east, where a successful work is carried on by the American Baptists, particularly among the fishing population, and the southern port of Hakodate, where, besides the Episcopal Methodists and the German Reformed Church of America, the C. M. S. has been at work since 1874. From this centre up to Sapporo in the west and Kuchiro in the east, the C. M. S. has 19 mission locations, and it is also engaged among the Ainus, a hill-people numbering some 20,000 souls, who stand on a low level of civilisation, and are believed to be the aborigines of Japan. They are given over to coarse Nature-worship and to drunkenness, but patient endurance, especially on the part of missionary Batchelor, who has also given form to their language, has resulted in the gathering from their midst of some 700 baptized persons. The American Board also does some mission work from Sapporo as centre. In the convict colony there it gathered a small congregation, but the work had to be given up for a considerable time owing to the opposition of Buddhist officials; it has now, however, in part at least, been resumed.

The chief centres of evangelical missions are to be found. in the elongated island of Hondo, over which there extends from north to south a great net of mission stations, which are most numerous about the centre of the island. In Tokio, the capital, and in the port of Yokohama in particular, quite the half of the missionary societies at work in Japan have settlements, although the Presbyterians predominate. A multitude of the central educational institutions of the different denominational groups of missions are also situated here. The small German mission of the General Evangelical Protestant Missionary Union has likewise its headquarters at Tokio. All the Protestants together have in Tokio 62 churches, 13 financially independent congregations, 7850 communicants, 61 ordained Japanese pastors, 14 higher schools with 1820 scholars, and 29 elementary schools attended by 4550 children. Towards the north of the island, as far as its extreme point opposite to Yesso, the chief centres are,-on the eastern side, Fukusima, Yamagata, Sendai, Chinomaki, Furikawa, Moriaka, Awomori; on the western side, Niigata, Ishinosaki, and Hirosaki, some of these with numerous out-stations; the workers are mainly Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Methodists, and Baptists. To the south or south-west of Tokio, the chief missionary agency, along with the Presbyterians and the C. M. S., is the American Board, which has the bulk of its congregations at Osaka, Kobe, Kioto, and Okayama. To the north of this strongly Christian district, at Nagoya-Gifu and Kanawasa, and to the south-west as far as Shimonosaki, at Hiogo, Matsuye, and Hirosima,

besides the stations of the societies already named, the most noteworthy are those of the Methodists, the Baptists, and the S. P. G.

In Shikoku, the third of the principal islands, the north is occupied mainly by the Anglicans, Baptists (at Tokushima), and Congregationalists (at Imabari). At Cochi, about the middle of the south coast, apart from an independent congregation founded by the American Board, the Presbyterians are the sole occupants of the field.

In the most southerly island of Kiushiu, the most prominent stations are Nagasaki and Kumamoto, on the west coast, both of which are occupied mainly by the C. M. S. and the American Board. The Anglican station of Fukuoka at the north of the west coast, and the Methodist station of Kagoshima at the south of it, are of minor importance.

The Episcopal group of missions has divided its Japanese field of labour into six dioceses, of which four-North and South Tokio, Kioto, and Osaka-are situated in Hondo, and the fifth and sixth embrace the islands of Hokkaido and Kiushiu. The first and the third of the Hondo dioceses are under American bishops. Of the English bishops, Bickersteth, recently dead, has left the deepest impression on the history of missions in Japan.

275. The total statistical result of the evangelical missions in Asia is somewhat as follows:

1I include these figures in the missionary statistics because they represent the result of a work of preparation for the mission to the Mohammedans.

CHAPTER V

OCEANIA

INTRODUCTION

276. From Japan we come last of all to Oceania.

Oceania is the widespread archipelago in the Great or Pacific Ocean between the east of Asia and the west of America. With the exception of Australia, which is regarded as a continent, it consists entirely of islands, almost all of which are of small extent. We shall best divide this great archipelago, with Meinicke,1 into five main parts,-Polynesia, the farthest east and most extensive; Micronesia and Melanesia, the two western groups; Australia and, farthest south, the New Zealand group. This mass of islands, scattered over the largest ocean of the earth, is in this respect the most recent of all the divisions of the earth, that it has been the last to emerge from geographical darkness. Spanish and Dutch navigators, it is true, had, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, discovered some of the Oceanic islands,-the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, New Zealand, Vitu or Fiji, and Samoa. But it was only from 1769, after the epoch-making voyages of Cook, that this newest world began to play a real part in geographical, colonial, and missionary history. Since that time one archipelago afer another has been explored, so that, with the exception of New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and some portions of the interior of Australia, almost the whole of Oceania may now be regarded as a region well known and to a large extent opened up to commerce.

As to the number of the native population in Oceania, no exact statistics can, indeed, be given. In most of the islands the climate permits white people to reside permanently, and in consequence they have settled extensively in all directions,

1 Meinicke, Die Inseln des Stillen Oceans, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1875–76. This classical geography of the South Seas gives at the end of every chapter a precise and trustworthy bird's-eye view of the mission in each group of islands.