AND THE LEWCHEWANS; BEING A Narrative of a Visit to LEWCHEW, OR LOO CHOO, IN OCTOBER, 1850. BY GEORGE SMITH, D.D., LORD BISHOP OF VICTORIA. LONDON: T. HATCHARD, 187, PICCADILLY. 1853. 203.d. 175. INTRODUCTION. THE author of the following brief notices of Lewchew or Loo Choo, now discharges a debt due to the friends and supporters of the Lewchew Naval Mission, in giving them an authenticated narrative of his visit to that country. The delay has arisen from a sense of delicacy and unwillingness to give his views to the public before the British government had taken its own independent course on the question of a British subject remaining at Lewchew. The Foreign Secretary of State has, in the name of the Queen of Great Britain, thrown the shield of British protection around the missionary, Dr. Bettelheim; and the naval commander, Captain Shadwell, R.N., who, in the beginning of the present year, was despatched to convey these renewed communications to the Lew chewan authorities, has brought back a report which shows that the position of the missionary, and the general prospects of the mission, have been improved since the author's visit in October, 1850. Under such circumstances-the political and international question having been now disposed of by those to whose peculiar province it belonged the author felt that, as the representative of the Church of England, and a pioneer of British Christianity in these dark regions of the farthest East, he would fail to obey a clear call of divine Providence, if he refrained longer from laying before the friends of missions at home, a brief statement of the present condition and prospects of the Lewchewan Mission. Seven years ago a few naval officers formed themselves into a society, sent out a missionary labourer, and have hitherto persevered against multiplied difficulties and discouragements, sufficient to have overpowered minds less hopeful and less sustained by faith in the sure fulfilment of God's promises in the extension of the Redeemer's kingdom. Their missionary—a converted Jew-possesses many qualifications for his work; he is an able linguist-has |