negroes to continue their benefactions for their evangelization and education, and we have no doubt that their liberality in the past will be even exceeded in the future, provided always that they see the fruits of their work in a growing spirit of self-helpfulness on the part of the negroes; in short, they will be willing to help those who are willing to help themselves, and we think they will not, and should not, help any others.

SUGGESTIONS AS TO BOXES. The requests from pioneer missionaries for assistance in the way of clothing and supplies have been unusually numerous during the present year, and the responses from the churches have been very gratifying. We have reason to think that the gifts from the churches have, in the main, been timely, helpful, and fully appreciated by those upon whom they have been bestowed. Occasionally, unsuitable articles have been sent -clothing utterly worn out and unfit for use; garments soiled and ragged; articles wholly unsuited to the families to which they were sent. In some instances not only carelessness has been exhibited, but such a lack of thoughtfulness, as has resulted in wounding the feelings of the missionaries instead of helping them. These, however, are rare exceptions, and are alluded to here only as a matter of record. We print in another column a letter bearing upon this phase of the subject.

As these gifts are wholly gratuitous, and form no part of the salary or compensation of the missionaries, and are not included in any possible way in their appointment as something which they may expect, those who receive them have no right to complain if what they receive does not fully meet their expectations. Even if the barrel should be empty, or filled with worthless contents, the missionary has not been defrauded; he has only been disappointed, and he must bear his disappointment with Christian grace. Of course, if the missionary has been required to pay freight charges on a worthless barrel he has been defrauded, not intentionally, but none the less actually.

In a miscellaneous process, such as gathering up supplies in the East and shipping them to missionaries in the West, where the givers and the recipients are unknown to each other, and where the gifts often consist of cast-off garments, it must necessarily happen that there will be a good many" misfits." These are sometimes amusing, sometimes vexing, always unfortunate, but necessarily, under the circumstances, they are unavoidable. It sometimes happens that a barrel, packed by a small church and containing but few articles, goes to a missionary with a large and needy family, while ample boxes and full barrels, packed by liberal and large churches, find their way to missionaries with small families and few necessities. But we see no help for this, unless far more time should be given to it in the way of correspondence than it is possible now to bestow upon it. Again we thank those good women who have so cheerfully and liberally and lovingly responded to our requests for help for deserving missionaries.

WHAT WE DO NOT DO.

The American Baptist Home Mission Society establishes and fosters schools of Christian learning, helps in the erection of meeting-houses, assists in the support of missionaries and pastors; its missionary, educational, and church-edifice work is very extended, costly, and successful; churches and individuals, during a period of sixty-two years, have contributed to its treasury more than eight millions of dollars, which have been expended in this useful way. The Executive Board receives and examines with great care and passes upon all applications for appropriations for any of the objects specified above.

We receive a great many applications for help which do not come within the rules prescribed by the Board of Managers for making its appropriations, so that it seems desirable that we should emphasize what we do not do. We do not build parsonages. If we had the money given for that purpose we could, in many instances, assist in the erection of a parson

age for a pioneer missionary which would afford him a home, facilitate his work, and be of great benefit to the church and the community which he serves, but we have no money for this purpose; what we have is not available for parsonages.

We do not make contributions to pay church debts. When a church has, of its own volition, contracted a debt, either for the erection of a meeting-house, the support of a pastor, the meeting of current expenses, it must expect to meet its own obligations. If the Home Mission Society should lend a ready ear to all of the appeals made to it to help impecunious churches out of their financial difficulties, it is hard to say where there would be a limit to its work. Church debts are very easily contracted, are oftentimes very unwisely contracted, but never should be contracted unless there is a definite and practical plan for their payment; those who contract the debts must expect to discharge them. There are rare instances in which, by reason of death, removal, or great and unexpected changes in the financial condition of those to whom the church could safely look for help to meet maturing obligations, where a church is warranted in appealing to outside help to save it from financial disaster. There are not many such cases, and, as a rule, it is better that a few churches should suffer rather than that many churches should be encouraged in involving themselves in indebtedness beyond any reasonable prospect of their being able to meet it, with the hope that they may appeal in the time of their emergency to outside parties to save them and "the cause" from disaster.

meeting-house, pay a church debt, or other similar objects.

The Home Mission Society is unable to receive from its constituents enough money to meet the urgent demands made upon its treasury for legitimate purposes by worthy applicants, and it would be folly for it to be constantly affixing its seal of approbation to miscellaneous agents who are canvassing the same field canvassed by its own secretaries, and thus diverting from its treasury into other channels money which it urgently needs.

DISAPPEARANCE OF THE BUFFALO.

Prior to the agreement of 1876, buffalo and deer were the main support of the Sioux. Food, tents, clothing, bedding, were the direct outcome of hunting, and with furs and pelts as articles of barter or exchange it was easy for the Sioux to procure whatever constituted for them the necessities, the comforts, or even the luxuries of life. Within eight years from the agreement of 1876 the buffalo had gone, and the Sioux had left to them alkali land and government rations.

It is hard to overstate the magnitude of the calamity, as they viewed it, which happened to these people by the sudden disappearance of the buffalo and the large diminution in the numbers of deer and other wild animals. It was as if a blight had fallen upon all our grain fields, orchards and gardens, and a plague upon all our sheep and cattle. Their loss was so overwhelming and the change of life which it necessitated so great that the wonder is that they endured it as well as they did. For not only did the vast herds of buffalo and exhaustless supplies of deer and other animals furnish them with food, clothing, shelter, furniture, and articles of commerce, but the pursuit of these animals and the preparation of their products furnished to the great body of them continuous employment and exciting diversion. Suddenly, almost without warning, this was all changed, and they were expected at

It

In this tremendous change in their status it was never contemplated by the government that it should supply by the national treasury the place which nature had supplied by its prodigal wealth of buffalo. was only intended to supplement the efforts of these people at self-support, and that as soon as they had learned the art of supporting themselves by the products of their own labor in tilling the soil or in pastoral pursuits, they should cease to look to the government for food and clothing.

Under the most favorable circumstances, in a mild climate and on a fertile soil, it

would be no easy matter for such a people as the Sioux to turn to agriculture or stock raising and become self-supporting, but in the rigors of a northern climate, on land recognized as largely unfitted for agriculture and under circumstances of peculiar hardship, they have been as yet unable to secure for themselves a sufficiency of either food or clothing to supplement that provided by the government so as to keep them entirely from want.

In all the negotiations with them there have been developed two parties-those favoring and those opposing the sale of their lands. The government has always proceeded upon the presumption that the act of the majority was to be regarded as the act of all, while among the Indians the minority have always asserted their rights with a vehemence worthy of Anglo-Saxons. They have never voted away their lands and their freedom, but have simply submitted to force and the inevitable. Unwilling or unable to accept civilization, they are being crushed by it.

WHAT OF THE WEST?

BY REV. H. L. MOREHOUSE, FIELD SECRETARY.

Only fifty years ago the dawn of modern civilization, streaming through Rocky Mountain passes, began here and there to break upon the Pacific Slope. From the long sleep of ages since creation, this land awoke to the new era of conscious power only fifty years ago. Six thousand years of repose! fifty years of activity! But in human affairs these fifty years count for more than those six thousand.

Is it any wonder that more than two hundred years passed between the first English or American settlement on the Atlantic Coast and the first on the Pacific Coastregions 2,500 miles apart, with vast unexplored areas peopled by savages lying between, and communication only by a sea voyage of 20,000 miles via Cape Horn? Moreover, Spain warned the world away from her Pacific possessions even as far northward as Puget Sound, and as late as 1818 notified the United States that her rightful dominion extended to the northern boundary of California. It is not fifty years since the Southwest, including California, was acquired from Mexico. The first diminutive pleasure steamer came down from Sitka forty-eight years ago, and the first American steamer dropped anchor in the bay of San Francisco in 1849, while the first locomotive whistles waked the echoes in Oregon and California only twenty-six years ago.

California.

Chronologically, California follows Oregon in settlement and in missionary efforts.

The accompanying map (which we are permitted to use by the courtesy of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company) conveys to the eye, better than any figures could give it, a just conception of the actual and relative size of the State. It occupies a stretch of country on the Pacific Coast corresponding in latitude with the Atlantic Coast between Plymouth Bay, Mass., and Savannah, Ga. It has a coast line of more than seven hundred miles and an average width of about two hundred miles. In the north is the magnificent, solitary, snowcapped peak of Mt. Shasta, 14,400 feet high; in the South, vast orange groves with their golden fruit, and, lying between, all manner of agricultural products-golden treasure in her hills, a harbor in which the

California, they would never have supposed it to belong to the land of "the Pilgrims' pride," but rather to Babel or Bedlam. Adventurers from the ends of the earth gathered there; wickedness was rampant; Sunday was high carnival day; gamblers paid $40,000 rent for a tent in the central part of the city, and $70,000 for the second story of a frame building used as a hotel. Prices of everything were exorbitant. Domestics were paid from $100 to $300 per month, and required very polite treatment at that. Lumber was from $500 to $600 per thousand feet. House rents were enormous.

Obtaining the use of a room in an unfinished dwelling, Wheeler preached his first sermon, March 18, 1849, to sixteen persons; July 6 organized a church of six members, and in August built and occupied their small chapel, 28x42 feet, that cost about $6,000, but could be built now for $600. This was the. first Protestant chapel on the Pacific Coast. What was the astonishment of the Home Mission Board in New York in receiving a letter from Brother Wheeler, saying that from November 1, 1849, the church would assume his support, at a salary of $10,000 per year!

The intense excitement for gold and the base elements in society made California for years a hard field for Christianity to cultivate. Multitudes of Christians, including ministers of the Gospel, became despiritualized, if not demoralized. Then, too, the tenure of life of churches organized in the mining regions was very uncertain. With the mushroom growth and decay of towns, churches came and went. It is stated that from 1849 to 1867, of one hundred Baptist churches organized in California, fifty-five became extinct. In subsequent years the denomination suffered seriously from unworthy but able men in the ranks of the ministry. Divisions, rupture and reorganization followed in 1880-81. For the last ten years, at least, there has been harmony, good leadership in the State Convention, efficient tillage of mission fields, gratifying increase in the num ber of churches and members, growing self-respect in the denomination, and decided development of educational interests. About five (?) years ago it was deemed best that the Baptists of Southern California should organize as a separate Convention.

American Baptist Home Mission Society, as the great pioneer missionary organization, resolved to send a missionary to San Francisco. Their appointee, Rev. O. C. Wheeler, going via the Isthmus of Panama, arrived at his destination February 28, 1849. The wildest excitement over the discovery of gold prevailed among all classes. Had the staid old Pilgrim Fathers risen from the dead, been blindfolded and set down in

Between the region of which San Francisco is the metropolis in the North, and the region of which Los Angeles is the metropolis in the South, the distance is great, with intervening spaces not densely populated, nor containing many Baptist churches. Hence a crystallization of activities about these centres. Indeed, it is not an improbability that within a few years the State may be divided and become two States.

The principal facts concerning Baptist growth in California have been given in the February number of the MONTHLY. The Home Mission Society has expended about $185,000 for missions in California, besides $31,242 in Church Edifice gifts and $2,250 in loans. This includes work for the Chinese. This, also, is apart from the offerings of Baptists of the State for their Convention work. It is about twelve years since the Society began co-operation with the

OLD CHAPEL, SAN FRANCISCO.

Convention now embracing Northern California, and five (?) years with the Southern California Convention. Of the former body, Rev. W. H. Latourette has been General Missionary nearly nine years; of the latter body, Rev. W. W. Tinker, General Missionary nearly five years. Our denominational progress in the State is due in no small degree to the efficient service of these brethren.

Needs of California.

The need of enlarged missionary work in the State is very great. The agricultural resources, both of Northern and Southern California, have been developed rapidly in recent years. Under irrigating systems, barren regions have become gardens; towns and cities have sprung up, and in the ten years, from 1880 to 1890, the population increased from 864,694 to 1,208,000-a gain of nearly fifty per cent., while the average gain of the country at large was about half this ratio. Of this population, 842,000 were

Americans and 366,000 foreigners. The present population must be about 1,450,000. There is ample room for 5,000,000.

Now, in some of these newer counties, each of which is as large as many an Eastern State, we have but just made a beginning and make but a beggarly showing. The special need is more district missionary work-two or three counties being put under the immediate charge of an itinerant preacher who shall look up, organize, and hold together our members, wherever thought wise, until they are able to assume a fair proportion of a pastor's support. Two of these pioneer workers are doing efficient service in Northern and Central California, and one in Southern California.

Then, too, the problem of city mission work in the State presses heavily upon us. For example, here is San Francisco, the greatest city on the Pacific Coast, with a population in 1890 of 298,997, in which there are only about 1,200 Baptists in three American, one German, one Scandinavian, one colored and one Chinese Baptist churches. One of the American churches is so deeply in debt that its very existence has been imperiled; another has a small and shabby house of worship in an undesirable locality, while the First Baptist Church, the strongest body, meets in the old house erected many years ago, now in the "down-town" section and remote from the better residence portion, where many of its members live. The German church has a new and neat house; the Scandinavians worship in a hired hall, and the colored church possesses a good property, with only small indebtedness. The Chinese church worships in a good house erected by the Home Mission Society. There are almost no Baptists of wealth in the city. Oakland, across the Bay, sustaining some such relation to San Francisco as Brooklyn does to New York, a city of residences and lower rents, has profited at the expense of her sister city, for there our churches, numbering eight, with about 1,300 members, are flourishing.

What can be done for San Francisco? The few thousand Baptists of Northern California cannot answer the question. It is a question that should concern Baptists of the whole country, both because people from all sections are there, and because of its present and prospective importance. It