"'Nearly six hundred students have been under instruction from time to time since the commencement of the American Seminary at Batticotta, and of these upwards of four hundred have completed the established course of education. More than one-half have made an open profession of Christianity, and all have been familiarized with its doctrines, and more or less imbued with its spirit. The majority are now filling situations of credit and responsibility throughout the various districts of Ceylon; numbers are employed under the missionaries themselves, as teachers and catechists, and as preachers and superintendents of schools; many have migrated, in similar capacities, to be attached to Christian missions on the continent of India; others have lent their assistance to the missions of the Wesleyans and the Church of England in Ceylon; and amongst those who have attached themselves to secular occupations, I can bear testimony to the abilities, the qualifications, and integrity, of the many students of Jaffna, who have accepted employment in various offices under the Government of the colony.'" "Another of the instruments of conversion adopted by these indefatigable men is _the press_. They were long obliged to have their tracts written out on _olahs_, or strips of the Palmyra leaf, which, when the missionary took for distribution, were strung round the neck of his horse. The printing establishment of the American Mission has for many years given constant employment to upwards of eighty Tamil workmen. Their publications are either religious or educational; and one of their ulterior objects is to supersede the degraded legends still in circulation. The natives of Ceylon, like most other Asiatics, have a strong repugnance to reading. This, however, has been to some extent already overcome, both on the continent of India and in Ceylon, as is evident from the facts of the establishment of native presses in Hindostan, and of the success of a missionary newspaper in Ceylon for the last seven years, which has now more than seven hundred subscribers, of whom five-sixths are Tamils. The Church Missionary Society have also a press amongst the Tamils; the Wesleyans established theirs in the Singhalese districts, and the Baptists have one at work in Kandy. One of the greatest, among the many triumphs of the missionaries in Ceylon, has been in the education of girls. The position of woman in that island, as in most parts of the East, was one of inferiority and toil. She was not permitted to sit at table with the males, or even to eat in the presence of her husband. Her education was so wholly neglected that, amongst the Tamils, no woman knew her alphabet, except such as rather gave the accomplishment a bad name--the dancing girls and prostitutes attached to the temples, who learned to read and write that they might copy songs and the legends of their gods.