Mr. Aiken had joined Mr. Wilson at Hums, a new station north of Damascus, where he was bereaved of his wife before she had been six months in the field. The arrangement for 1857 was that Beirut should be occupied by Messrs. Van Dyck and Ford, and Mr. Hurter, the printer; Abeih by Messrs. Calhoun and Bliss; Sidon by Mr. Eddy; Deir el Komr by Mr. Bird; Bhamdun by Mr. Benton; Tripoli by Messrs. Jessup and Lyons; and Hums by Mr. Wilson. Dr. Thomson and Mr. Aiken were in the United States; the latter with health so impaired as to forbid his resuming his mission. He had previously married Miss Cheney. In the following year, Miss Jane E. Johnson and Miss Amelia C. Temple arrived to take the care of a girls' boarding-school at Suk el Ghurb, on Mount Lebanon; but the former was soon found unable to endure the climate. Dr. Thomson, while in this country, published a valuable work on Biblical literature, in two volumes, entitled "The Land and the Book." Dr. and Mrs. De Forest had come to this country in the hope of a restoration of his health; but on the 24th of November, 1858, this excellent missionary was released from long and severe physical sufferings by a peaceful death. The health of Mrs. Wilson made it necessary, for a time, to leave Hums without a resident missionary. The principal operations, both here and at Deir el-Komr, were through schools for both sexes, which had been embarrassed by Syrian and Greek opposers, but in no case suppressed. The female department of the school at Deir el-Komr commenced with a dozen pupils, but in six months the attendance exceeded fifty. When Mr. Bird came to that place, he thought there were not six females in the nominally Christian population, who could read; but a year had not passed before half the pupils in his girls' school could read their Bibles. There were other mountain schools under the care of the station, and in one there were more than sixty pupils.