number of church edifices built, three; additions to mission churches about 200; number of pastorless churches, twelve; number of churches without houses of worship, thirteen ; number of places of importance where churches should be organized at once, five.

The general condition of the mission work is the best ever known, on this field.

The Victoria church this year dropped mission aid and at the same time increased its pastor's salary from $1,000 to $1,500. This is the first mission in this district to attempt to go alone. We hail this commencement with joy, and believe that each year hereafter will see one or more of the dependent become independent.

Within the last three years we have more than doubled our church property and nearly if not quite doubled our church membership. Our missionaries are educated, pious men and devoted to their work. The great cry of the destitute churches is " 'give us a missionary." And the great question with our Board is where can suitable men be found, and how can we pay them? In some places our churches are a hundred miles apart. North of Seattle we travel a hundred miles before we catch the beacon light of the first Baptist church of La Conner, and south of Tacoma we travel forty miles to find the first Baptist banner unfurled at Centralia. If this destitution surrounds our arge cities you can magine the needs of fields

more remote.

But great as the need now is it must be greater next year, for such a flood of immigration as is now visiting our shores was never known before in the history of the Northwest.

At Seattle it is estimated three houses a day are being erected. At Tacoma two hundred houses are now in course of erection, while in Vancouver where a year ago last January the trees were growing on the town site, there are now by actual count five thousand people.

Every train and every boat brings the immigrant and his family, who somewhere on the fair shores of Puget Sound expect to find their home; and yet before this tide commenced we had towns and cities where there was no Baptist preaching except as they were reached by your General Missionary.

At Port Townsend the third port of entry in importance in the United States we have neither church nor minister. At Olympia, the capital, we have a house but no pastor; while at Vancouver, Wash. Ter., headquarters of the army

of the Northwest, we have no house of worship, and the church is supplied once a month by the county missionary.

CALIFORNIA AND NEVADA.

REV. W. H. LATOURETTE, GENERAL SECRETARY.

This report covers the year from April 1, 1887 to March 31, 1888. Twenty-five missionaries have been under appointment as against 15 last year. They labored in 26 churches, and in many out-stations, and their reports, in fact show 72 baptisms. Nine mission churches became self-supporting. Only 3 now being aided have been aided 2 years or more.

There are of churches, 145; church edifices, 72; houseless churches, 73; 20 that should build this year; 8 built last year; 15 pastorless. The contributions for State work were $3,248.74, being about 50 per cent. greater than last year. This amount has been supplemented by $2,000 from the Society, besides $550 from the Edifice Department.

I have traveled 8,045 miles; delivered 99 sermons and addresses; attended 110 other religious meetings and conferences concerning mission work, written 1,003 official letters and postal cards. My traveling expenses have been $261.40; postage, $23.30; stationery, $6.70.

The whole

Thus the pro

In San Fran

Among the churches, interest in our work increases. Some have given from one to three dollars a member, and the number of churches contributing is greater than ever. About one third of the Bible schools observed Chapel Day. We have about 7,000 members. population is nearly 1,400,000. portion of Baptists in one in 200. cisco it is one in 500. At the former rate there would be in the United States only 300,000 Baptists, and at the latter rate 120,000. In Nevada with its 60,000 inhabitants there is one Baptist church, and that one has hardly 50 members. In California 100 towns each having Baptists, and 26 of which are county seats, have no Baptist Church. Of these towns 47 have each from 1,000 to 8,000 inhabitants. We would organize a church in each of these towns this year if we had or could get the money to assist in pastoral support. Out of the 52 counties 17 have no Baptist church and 9 others one church each. These nine have from 3 to 20 members each. Twenty-six of the 52 counties are prac.* tically destitute. A fertile, populous and growing section 200 miles in diameter with its centre at San Luis Obispo, has one church

only. That church has no edifice, and but 23 members.

Immigration is unparalleled. Many new towns are springing up and numbers of older ones have doubled their population the past year. Three hundred thousand people are now in the State seeking homes. The number will be still greater the coming year. The tide has turned from other States and Territories into California. We are having the greatest possible opportunity for effective work. We shall never have such again. It is the last. And it is slipping from us simply for want of means to improve it. The 7,000 Baptists of California are but a handful among the whole population.

THE GERMANS.

The number of German Baptist churches in this country is 170; the number of members, 13,372; the number of baptisms reported during the year, 859. Nearly or quite all of these churches have received, at some time, the fostering care of the Society. A number are self-supporting. More would become so soon were it not for the continual outgo of members of the churches and con. gregations, who become identified with American churches. There are American churches who number among their strongest supporters men who in early childhood were in German Baptist congregations.

Rev. J. C. Grimmell has continued as General Secretary of this work, devoting his vacation as pastor to a tour of observation in which he preached twenty-two times in the same number of days. He reports as follows concerning the condition of the work:

The German churches report a steady increase all along the line. Of the 60 missionaries a majority have an increase of membership by conversion and baptism. Revivals have occurred of great power. In Chicago over 70 new converts were added to the German church. Total number of baptisms, 859. Ten new churches have been organized. Eleven chapels have been built and a large number of preaching stations, especially in the Great North-West and in Texas, have been begun and regularly supplied. Death has visited the ranks of their ministry, calling six earnest workers to their

final reward.

While there is reason to rejoice over the numerical increase of German Baptists in this

Very gratifying results still follow evangelical efforts among the Scandinavians in this country. The Society has had seventy-four missionaries among the Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes, who during the year have labored in sixteen States and Territories. It was in 1845 that the first Swedish convert was baptized in New York City, in 1853 that the Society appointed its first missionary to the Swedes in Illinois. It is estimated that the number of Baptists connected with the Scandinavian churches in the United States is between nine and ten thousand, while many others are identified with English speaking churches.

In this country there are about 900,000 natives of Sweden, Norway and Denmark, nearly 500,000 of whom have come hither since 1880. The total population of Scandinavian parentage must be not less than 1,750,ooo the larger part of whom go to our mission fields in the Northwest, where they constitute the very best foreign element in American civilization. This wholesome, virile race, coming from the early home of the English speaking races to freshen and reinforce the American stock, constitutes an encouraging field of missionary effort in this country. The demand for more missionaries among them can not be met by the Board with the present resources of the Society.

THE FRENCH.

While the attitude of Roman Catholicism in New England is so positive in respect to the maintenance of its religious and its distinctive educational institutions, and while the French element in the population is so

numerous in the great manufacturing centres, the duty of American Baptists to evangelize this people cannot be doubted. A review of the year's work is presented by the Society's General Missionary, Rev. J. N. Williams, who has the undiminished esteem of our brethren in New England. He says: The last year has been marked by change in the corps of laborers. An urgent call from the Grande Ligne Mission took Rev. W. H. Dalpe from his fields in Connecticut to the no less important work of professor in Feller Institute, Canada. The imperative call of death has taken our beloved Brother Rossier from his

interesting and growing work among the 9,000 French of Boston. The broken ranks have, however, been filled with men of good qualities for work among Roman Catholic French. Bro. L. O. F. Coté, educated in a Catholic college of Canada, but converted in connection with our mission labors in Massachusetts, has, for a few months, been under appointment as our missionary at North Adams, where his labors have resulted in the conversion of several Roman Catholics.

Dr. H. M. Auger, whose father has had the distinguished honor of being the first French Canadian Protestant who has been elected to a seat in the Provincial Parliament, Canada, has succeeded Brother Rossier as our missionary in Boston.

Rev. A. St. James has commenced labors among the large French population of Stryker, Ohio, where over a hundred of that nationality have already been baptized.

A France-French brother, one of the fruits of our work in Woonsocket, and laboring in part under Home Mission auspices, has had great success in disseminating the Holy Scriptures among the French in New England, having sold nearly 4,000 copies, almost exclusively to Roman Catholics. A more successful laborer in this hardest but most important work among Romanists has never yet entered our Home Mission French work.

A very pleasant item of the last year's work has been the building of a very pretty church edifice for the French in Waterville, Me., wholly by contributions in that place, one-half of which came from the French converts themselves. This monument of the power of the gospel among French Roman Catholics stands right on the spot where a few years ago at the advent of our missionary stood a two-story build

ing that was the centre of pernicious influence in that French community-a saloon and dancehall combination!-a saloon beneath a dance

hall-or a dance-hall supported by a saloon— surely a most gratifying change of centripetal

moral forces in that community.

In ten of the mission stations occupied wholly or in part by our French laborers there have been baptisms of French converts, from nine to twelve in some cases, and also conversions from Romanism. In some nine others, mainly outstations, the gospel has been preached to gatherings of French nationality.

Our method of work, as in the past, has been not to organize separate churches of French nationality, but to maintain a mission, the fruits of which are gathered into the churches of the place, thus bringing this people, so long under the baneful influence of Romanism, under the influence of and into close contact with our Baptist American church life, converting and Americanizing this people.

A beginning has been made, looking toward a "French Department" of Newton Theological Seminary. Two French students are pursuing their studies there in view of the gospel ministry among their people, and if the authorities in that most excellent "School of the Prophets " will only provide some facilities for instruction in the French language and literature, some five more approved French students will apply for admission probably next fall.

Antoschevski, upon the advice of Baptist brethren in Poland, came to the United States to labor among his countrymen here. He located in Detroit, Michigan, in which city and vicinity there are about 20,000 Poles. For a short time he was supported by brethren in that city, but the burden being too heavy and other fields outside of Detroit requiring attention also, it was decided in November to as

sume the new mission, toward whose support friends in Detroit and the Woman's Baptist Home Mission Society of Michigan contribute. Polish newspapers claim that there are now about 700,000 of this race in our country, though by the last census the number reported is very much less, owing partly to the fact that only those born in Poland were so counted, while those from the dismembered portions of Poland incorporated in the territory of other kingdoms were classified under the latter. Dr. Henderson has truly said: "Here is a prolific race, swarming from an oppressed country, ignorant, riotous, dangerous to social peace. They are right at our doors. We must teach them. We must be gin some time, and every day we neglect

them the harder it will be to start."

CASTLE GARDEN.

This great port of entry for European immigrants constitutes a unique mission field, related to, yet distinct from, all others. Surely, the place through which nearly, or quite, half a million strangers pass in finding an abode here should not be neglected. Rev. John Schiek has continued to labor with success among the peoples who throng this place. He reports the arrival of 665 persons, whose coming was announced to him by letter, and 778 Baptist Church members and their relatives received. He reports "the greatest number of our brethren as coming from the churches in Russia and East and West Prussia; but side by side with them were also others from southern Germany and Switzerland; from Bulgaria, Poland, Sweden and Denmark," and some from other countries. To every Baptist is given a printed list of the names and addresses of Baptist ministers who are pastors of churches speaking a foreign language. Thus they have the

Christian greeting and guidance. Beside this, a vast amount of labor in other directions has been performed in helping the needy, and in distributing religious literature-449 Testaments and 25.480 tracts having been given away.

THE CHINESE.

The call made last year, and the effort put forth immediately after the annual meeting to secure at least $15,000 for Chinese mission headquarters in San Francisco, was crowned with success.

To this result the missionaries and the Chinese connected with the mission contributed very liberally, and the First Baptist Church of that city showed its practical interest in the work by a contribution of about $1,000. The new site which has been purchased, and the arrangement made for the erection of a building now in process of construction, impart new life and hope to our laborers in that city. It is hoped that the mission will be established in its new quarters, this fall. Dr. Hartwell remains in charge of the work, having two native assistants-one, Brother T'ong, as a laborer in San Francisco, and the other, Lum Chan, who came from China, this year, a laborer at other stations. In Portland, Oregon, Rev. Fung Chak continues to labor with acceptance. He reports

six baptisms during the year.

Dr. Hartwell presents the following report for his field:

"During the year, since the last meeting of the Society, there has been more real advance in the mission work among the Chinese than in any former year; more satisfactory study of God's word in the schools; more earnest heed given to the preaching of the Gospel, in the chapel and on the street; more manifest presence of the Holy Spirit. There has been also a very perceptible increase in the tolerant spirit of white people toward Chinese, and in the interest in missions to the Chinese taken by white Christians. There has been a very considerable increase of correspondence from the East and South, from persons trying to do something for the Chinese, and a large increase in the demand for Chinese Testaments and Tracts, both in this State and in the East. In San Francisco a mission building, school-house, and church, which, when completed, will have