Bandinel to G. F. Seward, March 30, 1880

Mr. Bandinel to Mr. Seward.

Sir: In response to your excellency’s dispatch No. 66, I have the honor to state that, as far as I can learn, there is not within the three Manchurian provinces any school founded or supported by native official or private enterprise in which foreign knowledge is imparted to Chinese students. From inquiries among the missionaries, I learn that the Roman Catholics have a college, under foreign supervision, wherein 26 pupils are instructed in Latin, philosophy, theology, and the elements of geography, mathematics, &c., &c., and whence four pupils have been ordained as priests. The Irish Presbyterian Mission has a boys’ school, under the supervision of a clerical missionary, wherein 20 scholars, from nine to thirteen years of age, are instructed in geography, penmanship, and the course of (four) reading books used in the government schools at Hong-Kong. They will learn, when more advanced, arithmetic and other subjects. There is also the nucleus of a girls’ school, only two pupils, supervised by the missionary’s wife, who teaches them plain sewing in addition to the above branches of knowledge.

Mr. Carson also contemplates starting a day school in the heart of the city in connection with the above-mentioned, which are held in his compound.

The medical missionary of the Irish Presbyterian mission has in his own compound, a boys’ school with 15 scholars, and in an adjacent building a girls’ school with 9 scholars; many of these are too young to learn much, but the elder ones learn geography (Wade’s book), and three boys and three girls are taught to read and write English.

The Scotch United Presbyterians have a mission here, but apparently neither in their boys’ school, recently discontinued, nor in their girls’ school, which numbers 14 scholars, has any foreign secular education been, except indirectly, imparted. The girls, however, are learning foreign needle-work.

I have, &c.,