These experiences and subsequent investigations led to the choice of Beirut as the missionary center for Syria and Palestine, contrary to the previous expectation that Jerusalem would be chosen. Jerusalem was carefully tested and its climate was found to be unfit for the permanent residence of American missionaries. Beirut was upon the sea, and at the same time in such relation to the Lebanon mountains that, during the heated time of the year, the missionaries could withdraw into the mountains without becoming entirely separated from the people and their work. The matter of healthfulness was most wisely taken into consideration in selecting the location for permanent mission stations. Not that this was the solely decisive feature, but it was given due place in the weighing of arguments pro and con. Subsequent experience has proven that it is the poorest and most wasteful policy to permit missionaries to reside permanently in cities that are found to be unhealthy, or to plant in such places central institutions. Beirut has been occupied to the present day as the great mission center for Syria, and the wisdom of its choice eighty years ago has been abundantly justified. In selecting other stations in different parts of Turkey the same wise, careful method was followed. During the ten years from 1820 to 1830 the explorations made in that country by missionaries of the Board were extensive, embracing, as has been stated, the site of the seven churches, the shores of the Nile as far as Thebes, the whole of Palestine, and the greater part of Syria. Cappadocia had been entered from Smyrna; while the Peloponnesus, the more important of the Ionian and Ægean Islands, as well as Tripoli and Tunis upon the north coast of Africa, had also received missionary visits. These careful and scientific investigations had brought to the attention of the Western world the religious beliefs and practises and the moral condition of the Copts, the Maronite and Greek Churches, as well as the condition and needs of other races dwelling in that wide extent of territory. Vast regions in that empire were still unexplored and peoples like the Armenians, Nestorians, Chaldeans, as well as Turks, Turkomans, Koords, and Persians, dwelt in the far east of Turkey and in Persia and about them little was known. The conditions and needs, and how best to meet these needs, could not be determined until all parts of the empire, all its peoples and their interrelations, were fairly well understood.