the Work of the Holy Childhood (Lyons). For the African missions there are the Bulletin des missions d'Afrique, and the Société antiesclavagiste, both published annually at Paris. The details of Roman Catholic education in the Orient are found in the periodical Œuvres des Ecoles de l'Orient (Paris, annually). An illustrated monthly entitled Catholic Missions appears in English, French, and German, and offers popular information concerning all Catholic missionary work (London). The Année de l'Eglise (Paris, annually) frequently gives a summary of the events connected with the Catholic missions.
United States Missions: The statistics of the native Roman Catholic missions are found since 1864 in the Reports of the Commission for Negro and Indian Missions (Baltimore, annually). Previous to that year the voluminous work of O'Shea, History of the Catholic Church in the United States (New York, 1886 sqq.), may be consulted; also the same author's History of the Catholic Missions Among the Indian Tribes [1592-1854] (ib., 1876), and his Discovery and Exploration of the Mississippi (ib., 1858), as well as the numerous writings of Father de Smedt, a Belgian missionary among the Indian tribes of the Far West. Their bibliography is to be found in O'Shea, Western Missions and Missionaries (New York, 1878). Consult, also, O'Gorman, History of the Roman Catholic Church in America (ib., 1895), and Engelhardt, The Franciscans in California (ib., 1887).
For the Farther Orient, consult: Launay, Atlas des missions de la Société des Missions Etrangères (Paris, 1890); id., Nos missions, album des missions catholiques (Lyons, 1900); De l'Huys, “Le Christianisme au Tonkin,” in Le Correspondant (Paris) for November 10, 1889. On the late troubles in China consult articles in Le Correspondant for July 25 and August 10, 1900; Lamy, “La Chine, l'Europe, et le Saint-Siège;” Cochin, “La Chine et le gouvernement français;” Fauvel, “Nos missionaires patriotes et savants en Chine.” All the details of the ‘Boxer’ movement from the Roman Catholic standpoint may be seen in the current Annales de la Sainte Enfance, those of the Propagation of the Faith in the pages of Catholic Missions. For details of earlier Catholic missions in China one may consult the Abbé Hue, Le Christianisme en Chine, en Tatarie et en Thibet (Paris, 1859). It covers the period from 1772 to the Peace of Tien-tsin (1858). The work of Hübner, Ein Spaziergang um die Welt (Leipzig, 1875), contains details of the Catholic missionary life in the East. On Catholic missions in Australia, consult Lemire, Le Catholicisme en Australie (Paris, 1900).
MISSIS′AGA. An Algonquian tribe residing east and south from Lake Ontario, Ontario, Canada. They are closely connected with the Ojibwa, of whom they are an offshoot. The name is said to mean ‘great mouth,’ referring to the mouth of the Missisaga River, but an educated member of the tribe says that if refers to an eagle, claiming that the Missisaga are derived principally from the Eagle clan of the Ojibwa. At a treaty in 1764 they signed with an eagle as their tribal mark. When first known to the French, early in the seventeenth century, the Missisaga were living upon the lower part of the river which bears their name and upon the adjacent Manitoulin Island. Soon afterwards they moved east and south into the country left unoccupied by the dispersion of the Huron and Ottawa, and soon spread over the whole peninsula of Lower Ontario. At the close of the Revolution they even had one village on the south side of Lake Erie in what is now Ohio. The land on which the Iroquois are now settled on Grand River, Ontario, was bought from the Missisaga. In 1746 they were admitted as the seventh tribe of the Iroquois confederacy, being then settled in five villages near Detroit, but the alliance lasted only until the outbreak of the French and Indian War, a few years later. On account of the former loose distinction between the Missisaga and Ojibwa, it is impossible to give exact figures of population. Those now officially classed as Missisaga number about 750, on small reservations at New Credit, Alnwick, Mud Lake, Rice Lake, and Scugog, Province of Ontario, Canada. They are all members of the Methodist Church, and support themselves by farming, fishing, trapping, gathering wild rice, basket-making, and outside labor. They are generally prosperous and comfortable and are universally commended by their agents for industry, morality, sobriety, and general progress. The statistics show them to be a healthy people.
MISSISSIPPI. One of the South-Central States of the American Union. It takes its name from the river which forms its western boundary for a distance of about 500 miles, and separates it from the States of Louisiana and Arkansas. It lies between Tennessee on the north and Louisiana on the south, being separated from the former by the thirty-fifth parallel of north latitude and from the latter by the thirty-first parallel from the Mississippi River to the Pearl River, a distance of 110 miles. Thence following the Pearl River southward, the boundary line is completed on the south by the Gulf of Mexico. The Tennessee River cuts off a small portion from the northeastern corner, but the eastern boundary separating the State from Alabama runs southward in a nearly straight line to the Gulf. Mississippi has an extreme length of 330 miles and an extreme width of 188 miles, and comprises an area of 46,810 square miles, of which water occupies 470 square miles, the land amounting to 46,340 square miles. Mississippi includes, in addition to the mainland territory, the islands Ship, Horn, Cat, Petit Bois, and others, separated from the mainland by the Mississippi Sound.
Topography. The highest ridges in the northeast reach an altitude of about 1000 feet. Throughout most of the State the elevations range from 500 to 600 feet down to 150 feet a few miles from the Gulf. A moderate uplift of the region has allowed the rivers to carry the work of dissection to maturity, all gradients now being low, nearly or quite at base level, the streams having their lower courses in valleys opened wide, from a few hundred yards to several miles, and wandering in sinuous courses upon silted bottoms. These river bottoms cover a total of 7500 square miles, or over one-sixth of the entire State. Of this the Yazoo bottoms occupy the greater part. The flood plains of the Yazoo and Mississippi rivers are lined on the east by bluffs from 100 to 300 feet in height, caused by the lateral corrosion of the swinging meanders of the great river. These bluffs are capped throughout with a deposit of
