Twenty-four lads went up to the normal school entrance examination in 1874, but only six passed. Also two of our best and most capable women were sent to the hospital to be trained as nurses. After their return they did a good and much-needed work in the district for many years. It took time and hard fighting, however, to overcome the old heathen practices. Prejudices and superstitions die hard. Under the old heathen methods, fully a third of the women died during ‘nature’s hour of sorrow’; but our trained nurses soon made a great change in that respect, and so established their reputation. A vast amount of splendid and much needed work was done at the Medical Mission Hospital for over thirty years by the various Medical Missionaries in charge of it. Perhaps the most thorough and valuable service rendered even there was the work done by the Matron Miss Byam (the Miss Nightingale of Madagascar), daughter of the late General Byam, in the training of a staff of Malagasy nurses. Nothing more effective in connexion with the Mission was ever done in the island. CHAPTER VIII DISTRICT JOURNEYS AND INCIDENTS ‘Happy is the people, that is in such a case: yea, happy is the people, whose God is the Lord.’--PSALM cxliv. 15, The year 1875 was by far the best since we came, in work done and progress made, in schools established, in money raised, in enlarged congregations, and in the fewness of scandals. We had to remember for our comfort that we were but breaking up the fallow ground, preparing the soil and sowing the seed of the Kingdom, and that it was too soon to look for a harvest. We found that there was great truth in the remark that ‘after a religious creed has been established in a community’--as to some extent at least it had been in Vònizòngo--‘the preacher educates gradually, far oftener than he converts suddenly.’ By degrees the Gospel became a power in the land. Old things passed away, and all things became new. The whole face of society was quietly revolutionized, and changes effected in matters social, political, and religious. Everything in fact, from the fireside to the forum, and from the queen on the throne to the prisoner in chains, felt the new influence. It was perhaps a matter for more thankfulness than we were always prepared to admit, that we had experienced so little of the sensational, the startling, and the marvellous; although from another point of view, the work might well be deemed a marvellous transformation.