"In homage to truth, we make known with pleasure that the
ministers of Protestantism have benefited this town more in one year
than all the priests and friars of the Papal sect have done in three
centuries."
"Last year," writes Mr. Milne, of the American Bible Society, "one of
our colporteurs in Ayacucho had to make his escape by the roof of a
house where he was staying, from a mob of half-castes, led on by a
friar. Finding their prey had escaped, they took his clothes and
several boxes of Bibles to the plaza of the city and burnt them."
It was not such a going-back as the outside world thought, but, oh,
it was a deeply significant one, when recently the leading men of the
Republic of Guatemala met together and solemnly threw over the
religion of their fathers, which, during 400 years of practice, had
failed to uplift, and re-established the old paganism of cultured
Rome. So serious was this step that the Palace of Minerva, the
goddess of trade, is engraved on the latest issue of Guatemalan
postage stamps. Believing that the few Protestants in the Republic
are responsible for the reaction, the Archbishop of Guatemala has
promised to grant one hundred days' indulgence to those who will pray
for the overthrow of Protestantism in that country.
"Romanism is not Christianity," so the few Christian workers are
fighting against tremendous odds. What shall the harvest be?
PART I.
THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC
The country to which the author first went as a self-supporting
missionary in the year 1889.
And Nature, the old nurse, took
The child upon her knee,
Saying, "Here is a story book
Thy Father hath written for thee."
"Come, wander with me," she said,
"Into regions yet untrod,
And read what is still unread
In the manuscripts of God."
And he wandered away and away
With Nature, the dear old nurse,
Who sung to him night and day
The rhymes of the universe.
- Longfellow.
THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC
The Argentine Republic has an area of one and a quarter million
square miles. It is 2,600 miles from north to south, and 500 miles at
its widest part. It is twelve times the size of Great Britain.
Although the population of the country is about seven millions, only
one per cent, of its cultivable area is now occupied, yet Argentina
has an incomparable climate.
It is essentially a cattle country. She is said to surpass any other
nation in her numbers of live stock. The Bovril Co. alone kills
100,000 a year. On its broad plains there are estandas, or cattle
ranches, of fifty and one hundred thousand acres in extent, and on
these cattle, horses and sheep are herded in millions. Argentina has
over twenty-nine million cattle, seventy-seven million sheep, seven
and a half million horses, five and a half million mules, a quarter-
million of donkeys, and nearly three million swine and three million
goats.
