[Sidenote: Where Every Prospect Pleases.] Southeast of India lies a group of large islands known by the name of East Indies. These are colonial possessions of Holland. Their population numbering thirty-eight million is divided among various tribes of the Malay race whose character is as varied as that of the different tribes of Africa. The land is rich and its products many, among them sugar-cane, coffee, rice, spices and all varieties of tropical fruits. Many sections are covered with forests of valuable timber. There are Lutheran missionaries on the islands of Borneo, Sumatra, Nias, Java and on the group to the west of Sumatra, which are called the Batoe Islands. [Sidenote: Borneo.] On the fertile and beautiful Island of Borneo the _Rhenish Society_[10] has had its missionaries for eighty years. Beginning along the southeast coast, the missionaries pushed gradually into the interior by way of the rivers. The Dyaks among whom they labored were the fiercest of savages and “head hunters.” Finally eight stations were established and the future appeared bright, when in 1859 during a rebellion of the Malays against their Dutch rulers, the Dyaks became involved. In the struggle which ensued, all the inland stations were destroyed and seven of the missionaries were murdered. In a few years the work was recommenced. To-day there are eighteen missionaries and the native church numbers about three thousand five hundred. Footnote 10: It should be remembered that the Rhenish Society is largely but not entirely Lutheran. [Sidenote: Sumatra--A Great Achieve-ment.] For more than fifty years, since 1861, the Rhenish Society has conducted a mission in the island of Sumatra. The larger part of the population is Mohammedan, but in the interior there are tribes who still retain their primitive religion. Among these tribes are the Bataks, who have a speech and written characters of their own. Once cannibals, they had been before the advent of the Rhenish Missionary Society the object of evangelizing work which had failed. In spite of constant danger the early missionaries continued faithful. The annals of missions have scarcely anywhere a greater victory to record. There is now a well organized church partly self-supporting. Thirty Batak native preachers have been ordained and work is carried on at forty-one main stations and five hundred out-stations. Twenty-seven thousand five hundred Batak children are being educated in five hundred schools. There is a training school for native preachers, a hospital, a leper asylum and a large industrial school. The Christian community numbers about one hundred and fifty thousand. [Sidenote: The Work of Deaconesses.] During the last twenty years the Rhenish Society has sent out deaconesses to take special charge of the work among women. They manage the girls’ schools, teach and give Bible lessons to married and unmarried women and try in every way to further the development of their own sex.