The first shipment of coolies for South Africa has left. This movement is differently viewed in different quarters, and characterised accordingly. This scheme has the Government with carefully pro-pared rules and regulations behind it, and some good men helping to engineer it to success. Any such scheme is beset with danger as every one knows, as there are bad men who Will try to avail of it to forward their own bad ends; it has to be watched and guarded at every point. With such rules and such backing it is too soon to condemn it as a plan of vice which is only a form of " slavery,' till it is soon whether its rules are carried out. If they can be, and if the coolies receive proper treatment, and their families get their portion of wages to be remitted regularly, it is possible for-these poor families to be greatly blest, and the coolies themselves be none the worse. One of the dangers to the scheme will result from the roughs and rascals among the coolies, men who gone in not so much for the money they expect to got from their own work, as from various methods of extortion. How this is to be prevented is one of the jous questions. There will also be outside parties, both foreign and Chinese, watching their opportunities to " make haul," so that those who have the success of the scheme and the benefit of the coolies at heart, will have to be continual ly on the alert. There appear to be great possibilities both for good and for ill; let us hope that the good will groatly predominate, Missionary Societies' Annual Meetings. 7 Within the last few weeks the four missionary societies which have work i Tientsin have held their annual meeting the English Methodists in Chuchiatsai, Shantung; the American Methodists in Peking; the London Mission in Tientsin and the American Board in T'ungchou. All alike speak of growth during the past year and of opportunities quite pheno-monal as compared with previous years of Inbour before the Boxer troubles. There is more work waiting to be done than the labourers can compass, and the outlook is most encouraging.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.