The Eastern mission had now ten missionaries, with as many female assistant missionaries, six native pastors, seventeen licensed native preachers, twenty-five native teachers, and thirty-two other helpers. The out-stations had increased to forty-seven, eighteen of which were connected with Harpoot. The average attendance at the regular religious services was over two thousand and two hundred; and many more heard the informal preaching of colporters and other assistants. Twenty-two Sabbath-schools embraced one thousand and four hundred pupils. There were sixteen churches, with a membership of four hundred and fifty, of whom sixty-eight were admitted on profession of faith in 1864, and one hundred and twenty were women. The number of registered Protestants was three thousand five hundred and thirty. Besides four hundred adults receiving instruction, there were one thousand five hundred children in fifty common schools, of whom more than five hundred were girls. The girls' boarding-school at Harpoot had forty-two pupils. The Misses West and Fritcher, from Marsovan, had been very usefully connected for a time with this school, in consequence of the return home of Miss Babcock. Miss Clarissa C. Pond was now connected with the school, and early succeeded in gaining the language. The mission was much encouraged by a growing interest in education, especially among the women. Parents who, a few years before, thought it wholly unnecessary, if not a disgrace, for their daughters to read, and who could hardly be induced to allow them to attend school, now gladly paid considerable sums for their tuition. This advancing spirit of intelligence was seen, not only among those who were brought directly under the influence of missionary labor, but also among the Armenians generally, compelling their ecclesiastics, in some places, to open schools of their own. So, also, to keep the people away from the Protestant chapels, extra services were established in Armenian churches, in which the Bible was read and explained, and prayer was offered in the modern or spoken language. In the village of Ichme, they even went so far as to open an opposition prayer-meeting, a female prayer-meeting, and an evening meeting; and societies were formed in several places professedly to carry the Gospel to neighboring villages.