THE WEST INDIA FIELD by C. A. Hall

Pacific Press Publishing Association

THE WEST INDIA FIELD.

By C. A. Hall

BY ELDER C. A. HALL.

T[[FIGURE]]HESE hundreds of islands lying off our southern coast have been brought into prominence by the events of the past few months.

Their history is a peculiar one, embracing, as it does, discovery, wars, conquest, and oppression in varied forms. At the present time their territory is divided among five powers,—Great Britain, France, Denmark, Holland, and the United States, with the island of Haiti as an independent republic. They contain about 95,000 square miles, with a population of 5,000,000. Of this number, two-thirds are black; and the remaining one-third consists of whites, Chinese, coolies, and the colored or mixed people. Cuba, with its one and a half millions, has one and a quarter millions of blacks and colored, the others being of Spanish descent. Haiti is credited with but few whites, while Puerto Rico is about equally divided between the two races. In Barbados the whites average one in eighty-five, while Jamaica is credited with three per cent. of whites in her population of 700,000.

The moral condition of the masses is indicated in the fact that the official record of births in Jamaica shows that over sixty per cent. are illegitimate.

The great need of a message that will change men's hearts and lives, and of pastoral work that will bring preacher and people into closer relationship, is everywhere apparent. The message of a soon-coming Saviour, and the call to obey all God's commandments, altho much opposed by the clergy, are well received by the people; and, tho they have been proclaimed here but a few years, yet many are rejoicing in a new-found hope and a changed life. And now, with wide-open doors, all these islands demand at our hands the saving message that God has intrusted to us.