These facts regarding Turkey and the various peoples who comprise its population were not fully known to the early missionaries nor to the officers of the Mission Boards. The country was largely unexplored and the vast interior was almost a _terra incognita_. Mohammedanism was vaguely understood. There was a clear knowledge of the conditions and needs of the Greek Church, but the Armenians and the other races in the remoter interior were but partially understood and only by a few. The most of our knowledge of Arabia, Syria, Eastern Turkey, and the interior of Asia Minor, the customs, beliefs, and lives of the people who dwell there, is the heritage which has come to us from the investigations and reports of missionaries who have traversed in every direction all parts of the country, except sections of Arabia. Many of these, by living among the people for a generation and mastering their language, have been able to speak with the highest authority upon what they have seen and known. We are approaching this question, not with the doubtful knowledge or even gross ignorance of eighty years ago, but with all the light that has come to us from fourscore years of mission operations which now cover practically the entire country. Never in the history of modern missions has a more difficult and complicated work been undertaken. The questions which entered into the mission problems of the Turkish empire were legion, assuming new phases at every turn and every phase presenting a new difficulty. The one dominant note that runs through it all is the fact of Mohammedan rule. This fact in all its length and breadth must be taken into consideration. Add to this the antiquity of the old churches, the form of Christianity, from which the spirit has fled, the race hatreds, the poverty of the country, the uncertainty of everything that pertains to the government, except that it never fails to be superlatively bad, the conviction of the Moslems that they have seen true Christianity and know it to be as bad as their own government, and we have a few of the difficulties which confronted the early missionaries. On the other hand, there were the encouraging features of the reverence of the Oriental churches, all of them, for the Holy Scriptures, their allegiance to the Church, and their respect for ecclesiastics, to which must be added their superior intelligence, eagerness to learn, and capability for great advancement. Surely Turkey presented a varied scene marked by high lights and dark shadows. Without hesitation, men and women of unusual intellectual and spiritual capacity and breadth, and of indomitable courage, entered this country to win it for Christ and for Christian civilization. XII. EARLY PIONEERING AND EXPLORATIONS