to the holiness, the purity, and the usefulness of their lives. They are, indeed in Japan, lights shining in dark places. Speaking of them generally she declares :

The days when a missionary was "dished up for dinner" at foreign tables are perhaps past, but the anti-missionary spirit is strong, and the missionaries give a great deal of positive and negative offence, some of which might, perhaps, be avoided. They would doubtless readily confess faults, defects, and mistakes, but with all these, I believe them to be a thoroughly sincere, conscientious, upright, and zealous body of men and women, all working, as they best know how, for the spread of Christianity, and far more anxious to build up a pure Church than to multiply nominal converts. The agents of the different sects abstain from even the appearance of rivalry, and meet for friendly counsel, and instead of perpetuating such separating names as Episcopalians, Baptists, Congregationalists, &c., "the disciples are called CHRISTIANS FIRST." [The capitals are Miss Bird's.]

Without indulging in any unreasonable expectations, it cannot be doubted that the teaching of this large body of persons, and the example of the unquestionable purity of their lives, is paving the way for the reception of the Christianity preached by Japanese evangelists with the eloquence of conviction, and that every true convert is not only a convert but a propagandist, and a centre of the higher morality in which lies the great hope for the future of Japan.

And again :

The practical sagacity with which the Americans manage their Missions is worthy of notice. So far from seeking for a quantity of converts, they are mainly solicitous for quality. They might indeed baptize hundreds where they are content with tens. The same remark applies to Dr. Palm and the missionaries of the C.M.S. at Hakodate and Niigata. There are hundreds of men and women scattered throughout this neighbourhood who are practically Christians, who even meet together to read the Bible, and who subscribe for Christian objects, but have never received baptism.

The following is Miss Bird's description of the labours of Mr. Dening:

The steamy atmosphere [in Sept. 1878] does not affect Mr. Dening's missionary zeal, which is perfectly indefatigable. Besides the two Sunday preachings and two weekly preachings at Ono and Arikawa, and two weekly preachings and three Bible-classes in Hakodate in addition, he is going to open a new station at Nanai, where there are many samurai, and it is from among these, and not from among the common people-in whom the religious instinct and the spirit of religious inquiry seem quite dead-that converts have been made. The foundation-stone of an English Episcopal Church has been laid since I returned, by Mr. Eusden, H.B.M.'s Consul, in the presence of the eight Japanese converts, whose names were placed in a cavity in the stone, and a few others, with a considerable crowd of Native onlookers. It shows the toleration granted to Christianity that this small body of Christians should have been able to purchase a site on the main street on which to erect a conspicuous religious edifice.

Of Mr. Fyson, and of Dr. Palm of the Edinburgh Medical Mission, she says,—

I have the highest respect for both the Niigata missionaries. They are true, honest, conscientious men, not sanguine or enthusiastic, but given up to the work of making Christianity known in the way which seems best to each of them, because they believe it to be the work indicated by the Master. They are alike incapable of dressing up "cases for reports," of magnifying trifling encouragements, of suppressing serious discouragements, or of responding in any unrighteous

way to the pressure brought to bear upon missionaries by persons at home, who are naturally anxious for results. Dr. Palm, for some time a childless widower, has had it in his power to itinerate regularly and extensively among the populous towns and villages contained within the treaty limits of twenty-five miles. Mr. and Mrs. Fyson offer what is very important in this land of loose morals, the example of a virtuous Christian home, in which servants are treated with consideration and justice, and in which a singularly sensitive conscientiousness penetrates even the smallest details. The missionaries are accused of speaking atrocious Japanese, and of treating the most sacred themes in the lowest coolie vernacular; but Mr. Fyson aims at scholarship, and Ito, who is well educated, but abhors missionaries, says, that though he is not fluent, "the Japanese that he has is really good." Mrs. Fyson speaks colloquial Japanese readily, and besides having a Bible-class, is on very friendly terms with many of her female neighbours, who talk to her confidentially, and in whom she feels a great interest. Her real regard for the Japanese women, and the sympathetic, womanly way in which she enters not only into their difficulties, but into their different notions of morals, please me much.

We have been, throughout this article, most anxious to present Japan, not as seen by missionaries, but as it presents itself to independent observers. We have therefore pretermitted much corroborative of missionary accounts which have appeared in our pages. It is for this reason that we do not here introduce any account of Miss Bird's most interesting description of her visit amongst the Ainos, "The peaceable savages who stand in the same relation to their Japanese subjugators as the Red Indians to the Americans, the Takkooses to the Malays, and the Veddas to the Sinhalese." They are in number about 12,000 and are believed to be decreasing (this, however, Miss Bird doubts-she would augment the numbers); a people having no written characters, no literature, no history, and very few traditions. Our readers must be familiar with them, from Mr. Dening's accounts in our own pages. But they will do well to refer to Miss Bird's volumes for the further and valuable information which she communicates concerning this strange people, held by some to be the aborigines of Japan.

The general conclusion will, we think, be that "although there are many adversaries, yet that there is promise in Japan for faithful and persevering labour." There is matter for thankfulness to Almighty God for the progress which has already been made during the brief period that has elapsed since there has been free access for Christianity to Japan, and the Lord has made a way for His servants to proclaim Him who" can open the blind eyes, and bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison-house." Few who study the subject will, we think, be indisposed to concur with Miss Bird's verdict that, notwithstanding all obstacles, "any one who attempts to forecast the future of Japan without any reference to Christianity is making a very serious mistake."

K.

AMONG THE DRUSES OF THE HAURAN.

HOSE of our readers, and they must be many, who watch with interest the operations of the Palestine Exploration Fund, will have noticed with much satisfaction the resolution of the Committee of that Fund to undertake the survey of Eastern Palestine. Western Palestine being now completely surveyed, and a magnificent map, in twenty-six sheets, on the scale of an inch to a mile, actually published, it is right and natural that the scarcely less interesting Trans-Jordanic country should be taken in hand. In the meanwhile, the attention of the reading public has been drawn to one large section of that country by the publication of Mr. Lawrence Oliphant's Land of Gilead. The present time, therefore, is opportune to remind the friends of the Church Missionary Society that, among the many fields of missionary labour occupied with their aid, one, and not the least important in its way, is Eastern Palestine. These smaller branches of the work are very apt to remain unnoticed while we are rightly directing the larger flow of our sympathies towards the great Missions in Africa and India and China. Those of us who occasionally remember the less prominent fields must take comfort in the thought that there is One in whose hand " are all the corners of the earth," and that wherever among the remotest of those "corners" the solitary travelling missionary or the humble schoolmaster is quietly sowing the good seed, there too shall the fruit in due time be found.

The work of the Church Missionary Society "on the other side Jordan" is small enough; but not too small, we trust, to claim a share in the sympathy and prayers of the Society's friends. It consists of (1) a small Protestant congregation, with a Native pastor, at Salt, (2) five small schools in the Druse villages of the Hauran. Of the former we presented an account in the Intelligencer of June last, in the shape of a report from the Rev. Chalil Jamal. The latter is described at length in the journal subjoined, of a missionary tour through the Hauran taken in August by the Rev. Franklin Bellamy. Some "Notes" on the same country and work, by Mr. Bellamy, appeared in the Intelligencer of September 1877; and the two accounts should be compared. Trans-Jordanic Palestine is usually divided into three parts, Moab, Gilead, and Bashan, corresponding nearly to the three portions, as usually coloured in our Scripture maps, of Reuben (with independent Moab), Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh. Mr. Lawrence Oliphant's recent work, The Land of Gilead, is mainly confined to the second or central section. For the southern section, Canan Tristram's Land of Moab is the recognized authority. Of the northern section, Bashan, we have few detailed accounts; and it is with this that we have at present to do.

Bashan again may be divided into four parts, singularly distinct from one another in physical characteristics, and recognized in the Greek and Roman period as separate provinces. (1) Jaulan, the vast table-land, 3000 feet high, lying east of the Lake of Galilee and the Waters of Merom,-the pasturage of the "wild bulls of Bashan."

It is the Golan of Scripture, the Gaulonitis of the Romans. (2) El Lejah, the strange district called Argob in the Old Testament and Trachonitis in the New, whose physical features are almost without parallel on the face of the earth; of which more presently. (3) Hauran, called Auranitis by the Greeks, but now still bearing the same name it bore in Ezekiel's days (Ezek. xlvii. 16); "a vast open plain," says Dr. Tristram," of surpassing fertility and luxuriant verdure ""the fairest and richest portion of Bashan"-lying south and east from Jaulan and El Lejah. (4) Bathaniyeh (Batanæa of the Greeks), a small hilly district to the east again, beyond which stretches the great Syrian desert. Most travellers who visit Bashan at all-and not many do-see only some small portions of the first and third of these divisions. Mr. Bellamy's journey extended over the second, third, and fourth. Almost all the places he mentions are marked in Van de Velde's map, and will be found in some of the better atlases, such as Keith Johnston's Royal; but most ordinary maps of Palestine do not reach so far east as Mr. Bellamy's furthest point in that direction, which was some seventy miles east of the Lake of Galilee as the crow flies. This remote district is inhabited by those remarkable people the Druses, described by Dr. Porter, in his Giant Cities of Bashan, as "physically the finest race in Western Asia." Their religion, neither Christian, Mohammedan, nor (in the ordinary sense) heathen, is still little known and less understood; but as will be seen from Mr. Bellamy's journal, they are willing that their children should be taught out of the Christian Scriptures if in this way they can get something of an education to put them on a level with their Christian neighbours—not a very high level, as our readers well know. A few years ago, Mrs. Parry, wife of the Rev. Dr. Parry, who took great interest in the Druses and made several journeys into the country from Damascus, established schools in five of the villages; and after her death they were for some time carried on and occasionally visited by Mr. Mackintosh, of the British Syrian Schools at Damascus. In 1876 the Church Missionary Society undertook the charge of these schools, and since then they have been two or three times visited by Mr. Bellamy, as well as by Mr. Mackintosh. There appear from the journal to be still five schools in operation, though not at the same five places as they were five years ago. Then they were at Suweideh, Kharaba, Mejdel, Atil, and Sleim. Now they are at Ezra, Lahiteh, Kunawat, Atil, and Kharaba.

The journal begins at El Husn, a village in Ajlun (Mount Gilead), some twenty miles S.E. of the Lake of Galilee; and from thence Mr. Bellamy travelled N.E. to Ezra, which is usually spelt Ed'ra, and is the ancient Edrei, where Og was defeated by the Israelites (Numb. xxi. 33). This place is at the south-east angle of El Lejah; and here we find the first of the five schools.

Journal of the Rev. F. Bellamy.
The last week of July I joined my
son (who had been making a tour in
Ajlun, south of Hauran) at El Husn,

and spent a Sunday there. It is true, that in a certain sense there is an open door for us, that is, the people and the

It is not necessary here to quote the descriptions given by travellers of the extraordinary region next traversed by Mr. Bellamy. El Lejah is an island of black basalt rock, about the size of the Isle of Wight, in the midst of the great grassy plateau of Bashan. It is called in the Old Testament the "region" (chebel, i. e. rope) of " Argob" (i. e. a heap of stones), which exactly describes it, as being encircled by a rocky shore, "like some mighty Titanic wall in ruins.' Not less significant are the Greek name Trachonitis (stony) and the modern name Lejah (place of refuge). For ages it has been, and still is, a refuge for out