I BENGAL AS A FIELD OF MISSIONS. IS THERE NOT A CAUSE? 1 SAM. xvii. 29. WHO THEN IS WILLING TO CONSECRATE HIS SERVICE THIS DAY UNTO THE LORD? BY M. WYLIE, ESQ. FIRST JUDGE OF THE CALCUTTA COURT OF SMALL CAUSES. LONDON: W. H. DALTON, 26 COCKSPUR STREET. CALCUTTA: THACKER, SPINK, & CO. 1854. PREFACE. I CANNOT send forth this work, without expressing my grateful sense of the kind and valuable assistance, by which I have been enabled to complete it. Whether I applied to the Lieutenant-Governor for access to official papers; or to the Secretaries to Government, or to the Surveyor General, for information; or to private friends, in Calcutta or the Mofussil, I uniformly received the same prompt and cordial replies. The names of some who sent me communications, appear in the following pages, but I have received help from many others. I am particularly indebted to the Rev. W. S. Mackay, and the Rev. C. B. Lewis, for valuable advice and assistance, especially in carrying the book through the press; and to Mr. Woodrow, the Secretary of the Council of Education for the map which accompanies the volume. A very severe illness, and the prospect of an early departure to Europe for a season, have interfered with my plans of revising the work. I regret also to find, that some important errors have escaped correction. The number of converts in the Burman Mission is printed as two thousand instead of ten; and the population table of the province of Behar, at page 316, contains several mistakes. The numbers should have been printed as follows: These figures do not correspond with the estimate at page 40, but when that was written I had not seen the Survey Reports of the Behar districts. |