xxi] THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO 349 



the jungle, and every Friday fasting on omelet and vegetables, 

 a most wholesome custom, which the Protestants erred in 

 leaving off. I have been reading Hue's ' Travels ' in French, 

 and talking a good deal with one of the missionaries just 

 arrived from Tonquin, who can speak no English. I have 

 thus obtained a good deal of information about these countries, 

 and about the extent of the Catholic missions in them, which 

 is really astonishing. How is it that they do their work so 

 much more thoroughly than most Protestant missions ? In 

 Cochin China, Tonquin, and China, where Christian mis- 

 sionaries are obliged to live in secret, and are subject to 

 persecution, expulsion, or death, every province, even those 

 farthest in the interior of China, has its regular establishment 

 of missionaries constantly kept up by fresh supplies, who are 

 all taught the languages of the countries they are going to 

 at Penang or Singapore. In China there are near a million 

 of Catholics, in Tonquin and Cochin China more than half 

 a million. One secret of their success is their mode of living. 

 Each missionary is allowed about £30 a year, on which he 

 lives in whatever country he may be. This has two good 

 results. A large number of missionaries can be kept on 

 limited funds, and the people of the country in which they 

 reside, seeing that they live in poverty and with none of the 

 luxuries of life, are convinced that they are sincere. Most 

 of them are Frenchmen, and those I have seen or heard of 

 are well-educated men, who give up their lives to the good 

 of the people they live among. No wonder they make con- 

 verts, among the lower orders principally ; for it must be a 

 great blessing to these poor people to have a man among 

 them to whom they can go in any trouble or distress, whose 

 sole object is to advise and help them, who visits them in 

 sickness and relieves them in want, and whom they see living 

 in continual danger of persecution and death only for tlieir 

 benefit." 



Before leaving Singapore I wrote a long letter to my old 

 fellow traveller and companion, Henry Walter Bates, then 

 collecting on the Upper Amazon, almost wholly devoted to 



