Rev. Eli Tapley, pastor of four of our churches in Mississippi, died March 2, in Lowndes County.  He was born in the same County and State in 1839.  When he was eight years old, his parents moved to Alabama.  At seventeen years of age he was converted, and immediately entered with zeal upon the active duties of a Christian life.  Uniting with the Methodist church, he was soon appointed class leader and Sunday-school teacher.  Afterwards as exhorter and licensed minister he labored without salary, as he had opportunity, both among white and colored people.  In 1869, he removed to Lowndes County, Miss., united with the Congregational Church there and was ordained to preach, and for many years he continued his work under the Christian Commission for Free Missions, of Wheaton, Ill.  He was often the subject of great persecution, because he labored among the colored people and refused to take any part in the Civil War.  In 1881, he began labors under the American Missionary Association, which he continued until his death, filling the pastorates of Salem, Piney Grove, New Ruhamah and Pleasant Ridge Churches in Mississippi.  He was an earnest and true man.  One of his latest rapturous exclamations, with face beaming with smiles as if in full view of the Celestial City, was, “Heaven through Christ.”

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THE INDIANS.

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A JANUARY TRIP.

BY REV.  JAMES F. CROSS.

Missionary among the Indians in Dakota.

On the 8th of January, I started from home at the Agency to visit Northfield and Park Street Church Stations.  A snow, heavy for this region, had fallen, and I thought a sled would run easier than a buggy, so I made a sled.  I had counted on the road being broken, as fifty wagons had gone over it only a day or two before.  Here was my first difficulty.  Only a few hours before I started a heavy wind arose and filled up every track.  So for every step of the thirty miles I had to break a new road.  Most of the way it was knee deep, and in some places it was entirely impassable and it was necessary to go half a mile or even a mile to cross a ravine forty feet wide.  In one place where the road seemed plain, the snow was particularly deep.  The crust was just thick enough to hold a horse until he began to pull.  Then down he would go.  Finally one horse could not reach the ground and rolled over on his side, and left me not yet halfway up the hill.  I unhitched the horses, tramped the snow down so they could stand, drove them out and around perhaps forty rods, and then took in the situation.  There was the sled half way up the hill.  To pull it up was impossible; to turn it round the same, to back it down by hand the same.  The only thing left was to haul it down.  Here is where a picket line is the best kind of a missionary.  It will often help a man out of a hard place, or unto a hard place, as in this case.  Making a turn of a rope around