to keep the Sabbath. He soon established communication with the publishers, and obtained further supplies, which he industriously circulated, thus preparing the way for the living preacher. In time he was joined by a few other earnest souls, among them a young teacher. W. J. Tanner entered the field in 1905, and his labors were blessed, so that at the General Conference of 1909 he was able to report 109 Seventh-day Adventists in the island, eighty of whom had come from the Roman Catholic Church. Since then the work has continued to grow.

There is a thriving company at Port au Prince, that had an interesting origin. When W. J. Tanner visited the place in 1907, he found a respectable old man who had been observing the Sabbath for nine years, during the first seven of which he supposed that he was the only Christian in the world observing the seventh day. He had discovered the truth simply by reading the Bible. It was not long before he had a company of eight or nine who met with him on the Sabbath to study the Bible and the Sabbath school lessons.

At the beginning of the work Mr. Tanner was greatly hampered for want of Bibles. The people would say, "What is the use of having your tracts and books if we have no Bibles? Sell us Bibles, and then we shall be able to read your literature with profit." Application was accordingly made to the agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society at Port au Prince, and the response was liberal. Not only were Bibles furnished at less than the original cost, but our workers were permitted to give away Bibles to those who could not afford them, and to do so at the expense of the society.

When Elder Tanner's health failed, the work went forward under other leadership. Andre Roth took general charge in 1918. In the same year a church building in Port de Paix was finished; 1920 saw the completion of a church for Cape Haitien, and a year later an advantageously located church property was purchased in Port au Prince, the capital of Haiti.

In 1925 the Haitien Mission was able to report twenty churches, numbering all told 700 members.

Cuba

Cuba has about the same area as the State of Pennsylvania, and a population of over 2,000,000, more than 60 per cent of the native population being colored. Work was begun on the island by Mr. and Mrs. I. E. Moore, who entered Havana as self-supporting nurses in 1904. In the following year E. W. Snyder, formerly of Argentina, began work in Havana. Shortly after

his arrival a native pastor invited him to address his congregation on the subject of prophecy. At the close of this meeting, one of the most intelligent members asked permission to come to the house of Brother Snyder for regular Bible readings. On coming to receive his first reading, he saw the chart of the ten commandments hanging on the wall, and was impressed with the fourth. He kept the next Sabbath. Moreover, he began at once to labor for his friends, and to circulate reading matter.

In the same year a church was organized in Havana, with a membership of thirteen. Other centers were shortly opened at different points in the city, and in other parts of the island, two of these being in eastern Cuba. In one of the latter, Omaja, is our first church of American settlers. Local schools have been operated on St. Lucia and San Claudis. In 1914 the first training school was opened at Santa Clara, Mr. and Mrs. S. H. Carnahan being in charge. S. E. Kellman, superintendent, reported seven churches in 1919, with a membership of 232. The mission headquarters is at Matanzas.

In 1925 there were eight churches, with a combined membership of 400.

Earthquake at Kingston, Jamaica

In June, 1906, there was a fourth session of the East Caribbean Conference, held in Port of Spain, Trinidad, at which the General Conference was represented by I. H. Evans. The West Indian Union Conference was organized at this time, and arrangements were made for a union conference gathering to be held at Kingston the following year. At this meeting, which convened on Jan. 11, .1907, there were delegates from St. Thomas, Antigua, Dominica, St. Lucia, Barbados, St. Vincent, Grenada, Tobago, Trinidad, British Guiana, Panama, Costa Rica, Spanish Honduras, British Honduras, Cuba, Haiti, and Porto Rico, as well as a large representation from Jamaica, the whole number of delegates and members in attendance being over 400.

The conference opened encouragingly, but was just getting well under way when, on the third day of the session, occurred the awful earthquake which destroyed practically all the business portion of Kingston and severely damaged the adjacent section. The loss of life was estimated at 1,500, and thousands were injured. One of the delegates, Norman Johnston, the treasurer of the West Indian Union, was among the dead. Under the circumstances it seemed best to transact only the necessary business, and then let the workers return to their homes.

This they did, however, with unabated courage, feeling that the earthquake was one of the calamities for which we may look in the last days, and earnestly praying that it might in some degree awaken the careless and unconverted to a sense of their lost and helpless condition. In fact, the terrible calamity did have the effect of causing some to decide for the truth.

At the time of the earthquake a service was being held in the Kingston church by J. A. Strickland, who gives the following account of the experience:

"We were singing No. 732 in Hymns and Tunes.' We had reached the third stanza of the hymn,

"Just as we finished singing the last line of that stanza, the earthquake was upon us. It came with a moaning, rumbling sound. The earth trembled, and the church building quivered from foundation to roof; then there were two or three seconds of stillness a deadly, oppressive stillness, such as I never felt before; then a rushing, roaring, rumbling noise, and the storm was upon us, as a wild beast might spring upon its prey. The building shook with a violence that made it difficult for one to stand on his feet; the floor of the church rose and fell like the waves of the sea; the building swayed back and forth, the walls twisted, as if a mighty giant were trying to wrench off the roof.

"Outside could be heard crashing walls and shrieks of people. The timbers of the church cracked as if the building were at the point of a collapse. Falling plaster filled the place with dust, so that a twilight prevailed. The arched brick entrance gave way, and fell with a crash. When the entrance fell, there was a stampede for the door, the people not knowing what had happened.

"I sprang from the pulpit, and got between the people and the door, and began to sing, 'Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.' In a moment there was perfect order, and all signs of excitement had disappeared, and our people sang that grand old doxology, sang it gloriously, prayer was forgotten, and only praise was offered to God.

"When we had finished singing, we hurriedly examined the steps to see if they were safe for the people to stand upon, and then assisted the congregation out, without hurt or harm."-" The Advent Message in the Sunny Caribbean," by George F. Enoch, p. 37.

Mexico

Adventists began their work in Mexico in 1893, when D. T. Jones, Dr. Lillis Wood, Ida Crawford, Ora Osborne, and Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Cooper entered the field. School and sanitarium work was carried on with some success, and a wellequipped sanitarium was put in operation in Guadalajara.

It was some years later that the work began to take on more of an evangelistic character. In the summer of 1897, Prof.

G. W. Caviness, formerly president of Battle Creek College, entered Mexico. He settled at first in Guadalajara, where he gave himself to the study of the Spanish language, and as he became able to undertake it, engaged in literary work. Toward the close of 1899, he and his family, with Mr. and Mrs. S. Marchisio, went to the city of Mexico to open up evangelistic work. They took up their permanent abode in Tacubaya, one of the principal suburbs of Mexico City, and began visiting the peo

ple in their homes and introducing the few denominational books then printed in the Spanish language.

As they visited the Mexican families, they were asked why they did not start a school where the children might learn English. The request being a general one, the school was opened, and about forty pupils of the higher class were soon in attendance. Through these children entrance was gained into many homes, and Bible readings were held in some of them, bringing out different phases of the advent message. A Sabbath school was started in connection with the school, and was attended by a goodly number of children. A school was also opened later at San Luis Potosi, and a school for native children in La Visnaga.

G. W. CAVINESS

The publishing work began in 1896 with the issuing of a monthly periodical called El Mensajero de la Verdad. When George Brown went to Mexico in 1904, it was decided to open a publishing house of our own. A piece of land was bought, a small building put up, and a printing press installed. From this small beginning there was developed a fairly well-equipped printing office. This did all the necessary work until the opening of the branch of the Pacific Press at Cristobal, Canal Zone, which took over all the publishing interests.

S. Marchisio was the first canvasser for Seventh-day Adventist books in Mexico. He entered the country in the summer of 1891. As there were no Spanish books, he sold the English edition of "The Great Controversy," his field being the city of

Mexico, with only about 2,500 English-speaking people. Later he spent some time at the Guadalajara Sanitarium, returning in 1899 to Mexico City, where he began canvassing for the Spanish "Christ Our

Saviour" and "Steps to Christ." In Mixcoac, a suburb of this city, fifty copies of "Christ Our Saviour" that he had sold to various customers, were burned by the Catholic priests. Later he began to work with the periodicals.

The canvassing work in Mexico had a new start in 1908, when four young men from Los Angeles, Calif., under the leadership of J. A. P. Green, began to work

BAPTISM IN SOUTHERN MEXICO

with Spanish "Coming King." Later other and larger books were sold, and with excellent success. More recently "Patriarchs and Prophets " is having an encouraging sale in the country. Most of our churches in Mexico had their beginning in the circulation of read

ditional companies, numbering fifty Sabbath keepers. These persons are descended from the Zapotecan Indians. They are superior in some respects to the Mexicans in other parts of the country, and are religiously inclined.