Mombasa, though a Mohammedan town, is perhaps scarcely a typical one, as of late years it has become decidedly cosmopolitan, still in what is called the "Old Town" Mohammedanism with all its attendant ignorance and bigotry prevails.

There are women in this part of the mission-field with whom we have talked and prayed in past years, who seem further off from the Truth and Light than they were even in those early years of work amongst them.

These are the words of a young girl who, we know, was convinced of the truth of the Gospel: "Oh, Bibi, if I confess Christ openly I shall be turned out of my home, I shall have neither food nor clothing, and [with a shudder] perhaps they will kill me." We knew this was only too true.

She was a beautiful girl with sweet, gentle manners, living in those days with her sister in a dark, ill-ventilated room which opened on to a small courtyard where all the rubbish of the house seemed to be thrown, and where goats, hens, and miserable-looking cats seemed thoroughly at home amongst the refuse.

Yet, in spite of these surroundings and in spite of her knowledge of all manner of evil (alas! how early these children learn things which we would think impossible to teach a little child), in spite of all this she was pure and good. Now she seems to have no desire at all to hear or read the Gospel. When we do see her, her manner is always flippant and worldly. We don't want to give her up, we keep on praying for her, but there have been so many hardening influences since those early days, and she never took the definite step of openly confessing Christ. She was soon married to a man much older than herself who already had a wife; probably more than one. We suppose he was a higher bidder!

She had one little baby that soon pined away and died. How can women, brought up as she was, have healthy children? Amongst all the Mohammedan women I have visited here I have never known one to have more than two children. The majority have no living child.

I believe the husband was kind to her, but he did not live long, and very soon she was married again. If she bears no children he will probably tire of her and leave her. I have been told by one of the women that if a wife does not cook his food properly he may get a divorce. One old woman I saw to-day told me that her daughter is now married to her third husband; the other two left her for some trivial reason. When I asked, "What will become of her when she is old and perhaps cast off again?"

"Ah, Bibi!" she said, "what has become of me? I am weak and ill and old, and yet I have to cook and work for others." This is just what does happen unless they have a house and property of their own. They become household drudges to those relations who take them in, and there is rejoicing at their death.

The rule here is for each man to have four wives, if he can afford it. The number of concubines is, I believe, unlimited. Here the wives live each in a separate house. The reason given is: "If we lived together we should be jealous and quarrel and make our husband miserable."

I have known cases where the husband has only the one wife and there seems to be a certain amount of affection. One little wife said to me the other day, "I love my husband now, but if he ever takes another wife I shall hate him and leave him."

Could one blame her?

In most cases just as a girl has learned to read she has been forbidden by her husband, and I have been told, "My husband says there is no profit in women learning to read and he has forbidden it."

How one has felt for and grieved with some of these women! One day in going as usual to give a reading lesson to a mother and daughter (these two really loved each other), I found them both very sad and miserable. It seemed that the father of the girl determined to marry her to an elderly man whom, of course, she had never seen. The mother said her daughter was too young to be married, and she knew something of the character of the man. She begged me to try and do something, but we were quite helpless in the matter; a large sum of money was paid for the daughter. Some time afterwards when I visited the house the mother said to me, "Yes, Bibi, she is married to him and I have had to sit in the room listening to the cries of my child as he ill-treated her in the next room, but I could do nothing."

How one longs for the skill to bring home to our favored English girls and wives and mothers, the awful wrongs and the needs of these their Moslem sisters! But what human weakness cannot do, God by His Holy Spirit can. May He lead some of you to give yourselves to the glorious work of bringing light and life to these your sisters who are "Sitting in darkness and the shadow of death." Love is what they want. Our love that will bring knowledge of Christ's great love to them. Will you not pray for them?