The American bodies are far the richest. Whether it is that the United States is a richer country than England, or whether it is that they are more liberal in their gifts to missions, or whether it is that they are more inclined to spend their money on Chinese missions, the result is certain, the American missions have every advantage that money can give. Their splendid educational establishments are a feature in {201} many towns. If the American missions have the advantage of the English missions in money, both British and American missions have an equal right to claim that they have as representatives in China a body of self-denying and enthusiastic men. It would be invidious to make any reference to the excellence of any special mission. Among the British missions, the London Mission claims indeed the greatest number of converts, though the Church Missionary Society does not come far behind it. Again, the Presbyterian Missions and the China Inland Mission have a large and growing work. The latter is a most curious development of missionary policy. The missionaries, differing in many doctrinal particulars, have agreed to co-operate under the name of China Inland Missions in the west of China; they have agreed not to oppose each other in any way, and to give each other mutual support. They are under the head of a director who organises and arranges their separate provinces. A great feature of this scheme is that they effect a large saving in the expenses of mission work by co-operation. A white man cannot live in many districts in China without a supply of medicines and some Western comforts; they arrange for the forwarding of these things, and help the missionaries in their journeys. Bishop Cassels is at once a member of this mission and of the C.M.S. He is a splendid example of the courage that is necessary for missionary work. He has been through the Gorges of the Yangtsze twenty {202} times. Once he was unwise enough to forsake the small native boat in which he habitually travels and to entrust himself to a steamer, which, under the pilotage of a German captain, was going to attempt the rapids. They did very well till they happened to bump on a rock, when the captain lost his head, and instead of beaching her, he tried to anchor. The water surged in and soon put out his fires, thus preventing him from raising his anchor, with the result that the ship gradually filled and sank and the passengers had to swim for their lives.