carry them on. Two rival Moslem houses claim the supremacy in that region, and are plundering and burning and killing each other's dwellings and families. The rest of the land is quiet.

Of course this prevalence of the war spirit and war news interferes with our work. Still our schools thrive, our congregations are as full as ever, and we trust without apprehension in the ordinary circuit of our labours, except about the head waters of the Jordan and from that region to Nazareth. Of course our Jerusalem brethren cannot visit Nablous and Nazareth as freely as before.

Mr Thomson has full Bible classes and zealous ones at Sidon, and the native friends there seem very zealous as propagandists. Some villagers above Sidon, especially Jûn, near which Lady Stanhope resided and died, have Protestant communities, and the knowledge of the gospel seems to be extending there. Jûn is the place where the Latins first gained a considerable company of the Greek Church, forming the first portion of that body now known as the Papal Greek Church. There is an interesting movement at Tyre. Several are declared evangelicals, and they are urging us to give them a good schoolmaster, who also can instruct adults in the way of truth. I hope we shall be able to do so soon. Sidon was the mother of Tyre, and now the new-born Protestants of Sidon are teaching their relatives of Tyre the truth as it is in Jesus. I came to Abeyh to see little Emily Calhoun, who is very ill, hardly expected to live. Mr Calhoun is better than last year, but still is not strong. He made a visit to 'Ain-Zehalteh, Sharôn, Mejd-el-Bâna, and Bhamdûn and Bhouwarah recently. He found the schools there thriving. Some of these are almost exclusively Druse villages, and yet they send even their girls. The teachers are all Protestants, and use only Christian books. One of the teachers seems a man of great zeal. He has been under the excommunication of the Papists for a long time, and yet he is received into houses of Papists and teaches their children. Recently I was called to Tripoli to see Mrs Wilson (then very ill, now recovered). But little progress is made there, but the brethren have pleasant intercourse with some Maronites above Jebail, and there are a number of individuals there who are of evangelical sentiments.

Last autumn I made an excursion, with others, to Baal-bec, the Cedars, &c. Mr Calhoun, William Thomson, and I. with three of

the ladies, rode to one of the highest summits back of the Cedars. I took up the aneroid barometer and found the height to be just about nine thousand English feet, or say six hundred less than Major Von Wildenbruch found some years since with his barometer. We were on the same point Mr Wildenbruch visited (I was with him), and it is called by the natives Făm-el-Mîzâb. A point a little to the north seemingly a little higher is called Dhohr-elKŏdhîb. No one has visited it with the barometer, but it is only some two hundred feet or so higher than Fum-el-Mîzâb.

Our mission circle have been unusually afflicted with weakness of body the past year, and I have been among the feeble ones. This has prevented an earlier notice of your letter. It is probable that I shall be obliged to go to the United States for my health, leaving in some two or three months. All join in regards to you. -I remain, yours, &c,

To C. W. M. VAN DE VELDE, Esq.,

HENRY A. DE FOREST.

Haarlem,

Holland.