In 1896 the Basel mission opened its eleventh station at Kumassi. It has twenty-four thousand three hundred church members with a school roll of nearly eight thousand pupils. There are thirty-six missionaries and forty-three other Europeans who direct the industrial and commercial work. The mission extends from Ashanti beyond the Volta River. [Sidenote: The Beauty of Nature and the Depredation of Mankind.] The Basel mission has also a flourishing work in the German colony of Kamerun, among the Bantu negroes. The beauty of the land in which they work and the human misery are described by one of the missionaries. “It is a beautiful wild country which often reminds us of Switzerland; on all sides we see chains of mountains separated by deep valleys, roaring torrents, foaming waterfalls, and forests of palm trees reaching to the highest summits. How many times our hearts have leaped for joy at the glory of the scene! And, on the other hand, what a sorrow it is to see humanity fallen so low! The inhabitants of this paradise live in a real hell, always in unspeakable dread of evil spirits and of death. The dying often quit this world with cries of terror. The different tribes fight constantly with one another. Their moral condition is incredible. There are actually certain localities which exchange their dead in order to devour them.” How vividly this description brings to our minds a danger not often considered at home, the fearful effect which constant sight of the most hideous immorality upon the missionary who is himself but a man. God be thanked that they hold fast to all that is pure, thinking, in the midst of monstrous crimes, of those things which are lovely! The Basel Society has here thirteen main stations which extend nearly a hundred miles into the interior. Here there are sixty-three European missionaries. The Christian community numbers twelve thousand. The _Gossner Mission_, whose chief work is in India, resolved in 1914 to send missionaries to Central Kamerun. Just before the outbreak of the war four missionaries were sent out to make preliminary studies. On the Slave Coast the _North German_ or _Bremen Society_ has had a mission since 1847. This society has no mission school of its own, but draws its workers from the mission school at Basel. Its African mission has been continued only at enormous sacrifice. In fifty years sixty-five men and women died. The climate is dangerous, the hearts of the natives are stubborn. The territory in which the mission is situated is partly German and partly English, a fact which causes not only political but linguistic complications since German must be the language of one section, English of the other. [Illustration: CENTRAL CHINA LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, SHEKOW, HUPEH, CHINA.] [Illustration: CHAPEL AND MISSION HOMES, CHIKUNGSHAN, CHINA. (UNITED NORWEGIAN)]