block of territory, eight times as large as Iowa, there is not a
single ordained missionary.

Another region, some distance north of the one just mentioned, without
missionaries, is 1,500 miles long and 500 miles wide.

Last of all, if we omit the mission stations on the Nile and a few
scattered workers around the fringes, there is in the upper half of
the continent a block of territory nearly as large as the United
States but with a scattered population estimated at fifteen millions,
without resident missionaries. Starting from the Nile River, 1,000
miles from its mouth, a traveler could go directly westward through
the heart of the continent nearly three thousand miles before reaching
the next mission station on the west coast. If he started at the mouth
of the Sobat River, about 2,000 miles from Cairo, the nearest mission
station to the west is 1,500 miles away, in Northern Nigeria. In all
those weary miles there is not a single church spire pointing toward
the stars or a home where a missionary family lives.

Taking the continent as a whole, there are at least fifty millions of
people who are not only entirely outside the reach but even of the
plans of any missionary society now at work on the continent.

V. ASIA

In Asia live more than one half of the human race. Accepting the
figures of the _Statesman's Year Book_, the population of the world is
1,698,552,204. The population of Asia is given as 958,781,233. Of
every hundred people in the earth fifty-six live in Asia. Of these
fifty-six, forty-three out of every hundred live in China and India.
Asia as a whole has 9,013 workers, according to the _World Atlas of
Christian Missions_, each having an average parish of 1,781 square
miles, containing an average of 106,377 people. Let us survey the
continent, "beginning from Jerusalem."

=1. The Near East.=--The Asiatic Levant, or Near East includes
_Turkey_, _Persia_, and _Arabia_. This territory has an area of
2,381,310 square miles and a population of a little more than
thirty-four millions. This region where Christ was born and wrought
his mighty works is to-day in desperate need of his message and life.

(1) Turkey has an area of 693,610 square miles, and is therefore more
than eighty-six times the size of Massachusetts. This great area has
only 2,836 miles of railroad, while Pennsylvania with one fifteenth
its area has 15,415 miles. Turkey includes Asia Minor, Armenia,
Kurdistan, Mesopotamia, Syria, and a po