I have been spending three weeks with my old
friend the French missionary, going daily into the jungle, and fasting
on Fridays on omelet and vegetables, a most wholesome custom which I
think the Protestants were wrong to leave off. I have been reading Huc's
travels in China in French, and talking with a French missionary just
arrived from Tonquin. I have thus obtained a great deal of information
about these countries and about the extent of the Catholic missions in
them, which is astonishing. How is it that they do their work so much
more thoroughly than the Protestant missionaries? In Cochin China,
Tonquin, and China, where all Christian missionaries are obliged to live
in secret and are subject to persecution, expulsion, and often death,
yet every province, even those farthest in the interior of China, have
their regular establishment of missionaries constantly kept up by fresh
supplies who are taught the languages of the countries they are going to
at Penang or Singapore. In China there are near a million Catholics, in
Tonquin and Cochin China more than half a million! One secret of their
success is the cheapness of their establishments.
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