288 DOTTINGS ON THE ROADSIDE. [Chap. XVII.-B. P. 
ancient Church, of the United Brethren. There are 
three grades, bishops, presbyters, and deacons. The 
bishops have no special position or authority as bishops, 
but have as such a seat and vote at the synods. The 
ministers’ salaries are raised by the congregations, as 
far as they are able. Their children are educated at 
the general expense. Small retiring pensions are given 
to aged and disabled ministers and their widows, and 
to all who have held any spiritual office. 
The first missionaries, with but a few shillings in 
their pockets, travelled on foot to Copenhagen in 1732 
and 1733, and embarked thence for the West Indies 
and Greenland. In the first nine years they had com¬ 
menced eight missions to heathen tribes, and fifteen 
years after, their missions were sixteen in number, 
viz. to the Negroes, Hottentots, Esquimaux, Green¬ 
landers, and American Indians; and not onlv does 
their work expand in these missions, but new fields 
are from time to time entered upon, as opportunity 
offers. Their efforts on the Mosquito Coast have quite 
altered the entire native character. 
The missions at present consist of 88 stations, 318 
European missionaries, 1021 native assistants, 300 
schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, 70,311 members 
of the Church gathered from the heathen, about half 
being British subjects, 20,721 communicants, 20,000 
children in day schools, and 19,000 in Sunday schools. 
The numbers were thus distributed about the end of 
1867 
