447

Then in October is "Self-denial week."

envelopes. Place them on Sunday morning. Talk to the people of the value of personal sacrifice for at least one week. Let the young men give up their cigars; let the women walk and save their car fares. Let all banish coffee and tea and condiments, and do it all from love of Jesus Christ to help him regain his kingdom.

Now in regard to the missionary collection. Do not trust the year's outcome to a single day. It may rain; there may be some very special attraction in a neighboring church; there may be some who, counting themselves." prudent," foresee the missionary storm and hide themselves. They know when once the storm has passed they are safe for the next twelve months. Besides, there are thousands of wage-earners who cannot at any one time pay any considerable amount, and who are reluctant to put their names to a subscription for any figure larger than they can pay any week of the year. To business men, to men of certain yearly salaries, it may make little difference how the "collection" is taken. To the mass of our weekly wage-earners it matters very much. Sometimes in the tenth month of a year a strike takes place, some special drought or frost afflicts; the possibilities of the year are lost because everything was left to one day, and disaster came before that day.

Much the better plan is to make various small occasions besides the great one. Let the Sunday school begin the first week. Why cannot all the moneys the children contribute go to the missionary cause? If necessary, let the actual cost of supplies be taken from the collection, but let all the school feel all the time we are helping to save this world.

Take advantage of Easter evening. The morning has been one of joyous worship. "Christ the Lord has risen again." Flowers abound; music and gladness have filled the air. Why not give the evening to a "children's missionary program," with a special offering to take Christ to the children of the whole earth?

Let the midweek service bear on the subject of "Inasmuch." Sow much seed for the winter meetings in the loving devotion of this "do without" week.

Interest the League in a special "League contribution," through mite box collections or in any way, the amount not to be named until the great missionary day comes. With all these tributary streams the rise of the waters on missionary day need not be anxiously or fearfully awaited. Rise they must.

Let the great day be carefully planned for. No auctioneering, no unseemly pressing, no pitting John Smith against Harry Jones; all that works worse than reaction. It cannot be repeated, and one year's gains will be more than offset by the losses of several following years. Bright, intelligent, earnest presentation of the victories of the sacramental host and of the value to Jesus Christ of present reinforcement; then the collection by subscription. Follow with the baskets for those who will not sign much, but will give a little.

Let the Missionary Committee, immediately after Sunday, prepare a duplicate list of all names of church members not appearing in the missionary subscription list. Divide the names among the committee for an immediate canvass. Let the pastor follow up this canvass, just to see that the committee is doing its work.

Add all the sums together, and if the church has not completely passed its "apportionment" it will do so at an early date.

Lest some impatient reader should say all this advice is impracticable and doctrinaire the writer would add in conclusion that he operated a large workingman's church in the heart of a manufacturing city, and by the use of these and similar methods prevailed upon the people to give nearly as much for the "benevolences "as they spent upon the running of their own church, which, meanwhile, was increased in all the elements of stability and local usefulness.

Delaware, O.

449

A school will be opened at once in New Umtali for the whites, and one in Old Umtali for the natives. Other missionaries will soon follow Brother Ehnes and his wife. Bishop Hartzell will arrive in that section of the continent at the beginning of the next dry season, early in the spring, and spend three or four months in giving direct superintendence to the inauguration of this new, and, what is certain to be, great missionary movement.

The bishop needs at least $25,000 to improve the valuable concessions in lands and buildings at Old and New Umtali and put them in shape for workers and their work. One friend has given him $5,000 on this fund. Another one $1,000, and a good many smaller amounts. He will be exceedingly glad to correspond with any who would like to have a part in this new and great opening for the redemption of Africa.

Outside of old Egypt no section of Africa is so rich in evidences of ancient peoples and civilization as this great plateau on which the Umtalis are located and which extends northward to the great lakes, with an average altitude of from four thousand to seven thousand feet above the sea.

In the Inyanga country, forty miles above Umtali, Mr. Cecil Rhodes has one of his great experimental farms where hundreds of thousands of dollars are being expended in every sort of experiment as to agricultural products and live stock.

A recent traveler describes an interesting journey through this country in the British Central Africa Gazette, from which we make the following extract:

Approaching Inyanga from any direction one is struck with the marvelously regular lines, or contours of elevation which are to be seen from a distance running in long, continuous parallels horizontally to the mountain slopes until they are lost to sight on the observer's horizon. Here and there along the face of the mountains, and intersecting the aforesaid parallels, are to be seen numerous silvery-looking streaks (when lit up by the rising or setting sun) descending from the mountain tops.

On a closer inspection it will be found that the long parallels are simply retaining walls, and that the silvery-looking streaks are waterfalls. The whole of the mountain slopes have been most beautifully and systematically terraced by the hand of man, and 2

time been carried out and completed. Even the numerous valleys which are inclosed in this moun. tainous region have been laid out in ridge and furrow; the ridges are about two yards wide by about three feet deep. Standing some distance up the face of any of these mountain slopes and looking downward into any of these valleys, one is at once struck with the remarkable symmetry with which the whole surface of the country is laid out.

I used to be impressed with the beautiful regularity of the Scottish fields as compared with the attempts at agriculture in other lands, and I hold the opinion that in no place in the world is farming carried on with such industrious or persevering regular

ity as in Scotland, and that other countries have a good deal to learn from Scotland. Yet here in East Central East Africa there is a record left behind by a race forgotten whom the Scotch would not be disgraced in copying with respect to irrigation. Of course, with such splendid facilities as those which nature has bestowed upon this portion of the earth, it was only natural that when it first met the eyes of ument of their intelligence and industry behind that wandering tribe, who have left so grand a monthem, they decided to make it their home.

That they must have been a mighty host is evidenced by the fact that every foot of soil was made available for cultivation, and the magnitude of their labors will be readily understood when it is stated that frequently as many as one hundred and fifty to two hundred parallel walls of stone can be counted on the face of the mountains, and these walls can be followed, conforming to every contour of the ground,

for thirty or forty miles along one system alone. After the walls were built the ground had to be excavated and leveled. The water courses were then cut, and the water, which had been flowing from hundreds of springs on the summits of the mountains, finding its nearest path downward, was let into these channels and thence regulated over the entire face of the

country.

There are numerous traces left of old forts, strongholds, and lookout posts, all very strongly built in stone. The method of ingress or egress was through a small hole left in tċe foot of the wall. The people may have taken these precautions as a means of protection from wild animals. I think, however, that it is more highly probable they were beset by a hostile surrounding. I cannot conceive it possible that so industrious a race could have been other than a peace-loving people. It is a great pity that nothing of their story is known. The few natives who now live in very scattered and small groups over the country know nothing and have no tradition of the past. A considerable number of the men in the surrounding kraals have the aquiline type of nose, and I have thought that this may possibly suggest that the people were of either Arab or Bedouin descent.

IN

N the very heart of the city of San Francisco, crammed into eight blocks of buildings, is to be found a community of eighteen thousand Chinese, who eat, dress, live, and have their being just as if they lived in China. It is, indeed, a section of China set down in Christian America. Of this Chinese population about three thousand are women and girls, and about two thousand children under twelve years of age, most of them born in the United States. About a hundred are bound-footed women, the first wives of well-to-do Chinese merchants. About seven or eight hundred are also married according to Chinese custom, the majority of whom are "secondary" wives of merchants whose first wives are living in China. About five hundred women are married according to American law and custom, whose homes present the only sample of clean, decent family life to be found in this wretched place. The rest of this female population are slaves-and worse.

While Methodism is sending hundreds of Christian women to labor in the zenanas, hospitals, and schools across the seas it would be suicidal for us to neglect the heathenism that is intrenched in our midst, and if neglected may become a menace to our very civilization. Think of one thousand five hundred slave women and girls in this land of freedom, the majority doomed to a loathsome bondage! Think of two thousand little children, nine out of ten born on our own soil, growing up in heathenism and unreached by ordinary evangelistic agencies! Think of polygamy, foot-binding, and opium smoking! The work among these women was started by Dr. Otis Gibson in 1871, who organized the Woman's Missionary Society of the Pacific Coast, its aim being to rescue women from slavery and to employ Christian women to visit the homes in Chinatown. With the increase of a Chinese child population the society widened its scope. It became no longer a work only for foreigners, but for native born. In 1893 this work was taken under the wing of the Woman's Home Missionary Society, and is now managed by a committee of ladies known as the "Oriental Bureau."

There are three departments: 1. Rescue work. 2. House-to-house visitation. School work.

3.

RESCUE WORK.

On the back streets of Chinatown are infamous dens where hundreds of painted bedizened creatures are herded behind ironclad doors and barred windows, held in a bondage worse than death. Ninety-nine out of a hundred cannot speak the English language. Incarnate demons in the form of white men for $200 a month "protect" these human chattels, prevent their running away, and head off any curious American who seeks to communicate with them.

These women and girls have been purchased or stolen in China, and under the persuasion that they are coming to marry rich men are imported to this country. They claim to be native daughters of California, and white women have been found ready for $10 to swear in court that they were present when the child came into the world. The girls are coached up in crossing the ocean, and show an amazing familiarity with California life and customs and topography. The judge is bound to decide according to the evidence. The girl is landed, and in a few months finds herself in a house of ill fame. Her owner has paid perhaps $2,000 for her, and she must earn money for her master by her shame.

Mrs. K. B. Lake, the matron of our Rescue Home on Washington Street, has twentyfive of these rescued girls and women under her charge at the present time, who have either fled in the darkness of night to us for shelter or been taken by force from dens of vice and cruel treatment.

Not all of these girls have been saved from an immoral life; some of the younger ones have been rescued from domestic bondage where they have been kept as nurse girls and often treated with incredible cruelty.

It is a most difficult undertaking to save these poor creatures from their owners' hands. The majority, ignorant of our laws and institutions, believe that Chinese customs prevail even in America, that there is no hope of escape, that a worse fate awaits them outside, and that the foreign devils will torture them in black prisons if they try to escape. Hence many will recoil like a fly in a spider's web from those who attempt, often at great personal risk, to save them.

The American policeman who patrols the street is pointed out as a "blue-coated