Note 82 — Chapter VII

Although the success of the Chinese missions has not been proportionate to the self-devoting zeal of its laborers, there yet are, in China, a vast number of believers in the true faith. M. Huc tells us, in the relation of his journey, that, in almost every place where he and his fellow-traveller stopped, they could perceive, among the crowds that came to stare at the two "Western devils" (as the celestials courteously call us Europeans), men making furtively, and sometimes quite openly, the sign of the cross. Among the nomadic hordes of the table-lands of Central Asia, the number of Christians is much greater than among the Chinese, and much greater than is generally supposed. (See Annals of the Propagation of the Faith, No. 135, et seq.)—H. [82]