BY DISTRICT SECRETARY JOS.  E. ROY.

This is a department of the University of New Mexico at Santa Fe, occupying separate buildings and a separate locality, and managed by the American Missionary Association.  A recent visit to the school it may be worth while to report.  It is for the Apache Indians and the youth who are gathered into it are of the Jiccarrilla band.  Their reservation is about two hundred miles west, and is reached by railroad or by pony transportation.  The teachers deem it better to have the school some distance from the people so as to make its impression the more positive, and yet near enough for the parents to visit their children occasionally while at school.  This keeps up the interest and prevents the children from being educated away from their elders.  Two good sized buildings are used.  In one there are the school rooms, the accommodations for the teachers, and the lodgings for the boys.  In the other, under a matron, there are lodgings for the girls, work rooms for the same, and the boarding department for all.  The Indian girls do the cooking for the establishment.  I saw them getting dinner and I saw many loaves of beautiful white bread made by them.  In their work shop they make their own clothes.  The boys, under the lead of the principal, Prof.  Elmore Chase, work at cobbling, making ditches and cultivating the soil, and also do something with carpenter’s tools.  The Government pays over a hundred dollars a year for each student toward the expense of board, clothes, etc.  The American Missionary Association appoints the teachers and directs the school.  The scholars, thirty in all, have made very creditable progress in their studies, considering the short time the school has been in operation, from three to four years.  Prof.  Whipple, now of Wheaton College, who for a time was principal of the Ramona, testifies:  “I never saw on an average such aptness, docility and faithfulness in school and industrial work.”  The religious influence of the school has not been interfered with by the Government.  I heard the scholars recite with promptness and evident understanding the Twenty third Psalm, the Beatitudes, the Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, and portions of a catechism introductory to the Westminster Shorter.  Daily worship is maintained among them, the Sunday-school lesson is thoroughly taught, while the Bible is freely used in the school.  The Professor thought that several of the youth gave such evidence of an experience of grace as would satisfy us concerning white children.  I was permitted to see half a dozen letters written by the scholars to be sent to their parents and brothers and sisters, without the supervision of their teachers, in which were many expressions of love for the Saviour and the Bible, and of a desire that their friends at home should be made acquainted with the same, and the purpose, when they should go home, to communicate those good things.

The following are four of those letters: