My special purpose in coming to this section of the country to rest was to make my furlough as profitable as possible, and to gain information helpful for mission work. Missionaries had been in this section of the country the greater part of the nineteenth century. The American Board had started their work some time in the '30s, and this formed an excellent opportunity of seeing some of the fruits of missionary labors. I spent some time at an English Mission under Mr. Eyles at Imbezana, at a Free Methodist Mission and girls' school, Fairview, and at four missions of the American Board--a boys' school at Adams, a large girls' school at Inanda, and one at Umzumbi, and also visited their work at Durban, in charge of Rev. Bridgeman. At all these places I was most hospitably entertained and given every opportunity for studying the work. It was an inspiration to see what God had wrought among these erstwhile heathen. Here were large boarding-schools, and natives living like white people in neat brick houses, built by themselves. Here were missionaries, like Mrs. Edwards and Mrs. Bridgeman, grown old in this soul-saving work, and yet so attached to the natives and the work that they could not think of leaving the country. Natal, like Cape Colony and the Transvaal, can no longer be called heathen Africa, as so many of the natives are civilized. The large cities of white people are built in modern style, with all the latest improvements, electric lights, street cars, telephones, and the like, and since then automobiles. There are also many white farmers, as well as small towns of white people, throughout the country. Missionaries of many societies are here in this densely-populated and easily-accessible district of Natal. This is considered one of the greatest fields for the overlapping of missionaries, perhaps, to be found anywhere, yet all seem to have plenty to do. With all the advantages for improvement which the Africans here possess, I was surprised to meet, within a mile or two of one of the oldest mission stations, natives with paint and grease, and when the evangelists go to the homes of the people they still find some raw heathen. Some not only do not and will not accept Christ, but they also prefer their dirty, indolent, ignorant way of living to that introduced by civilization.