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Guadeloupe

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 7, 1914

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 91, No. 19.

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Guadeloupe

By Philip Giddings

Guadeloupe comprises two divisions, separated from each other by a tortuous stream called Riviere Salee, which is spanned by a drawbridge. The city is composed of two towns—the one, the seat of government, Basse Terre (16,000); the other, the commercial capital, Pointe-a-Pitre (24,000), where my family and I, arriving from Dominica on March 9, have settled. The entire island contains a population of 210,000.
We are the first Protestant denomination to start work in this island, hence are having the experiences that usually accompany pioneer work in a Catholic country. We realize our own insufficiency, which we pray may keep us near to him who is able, and who bade us go, with the encouraging declaration, "I am with you alway, even unto the end."
We take this opportunity of thanking the office of Les Signes des Temps for old copies of that paper which have reached us since we came, and to express our hope that that office will continue to supply us with this publication. We ask others of our French people who may have clean old literature in that language which they can give for free distribution, to do so.
A Methodist minister told me that the Methodists in their recent conference expressed much regret that they should have allowed two French Catholic islands so near to their operations to go unoccupied so long. And we who claim to have the last message to the world, how eager ought we to be!
There is Martinique, a sister island to Guadeloupe, as far from Dominica as Dominica is from Guadeloupe,—just forty miles,—where nothing yet has been done. There are good roads all through these French islands, and besides, steam launches make communication from one port to another easy.
We ask the REVIEW family to remember us in their prayers, for success in the work in Guadeloupe, as well as for the soon opening of work in Martinique by some one with a burden for that field.
PHILIP GIDDINGS.