The Seminary at Abeih was now made more directly a training school for native preachers and helpers; and a female boarding-school was opened at Suk el-Ghurb, a village six miles north of Abeih, under the direction of Miss Temple. The training of female helpers was its leading object, and the removal of Mr. Bliss thither made a home for the pupils. Ain Zehalty continued to be a marked village, and the papists made great efforts to reclaim it. A Maronite bishop at one time, and a wily Jesuit at another, repaired thither, at the urgent request of the papal party, to uproot the dangerous exotic. The coming of the bishop was with great boasting on the part of his adherents, but, much to their chagrin, he declined commencing a controversy with Khalil, the native helper there; and was afterwards so hotly plied with texts of Scripture by some of the church-members whom he ventured to attack, that he fled for refuge to the more accommodating "traditions of the elders." It was supposed that the disciple of Loyola would carry all before him; but the undaunted Bible-men were more than ready to meet him, which they did effectively; and his visit was productive of more good than harm. The report of the mission for 1858, furnishes many striking evidences of the influence exerted, especially in the department of education. Soon after the opening of the first Protestant school at Tripoli, the Greeks opened a school for boys, which soon became large and prosperous. And when the Protestant girls' school became a success, a board of directors was organized, under the direction of the Greek bishop, to break up the other, if possible. Not finding an educated woman in Syria who was not a Protestant, the Greeks applied to two Protestant young ladies to take their school, but without success. To secure the needful pecuniary means, they constrained the Patriarch to surrender a part of the convent revenues for this purpose. The Russian government, moreover, took up the subject of education in Syria, and remitted twelve thousand piasters (four hundred and eighty dollars) to the Greek school directors in Tripoli for the city schools; but with the injunction, that the tenets of the Greek Church should be the chief subject of instruction.