In Java the Dutch have made considerable efforts to convert the natives to Christianity for three hundred years past, and as the result of this early work there are considerable Christian communities still existing. It is only within the last century, however, that the work of the missionary societies has infused new life into the work of converting the Mohammedans. The greatest numerical success has been achieved by those who devote their efforts to the founding of Christian communities in villages of their own, entirely distinct from the Mohammedans, with their own Christian village headmen. It is found that in the Mohammedan villages the Christians suffer so much persecution from the headmen and others, that in some cases Christianity has been entirely stamped out, and the Christians have disappeared, no one knows where. The Christian villages have in most cases been established in unsettled districts, whole families being moved from other places, and clearing the jungle to form their own settlements. These people have been won to Christ by preaching among the Mohammedans, and are protected from persecution by thus gathering them into Christian communities. Much work is also done by means of schools and dispensaries. The Dutch Government provides both the school buildings and salaries of schoolmasters, under certain rules, and it also erects hospitals, and provides medicines free to every missionary. There are also instances in which Christian communities have grown up in the midst of Mohammedan surroundings, and it is claimed that such Christians are of a stronger type, and exercise a more powerful influence among their fellow-countrymen. A Dutch missionary writes that polygamy and divorce are very prevalent in Java, there being many who have changed husbands or wives as many as ten or twenty times. The man has to pay the priest two guilders for a divorce, but a woman would have to pay twenty-five guilders; the latter is known as "Buffalo divorce," i. e., brutal. In Java the second wife is called "A fire in the house." Four wives are allowed, and any number of concubines. In case of divorce the girls follow the father, and the boys follow the mother. Divorced women are often in straitened circumstances and become concubines or the kept mistresses of Europeans or even of the Chinese. The largest Christian communities in Malaysia are in North Celebes and on the island of Amboina. These are the result of the early labors of the chaplains of the Dutch East India Company.