Page:The Moslem World - Volume 02.djvu/148

 Dera Ismail Khan. One thousand six hundred and twenty-one scholars study in these schools, some of them being Pathans from across the frontier. There are hostels in connection with each school, and in these, those boys who come from a distance reside under the close supervision of the British missionary, and the influence exerted by these schools, in which daily Scripture teaching is given to all classes, is far-reaching. There is a mission college at Peshawar, in which education is given up to the B.A. degree of the Panjab University.

The chief mission hospitals are at Peshawar, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan and Quetta, but most of the branch stations have medical work going on in some way or other. At these hospitals during the year 1910, no less than 236,167 visits were paid by out-patients ; 5,008 were treated as in-patients in the hospital wards, and 10,182 operations were performed. At all the hospitals at least one, but generally several Gospel addresses are given daily to the out-patients, while those in the wards have the benefit of regular services and systematic teaching, not to speak of the atmosphere of Christian sympathy and service by which they are surrounded. Among both in and out-patients are numerous Afghans who have come from Afghanistan itself, either specially for medical and surgical treatment, or in the ordinary course of trade and travel. These people remember what they have heard and learnt, and thus there are probably few villages in Eastern Afghanistan which do not possess some such quondam patients, who not only retail to their fellow villagers the teaching they have received, but often take back with them copies of the Gospel in Persian and Pashtu, and by what they have learnt of Christian love and sympathy, break down prejudice and prepare a welcome for the missionary himself.

The whole of the Bible has been translated into both Pashtu and Persian, the two languages, one or other of which is spoken throughout the country. "The Pilgrim's Progress" and some tracts and controversial treatises have also been translated. There are at present working among the people on the eastern border of Afghanistan (including those on furlough) : — 9 European ordained