of this chapter I have rather sought to defend him. But apart from the distribution of praise or blame, there remains the fact that the methods of the two Churches are entirely different. The reason, of course, is in the different circumstances of a celibate and a non-celibate clergy. The married Protestant missionary with his wife and children requires a cottage and a pony carriage or its equivalent. He does not require, as the gossip of the treaty ports suggests, a luxurious villa and a well-appointed carriage; he requires and asks nothing that is not necessary for the healthy maintenance of his family life. But yet to the Chinaman, to the coolie whose earnings are not more than a shilling a week, the difference in the attitude of the two Churches is great. I do not see how the Protestant system can be changed, but I do see that, if China is ever to be Christianized, it is more likely to be Christianized by the Roman Catholic than by the Protestant method.

In the meantime, however, there is, humanly speaking, no probability of Christianizing China. I say 'humanly speaking,' because it must always be remembered that these good missionaries with whom I stayed did not base their work or their hopes upon human probabilities. They were not fools, these missionaries. The chief of the mission, the Rev. Mr. Sprague, had the head of a statesman, and seemed to me a man who would have done well in any walk of intellectual life. If

such a man were to sit down to Christianize China, and were to base his hopes and calculations on human probabilities, he would die in despair. The only thing that enables these missionaries to endure what in their heart of hearts they must know to be their lack of success is the sincere and earnest belief that, whether in their time or in the time of their successors, the whole of China will be conquered by the Christian religion. Persistence in that hope is their only salvation from despair, and it was pathetic to notice how the expression of that hope was' repeated again and again with insistence at all the services and prayers at which we had the privilege to assist. I am not disputing, or discussing, or questioning, the grounds of that hope. I am merely noting that the persistent recurrence to it was a sign of the missionary knowledge that, measured by ordinary human probability, their work is wasted. Their earnest insistence upon the necessity of Divine intervention in their favour is entirely what one would expect, and it is the only thing that prevents them from breaking down under the strain of present failure.

Meanwhile, when passing from this missionary family, let me place on record the great sincerity, the great earnestness, and the pathetic attempts at hopefulness, with which this missionary work is conducted. I would seek to hold the balance even between those who unjustly disparage mis

sionary work and those who speak of it in unduly sanguine terms. The opportunity of living two days in a missionary family was thus very welcome to me. Apart from the memory of great kindness and great helpfulness, the stay left upon my mind a double impression. To anyone doubting whether missionary effort in China is advisable, the impression produced would be to confirm that doubt. To anyone believing literally that it is the clear duty of Christians to go into all the world and preach the Gospel, the impression produced would be a desire to help still further those people who are conscientiously, zealously, and nobly seeking to fulfil that duty.

CHAPTER VII.

OF MONGOLIA.

THE territory of Mongolia, into which I passed by way of Kalgan, is one of the greatest of the Chinese provinces outside the Great Wall. Mongolia lies north and west of China, north of Thibet, and south of Siberia. The heart of Mongolia is that part which is known as the Great Desert of Gobi. The name, perhaps, is somewhat misleading. It is true that a large part of the area is a desert of arid soil, devoid of vegetation, scant of water, and with the ruins of great cities that have become buried in the sand. Anyone who doubts that may read the book of Dr. Sven Hedin, who traversed the unexplored area of the desert some time before my visit, and of whose narrative of personal adventure and imminent death I heard much before it was published from the Kalgan missionaries, with whom Dr. Hedin had stopped to rest and refresh. But it nevertheless remains that a large part of the Desert of Gobi can only be described as a desert by repute. It is not waterless, since wells can in

most cases be found by digging a few feet, while there are many other deeper wells, well known to the Mongols, that are never dry.

The fact that the Desert of Gobi, through which for many hundreds of miles my pathway lay, supports a resident population, rich in flocks and herds, is of itself a sufficient contradiction to the assumption that all Gobi is really a desert. No doubt I saw the desert at its best, for, travelling immediately after the rainy season, the vegetation was fuller than at any other time of the year. Over most of the six or seven hundred miles technically called 'desert,' through which lay my path, the ground was sand, but it was sand covered with short grass, such as one might see at a seaside golf-links in England.

Further, I am credibly informed that there are other parts of Gobi where the grass grows so long and high that a horseman riding through it disappears from view. Nevertheless, even the part of Gobi that I traversed is famous for dust-storms and whirlwinds of sand. Over a very huge area the wind has a course as free and undisturbed as it would have on the sea; and just as there are storms at sea there are storms on Gobi. Such wind-storms will lift bodily any lightly-secured tent, which no doubt is one reason that the tents of the wealthier Mongols are solidly constructed and firmly anchored.

Whirlwinds marked by moving pillars of sand are