hundred and eighty thousand people, and it was once a very important city.
You can read all about its ancient beauty and wealth and commerce in the
Arabian Nights. Some of the palaces that Harouner Rashid visited are still
standing. In the city there are at present sixty-four mosques, six
churches and twenty-two synagogues. One-third of the population are Jews,
and there are over five thousand Christians. Most of the latter belong to
the Roman Catholic faith, or to other twilight churches. The Roman
Catholic cathedral, which you see in the picture, is the only church in
all Northern Arabia that has a bell. Moslems do not like to hear
church-bells, and they were forbidden by some rulers of the Moslem world
long ago. The Protestant Christians meet for worship in a dwelling-house.
The Bagdad mission has a large dispensary for the sick where thousands of
Moslems and Jews and Christians come every year for treatment. Books are
sold to the people, and there is a school for boys and girls which is also
helping to _turn down_ old prejudices and _turn up_ the right side of
child-life. The Moslem children are beginning to believe that the world is
_round_ and that Constantinople is not the capital of all Europe.

The British and Foreign Bible Society is also helping to turn this part of
the world downside up. The gospel which has been buried under many
superstitions and traditions so long, is again showing its power.
_Colporteurs_ are men who carry the Bible about, offer it to the people
and read and explain it to those whose hearts are open. They have a hard
task, but if it were not for them the "Little Missionaries" would not get
along at all.

On the way from Bagdad to Busrah, we pass Amara, an enterprising village
where the people once burned books and threw stones at the missionary, but
where now the little Bible-shop of the American Mission shines unhindered,