The mission, as early as 1836, became sensible of a serious deficiency in their Arabic type. As it did not conform to the most approved standard of Arabic caligraphy, it did not meet the popular taste. Mr. Smith therefore took pains to collect models of the characters in the best manuscripts. These were lost in his shipwreck, but he afterwards replaced them at Constantinople, to the number of two hundred; so varied, that the punches formed for them would make not far from a thousand matrices. These he placed in the hands of Mr. Hallock, the missionary printer at Smyrna, who possessed great mechanical ingenuity, and was entirely successful in cutting the punches. The type was cast at Leipzig by Tauchnitz. Thus a really great and important work, without which the press could not have been domesticated among the many millions to whom the Arabic is vernacular, was brought to a successful issue. The disastrous shipwreck of Mr. and Mrs. Smith on their way from Beirut to Smyrna, has been already mentioned. The voyage was undertaken chiefly for the benefit of Mrs. Smith's health; but the exposures consequent on the shipwreck, extending through twenty-eight days until their arrival at Smyrna, aggravated her consumptive tendencies, and hastened her passage to the grave. She died on the thirtieth of September, 1836, at the age of thirty-four. The closing scene is described by her husband. "Involuntary groans were occasionally muttered in her convulsions. These, as we were listening to them with painful sympathy, once, to our surprise, melted away into musical notes; and for a moment, our ears were charmed with the full, clear tones of the sweetest melody. No words were articulated, and she was evidentally unconscious of everything about her. It seemed as if her soul was already joining in the songs of heaven, while it was yet so connected with the body as to command its unconscious sympathy. Not long after, she again opened her eyes in a state of consciousness. A smile of perfect happiness lighted up her emaciated features. She looked deliberately around upon different objects in the room, and then fixed upon me a look of the tenderest affection. .... Her frequent prayers that the Saviour would meet her in the dark valley, have already been mentioned. By her smile, she undoubtedly intended to assure us that she had found him. Words she could not utter to express what she felt. Life continued to struggle with its last enemy until twenty minutes before eight o'clock; when her affectionate heart gradually ceased to beat, and her soul took its final departure to be forever with the Lord."1 1 _A Memoir of Mrs. Sarah Lanman Smith_ was given to the public by her brother, Edward W. Hooker, D. D., in 1837, pp. 407.