THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO 349 



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 perse- 

 cution, expulsion, or death, every province, even those farthest 

 in the interior of China, has its regular establishment of mis- 

 sionaries 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 their 

 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 

 entomology and especially giving my impressions of the 

 comparative richness of the two countries. As this com- 

 parison is of interest, not only to entomologists, but to all 

 students of the geographical distribution of animals, I give it 

 here almost entire. The letter is dated April 30, 1856: — 



" I must first inform you that I have just received the 

 Zoologist containing your letters up to September 14, 1855 



