ange River,
Zululand, and Zanzibar; and while the cry from East, West, and South is
still "Come over and help us," we cannot but feel that, in spite of many
a failure, many a disappointment, many a fatal error, still the Gospel
trumpet is being blown, and not blown in vain, even in the few spots
whose history, for the sake of their representative men, I have here
tried to record. Of the Canadian and Columbian Indian Missions, of the
Sandwich Isles, and of many more, I have here been able to say nothing;
but I hope that the pictures of these labourers in the cause may tend to
some understanding, not only of their toils, but of their joys, and may
show that they were men not easily deceived, and thoroughly to be trusted
in their own reports of their progress.

CHARLOTTE M. YONGE.

_March_ 16_th_, 1871.

CHAPTER I. JOHN ELIOT, THE APOSTLE OF THE RED INDIANS.

Since the great efforts that Britain had made between the years 500 and
1000 to bring the knowledge of the truth into the still heathen portions
of the Continent,--since the days of Columban and Gal, of Boniface and
Willibrord,--there had been a cessation of missionary enterprise. The
known portions of the world were either Christian, or were in the hands
of the Mahommedans; and no doubt much of the adventurous spirit which,
united with religious enthusiasm, forms the missionary, found vent in the
Crusades, and training in the military orders. The temper of the age,
and the hopelessness of converting a Mahommedan, made the good men of the
third 500 years use their swords rather than their tongues against the
infidel; and it was only in the case of men possessing such rare natures
as those of Francis of Assisi, or Raymond Lull, that the possibility of
trying to bring over a single Saracen to the faith was imagined.

It was in the revival from the Paganism with which classical tastes had
infected the Church, that the spirit of missions again awoke, stimulated,
of course, by the wide discoveries of fresh lands that were dawning upon
the earth. If from 1000 to 1500 the progress of the Gospel was confined
to the borders of the Slavonic nation, the space of time from 1500
onwards has been one of constant and unwearied effort to raise the
standard of the Cross in the new worlds beyond the Atlantic.

Spain, Portugal, France, as nations, and the great company of the Jesuits
as one mighty brotherhood, were the foremost in the great undertaking;
but their doin