cats come and fight on the roof and even under the bed, and the mosquitoes and sand-flies are almost maddening at times. The light of the moon is so scorching and glaring that curtains have to be used as a i^rotection, so that what with the firing of guns b>- the watchmen, the (juarrellings and the monotonous prayers and chantings of neighbours, the bowlings of babies, and the tingling of bells on animals belonging to the passing caravans, "you will not be surprised," writes one of the missionaries, " that after four months on the roof, one is glad to get back to a quiet bedroom.'" The Persians love gardens, and the wealth)-, like the ladies in our picture ip. 40;, keep very beautiful ones. Orange trees, tulips, narcissus, and irises are favourites. Though the people are so poor and ignorant, the Shah, as their king is called, lives in great magnificence. His palace is in Teheran, which is quite an Eastern city, except that tramcars run along its streets ! The Persian soldiery, who are in rags elsewhere, are here resplendent in gorgeous uniforms, and the royal footmen go about on horses whose tails have been died magenta, like the tail of the Shah's horse when he was in England some years ago. The Shah has a marvellous treasure house, for instead of putting his money into a bank, as we should do in England, he buys splendid jewels with it. He has numbers of glass cases over two feet high, into which rubies, diamonds, sapphires, pearls, and other jewels are poured, just as we would fill a jar with rice or tea. Amongst other treasures he has a golden globe, on a solid gold stand. The equator is made of large diamonds, the countries are outlined in rubies, except Persia, which is done in diamonds, and the ocean is made of emeralds. I think this would be a good missionary globe, for the world-wide jewels would remind us of the precious souls scattered everywhere, whom the Saviour longs to gather to Himself. Persia, and the dis- trict of Mesopotamia, were the early home of God's people. Here men first began to call upon the name of the Lord. Here we find Bible links with Adam and Abraham ; here was the scene of the story of Esther and of Daniel ; from hence came probably the wise men who visited the Infant Christ, and some of those mentioned as in Jerusalem at the Day of Pentecost must have been from Persia. There were Christians long centuries ago in Persia, but they were terribly persecuted by the Parsees, and thousands were martyred. Some time later the Moham- medans invaded Persia, and the Parsees, or fire-worshippers, were in their turn driven out. There are only now about 8,000 of them in Persia ; all the rest of the people, except the very poor and ignorant Christians, are PERSIAN LADIES IN INDOOR DRESS. (See p. 39.^ Feeding tJie FamisJivjg. 41 now either Mohammedans or Jews, both aUke being very slow to receive the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The first modern missionary to Persia was the great Henry Mart\n, who died when he was only thirty-one years of age, having done more in his lifetime than most men twice his age. He translated the New Testa- ment and Psalms into Persian, and thus laid the foundation of all missionary work. In 1869 Dr. Bruce of the C.M.S., on his way. to India, went through Persia, and finding the people ready to listen to him began to work among them. Shortly after, the terrible famine came, and he and his wife flung themselves into the work of saving the starving people, especially the orphan children of those who had died. In 1875 the C.M.S. opened a Mission in Persia, making their headquarters at Julfa, near Ispahan, and ever since a small Mission has been carried on among this most Kl'llAN lii)\,> I Kn liV ni^ I-Kli-K IN 1 WIIM 42 Three Ways to Work. interesting people. It is most difficult work ; for though the Shah has proclaimed religious liberty, the law punishing a Moslem who embraces Christianity with death is still in the statute book, and converts are sorely persecuted. An officer in the Persian army became a Christian, and was condemned to be executed if he was ever again found in the country. His house was burnt, and his widowed mother and younger brothers were turned out to starve. Work is carried on in Persia in different ways. The ladies of the Mission visit in the houses of the women and teach them about the Lord Jesus, and schools have been opened where the Bible is taught. But there are three ways here, as in all Mohammedan lands, by which the people can best be reached. One is by long patient talks with individual inquirers, meeting them day by day, and boldly proving to them that their faith is false and ours is true. Another way is by the quiet regular distribution of Christian books, and specially of the Bible, all over the land. There are in Persia and the other Mohammedan lands of the East many colporteurs, supported by the British and Foreign Bible Society, who carry about Bibles in the language of the people for sale. This is not always easy work. Sometimes the colporteurs are beaten and insulted, and have their lives in danger, yet they bravely keep on. The third great way of working in Mohammedan lands is by means of Medical Missions. The Persians are liable to many sicknesses, and there arc scarcely any doctors. The poor people flock gladly to any one who will bring ease to their suffering bodies, and then they listen to the message which the Christian doctors bring. Many a poor Moslem, both in Baghdad and in Julfa, has heard the blessed Gospel from a doctor's lips. And now for Madagascar, the great island lying off the south-east coast of Africa. It is larger than the British Islands, and has a population of about five millions. There are many different tribes in the island, but the people as a whole are known as Malagasy. I have a picture of the chief town before me as I write. It is called Antananarivo — how many of you can manage to pronounce that very long name } This town stands on a hill, and as you look at it you see all the houses of the ordinary people clustered round the base of the hill, then come the houses of the Queen's relatives and officers, and on the very top is the royal palace, about sixty feet high, with a great gilt eagle on the summit, its wings outspread. Island Martyrs. 43 The C.M.S. once had a Mission in Madagascar, but it was given up. The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and other societies, are now at work there, but the first to begin was the London Missionary Society. Ten years after it began work a cruel queen named Ranava- lona came to the throne. The Native Christians were at once oppressed by her command, and though for a few years longer the missionaries were allowed to remain among them, in 1837 they were sent away, and all the Bibles and Christian books that could be found were seized. Then the Christians were fined, and taken as slaves, and some were put to death. The poor people tried to hide in caves, or to get out of the country, but they were captured and killed. One day a party of them trying to get to the sea in order to escape in a ship, were caught b)- their enemies, taken back to the queen's city, and nine of them were cruelly put to death. In 1849 a horrible massacre took place; eighteen Christians were killed. Four of them were burnt to death ; the other fourteen were, one by one, hung by a rope round their bodies over a fearful precipice. As they hung there, they were asked once more if they would give up the Lord Jesus } If they said "yes" they would have been drawn up again to life and safety; if they said "no" the rope was to be cut, and they were to be dropj)ed down over the terrible rock. What was the answer, boys.' Did they choose life without the Lord Jesus, or death rather than deny Mis name.' I think you know. Not one out of the whole fourteen denied Him ; each chose rather to die for His sake. And so they did. Even weak women gained the martyrs' crown in those years of bitter persecution. In i86[ the cruel queen died, and the missionaries were allowed to go back to Madagascar. Did they find the Christians weak and discouraged, almost lost to sight t No, indeed ! Through all the persecu- tion God's blessed Word had been in their hearts, their faith burned clearer and brighter, and nothwithstanding twenty-five years of cruel suffering, without a single missionary to encourage them, the Malagasy Christians had grown in number and in grace. There are to-day in Madagascar some hundreds of churches and schools, and many thousands of Christians. God give you and me grace to be as true and faithful as those island martyrs who laid down their lives for Christ ! In the woods of Madagascar there are many strange and beautiful 44 A Secret Supply. trees and plants. One of these is called thatch their houses with its leaves the partitions and sides of houses, for the floors. The leaves are dishes. It is called the " Travel tired, and thirsty traveller secret, he pierces a hole in the leaves, and out flows a the " Traveller's Tree." The people The stems of the leaves often form and the hard outside bark is used used as tablecloths, plates and ler's Tree," because when a hot, comes up, if he knows the the thick firm part of one of stream of clear, sweet water. TRAVELLING IN When the Native Christians Lord Jesus is to their souls, they himself — "Jesus is the Traveller's Our last peep in this chapter about the size of Hertfordshire. It have had some Mission work there plantations on the island, principally PKRSiA. ySee p. 38 ; want to tell how precious the sometimes say — each one for Tree to me." must be at Mauritius, a little island belongs to England, and the C.M.S. since 1854. There are great sugar worked by Indian coolies. Some of these A Little Lighthouse. 45 men speak Tamil, a language used in South India and Ceylon, others speak Bengali, and there are also a good many people from China, who, of course, speak Chinese. Mauritius is like a little lighthouse in the sea. True, there is plenty of darkness still, but there are bright beams of light, too, thank God. There are over 2,000 Christians attached to the C.M.S. Mis- sions, and more than 1,600 children in the schools. Sometimes a coolie who has become a Christian goes back to his own land, and so a ray of light is sent out to his distant home. In Mauritius there is no perilous journeying and no danger for those who become Christians as in Persia, nor has there ever been persecution as in Madagascar. But a terrible cyclone or hurricane visited the little island in 1892, destroyed many of the Mission buildings, and brought ruin to numbers of the inhabitants. Trees were uprooted, sugar plantations de- stroyed, and numbers of houses blown down. Hundreds of poor people were left homeless and helpless — many of them wounded, some of them dead. The cathedral in St. Louis was turned into a hospital, and the missionaries did what they could to hel{) the suf- ferers. In God's great mercy not one of the C.M.S. workers in the island was hurt. TR.WELLEKS TREK. \See p. 44 :> J' CHAPTER V. FIVE O'CLOCK LAND; OR, LXDLIX JEWELS. HERE are other countries in Five o'Clock Land about which \vc might talk, but I shall shut my eyes to them "on purpose" just now. Oh, that I could gather you all up this moment into a balloon, or hurry you off b)' tele- graph, and then set you down in India — our own great India — and let your busy eyes see all that I want to talk of now ! I wonder if you know at all how vast our India is ? It is thirty times the size of England and Wales, and might be called a continent rather than a country, so varied is it in climate, and race, and language. The inhabitants of the north are about the colour of Spaniards or Italians ; those of the south are much darker, more the colour of Africans. About fifty different languages are spoken. The three great religions of the country are Hinduism, Bud- dhism, and Mohammedanism, but there are several smaller bodies of other creeds, and, thank God ! a growing number of Native Christians. Though there are many large towns, the greater part of the population live in villages, and the people on the whole are poor. As you see from the happy mother in our picture, the grown-up people wear very little clothing, and the babies none at all. In the north, towards Afghanistan, where the great Himalayan mountains tower over the plains, the men are fierce and hard)' ; they crouch, in time of war, with their quaint old guns behind the rocks on the hill-side, am (ire on the advancing foe. :iM I think most of \'<>u know a good (leal about Intlian life (perhaps some of you have been in India your- selves ?) and have heard of the zena- nas, in which the women are shut up, and the terrible child mar- riages, and the system of " caste," which in some places is a great barrier to the Gospel, so instead of telling you more about the manners and customs of the people I will turn at once to missionary work. If you could glance over my shoulder you would see a coloureil map of India, on which all the C.M..S. Missions are marked with a small red cross. Here, up in the ver\- north, in beautiful romantic Kashmir, we finil the most northerly mark at Srinagar the capital ; and then down in the furthest south, where Cape Comorin reaches out towards Ceylon, we see a C.M.S. station with sut/i a long name (please don't ask //w to pro- nounce it \) Suviscshapurani. Then far to the we.-^t, where the burnin'^ MOIIAMMKDAN WARRIORS OK .VORTH INDIA. plains of Sindh run down to the ocean, Karachee has the wee red sign ; and girls' school in india. here, in the very east of India, we find Calcutta surrounded by a little group of stations. You see the C.M.S. has gone all over India, but oh, how far Mines and Miners. 49 apart the stations arc ! Even if our map showed you all the stations of all the other Missions in India, you would sec spaces— great empty spaces — between which there is still no one to tell the people that the Saviour who died for them lives now, and loves them, and is coming back again. I might tell you the history of Missions in India, or write the lives of some of the heroes who lived — and died— there. Hut instead, I want you to come and see the different kind of mines out of which God's Indian jewels are dug up. The missionaries arc the miners, and the different kinds of Mission work are like the mines. I-'irst, there are the Indian colleges and schools. I don't put them first only because I am writiiii; for bo\s and giils. but because I truly do think they come first in real missionary importance. Unless the young people in India are taught about the L(^rd Jesus and Mis salvation there is little hope of winning India for Christ. And when (iod gave India to England that was what He mcnit ik to do. The C.M.S. has nine m ten establishments in India, where young natives can get a very high-class education. The mis- sionaries in charge are all men wh' worked hard in school and at a university after- wards, and now they use their learning for their Lord. How patiently and lovingly they prepare the i I Imlian pupils tor diflficult "e.xam^:.,' unci all the while te icii 50 Boys and Girls in ScJiool. them the Bible, and seek to show them their need of Christ. Then, of course, there are legions of other schools, some for advanced pupils, some for beginners ; but in all of them, first and foremost, God's Holy Word is taught. The boys are just as nice as English boys, but some things about them would strike you as strange. They stay a good many years at school, and as all boys are married when about sixteen, most of those in the upper classes have wives. It sounds rather odd to hear a school- boy excuse himself for being late for lessons because his son was ill ! Sometimes an Indian schoolboy has great influence at home. One little Tamil lad, eight years old, loved the service in the church so much that when the bell rang he used to leave his rice and run off at once. He persuaded his parents to leave off work on Sunday and come with him to church ; and as they were leading people, others followed their e.xample. See what one boy's influence can do ! Some of the boys from Indian schools have grown up to be splendid missionaries themselves, and have come home to England to ask us to do more and more to teach the people in India about the true God. The work of teaching the girls and women is very important too There are two missionary societies formed for the purpose of sending out ladies to India, and they work beside the C.M.S. missionaries and their wives. These ladies go into the dark, desolate zenanas, to the Indian ladies who arc shut u[) there, and many of God's brightest jewels have been brought from these mines. And the girls' schools, like those you see in our pictures on pages 48 and 49 — what an endless talk wc might have MEHKl .^ND HKK F.\THEK. A Doctor s Dijjuulties. SI about them I They arc so cliarminjj to teach, these little Iiulian lassies, yet they often have such sad, sad lives. Medical Missions arc also a splendid mine for God's Indian jewels. Hut there are so few mincrj, that is the worst of it. Only eight doctors belonj^in^ to tlie C..M.S. aic attached to our Indian .Missions. We do hope some more will soon go out. A medical missionary generally has a Mission hospital, where the sick people can be taken in, but he also goes with his medicines and his Native helpers into the villages round about. Sometimes it is very touching to see the delight of the parents if a suffering child is helped. Our picture on page 50 shows a dear little girl named .Mehri, a patient from the Kashmir hospital ; it is the first time she has been able to stand since her illness, and her father is holding her to be photographed. On this page )*ou see a group of people gathering round a doctor eagerly hoping for cure. If you knew how ignorant the natives are about illness you would not wonder that a skilful doctor is welcomed. \ missionar)' had a poor sick Native woman brought to her one day. Her husband did not know what ailed her, but he had branded her with a hot iron on her head and down her spine by way of effecting a cure. Kven when they do get to a proper doctor, it is almost impossible to get instructions carried out. One poor woman kept on cr>ing when any question was put to her, *' Do not ask me ; I know nothing ; I am just a cow." Over and over again the doctor has to say that the ointment and plasters are not to be eaten ; and if a 'Z. .wr^.' stethoscope is pro- duced ()'ou know that brown harm- less tube which the doctor holds to your chest that he may listen to your breathing .') the patient runs away crying. "Oh. I am killed!" 52 Many precious yeiocls. Both men and women are needed as medical missionaries in India. Thousands and thousands of the women shut up in zenanas can have no medical help at all unless lady doctors go to them. Of course the medical missionaries, b)' caring for people's bodies, get openings to speak to them about their souls. There are many other ways in which this "Missionary Mining" in India is carried on. There are missionaries who live in the hot dust)' towns, preaching day after day in the streets and Mission rooms, or in the crowded Native bazaars, and talking to any one who will listen to their message. These " miners " have brought up man)' costl)' gems for Jesus Christ. Other missionaries travel to and fro through the villages, gathering the simple country people round them to hear, and some, who are more like jewellers than miners, have busy work amongst the Native Christians, teaching them, and helping them to shine as bright jewels for the Saviour's Crown. Now you know if a great deal of gold or a great many jewels were found in a real mine, hundreds of men would rush off at once to make their fortune, and give up everything to get a share in the spoil. But here is India — great needy India — set from north to south with jewels rich and rare, yet men and women are going slowly — oh, so slowly ! — to gather these jewels for the Lord. Boys and girls, perhaps God wants you one day to help to gather in His jewels in Five o'Clock Land. Stay ; ere we leave we must just give one loving, longing glance at beautiful Ceylon, with great Adam's Peak rising into the clear blue sky. Since 1817 the C.M.S. has been "mining" there, and many precious jewels have been won amongst the Tamils and the Singhalese. There are over twenty C.M.S. missionaries belonging to the Mission, several of them being ladies. Do they love the people among whom the)' work .' I think so ! Not long since a little Native boy fell into a deep well, and without a moment's delay a young missionary jumped in after him at the risk of his life, held the lad up until help came, and while still in the water he preached the Gospel to the astonished natives who were peering down the well. But many books have been written to tell you stories of Ceylon, so I will only advise )'<)U to read tlicni \\liciic\er you can, and to pra)- that the Native Christians on the island ma)- be kept true to Gcxl. \...y I I. V-' V» r ^ ^ .c I f I : I — ^ . CHArXKR VI. !^ 5/.\ U'CIAH K I.ASI): OK, A.\/()Mi \ STKAXCE PKOr/MS. 1 I V. first stopping-place on our journey to-day is Mongolia. A large place to stop in, you will say. for it contains over l,250,CXX) S(juare miles, and o\er I0,0CX),000 {H-'ople. However, we shall not stay there long, for you will be glad to leave its snowy north, which borders on drear)' Siberia, and push rapitll)' across its great, central sandy desert of Gobi, hastening on to a balmier southern clime. If you lived in Mongolia, you would find your neighbours strange people indeed. You have read a!)out them more often than \(»u think ; in Konian history _;3l they are called the Huns, ami Avtotig the Tartars. in Grecian history the Scythians. Perhaps you would rather not be very close friends with them, for from times immemorial people have been brought up to think it very unpleasant to " catch a Tartar " ! The Mongols, or Tartars, are spread almost all over Central Asia, and are a very ancient people. They keep to such strange and ancient customs that you scarcely know whether to laugh or to be sorry when you read of them. One thing is specially marked about them, and that is, they do not want any Europeans to enter their land, ihey like to keep quite to themselves and resent all intrusions. But of course we Europeans couldnt leave this race of short, tawny men, with their flat faces, their straight eyes, their large flabby ears and long, lank hair, quite alone. The mission- aries must get at them somehow. Accordingly, ever since the year 1764 the Moravians have been trying to do this. Perhaps before going further I had better tell you that in the whole of Six o'Clock Land the C.M.S. has no Mission station ! Never mind, other societies have, and you and I agreed long ago to learn what we could about all who had gone into the world with the Gospel news. Well, these brave missionaries tried to enter Mongolia first from the western or Russian side, and the Empress Catherine II. of Russia gave them leave to do so. They succeeded in making friends with some of the Kalmuc Tartar tribes, and used to wander about with them. You must remember that in Central Asia camels have always two humps, and in this respect are unlike their African and Arabian first cousins, who have only one. Granted that people Dnist ride on camels, it is to my mind safer to ride between two humps than on the top of one. But perhaps I don't know much about it. For years and years missionaries tried to win the Mongols to Jesus Christ, but, alas ! with little effect. This was, no doubt, partly because the Mongols had such a strange religion of their own. It was an easy religion, too, for it depended altogether on what they were able to do in order to secure happiness in the life to come. Each man was concerned with the happiness of his own soul, and by sundry good deeds and divers religious performances tried to add to what he called his own stock of " merit." A PRAYING WHEEL. Prayer McicJiincs. 55 Indeed, this idea about " merit" was a great hindrance to the missionaries, for when they stood by the wayside and read aloud out of their Bibles and preached, the Tartars only thought these strange Europeans were adding to their own private stock of "merit" by preaching aloud, and it never occurred to them that they wanted Tartars to listen ! Afterwards the missionaries found out that the best way to get at the people was to climb up by the notched tree-trunk to the flat roofs in the villages, where the people were sitting in the sun, and then they listened, and their neighbours flocked from the other roofs also to hear. It is no wonder that the Mongolians do not understand having their souls cared for by strangers, for half the men in Mongolia are priests ! But, sad to say, in almost all cases the red vestments which they wear are about the most impressive part of them. These lamas, as they are called, are supported by the people, to whom generosity is second nature, and they live lazy and miserable lives. In the picture on page 56 you see one of these Buddhist priests, and at the beginning of our chapter you sec some of them dressed up for a great religious festival, and blowing trumpets made from human thigh-bones. What would happen if our missionaries were like the lamas .■* The poor Mongols believe in prayer, but such a difl'erent prayer from ours. Do you think you could find in the Gospels our Lord's mention of " vain repetitions".' If so, it would exactly describe Mongolian prayers. On all occasions, in every available interval, the\- keep repeating words which mean, "Oh, the precious lotus, amen." These words conve)- to them a mystic meaning ; so sacred are they that they arc written on garments and written round houses. But they can net repeat them often enough with their lips, so they have prayer machines, which are sometimes so large that thev are turned bv two A THIHKT.W AT I'UAYtK. men. Thousands of yy ■ ^1 slips of paper with • these sacred words written on them are put into the ma- chines (see pages 54 and 55), then when these are being turned and turned through the whole day, the Mongol be- lieves that it counts as if he had said thousands of prayers. You must not think that everybody in Mongolia lives in tents and rides about on camels ; there are villages and towns as well. If you were ever to live amongst the people, as brave Mr. James Gilmour, the best- known of Mongolian missionaries, did, you would see gleaming across the sandy plains gorgeous temple domes, brilliant with colour, ornamenting large towns. But we have stayed long enough in Mon- golia, fascinating as it is. Before we do leave it, however, please remember one thing — I suppose it applies chiefly to the boys ! — the Mongolians are very kind to insects, and never destroy '■- them if they can help it. In a country '■ as dirty as Mongolia, this must be very trying sometimes. Nevertheless, it is 7r:rr worth remembering. Butterfly, and beetle, and moth collectors, please do your best not to destroy more speci- mens than are needed to fill up the ^~ blanks in your case ! Travelling in Thibet. 57 Crossing the great Khinghan Mountains we journey down to Thibet. Vou see in our picture a party of Thibetans journeying down a great snow-slope, with their flocks of goats, and their useful beasts of burden, the yaks. On page 58, too, you see some travellers on horseback. If Mongolia is secluded, still more so is Thibet, for not one missionary is allowed to enter, and only one Knglishman has ever reached the capital, L'hassa. Here the Grand Lama lives— the Mongolian Pope— in his gilded palace, which is said to contain 10,000 rooms. The religion is almost the ^.ime as in Mongolia, so are the people's habits, and tlicir hearts are ecjually IH.BJTAVS WITH THEIR FLOCKS ON A SSdW-SLOPE. lVai/i7ig. dark, and absolutely without any of the Light of the Gospel. So fierce has the opposition to missionaries been, that attempts to enter Thibet itself have for the pre- sent been given up, Ah ! but in Lesser Thi- bet — and our hearts always warm when we think of that — there are brave men (and women too !) perched up on the Himalayan Mountains, ready to swoop down from their heights like eagles the moment Thi- bet is open to them. Several missionaries have laid down their lives in the high places of the Field. Those who have replaced them carry on the noble work, and send across the borders of Thibet by the merchants the precious Bible, which those who went before them translated into the Thibetan tongue. But still we are bound southward for Burmah. " White elephants ! " you will say at once. Yes, exactly ; among the many black elephants, like our friend on the opposite page, there are some white ones here, only ihey are not white, but a sort of brownish yellow, not even as white as a white (?) pig. Still this is their home. But it is not the elephants, nor the water- buffaloes, nor the cobras, nor the wonderful trees and great rivers now that concern us. We think of the first great missionaries who went to Burmah in 1808; of the others who followed them in later years ; of brave Mr. and ^^: c^cs^« TR.WELLING IN THIBET. 4 Talc of an Eclipse. 59 Mrs. Judson ; aiul of the bitter persecution under cruel Kin^j Thccbaw, when Mr. Judson was put in prison and heavily loaded with irons. Once he and lOO other prisoners where crowded into a windowless room, with the temperature outside at lo6 . Under the Society for the Propagation of the (iospel most successful Missions were started and are flourishing to-day. Schools were founded, and at Mandalay nine (jf the king's sons came daily to school, attended by forty followers, who carried the books and slippers, and held two golden umbrellas over each |)rince's heatl ! Now we njust slip down into Siam ; at this rate of speed, a regular glissade, we shall soon come to the end (^f Six o'Clock Land! Siam; — instead of "White I'.Iephants " you will say. "Siamese Twins" at once. Quite right again, the well-known " Siamese Twins " have something to do with our story. At least they were taken to America on board the trading vessel that took an appeal from two missionaries in Siam for more helpers. These heljjcrs came from America and established a Mission at the capital. liangkok. Missions in Siam have developed rapidly. Not without persecution, however, especially in the northern parts. The first man who was converted to God among the Laos tribes, a fine race occupying the north of Siam, was named Man Inta', and he was converted because the missionaries foretold an eclipse of the mooii which took place on August 1 8th, 1 8*^)8. I wonder whether \our father remembers that eclipse' Man LUa' thought if any one could foretell that they must know the true God. This was the loving Himself. Peninsula to Singa- ourselvcs in the servants at work, about Christ ; but longer ; we must and look up the o'clock Land, and out more and still care for all these way in which (iod led this poor dark soul to Now a few giant .strides down the Malay l)orc, a bound across the straits, and we find NIand of Sumatra. Here again wc find God's teaching the Battas we dare not stay just turn round so. long strip of Six ask God to send braver hearts to lands. CHAPTER VII. SEVEN O'CLOCK LAND; OR, A CHAT ABOUT CHINA. I AM glad that China comes to be Seven o'Clock Land. Seven o'clock is tea-time with a great many of our elder readers, and you can think of China when you are drink- ing tea. And seven o'clock is bed-time with many of our younger readers, and I do want you always to re- member China when you say your prayers just before going to bed. I expect you have learned by this time that we really can't keep very close to our "line" on the frontis- piece map, but must talk W .nbout the countries it goes through instead of only the places / it exactly touches. The "Eight o'Clock line" is just on the coast of China, but all the same I am going to call the whole of China Seven o'Clock Land. Don't you want to see China, with its great rivers and ricc-fields ; its crowded cities, ^\■ith the long, quaint sign-boards hanging in the narrow What you zijoulii siu streets, and its j:jrcat country plains, where the stupid, busy people toil and toil and toil, and gaze with wonder aiul dismay at any foreigner whc* comes among them ? And don't you want to see the Chinese ? The men, with their yellf)w faces and small eyes, and great long plaits of hair ; the women, with their poor crippled feet, scarcel)' able to totter along ; the little bus)' boNs, trotting about in their funny wadded clothing, learning long lessons out loud, and hoping to be very wise by-and-b)' ; and the poor little unloved neglected girl babies, sometimes thrown out of doors to die, and often despised and ill-treated be- cause they are " only girls." Yes ; I am sure \'ou wouKI like to see them all. Perhaps you may, if you are a mis- sionary in \ears to come. Though this chapter is not a sermon, it must have a " text, " and a text with " three heads. " It is not a Bible text, but just a sentence out of a missionary's letter. And the text has got a story, which you shall hear. iO^ /C .\ STKKI- I IN CHI.N'A. 62 " Great, dark, hungry Chiliad In JS90, a C.M.S. missionary, the Rev. T. H. Harvey, wrote to a friend in England a plea for more work and more workers among the Chinese. In that letter he spoke of "great, dark, hungry China." Before that letter was printed in England a telegram came to say that Mr. Harvey, who had only just been married, had fallen suddenly ill and had died. So his appeal for China came to us as a voice from the grave. The words in it which I have taken for " a text " went right home to the heart of a lady who read the letter, and she longed to do something for " great, dark, hungry Ciiina." So she prayed about it, and then she wrote an article for our C.M.S. Magazine Azvake ! taking those very words for her text. Amongst the readers of Awake ! was a Christian bricklayer, whose heart had not before been stirred' about the needs of the heathen world. But the little sermon on the dead missionary's text touched him, and he resolved to do what he could. So one day he walked into the Church Missionary House, and rolled out on a table in one of the rooms forty golden sovereigns. Ic was a sum of money that had just been repaid to him, and he felt he must give it all \.o send the Gospel message to the Chinese. He was a poor man, earning small weekly wages, yet he gladly gave what was a great sum in his eyes — and in God's eyes too. The story of our bricklayer friend has been used by the Spirit of God to stir many others to deeds of sacrifice, and thus the words written by Mr. Harvey have rolled on like a stream of blessing, and I believe they will be used again to be a blessing to the boys and girls who read this book. Perhaps few of us can give forty pounds, but we can easily gather forty pennies ! China is "• great!' The empire is larger than the whole of Europe, a rope stretched round its outer rim would have to be 12,000 miles long. There are so many people in China that every fourth baby born into the world is Chinese. With every breath we draw a Chinaman dies. A million a month are dying who have never heard of God. How can I help you to understand the enormous number of the Chinese .' ^ It would take }'ou some time to count , J "^ <.< f^^ ^11 the ehapters in your Bible, and AS) ^N-^ ^.ji^v^S very very long to count all the ivords, V ^^ and as to countin^^ the letters — I think you would never get it done. Vet you would iiave to count all the letters in one hun- dred Bibles before you would reach the number of the heathen Chinese. As to the Native Tro- testant Christians in China, >ou need only count once the letters in tlie Epistle to the Romans to get at the total number of them. Is it not an awful difference ? So many heathen, so few Nati\e Christians to shine like " Chinese lanterns " in the darkness of the land. Should we not do all we can to get more Chinese hearts lit up with heavenly light, that they may shine on all around .' China is "great," too, in many other ways. It is not a new kingdom like England, but very very old. When our an- cestors were savages wearing skin clothing the Chinese wore flowing robes, and were just as civilised as they are at present they knew how to paint and weave silk, and had a great deal of strange learning among them mistake for hundreds of years. THI-: 1'fc.r.KKCILV ULTIKUL BOV " CL.M.MI.N'G .\.N AL'Ult.NCfc. {See p. (>\.\ Hut tlu'v have mule one ve.y serious They think they know enough and are much wiser than any other nation, and object to change tlieir own wa>s for those which are better. Are there no boys or girls who are like the Chinese in this? I must tell you about one thing in China which is reallv great. The 64 A Good Son. CHINAMEN PERSECUTING CHRISTIANS. boys — and the girls too— are taught to reverence their parents very much. Here is a quaint Chinese story, with a quaint Chinese picture on pas^e 63, which illustrates it. It will show you what Chinese sons feel if their fathers are in trouble of any kind. It is called The Perfectly Dutiful Boy :— "About thirteen hundred years ago an officer was unjustly accused of treason by a brother officer, and was condemned to death. His son, who was only fifteen years of age, went in boldly and beat the drum to claim an audience, entreating to be allowed to die for his father. A Chinese Mob. 65 "The emperor thereupon set the man free, and then expressed his intention of ^rjving the boy the title ' Perfectly Dutiful.' "The boy exclaimed, ' It is right and just for a son to die when his father is disgraced ; but what disgrace can be compared with the idea of gaining honour at a father's expense ? I respectfully decline your majesty's proposed distinction. " C/iina is''(i(7rk." I do not mean that the country itself is dark and dreary; in many parts, especially far inland, it is very beautiful, and you know that China is called .-, "The Glorious Land," but the poor Chinese are very dark ^; indeed. They have many strange super- stitions which cause They hate foreign- riots against them. - cut many years attacked her, dear mission- China again picture that in China. It I should not encourage and to burn lieve that to cut out and y A m ( -"i the missionaries a great deal of trouble, ers, and often break out into terrible One friend of mine had her wrist terribly ago by a cruel Chinese mob who and you know that quite lately our aries have been in great danger in and again. On page 64 you see a was given away by the thousand lately had terrible words attached to it, which like you to see, and it was meant to Chinamen to persecute the Christians, their bodies. The people be- Christians want children's eyes .\ CHINESK HOL'SE-BO.fT. mites shake with terror when they see a missionary coming, until they get to know what the missionaries are like. The women are very ignorant, and so difficult to teach. You have to go over the same thing with them again and again, and then very often they don't un- derstand in the end. A lady missionary be- gan to teach the Ten Commandments to a class of Chinese women. First she explained how God had given this holy law, and then said she would teach them the first Commandment. " I know it," said a Chinese woman, "you taught us that before." " No. indee J," said the missionary, "it is quite a new lesson to-day." But the woman persisted. "You told us yourself," she said, " and I have told several people since." "Well," said the puzzled missionary, " what is the first Commandment, if you know it so well ? " " Yoft sJtall not eat fruit," said the woman prompt!}'. Then the missionary remembered that with great care she had taught this woman the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and their OPIUM SMOKERS. opium Smoking. ^7 eating the fruit of the forbidden tree, and the poor dull woman had mis- understood her, and had actually told several people that the Christians' God forbids them to eat fruit. Vou know, perhaps, that until about fifty years ago, China kept her doors tight shut against any outside influence. She would not even trade with any foreign power. But now her ports are open to ships of all nations, and missionaries are pressing on into great cities where no one has yet gone with Gospel light. Owing to her resolute dislike to all that is new and foreign, China has practically no railways, and all journeying has to be done either in boats on the great rivers and canals, or else in chairs carried by Chinamen along the roads. There is another thing which helps to make China "dark," and that is the terrible habit of opium smoking. This drug, which is made from the seed-vessels of the poppy, has terrible power over the body and mind of those who smoke it, and many man)' thousands of Chinamen are confirmed opium smokers to-day. In our picture on page 66 you see how miserable they look. The drug gets such hold of them that they cannot give it up ; a man will spend all his money and sell all he has, even his wife and children, in order to get opium to satisfy the awful craving which lays hold of him. I am afraid England had a great deal to do with getting opium into China years ago, and even still opium is made under the authority of the British Government in India, and sent in great quantities to China every year. We ought to be very sorry for this, and to ask God to show us what wc can do to wipe out this dark stain in China. Now we have seen that China is great and that A CHINESE BOAT. 6S Very Hungry. China is dark ; the third " head " of our " text " says that China is ''hungry.'' I do not mean bodily hunger, of course, though China knows a good deal about that as well. The people are so numerous that there is scarcely food enough for them all, and when there is a bad harvest, even in one district, it means famine and death. The people are, as a rule, very very poor, only just able to get enough rice to keep them alive. - Talking of being hungry in China, I must tell you a story of a dear missionary who was once very hungry there. She was not a C.M.S. missionary, but was working in a province where another society is at work. She and some fellow-missionaries were very far inland, living at a station where supplies were very hard to get. The tinned things they had brought up with them were nearly exhausted, and though it is possible with great care to live on native food for a time when you are well and strong, it is very difficult to do it when you are ill and weak. These missionaries sent a Chinaman off to get them some fresh supplies, but he had a long way to go, and he did not think there was any hurry, and on his way back, the weather being favourable, he stopped to gather in the harvest. Meantime, the missionaries had fallen ill, the last tin of condensed milk was used up, all the little comforts so needed in illness were gone, and only the native food remained. At last the young missionary who had been nursing the others fell ill also, and had to stay in her own tiny house in the courtyard, with no one but Chinese women to care for her day by day. Her house was a two-storied native one. The upper room, reached by a sort of ladder, was nice enough to sleep in at night, but by day the sun beat so upon it that it was like a furnace. The lower room had no windows at all, only a doorway, so it was dismal and dark, but there day by day the young missionary, little more than a girl in years, used to lie back weak and helpless in her canvas chair. Long before this, the needed supplies were due, for those in charge of the Mission had sent them at once. But they had not come, and it was, oh! so difficult to eat the native food. One day, as the missionary lay in the darkness, she fell asleep and dreamed. She thought that she saw in the doorway her own dear sister, dressed in white. As her sister slowly came towards her, the sick girl saw in her hands a little tray, holding a cup of tea vvith real milk in it, and a tiny plate of English bread and butter. Eagerly she sat up and held out Botvtfig to Wood and Sto?ie. tLUUHIST WOKSHIl'. •JO English Bread and Butter. her hands for the tray ; the movement woke her and she found it was a dream. I have heard her say she was so ashamed because she just burst into tears — " to think of a missionary crying for bread and butter ! " she said — but I do not think there was anything to be ashamed of in the least. It nearly made me cry to hear the story of her dream. You will like to know that all the missionaries got well again, thank God, and that, not long afterwards, the faithless messenger brought the much-needed supplies. But the " hunger " I meant to talk about was the hunger of Chinese souls who do not know God. I have told you already how many of these there are. The worst of it is this, the Chinese do not know that they are hungry, they mind earthly things and are busy about their own concerns. The people are not satisfied. They have several religions, great temples (some of them like that in our picture on page 69), and many gods, but none of these things bring them peace. They arc sinners, and they all need forgiveness ; they are dying, and they need to know what is beyond the grave. Thousands and thousands of them have never heard of Jesus or His love. We cannot bear to let a beggar hunger when we could spare him a piece of bread. Oh, how can we then bear to think of all the hungry souls in China dying for want of the Bread of Life .-' The C.M.S. has work in five out of the eighteen provinces of China. Hong-kong, an island in Kwang-tung province, is a C.M.S. station, and a well-known British port, and there is also a C.M.S. Medical Mission at Pakhoi, with most interesting work among the poor Chinese lepers. Then in the adjoining province of Fuh-kien there is a large C.M.S. Mission, with a beautiful story which I hope to tell you one day ; and further north, in Mid-China, the Society has stations in Cheh-kiang province and also at Shanghai, which is in Kiang-su. Then far up the great Yangtse river C.M.S. missionaries arc working in Sz-chuen, which borders on Thibet. But other servants of God have work in China as well as the missionaries of the C.M.S. Up in the north the Society for the Pro- pagation of the Gospel is at work ; in many parts American missionaries are telling the same glad story ; several English Nonconformist societies are also represented, and everywhere through open doors the China Inland Missionaries are hastening on. God bless them one and all, and send many boys and girls who read this book to join the busy band. -^^»^ cii.\i'Ti:k \iii .\/.\A ()'( /.<)( K J..l\n: ()h\ /•/:/■:/'.< AT lAI'A.W T ^ 1<< ).M ("hiiiii \vc naturall)' want to liastcn on t(j Japan I Hut \<)U must 1 be patient for a moment and just glance at some of the countries in Eight o'Clock Land, though it can onl)- be a passing glance. First of all, there is the mountainous peninsula of Korea, jutting southward into the sea. Since 1882, when a treaty with America was signed, Korea has been more or less open to the influence of Protestant missionaries. Medical Mission work is very popular, and a great deal of Bible translation has been done. The people are naturally religious, and in man)' ways most interesting. 'I'hcN' ha\'e a very low opinion of women, in fact the women have £^\. no proper names of their own. All but their nearest relatives call them " The daughter (or the sister) of Mi. So-and-so." After mar- riage the woman is called b)- the name of the place she came from, and when she has a son she is known as "the mother of So-and- so." The nobles and a MhKeMvNr is a jinkuksha. 72 HuntiniT hiiinaii Heads. high officials in Korea wear long robes of white, or sky-blue, or pink silk, and broad-brimmed round hats, something like a Welshwoman's, which are tied on under their chins. Pigs and dogs abound ; the latter afford butcher's meat, and are considered most delicate in flavour. Korea is called "The Land of the Morning Calm," and a new English Mission was started there some years ago, by Bishop Corfe of the S.P.G. Then, still in Eight o'Clock Land, we come to the Island of Borneo, part of which is under British protection. In 1846 an Englishman, who had become a friend of the Sultan of Borneo, applied to England for help to establish a Mission. This young officer, always known as Rajah Brooke, finding he had a good influence in Borneo, stayed there, and was allowed to have much power in the government of the country. His request was granted ; the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel undertook the work, and Dr. MacDougall was sent out, and became Bishop of Sarawak, the northern province of Borneo. The Dyaks, as the natives are called, arc naturally very fierce indeed. Head- hunting w as a favourite pursuit among them, and no \-outh could attain the rank of manhood without pos- sessing a cer- tain number of human heads. 1 here was a great deal of trouble in Bor- neo in 1S57 between the Dyaks and the Chinese who GOOD night! — JAPANESE IN BED. had Settled m Pilloii'S not of l-'eatliers. ^^J^S T''''^>-«L««JC MOUNT FUSIYAMA, ^ h. the island, but the Mission Mouse was not touclicd, be- cause the Hisliop and his wife were so beloved. When matters were quiet again, they were both in\ited t(j a native festival, ihe table was well furnished with food, and just as Mrs, MacDougall was eating some rice she saw to her horror amongst the other provisions three human he.ids in a disli I She dare not sa)- anything;, nor would the D\al'et, the whole tone of the natives has been raised b\- the teaching of God's Word and the example of the missionaries. W'e might talk a little about Java, where Dutch missionaries are at work, and about other islands in the East Indies, but all this time we are supposed to be in Nine o'Clock Land, so we we must not dela\'. When the sun is brightly shining here, straight over our heads, it is getting dark in Japan. I expect if we were there at that hour we should find the Japanese hurrving home from the th.-atres. where they are .so fond of going, to their own wooden hou.scs. and putting their heads down on their hard little wooden pillows and getting to sleep. In passing, do remember )ou should never say to any one, Chinese or Japanese, that their pillows seem strange ! A Chinese lady, who could not speak English, once .showed me her pillow, and I quickly said, " Hoiv uncomfortable it must be!"— never thinking she would catch my meaning — but she did, and to my confusion gave a pitying smile. I felt very ignorant and crushed I If the Japanese and their neighbours prefer sleeping on such wooden wedges as you see in our picture, all right ; but you and I will keep to feathers. The islands of Japan lie off the eastern coast of Asia very much as the British Isles lie off the western coast of Europe, and indeed in more ways than one Japan promises to be in the Asiatic world what England has been in the European. Thougli this is so. as we go along we shall find how Earthquakes. many contrasts there are between Japanese and Eng- lish life and ways. The country itself is very hilly, and has several volcanoes. Some of these are very erratic in their habits, for in 1874 one of them, which for ages had been quite quiet, and had had its crater quite covered over, suddenly burst off its rocky top and scattered showers of ashes and stones for miles around. It would be very uncomfortable living in Scotland or Wales if Ben Nevis or Snowdon did this sort of thing ! The prince of Japanese mountains is a volcanoe called Mount Fuji or Fusiyama ; it is a great deal higher than all the other mountains, and its summit is almost always covered with snow. The Japanese admire this mountain greatly, and put paintings of it (the Japanese are great artists, see pictures on pages Ji, 75, and -jQ) on their fans, their tea-cups and their rice-bowls. The worst of living near these volcanoes is that there are so many earth- quakes, but the Japanese take them very cheerfully, and build their houses of wood so that they fall down very easily and are more quickly re-built than if they were of stone. Some of you may have read about the terrible earthquake in 1891, when whole towns were ruined, and hundreds of people wounded and killed. If you care to hear our English birdies sing you would be disappointed in Japan, for all travellers tell us that the birds there sing scarcely at all, TAKING HOME A BLOSSOM BRANCH. Ltly Roots for Dinner. 75 M ;■'/ y though they can boast bright feathers. But if you like flowers Japan is the country to see them. Plum blossoms, peach blossoms, peonies, chry- santhemums, and lots of other flowers .^rowing in profusion have given the Japanese such a love for them that they have a sort of flower picnic often. As the different flowers come into bloom a whole neighbourhood will turn (jut and go to the place where the best blooms are to be seen. I am afraid that in England flowers are not the part of the picnic wc like best ! I dare sa>' you .sometimes like to dress the flower vases at home, and yc^u like to mix green leaves with the flowers, but that is not according to Japanese ideas, for they have most elaborate rules about flower-dressing, and never allow more than one kind to be put in the same va.se ! They have some ideas about flowers and vegetables which are very strange to us. A lady missionary once wrote home from Japan in great amusement ^ ^ had been offered -^^H)> -> I- because she had been offered -^^ boiled lily roots to eat as a vege- table at her dinner, and had seen a common cabbage grown as an ornamental plant in a pot. In many other ways things done in Japan are very unlike what we do in England. When Japanese meet they shake their own hands — not each other's ; the cows have bells on their tails ; the horses have their tails put to the manger, and wear shoes .\ J.\P.\NESE ARTIST. The Gcspcl in Japan. of straw, which cover their whole hoof, so I suppose there are no blacksmiths in Japan ; and the gardens are watered from a wooden pail with a wooden spoon ! Travellers tell us that the roofs of the houses are built first, but how that is accomplished is a mystery to mc ! Now into this strange, lonely and upside-down land the Gos- pel of Jesus Christ has spread. You might possibly think that as the Japanese do not eat each other or make war on their neighbours, and love flowers and are kind to their children, they do not need the Gospel as much as the Central Africans. liut they do need it just as much ; for the Japanese religion is quiie false, and they worsin'p false gods, and their habits and ways are so very sinful that ihey must be brought a religion which will teach them what is true and right ; and they must be told about a Saviour who will pardon and keep them froni sin. Some of the Japanese are very clever, and can easily learn anything new, but the country villagers, like those in our picture on the opposite page, arc not so quick. In fact, in Japan, as elsewhere, it needs long and patient work to make the truths of the Gospel understood. The story of how missionaries got into Japan is very interesting. Hundreds of years ago, about the year 1549, the great Ron;an Catholic missionary, hVancis Xavier, visited Japan, and began to teach the people. He was followed by many priests, and as the years rolled on . numbers of Japanese were baptized. I am sorry to say that the Roman Catholics are not always particular whom they baptize ; and they did not take away the Japanese idols, they only gave the idols Roman Catholic AN .iiRTISTIC JAPANESE. Foreigners Expelled. 77 names, and let the people go on worshipping them. But by-and-by these missionaries began to interfere in the government of the country, and they and their followers laid plots and plans. Naturally the rulers became very angry, and in 1600 an order was issued obliging all foreigners to leave Japan. This edict was followed by another in 1(^14, obliging every one who had become a Christian to give up the Christian religion. In this and in following years numbers of Native Christians escaped to China and else- where ; many were cruelly tortured and put to death, and the immediate effect of the Roman Catholic priests having interfered with politics was that the doors of Japan were tightly shut to all foreigners except the Dutch for more than two hundred years, and in addition to this no Japanese was allowed to leave the countr\-. On all the public notice boards at every JAPANESE PEASANTS COMING TO TOWN. * % OUT IN THE SNOW. Fifty Years' Advance. city gate and in every village was this terrible pro- hibition written up: — ''So long as the sun shall zuarm the earth, let no Christian be / \ so bold as to enter Japaji!' Several countries tried to get permission to trade with /" Japan, but always unsuc- cessfully, and it was not till the year 1854 that America was able to secure the advantage, for the Japanese dreaded to let any more Europeans in amongst them after all the disturbances made by the / ,w ^Slfc^^'^^^HB^/ priests This treaty with America was the beginning ^. of better things, and _\ the Protestant mission- aries were not slow to creep into Japan, though the edict forbid- ding Christian teaching was still in force. How widely different is Japan to-day from what it was fifty years ago ! Now there are telegraph offices, railways, splendid colleges, an army dressed and drilled like the French, light- and newspapers. And there are numbers of Japanese ■ gentlemen who have left their own country and are studying in our English colleges. All this has happened A JAPANESE SNOW-COAT. Growing Work. 79 quickly. Splendid trade is carried on with Japan (though I do not advise you to believe that everything called "Japanese" which you buy for a penny really came from Japan!), and the steamers which sail to Japan from America and from England, also bear our missionaries to and fro. Funny things were seen when European ideas suddenly reached lapan ! The railway guards wore a uni- form like ours, and said in Eng- lish, "All right," when the train was to start ! A Government official might be seen going out to dinner in a swallow-tail coat and white gloves, with native trousers and wooden clogs. But all this willingness in the people to take up our western clothing and habits, meant also that God was preparing their hearts to receive the Gospel. The growth of Mis- sion work in Japan has been wonderful, though there is still very much to be done, and thou- sands of natives are unreached. Many Mis- sionary societies are try- ing to help the dear Japanese, but I cannot tell \-ou about them all. The C'.M.S. has hft\-ninc missionaries there, of whom thirty-six are ladies, and they have stations in each island in the group. Some of the missionaries train the clever Japanese lads in colleges or divinity schools, that they may be ordained as Native clergymen or work as teachers and catechists ; others preach in the mission - halls in the Japanese towns, and talk gladl\- to those who will listen to A.V AINU r;iRL. 8o The A inns. the story of Jesus ; some of the mis- sionaries go out into the country parts and try to reach the villagers, and others are up in the cold northern Island of Yezo, telling the ignorant Ainu people the way to the one true God. These Ainu are very interesting people ; they are the old inhabitants of Japan, but their power is all gone now, and thej'live in dirt and poverty and ignorance. They are unlike the Japanese in habits and in appearance and in language, and are terribly fond of strong drink. The Ainu girl in our picture on page 79 is much prettier than most of them ; the men are short and thick and very hairy, and the women have a moustache tattooed on their upper lip! It is very cold in the place where the Ainu live, and the Japanese who are in the island take good care to wrap up when the winter snows begin. Please to admire their quaint snow-coats as represented in our small picture on page "/?>. What do the lady missionaries do in Japan .'' All sorts of things ! I scarcely know what the Mission would do without them. They train the Bible-women, and teach the girls in school, and visit the women, and take classes and meetings, and nurse the sick, and play the harmoniums ; — in fact there are not half enough ladies in Japan for all the work that is wait- ing for them to do. Some of the ladies are missionaries' wives, and then, besides helping in the Mission work, they can do so much for the Japanese women by showing them what a Christian hunie should be. JAPANESE MOTHER AND CHILD. A WILD NATIVE OF AUSTRALIA. CHAPTER IX. TEN O'CLOCK LAX/),- OR, MOTIIEli AXl) D Arc, I ITER. INTO Ten o'Clock Land come parts of the two largest islands in the world — Papua, or New Guinea, and Australia. The Papuans are .-i-. most ferocious savages, ; and were long the terror of shipwrecked crews. Many of the tribes are cannibals, killing and eating their fellow-men. The Lon- don Missionary So- ciety has been at work on a small scale in Papua for some twenty years, and there are also Missions connected with Continental societies. But great part of the countrx- is still unexplored. The natives were greatly puzzled to know why the missionaries came among them — traders they could understand. One day some of tliem thought they had found out the reason at last. They were on board one of the little Mission ships, peering into everything after their custom, when they came upon the cask in which the salt beef was kept. It was nearly empty. For a moment the natives crowded round it, then they fled in terror, scrambling over the sides of the ship and making off in their boats as fast as they coukl. They thought the salt beef was human flesh, they saw the stock of it was low, and they took it into their heads that the missionaries had invited them on board in order to replenish their ."•••uppU- ! (; 82 Our Daughter-Island. MR. EUGENE STOCK. REV. R. \V. STEW.\RT. Owing to the work of the missionaries and the Native Christian teachers, cannibalism is now lessening in New Guinea. Perhaps you wonder what Australia— that great daughter-island of ours The " Blackfelloivsr 83 — has to do with a missionary book. But you will soon sec that Australia had a good deal to do with missionary work in the past, and has a good deal to do with it in the present, and I hope will have in the future too. Australia was discovered by the Dutch, who called it New Holland, but the whole of the Eastern shore was first visited in 1770 by the well-known English sailor Captain Cook, who thought the scenery so like that of the Welsh coast that he named it New South Wales. ICight years afterwards, the English Government sent out a tlcct with 750 convicts on board, who made a settlement just where the great town of Sydney now stands. Year by year fresh sets of convicts were sent out, and some few brave Christian men went to work amonj,^ them. One of these was the Rev. Samuel Marsden, who was suggested for the work by the Rev. Charles Simeon, of Cambridge, a great and good man who helped to found the C.M.S. You will read more about Mr. Marsden in our next chapter. The natives of Australia, the " blacks," or " blackfellows," as they arc generally called, are wild and intractable, and very debased and vicious. You sec a picture of a warrior on page 81, and of a boy on this page. Their customs were very sinful, they were inveterate thieves, and ^/ . scarcely knew what gratitude meant. Contact with the kind of white men who came to Australia made the blackfellows worse even than they had been before, and when mission- aries began work among them they used to try to get at natives who had not been spoiled by intercourse with V white men. It is .so sad when tho.se who call them.sclves • S Christians hinder the poor dark i)c<)ple whom the\- ou'dit ......ffy^r^t^- U\\w\^i'^//t;:;f<^ In 1836 the C.M.S. began a Mission in the Wellington Valley in New South Wales, and for six )'ears the work was carried on. Some of the stories of the work among the natives in the bush are full of interest, the mis- sionaries rode along r^' .\ NATIVE .W'.STK.\LI.\N BOV. 84 A Hafpy Union. until they were so weary they could hardly keep in the saddle, hoping to reach a few of Christ's " lost sheep." Other workers, too, besides those of the C.M.S. did a great deal to help. After a time Australia grew to be a very different place. The natives lessened in nunibcr, cut off oftentimes by their own evil ways, and British colonists of another class poured in. Great sheep runs were started, gold was discovered, and created a regular "fever" in the country, and though the country districts in Nine and Eight o'Clock Land were still almost without any Gospel ministry, the great towns and cultivated regions further eastward began to be fairly supplied with means of grace. Thus, little by little, this daughter-island of ours grew to be no longer merely tjie home of convicts and blackfellows, but a thriving colony, one of the most valued dependencies of the British crown. In more ways than one Australia has shown that she loves the " old country," and is ready to be linked in closer fellowship with us at home. This union between the old land and the new had missionary expres- sion when the Bishop of Sydney, Dr. Saumarez Smith, wrote to ask the C.M.S. to send out a Deputation to Australia, to help to stir up a greater missionary spirit in the Colonial Church. After a great deal of thought and prayer, the C.M.S. Committee resolved to accept this invitation, and they sent out Mr. Eugene Stock, who had for eighteen years been closely con- nected with the home work of the Society, and was known to many friends in Australia as well as in England ! and the Rev. Robert Stewart, who had long been a missionary in China, and, therefore, knew all about matters in the Mission Field. You will see a picture of them both on page 82. The Australians gave them such a hearty welcome, and sent them gladly from place to place, arranging many meetings for them to address. They found a very different Australia to that of Samuel Marsden's days. Great cities with huge outlying suburbs were visited, many cultured Christian homes welcomed the English guests, and thousands of warm Christian hearts heard and gladly responded to the call to pray and labour for the evangelisation of God's great world. Other workers from England had previously visited Australia on missionary work, and found the Church in the Colony was doing good service amongst the Chinese who had settled there, and also amongst the remaining "blackfellows," as well as reaching A Sfirrhij Call. 85 out to labour amoni; the Papuans in New (juinca, and the nati\'cs in some of the islands of which you read in the next chapter, liesides all this, an earnest clergyman had gathered a great deal of money in Australia }-car by year, and had sent it to India to help the missionaries there. But the call Mother England sent to her Australian daughter was a call to care for the whole ivorhl, and a call to take her part in sending the (iospel every7i.'/ierc. And I think Australia has heard the call, and is bestirring herself to find men and women — and monc)' to support them — to go out with the Gospel news into every laiul. That is wh)' I saitl Australia had a great deal to do with Missions in the present, and in the future, as well as in the past. Now we must take care, here at home in I-^ngland, that we are awake and active ourselves. It would never do for Mother ICngland to grow sleepy, wouUl it? — when she has just been urging her great Australian daughter to awake ! We have been sending a message to Australia, but I think one has come from Australia to us in a hymn by Dr. Saumarez Smith, l^ishop of Sydney, and Primate of Australia, which was sung at the great Gleaners' Union Meeting in Exeter Hall, on Tuesday, Nov. ist, 1892. I hope England, as well as Australia, will answer to this stirring call. J\ JVIessage from Australia. Tip ELL it out, the Lord is King: Everywhere the peoples ye.irn I Tell it out in arcents clear, For the mighty healing word ; Message meet for every land, Christians, speed the message forth, Message meant for every ea r, '-et it everywhere be heard. Light, and love, and life to bring ; };}^^^: '"'^ l'>ve, and life to bring ; Tell it out, the Lord is King : ' *-'" " ""'■ ^^^ ^ord is King ! T> ,, .^ .^ ■ /- J- J • Spread the Gospel of the Kine, lell it out, tis Liod s desire -r n ;» ..» » n .u .u ,,. .^, '. ,,. ,,. J c I ell it out to all the earth, \V ntten in His VV ord of grace ; . . r : Message f^t for human need, \ ou who h ave it in your heart. Fit for every clime and place, \ on who know its boundless worth. Light, and love, and life to bring; Light, and love, .ind life to bring; Tell it out, the Lord is Kingl Tell it out, the Lord is King! Tell it out, proclaim the Christ, Tell the message far and wide ; Doors are open, enter them : Messengers be multiplied. Light, and love, and life to bring; Tell it out, the Lord is King; ^^^^■yy^^i^gsaU-':^^- NF.W ZEALANDER AT PRAYER. CHAPTER X. MIDNIGHT lAND ; OR, AN OCEAN STORY. THE Clock strikes Twelve again! Yes, and if an echo could reach us right up through this round world, we should hear the New Zealand clocks strike twelve as well, only it would be midnight there, though it is mid-day here. Now in this chapter we cannot really keep to Twelve o'Clock Land. We must stretch out considerably to either side, for the story of New Zealand is an ocean story, and we want to bring in the story of other ocean lands not so very far off, those lovely .South Sea Islands, where coral reefs, volcanoes, sharks, sandal wood, bread fruit trees, and everything else that makes you want to travel and find adventures, are to be seen. But now to New Zealand itself first. The summers are as cool as in England, and the winters as warm as in Italy. Without doubt, the heat and cold would be more extreme were it not for the lovely ocean that rolls all round and brings soft springlike air. The shape of New Zealand is not unlike the shape of Italy, though it is composed of three islands, and its size is about that of the United Kingdom. There are mountains also to attract us, .some of considerable height. Forests, ferns — great tree-ferns such as only grow under glass in this country — and grassy plains cover the fair surface of the land. Shall you want to go there too much when I tell you that hedges of geraniums and arum lilies have to be cut away as weeds } New Zealand has been an English Colony since 1840. The original A Maori at Prayer. 87 inhabitants are called Maories, and they are very ancient indeed. They are a splendid people, tall and well made, and not nearly so dark skinned as other races. Their faces, as you see in our pictures, are ^neatly dis- figured by deing " tattooed " with strange devices and marks. They live in villages built of wood ; on page 89 you see a fortified f^ah, or village, with the natives evidently expecting war. The worship of the Maories is very sad and savage. I could not tell you much about it here. At the head of this chapter you see a picture of how some of them have been known to pray. The man has put his hideous god on a little rod, set upright in the ground, and has tied a string round it that an occasional jerk may keep the god from forgetting him. Then he intones a mere string of words by way of a prayer, and sticks a peg into the ground each time that the god may take notice of the number of his prayers. You must hear the story of how the Maories first attracted the mis- sionaries. You read in our last chapter of the clergyman named Samuel Marsden, who was chaplain at the Convict Settlement of Paramatta, in Australia. He sometimes saw some splendid looking men near Sydney, and he found they were New Zealand Maories who had come in ships from their native land. Immediately Mr. Marsden loved these men, and became their friend. This happened about the year 1807. Now Mr. Marsden never did anything by halves ; if he loved people he helped tliem. Perhaps one of the things he did )'ou will think ver)' very kind, almost dangerous!)' kind, though it answeretl well. It was this : Mr. Marsden used to invite to his Australian par- sonage as man)' as thirty New Zealanders at a time ! I wonder what you would feel if you heard that thirty savage cannibals were staying at the vicarage ! Wh)', it would empty the Sunday-school ! A dauijhter of Mr. Marsden's tells 88 Cannibals at the Parsonage. us that once an awkward little incident arose in connexion with their strange visitors. While Mr. Marsden was away from home, the nephew of one of their guests — a chief — died. The be- reaved uncle at once purposed to put to death a slave who was in the party, so that the spirit might accom- pany his nephew to the other world. With great difficulty the poor young slave was kept hidden in one of the parsonage rooms till Mr. M arsden re- turned and dis- suaded the chief from committing t'lis murder. About this time Mr. Mars- den went to England, and while there, he induced the Church Mission- ary Society to A MAORI CHIEF FIFTY YEARS AGO. CStablish a MiS- A Christmas Sermon. 89 sion to the Maories in New Zealand itself; but it was not until the year 1 8 14 that the Mission was successfully planted. I must go back a little and tell you that when coming back to Australia from England, Mr. Marsden noticed in the forecastle of his ship a man taller and darker in colour than the rest, who was very ill. Mr. Marsden found out that he was a Maori named Ruatfira ; he was very kind to this man, and on reaching land took him to his own house in Australia until he recovered. Ruatara afterwards greatly helped Mr. Marsden, l)vit he nevcrdeclarcd himself a Christian. After many difficulties, delays, and defeats, the first Christian service was held on the shores of New Zealand on Christmas Day, 18 14. On that day, after sing- ing the Old Hundredth Psalm, Mr. Marsden preached on the te.xt. " Behold I bring you good tidings of great joy," and Ruatara interpreted the sermon. The First Bishop. These Maories sadly needed the Gospel of Christ. Like a great many other people whom you and I know, they were not quite as fine as they looked, for their hearts were often savage and cruel, and though they were kind to rela- tions, they delighted in torturing their foes, and revelled in war and bloodshed. So fierce were they, that they were the terror of the sailors in the whaling ships which frequented those Southern Seas. They were, however, affectionate, and indeed, had not Mr. Marsden been assured of this, his first landing on the North Island might well have terrified him. A band of naked warriors, armed with spears and clubs, and wearing necklaces made of the teeth of slaughtered enemies, advanced towards him with furious yells, brandishing their spears and performing their war dance. This was simply an affectionate welcome to the " friend of the Maories " ! J wonder Mr. Marsden did not run away ! The first eighteen years' work showed very little result as to direct conversions among the Maories, but after 1832 the people began to listen gladly, and when, in 1842, the first Bishop of New Zealand, the Rev. George Augustus Sehv)'n, whose picture you see on this page, reached the Islands, he was astonished at all he saw. The Maories, as a nation, soon professed Christianit}', though, alas ! there were very many among them who knew nothing of the grace of God. By-and-by great difficulties niSHOP SELWVN OK NEW ZKAI.AND. Isles of the Sea. 91 arose in New Zealand, mainly between the colonists and the natives, the Maories were drawn into repeated wars, and became disloyal not only to the Queen of England but to the King of kings. Great numbers of them were drawn back into a kind of semi-heathenism, and fell into grievous sin. One of the missionaries was murdered, and much of the work broken up. Hut the Native clergymen stood firm and true, and did their best to bring the people into a better state of mind. There arc still many Maories in New Zealand who are in a semi- heathen state, and there are a few who still entirely reject the one true God ; but there are also many bright Native Christians, and many earnest Maori clergymen and lay readers. So though a great cloud came over the Mission, which was so sunn>- when Bishop Selwyn arrived, there is still very much for which we must thank God. And now into New Zealand thousands of luiglish colonists have poured. They have often been far from helpful to the Maories, but the days of the terrible conflict between them have passed away. The Maories are comparatively powerless, and the white men rule unchcckeil. In New Zealand, as in Australia, the Colonial Church is waking up to her responsibility to the great heathen and Mohammedan world, and the two C.M.S. friends who went as a Deputation to Australia have visited .several places in the Islands, to press the call still further home. Bi.shop Selw\n did not confine his work to New Zea- land. He jour- neyed often among those lovely islands too numerous to I name, lying away to the North-West of New Zealand. The Bishop had no charts, but then )ou .sec he took naturally to the AIHHN M.VORI GIRLS. 92 The Bishop atid his Boat. LANDING OF MISSIONARIES IN THE SOUTH SEA ISLANDS. water, for he had been a first-rate oarsman at Cambridge, and though the quiet river was very different to the wide wild ocean, lie did not fear adventures by sea. He had a capital way with the natives too, and never forgot tJie names of those he once visited. In and out, here and there, among these Islands the Bishop went. New Caledonia, New Hebrides, the Loyalty Islands were all visited, and he pushed his way through every difficulty. He had to do all sorts of things which are not in St. Paul's list of Episcopal duties, such as taking observations, pulling a rope, calculating distances, managing a crew who often spoke ten languages, making dresses Working for a Bible. 93 for tlic natives' wives, and when they were sick, "he even washed their babies"! No wonder such a Bishop won his way! In 1855 J<^hn Coleridge Patteson joined the Mission, at his own charges, and was six years later given sole care of it by Bishop Seiwxii, being consecrated Bishop of Melanesia. He continued the heroic work — only to be murdered ten years later at Napaku, where now a good footing has been obtained. The second Bishop of Melanesia was a son of the Bishop Selwyn who had founded the Mission, and he, like his father, had been a great oarsman at Cambridge. The first Bishop Selwyn used to say that " white corks were onl\' intended to float black nets," and by this he meant that Native Chris- tians should be educated and taught in schools how to teach their own people. So to secure this, be bought from the British Government some ground on Norfolk Island, hundreds of miles away from all other land, and there he founded schools for training South Sea Islanders as preachers and teachers. This land cost i^2,ODO, and how do you suppose the Bishop got the money? Mr. Patteson, who was afterwards the Bishop, gave £\,0(y:i himself, and Miss Charlotte Yonge, whose name most of you know, gave the profits of her story " The Daisy Chainl' which amounted to ^1,000 also. There are about 200 students in these schools, which close every year from April to November, when the students travel all over the South Seas, teaching and preaching. Bishops Patteson and Selwyn were not the onl>' hero missionaries of the Islands. In the New Hebrides group, John Williams, the " Martjr of Erromanga," met his death on the Island of that name, famous for its sandal wood ; on the Island of Aneityum many thrilling scenes took place. You must hear how the Aneityumesc got their Bible. The people wanted a Bible, the missionaries set to work at the translation, but who was to pay for the printing of the book ? The natives thought of a way. They prepared and laid aside each )ear all their arrowroot ; and the missionaries obtained sale for this in Australia and Scotl md. \'car by \'ear for fourteen years was this arrowroot treasurcil up and sold, till the glail tlay came when /, 1,200 was gathered up, sufficient to pa\' for the printing of the l^ible and its carriage to Aneityum from luiglantl, where it was printed by thi' British and Foreign Bible Society. Remember that these nati\es were men not \m\^ converted from barbarous cannibalism. Till 94 Persecution. the missionaries came their only clothing was bracelets, earrings, and nose rings made from sea-shells ! In our picture on page 92 you see such islanders receiving a missionary party on their first landing among them, and below you see the kind of boat in which the savages go out to meet the traders' ships. The change in these island savages was not brought about without many martyrs ; in Erromanga not only John Williams was murdered, but in later years, Mr. and Mrs. Gordon were dealt with in the most cruel, stealthy way. In the last letter Mr. Gordon wrote to his friend, the Rev. J. G. Paton, he said that the hatred against him and his wife was indescrib- ably fiendish ; not many months after he was literally hacked to pieces. On Tanna, also one of the New Hebrides, the Rev. John Paton endured much from the natives. Their only idea of Europeans was derived from the sandal-wood dealers, who were often cruel and dis- ^■ci honest in their deal- ings. Among the ^=^^- fierce and angry na- ^"^^ tives came brave ^^g3 John Paton, there he "/^^fc taught and preached, ,^Bi there he lived with his life in his hand. From day to day death dogged him, and were it not for the tender keeping of God, and his own grand heart and cool head, he would not be alive to tell his story to-day. We SOUTH SEA islanders' CANOE. Death at Hand. 95 can scarcely imagine what it must be like to live in scenes like those on Tanna. One d.i)', when Mr. Paton was building his house, he noticed an armed party of savages led by a war-chief gathering stealthily round him. They watched him in perfect silence ; suddenly every man raised his musket and levelled it at Mr. Paton. A deathly silence followed, not one .sound was made. Mr. Paton did not move; to speak would have been fatal ; he pretended to be going on with his work, but his eyesight came and went in flashes, the strain on his nerve was intense. In his heart he uttered a quick pra)er to the Lord Jesus to save him, or else to take him home to glory quickly that he might not suffer torture at savage hands. In a moment, the words stole into his heart, "Whatsoever ye shall ask in My Name, I will do it," and he knew that he was safe. The savages retired, but re-formed a little further off; again God restrained them, and finally they retired altogether. The Fiji Islands, to the east of the New Hebrides, were full of awful scenes when the first missionaries arrived there. Savage cannibal feasts, and the roasting of human bodies, were frequent sights; to show horror of them almost brought deat!i upon them.selve.s. One party who were forced to be all but witnesses of a savage feast, closed their frail doors, and drew their slender mosquito cuilains so that their eyes might not see what their ears so unwillingly heard ! there was scarcely a hope that the infuriated savages would spare them, so they all knelt down in the dark gloomy house determined to be slain while on their knees. At midnight, when each voice had ceased its prayer, and heads were bent to accept God's will, whethL-r it brought death or life, the stillness was broken b\- an awful \cll of many voices. Death seemed really to have come at last — but the yell proved only to be an invitation to join in the dance outside, and by degrees danger passed. Now, Fiji is practically a Christian land, civilised to a great extent. If we visit the .Sandwich Isles, where we used to think the "King of the Cannibal Islands" lived, if we visit the Frientlly Islands, the same story meets u.s. Cannibals before, Christians now. Thank God for this; but, ah, there are many among the "green isles of the glittering sea" cannibal still. More missionaries arc needed, more heroes, more lo\e to those in such depth of sin. If your eyes ever see these Isles, I hope it will be as a missionary hero, starting out after the brave saints of God, to bring His ueace to sinful hearts. CHAPTER XL DAY- DAWN LAND; OR, THE RED MAN'S REST. E have travelled eastward together, you and I, until the very limit of our frontispiece map has been reached. Wc have even gone beyond it, among the further islands of the sea. Now we come back again to our own dear England, and look, not east- ward at those lands which the sun has reached before he came to us, but straight away westward, across the broad Atlantic Ocean, to that great New World where it is day-dawn at our noon-tide hour. We might look northward to Iceland and Greenland, those frozen lands visited by many a glowing missionary heart, or we might look somewhat southward to the beautiful West Indies, where for long years men and women have pointed souls to Jesus Christ, or further southward still, to the great " neglected continent," as South America is called, where men like Allen Gardiner — but oh! so few in number — have gone with the Gospel message to savage or priest-ridden souls. But we can only give one passing glance at all these lands, and ask for your earnest prayer that they may be in "Day-Dawn Land" indeed, lit up by the rising of that Sun of Righteous- ness Whose rays have shone upon us. I want you just now, however, to look neither northward nor southward, but straight across the great Atlantic Ocean to the Red Man's Land. This great region, as we look across it in our noon-day sun, includes every hour from eight a.m. to one a.m.;, so that while it is full da)'light on the Atlantic The Great Lone Laud. ■^ nb^lU'^'ilK' <^^^^4^M l|{TKr£iW't®ll J.F'''|.,, .lift , lift coast it is the grey dawn of early morning in the central regions, and still night awny on the Pacific shore. What shall I tell you about this Great Lone Land ? First come with me to the far north, where the Eskimo live, on the shores of the Polar Sea Instead of tall, half-clad Indians, stalking in and out of tents of skin, we find the short, square gentle Eskimo, covered in thick skin garments bu.ldmg then- bcc-hive huts of ice. The door is a block of ice, and as II AMONc; THE KSKIMO. soon as a numerous family have crept into the hut (which may or may not have a hole to act as combined window and chimney) they close t/ie door. You may picture the sort of place it is in which to spend the night ! It may be intensely cold outside, but inside it is tolerably warm. Only, it is not just the kind of warmth one would relish if one had the choice ! The Eskimo are not cleanly in their habits, their skin garments are very imperfectly cured, and their food is often a sort of fatty stuff which is unsavoury to English senses. Yet some dear missionaries go out amongst these people and sleep in the huts of ice, that they may the better tell them of the love of Christ. The Eskimo "horses" are dogs! They use small light sledges drawn by several of these hardy animals, and when the snow is frozen hard they can spin along at a good round pace. The traders often ride in the sledges, but the Eskimo and the missionaries generally let the dogs draw their food or luggage, and walk themselves beside the sledge, as you see in the picture on the opposite page. Down in the south of the Red Man's Land, the country is ver)- rich, and readily grows good crops of corn ; the forests are full of splendid The In(/i{jfi's God. 99 timber; and the great lakes and rivers abound in fish. Up in the north it is very barren ; snow lies heavily for months, the rivers are frozen during the long severe winter, and the only means of living is by hunting the deer and other wild animals, whose flesh gives food, and whose skins can be sold to the fur-traders. Once the Red Intlians were the sole owners of this vast Cf)untr\-. The>- were lords of the soil. The name of "Indians" was given to them by mistake, and has stuck to them ever since. They have nothing at all to do with the people of India, away in Five o'Clock Land. ICven if the North American Indians had been busy agricultural l)eople, they were never numerous enough to cultivate so much fertile laml ; but they did not take to farming, they cared more for hunting and war. They were very clever in catching the wild animals that roamed over the great inland plains, and they were horribly fierce and cruel in fi^htin"- among themselves. The different tribe.s, .speaking different language.s, often hated one another, and the " braves," as the fighting men were called, would paint in a hideous fashion, deck themselves with gay feathers, and go out "on the war-jiath," killing every one they met. They did not generally worship idols, but believed in a Great Good Spirit, whom they called " I'ather." They thought, however, that there was a bad spirit stronger than the good one, and they u.sed all sorts of charms to protect them from his evil influence. In our picture on page loi, where the "medicine-man" is working incantations, while the sick man cowers in the corner, you see an illustration of this. For hundreds of years these " Red Children of the Great Father " lived on without hearing of the Saviour of the World. The\- were brave and generous, but very ignorant and wicked, truly " tied and bound " with the chain of their sins. Death to them meant going to the ,- •■hapj)y hunting ground.s," .VJl4 — ^r^t^»*.^»-irrr^.^M.^.„w-^y |-^^^-»r and they were buried either » i(^ up in the trees or in wooden a Ajf^^^J^^ jk^tHft—J^^iiiiS^^fi^ ->hantie.s, or in a tent, often with all the things arouml HOli TRAIN ON THK ICF. lOO A Better Rest. Indians in a Canoe. \-, them which they had used in this life (see picture on page 97). Now the Red Men know of a better rest, and man\- of them have gone to that " rest which remaineth for the people of God," whilst others are living holy Christian lives and rejoicing the missionaries" hearts. Very many years ago it was found out that there was money to be made in the Red Indians' Land. Numbers of white men, some, alas ! godless in the extreme, visited the northern shores to buy furs from the Incantations. lOI AN INDIAN .MKUICINf-MAN. I02 Good and Bad. clever Indian trappers ; others wanted to cut timber in the great forests, and to till the fertile land. Scotch and English sett- , .lers went to the Red River and founded the great city of Winnipeg, and at last / the whole of North-West America was turned into a British Colony, , ■ and the Red Indians became your * / and my fellow-subjects. In some ways this was the Indians. It stopped their wars, and gave them a hope / about the Saviour. But „ > ^ "H>. "^'■; ^ hand they learned to love which they had never and until the Govern- them to have it num- efifects. The Red always ready for ligion, have been the white man's Indians is get- th ei r old they are here and mission- good for cruel of learning on the other strong drink, touched before, ment forbade bers died from its Indians, though not the white man's re- painfully ready to learn sins. The number of ting smaller year by year, glory is gone, and now- scattered in small parties there, with earnest C.M.S. aries living amongst them, and seeking to win them to God. You must not think that all the natives of this great country A' >^ are alike. In the southern plains, .jV> * ... ^V * the Red Indians live in tents made of ^ reindeer skin. They sometimes have -g^ ., , ^ r^ ?i few horses, sorry ill-fed animals, such '^^'^^ ,-~^^ ^ as would disgrace an English cab-stand. ^■Qi!/, ;f^ The Indians on the great rivers live cither Squaws and Papooses. 103 in tents or bark huts, and spend most of their time in canoes (see picture on page 100), which they paddle through dangerous rapids in a daring way. The missionaries know enough about these Indian canoes, for they some- times travel in them for weeks together, pitching their tents by the river- bank at night. When the snow is thick upon the ground, the Indians wear great snow-shoes, with broad network, which prevent their feet from sinking in the snow. The Indians call their wives S(jiiaivs, and their children papooses. The wives have a hard time of it among the heathen Indians. When the master of the wigwam, as they call their tent, has killed .some game, he will stalk home and order his poor wife to go out, miles away perhaps, and drag the hcav)' carcase home. Then she must skin the animal, and prepare it for food, and not until her lord has eaten may .she begin her own meal. ^I^A5. T\i/e(\ 104 Our Last Pairc. " Ladies first " is not the rule out there ! The babies are carried about in very odd cradles, slung on the mother's back ; you see one in our picture on this page. You w^ould never see an Indian father carrying his baby, unless the love of God had touched his heart. In some places the Indians have given up their wandering life, and have settled down into near little houses which the missionaries have taught them to build. Schools have been opened, workshops started, and Christian order has taken the place of the old lawless life. Two of these Mission stations you see in our pictures on pages I02 and 103. They are right away on one of the rivers which flows into the Pacific Ocean, amid grand and beautiful scenery. The stories of Mission work amongst these Indians are full of thrilling interest. I hope you will always read them in missionary books and magazines. But we have come to the \iQ.Ky last page of our book, and I must say good-bye. I hope you have learned something more of God's great world, and the people in it whom He so loves. I hope you have learned that all men everywhere need the Saviour who died for them and for us, and that the Holy Spirit can alone reveal Him to the soul. I hope that this fuller knowledge will mean earnest prayer, and busy work, and also personal service in the Mission Field b}'-and-by from man}- who are now bo)'s and eirls. 1932Y6^. 1! Princeton Theological Seminary Libraries 1 1012 01253 8577