maintain their time-honored customs, liturgies and languages. The Oriental rites, under the administration of the Propaganda, are as follows: 1. The Ethiopian or Abyssinian Rite, principally in the Abyssinian Church, first planted by Saint Matthew, increased by Saint Frumentus, in the 4th century, was represented at Council of Florence 1445,-principal missionary of modern times Joseph Sapeto. It includes 30,000 souls. 2. Armenian Rite-gospel first preached by Gregory the Illuminator, though the modern Church was reorganized by constituting the bishop of Cilicia as patriarch of the Armenians. The liturgy is in ancient Armenian. It includes 109,000 lay members and 357 priests. 3. Coptic Rite.- Church first established by Saint Mark, disciple of Saint Peter and bishop of Alexandria in Egypt. The people went into schism under Dioscorus, but later on were restored to the unity of the faith. The bishop of Alexandria is the patriarch; 22,500 members with 44 priests. 4. Greek Rite-subdivided into (1) Pure Greek in which the Greek language alone is used; (2) Rumanian Greek; (3) Bulgarian Greek, using the Slav language; (4) Ruthenian Greek, and (5) the Melchite Greek. The entire Greek rite in communion with Rome numbers 4,645,803 members with 5,251 priests. They have numerous seminaries and educational institutions. 5. Syriac Rite subdivided into (1) Pure Syriac; (2) the Syro-Chaldaic; (3) the SyroMalabaric, and (4) the Maronites. The Syrians number 626,029 with 1,171 priests. All these Oriental rites together make a total of 5,433,332 members under the administration of many bishops and 6,823 priests. Many of these Eastern churches have their seminaries for the training of their missionary priests in the city of Rome. Under the jurisdiction of the Propaganda, according to official statistics, there are: Oriental churches -5,433,332 members, 6,825 priests. Occidental churches - 27,218,297 members, 33,148 priests. The latter are distributed as follows: England. Scotland. Ireland. Norway Sweden 74 Members Priests 1,362.489 2,674 9,750 3,168 890 109 310 Persia. 7.650 11 11 This list does not include the Philippine Islands, Porto Rico, Cuba, Mexico nor any of the South American countries, as these countries were ancient dependencies of Spain, and therefore not under the Propaganda. The total aggregate. under both branches of the Propaganda or the Missionary department of the Roman Catholic Church at the close of the century was over 32,000,000 with about 40,000 priests. This statement does not take into account the large army of teaching orders of brothers and sisters and native catechists, nor does it give any estimate of the educational institutions, hospitals and orphan asylums that are under the auspices of the Church in these countries. Some idea of the growth of the missionary work of the Church may be realized from the fact that at the beginning of the 19th century there were only 5,000,000 under the jurisdiction of the Propaganda; at the beginning of the 20th century there were over six times that number. Be This account will be incomplete without some statement of the material resources by which the missions have been carried on. The Congregation of the Propaganda has vast funded resources amounting to $135,000,000, the revenues of which are applied to the support of the work and the colleges under its care. side this there have grown up during the 19th century many auxiliary societies; the principal one is known as the Lyons' Society for the Propagation of the Faith. It began with the idea of assisting the poverty stricken missions in New Orleans under Bishop Dubourg, but it soon broadened its scope. It asked only a cent a week from its members, and during its existence (1822-1900) it has gathered and spent $65,690,017. The Annals of the Propagation of the Faith, the official organ of this society, is now issuing 300,000 copies every two months and in 12 different languages. There are 58 different religious societies of priests engaged in the work of the missions, together with 82 orders of brothers who have no aspirations to the priesthood, yet are consecrated to missionary work, and 434 different orders of religious sisterhoods. These 574 different societies embrace a membership numbering very nearly 100,000 who have left all that this world holds dear, of houses, land, country and the pleasures of the domestic hearth, and have sacrificed their lives in poverty, celibacy and exile for the souls of the heathen and the unevangelized. Their consecration to this life is not for a few years, but they count it their greatest joy to spend and be spent till death comes, that the blessed name of Jesus Christ may be better known and more deeply loved. Under the caption of Home Missions, a short_account may be given of the missions to non-Catholics in the United States. The idea of the need of organized effort to present the teachings of the Catholic Church to the American people is what brought together five priests, Isaac Hecker, Augustine F. Hewitt, Clarence *10.049 Walworth, Francis Baker and George Deshon, who founded the organization known as the Paulist Fathers (q.v.). This idea was practically systematized in its present form by Rev. Walter Elliott, in September 1893, when he began, in Michigan, a series of missions in public halls and churches for the purpose of ex plaining the doctrines of the Catholic Church. These missions to non-Catholics prohibited controversy and invited the spirit of inquiry by placing a "Question Box" at the door, into which were dropped all questions concerning the teachings of the Church which anyone desired to have answered. During the last 10 years the work has grown to vast proportions. While the Paulists inaugurated the movement in the United States, yet the work is the normal work of the Church, and therefore belongs to every branch of the service, particularly to the diocesan clergy. The leaders of the movement contemplate the placing in every diocese a band of talented preachers whose business will be extra-parochial and whose duties will be to go into the towns and country places where the Church is weak, or does not exist, and arrange for the inauguration or strengthening of Church organizations. This band of diocesan missionaries will largely do the duties of a Church extension committee in the spiritual and missionary sense. The growth of this "Home Missionary Movement," after 10 years, has been such as to necessitate the building of the Apostolic Mission House at the Catholic University at Washington. This institution will provide special lectures and instructions in missionary methods, and in this way will give training to the diocesan missionary. The legal organization which is financing the work is the "Catholic Missionary Union," incorporated under the laws of the State of New York. Its president is the archbishop of New York, ex officio, and there are six other directors. The practical effect of 10 years of this home mission work has been to give the American people a more correct view of the teaching and spirit of the Catholic Church, to eliminate antagonisms and to make Church relationships more harmonious. It has also tended to increase, and this in no small degree, the stream of converts that has been flowing into the Church. The growth of the Roman Catholic Church under the jurisdiction of the home missions during the last 100 years has been one of the marvels of the 19th century. The following figures give some measure of it: In 1800 there were 40 priests; in 1830 the number increased to 232; in 1850 to 1,800; in 1906 to 15,177. In 1800 the Catholic population was 100,000, in 1910 it is estimated at not less than 14,000,000. In 1800 there were but 25 churches; in 1910 there are 17,000. The value of church property, as given by census reports in 1850, was $9,256,758; in 1860 it was $26,774,119, a ratio of increase of 189 per cent, while the aggregate wealth of the country increased only 125 per cent. In 1870 it was $60,985,565. In 1906 value of church property had risen to $292,638,000. While this external growth indicated by numerical strength and material wealth is very remarkable, the internal growth indicated by evidences of maturing organization as well as by signs of increasing spirituality is none the less remarkable. The first flowering of the Church's inner life is the vocations to the religious orders whereby men and women accept the call to the life of the evangelical counsels. In 1790 there was one convent with less than 10 religious, in 1909 there were over 5,000 convents with more than 60,000 religious. This VOL. 19-16 army of men and women devote themselves without hope of worldy gain to the alleviation of the ills of humanity in the hospitals by the sick bed, in the tenements of the poor, in the slums among the depraved, in the asylums caring for the orphans and among the aged, who have been stranded on life's shore, without one cent of salary, contenting themselves with meagre fare, with short hours of sleep on a hard bed, and long hours of prayer and devotion to the sick and the poor and the wretched, because they know and are convinced that their reward will be very great in heaven. Many of these religious communities are offshoots of orders that have been established in the old country, but some are indigenous to the American soil. Noteworthy among the communities of men are the Paulist Fathers, founded by five converts, and among the women the Sisters of Charity, founded by Mother Seton, also a convert. The growth in the Church in the United States of course is principally due to the great stream of immigrants, but not the least element of growth and present strength is the large number of converts who have been drawn to her through the conviction that she is the one Catholic and Apostolic Church. There are no accurate statistics of yearly conversions, but Cardinal Gibbons puts it in this way: "If the same ratio of conversions is preserved throughout the country as exists in the archdiocese of Baltimore, the yearly number of conversions would amount to 44,800 souls." To sum up the aggregate number of Catholics under the American flag is as follows: United States (Cardinal Gibbons' estimate), 14,000,000; Philippines, 6,600,000; Porto Rico, 980,000; Hawaii, 33,000; American Samoa, 3,000; Guam, 9,000, making a total of 21,625,000 souls under the jurisdiction of an apostolic delegate, a cardinal, 13 archbishops and 87 bishops. On account of the world-wide events culminating in the Great War, 1914-18, for seyeral years it has not been possible to obtain statistics of Catholic foreign missions. It may, however, be safely said that the numbers of converts have greatly increased, in many cases have been doubled. Bibliography.-'La Gerarchia Cattolica e laFamiglia Pontificia Rome'; 'Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses des Mission Etrangères'; (Annals of the Propagation of the Faith'; Henrion, 'Histoire. Générale des Missions Catholiques depuis le XIIIe Siècle jusqu'à nos Jours'; Marshall, 'Christian Missions'; 'Collectanea Constitutionum, Decretorum, Indultorum ac Instructionum Santa Sedis ad Usum Operariorum Apostolicorum Societatis Missionum ad Exteros'; 'Missiones Catholicæ cura S. Cong. de Propaganda Fide descriptæ in 1901 A.D.; Socrietatis Jesu usque ad Sanguinis et Vitæ profusionem Militans in Europa, Africa, Asia, et America, contra Gentiles Mahometanos'; Tanner, Travels of the Jesuits in various parts of the world'; Lockman, 'The Catholic Missions'; 'The Missionary' (Quarterly Magazine, 120 W. 60th street, New York); De Thiersant, 'Le Catholicisme en Chine au VIIIe Siècle de Notre Ere'; Abbe Huc, 'Christianity in China, Tartary and Tibet'; 'History of Christianity in Cochin China and Tonking'; Shortland, De Rebus Japonicis, Indicis, et Peruanis, Epistolæ Recentiores'; Hayo, 'History of Church in Japan'; Charlevoix, Christianity in Ceylon'; Tennent, Missions of the Zambesi'; Weld, 'Excursions in Afrique'; Van Sooy, 'Historia Ethiopica Ludolfus'; Tellez, Travels of Jesuits in Ethiopia'; Gutzlaff, 'History of China'; 'China Opened.' REV. A. P. DOYLE, C.S.P., Secretary, The Catholic Missionary Union. MISSISAGA (mis'si-sâ'a) INDIANS, an American tribe of the Algonquian family residing in Ontario, Canada. In 1746 the tribe was admitted to the Iroquois confederacy. The name refers to the "eagle" and also to "great mouth," signifying the outflow of the Missisaga River, near which they lived when first visited by French explorers. They signed a treaty in 1764 with an eagle as their tribal mark. There are upward of 600 of the Missisagas remaining. They inhabit small reservations in Ontario, are mostly Methodists and are progressive, industrious, self-supporting citi zens. MISSISSIPPI, one of the southern United States and the seventh admitted to the original Union, situated between lat. 30° 13' and 35° N. and long. 88° 7' and 91° 41' W.; extreme length, north and south, 332 miles; average breadth, 142 miles, varying from 78 miles below lat. 31° N., to 189 miles on that parallel, and 118 miles on the north line; area, 48,610 square miles, being 1.61 per cent of the territorial extent of the United States. It is bounded north by Tennessee, east by Alabama, south, between the Alabama line and Pearl River, by the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Pearl to the Mississippi on the parallel of 31° N., by the State of Louisiana; and west by Louisiana and Arkansas, having below lat. 31° N. the Pearl River, and above that line the Mississippi as the dividing lines. The Round, Horn, Ship, Deer, Cat, Petit Bois and several other islands lying outside of and forming the southern limit of the Mississippi Sound belong to this State. Mississippi was admitted to the Union 10 Dec. 1817 and takes its name from the river which forms its western boundary for a distance of over 500 river miles. There are 80 counties in the State. The capital city is Jackson. Topography. Mississippi lies in two principal hydrographical divisions, separated by a low broad watershed; the eastern rivers flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, and the westernmost streams emptying into the Mississippi. East of the dividing broad ridge the surface of the State consists of broad rolling fertile prairies; the ridge itself is rolling and broken into narrow valleys where streams afford plentiful water supply, while to the west the land falls away into the low swampy lands of the Yazoo and Mississippi rivers. The State is very low, the highest altitude being but 1,000 feet. The coast has a shore line on the Gulf of Mexico of 88 miles, or including the irregularities and islands, of 287 miles. In the eastern part of the State the prairies are covered with grass the greatest part of the year. East of this prairie region extends a level but very fertile tract on the upper course of the Tombigbee River. In the northern district is a range of hills of moderate elevation, well-wooded but devoid of undergrowth. These hills find their western limit in the Walnut Hills; and west of them and between them and the Mississippi River, in about lat. 32° 30', for a distance of more than 170 miles, north and south, and 60 miles extreme east and west, the country is occupied by immense bottom lands, produced and fed formerly by the inundations of the Mississippi, constituting the so-called "Delta." Nearly all of this low region has been now reclaimed by a system of levees and is rapidly being opened up and settled, and penetrated by railroads. The bottom-lands are about 7,000 square miles in extent. Rivers and Lakes.- Mississippi is well watered by the Homochitto, Big Black, Yazoo, Sunflower, Coldwater and Tallahatchie rivers, all emptying into the Mississippi, and the Pearl, Pascagoula, Leaf and Tombigbee, all emptying into the Gulf of Mexico. There are many small streams in all parts of the State, which, though inferior in capacity to those already noticed, are locally important, watering extensive districts and giving fertility to the soil. In the bottom lands are numerous lakes, bayous and channels, and in this district, along the Mississippi, levees are built by the State partly from a fund derived from a special tax on the land, and partly with moneys derived from the sale of swamp lands. Drainage districts in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta have been recently established, one project alone calling for the expenditure of $8,000,000. Climate.- The State lies in what is called the semi-tropic climate belt. The winters are short and mild, the mean temperature 45° F.; the summers are devoid of intense heat, the mean 81°, seldom reaching 100°. Ice from 1 to 2 inches thick forms in the northern part of the State. The elevation of the surface and the Gulf breezes render the climate delightful during most of the year. The annual rainfall ranges from 48 to 58 inches. The death rate is very low-12.9 in 1,000. The heaviest rains occur in late winter or early spring, when the warm Gulf winds meet the cold north winds. The average wind velocity for the whole year is seven miles per hour. The prevailing wind for January is from the north, while it is from the south for July. Geology. Mississippi is occupied wholly by deposits of the Tertiary and Upper Secondary formations, which, sweeping around from the southern Atlantic States, attain here their greatest width. Near the Gulf of Mexico the sands and clays of the largest periods are spread over the country, and further north the deposits gradually become of greater age. At Vicksburg the Eocene appears at the base of the river bluffs and the upper portion of these is covered by a deep deposit of yellowish loam or loess, containing fresh-water and land shells. This extends over the country eastward and attains a thickness of 60 feet or more. The Upper Secondary appears near Jackson and occupies the northern portion of the State. Fossil remains of a gigantic marine animal, resembling the alligator, are found in the prairie regions. Flora and Fauna.- There are over 100 species of trees in the State, including 15 varieties of oak. There are cypress, poplar, longleaved pine, tupelo, sycamore, persimmon, magnolia, holly, cucumber tree, sweet-gum, blackwalnut and various species of hickory, elm and maple. Wild animals, such as the deer, puma, wolf, bear and wild-cat, are still occasionally |