[Sidenote: Discouragement.] Selecting the capital of the local government, Ranchi, for their headquarters they named the spot where they settled Bethesda. For five years they worked without gaining a single convert. Utterly discouraged they asked for permission to seek another field. To this request Pastor Gossner answered as follows: “Whether the Kols will be converted or not is the same to you. If they will not accept the Word they must hear it to their condemnation. Your duty is to pray and preach to them. We at home will also pray more earnestly.” [Sidenote: Reward.] Presently four natives were baptized, others came to inquire, and a church was built. When it was begun there were sixty members of the congregation; when it was completed there were three hundred. So thoroughly was the work of evangelization done, so well grounded were these degraded people in the faith, that in 1857 at the time of the great mutiny when the natives of India rose against the English the nine hundred adherents of the Gossner mission refused to give up that faith to which they had been baptized. Here is an extraordinary episode in missionary history. In 1845 the deepest degradation, misery and superstition, which included the worship of idols and demons and even the recollection of the sacrifice of living beings--in 1857 the most exalted Christian faith and courage. From now on the mission prospered and its converts multiplied. Presently work was begun among the Hindus and Mohammedans in the Ganges Valley with a station at Ghazipur. A visitor to Ranchi has written down some of his impressions of the chief station of the Gossner mission. [Sidenote: Impressions of a Mission Station.] “In Ranchi I could have spent a month with the greatest delight, there is so much to see and to hear. There is a Christian hostel here on the mission premises, which seems to be a great power for good. It is a large square courtyard with open rooms all around, in which any Christians are allowed to put up who may be in from the district on business; they get their firewood free, and the only condition of admittance is that they attend morning and evening worship. Occasionally heathen people stop there too. The idea is a capital one, as it keeps the missionaries in touch with their native converts in a way which otherwise it would be very difficult to accomplish. We visited the printing press and the boys’ and girls’ schools. I was particularly struck by the bright little girls, who answered so intelligently when I questioned them, and whose part-singing was beautiful. The Kols are naturally musical, their ear being, as a rule, very good. The girls sang softly and sweetly; some of them even sang alone for me. They were being taught by a native who seemed to have a great deal of musical talent; he had just picked up a new thing himself--by ear, I suppose--and was putting it to notes for his girls.