JNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGC 3 1822 00194 8256 FRS dLJJLVvJ UNIVERSITY OF CAL FORNIA SAN D 3 1822 00194 8256 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS oX x ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS A Sketch of the Missions of the United Free Church of Scotland BY J. H. MORRISON, M.A. MINISTER OF THE UNITED FREE CHURCH, FALKLAND HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO PREFACE THE history of missions throbs with romance on every page, a fact which seems hardly yet to have dawned upon the general reader, and least of all upon that large section of readers who love romance. Missionary reports are, of necessity, dull and, to a great degree, unintelligible to all but the initiated. They plunge in medias res, and bear down the hapless reader with a cavalry charge of unfamiliar names ; while, as they deal only with the work itself apart from its environment, they leave the " native " a vague and misty figure, devoid of nationality and human interest. Only when each mission stands out clear, against its own background of place and people, does it become living and begin to take on the colours of romance. The following pages are intended as a sketch of the missions of the United Free Church of Scotland for the uninitiated, and especially for the youth of the Church. One would even hope that the fastidious ear of the " young barbarian " might be caught, and he be led to the discovery and enjoyment of the great missionary classics. The chapters were first delivered as a series of ad- dresses to the young, under the form of a voyage round the world to the various mission fields of the Church. vi PREFACE This form has been retained as a convenient frame- work, although at one or two stages of the journey the actual traveller might find some difficulty in booking a passage ! May the story, even in a brief and imperfect telling, be to the reader, what it has been to the writer, a tonic to faith and a spring to compassion. I desire to express my obligation to Professor Clow, D.D., Glasgow, for generous encouragement and many helpful criticisms. CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE FOREIGN MISSION NIGHT . . . . . *~ i CHAPTER II THE SISTER ON THE HILL ...... 7 CHAPTER III FROM THE DANUBE TO THE GOLDEN HORN . . .12 CHAPTER IV THROUGH THE ISLES OF GREECE TO GALILEE . . 17 CHAPTER V WHERE JESUS TAUGHT AND HEALED . . .22 CHAPTER VI HEBRON IN THE HOLY LAND . . , . - . -27 CHAPTER VII DOWN THE RED SEA . . . . 33 CHAPTER VIII THE BARREN ROCK OF ADEN ..... 37 viii CONTENTS PART II INDIA CHAPTER IX PAGE A TRIANGLE AND Two RIVERS . . . 4 1 CHAPTER X IN THE BAZAAR .'45 CHAPTER XI CASTE AND OUTCAST 49 CHAPTER XII THE PRIDE OF THE PESHWAS 54 CHAPTER XIII As THE SAND OF THE SEA * 59 CHAPTER XIV BEHIND THE PURDAH 6 4 CHAPTER XV THE KEY TO A PRINCE'S HEART 7 CHAPTER XVI THE CITY OF HOPE 75 CHAPTER XVII THE TAJ MAHAL AND THE WHITE ANGEL . . . 80 CHAPTER XVIII ASHES AND TRAMPLED FLOWERS . . . .84 CONTENTS ix CHAPTER XIX PACK UNDER THE SHADOW OF PARASNATH .... 88 CHAPTER XX ON THE BANKS OF THE HUGLI 93 CHAPTER XXI BUILDERS OF EMPIRE . . . . . . . . . 98 PART III EAST OF THE BARRIER CHAPTER XXII BEYOND THE STRAITS OF MALACCA ... . 103 CHAPTER XXIII ABOUT THE BOXERS ....... 108 CHAPTER XXIV A LAND OF FAMOUS BATTLEFIELDS . . . .113 PART IV THE ISLANDS OF THE SEA CHAPTER XXV THE ROMANCE OF THE SOUTH SEA ISLANDS . . .118 CHAPTER XXVI THE SORROWS OF THE SOUTH SEAS . . . .124 CHAPTER XXVII THE OLD SLAVE DAYS IN JAMAICA .... 128 x CONTENTS CHAPTER XXVIII PAGE THE STORM- VEXED QUEEN OF THE ANTILLES . .134 PART V THE DARK CONTINENT CHAPTER XXIX IN THE HOMELAND OF THE NEGRO . . . . 139 CHAPTER XXX THE GATEWAY OF THE EN YON CREEK . , . . 144 CHAPTER XXXI BESIDE THE GREAT KEI RIVER . . . . ,148 CHAPTER XXXII SOMGXADA, THE SWIFT STRIDER . . . '> . 155 CHAPTER XXXIII REDS AND WHITES 160 CHAPTER XXXIV UP THE ZAMBESI TO LAKE NYASA .... 165 CHAPTER XXXV SPEARS AND PRUNING-HOOKS . . . 170 CHAPTER XXXVI AT THE GRAVE OF LIVINGSTONE . . . . 174 CHAPTER XXXVII HOMEWARD BOUND 178 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Ju-ju PILLAR, WEST AFRICA . . Frontispiece MOUNT OF OLIVES FROM THE BEAUTIFUL GATE . p afe 30 RELIEF MAP OF INDIA . . . . 42 A VILLAGE AUDIENCE . . * . 62 UDAIPUR AND THE LAKE . . 71 TUG-OF-WAR, SANTALIA . . . . 91 MADRAS CHRISTIAN COLLEGE . . . . 100 PRESENTATION TO DR. WESTWATER . . in MISSION HOUSE AND CHURCH, DILLON'S BAY . . ,,121 CREEK TOWN CHURCH . . 143 NATIVE CONVENTION AT DR. STEWART'S GRAVE . ,,159 STOCKADED VILLAGE IN THE LOANGWA VALLEY . ,,174 PART I THE NEAR EAST CHAPTER I FOREIGN MISSION NIGHT THE great Assembly Hall on the Mound is packed from floor to ceiling. An unbroken sea of faces looks down from the four surrounding galleries. Outside in the corridors anxious groups hurry from door to door and rush upstairs, only to meet others, equally anxious, rushing down. Every entrance is blocked, and down every gangway a long wedge of standing people has been driven deep into the heart of the house. On the low platform in front of the Moderator's chair, forming a half-circle round the clerks' table, sits a dozen or there- by of young men and girls, some of the latter in nurse's garb, some in simple white. It is the crowning night of the religious year in Scot- land. The Church's pioneers have come back from distant lands to tell of the progress of the Kingdom, and those who sent them out have met in thousands to hear their thrilling story. It is a festival of the romance of missions. A resounding Psalm strikes the note of triumph. " His name for ever shall endure, Last like the sun it shall. Men shall be bless'd in Him, and bless'd All nations shall Him call." Then we settle to hear the story of how the prophetic words have been fulfilled. 2 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS Speaker after speaker mounts the platform. Each is worthy of a whole evening to tell his tale. Now, under a rigid time-table, every word is weighty, compressed, intense. First, a professor from one of our Indian colleges conjures up before us a picture of India's un- rest. He welcomes it, sees in it the promise of new life. India's long sleep is broken, her young men are awake. Now is our golden opportunity. It is ours to lead them to the light of life. A voice is next heard from West Africa. The speaker has come straight from a region where a few years ago no white man dared set his foot. He is oppressed by the vastness of the surrounding heathenism. Deep in the forest, villages, tribes, whole nations are in darkness and stretch out wistful hands to the light. The Mohammedan peril becomes daily more acute. " Shall the Crescent or the Cross prevail ? " he cries. Again we are gripped with a sharp sense of crisis. If the work is to be done it must be now or never. A moment later we are spirited away to the South Pacific, and see a vision of its fairy isles. But there are sombre colours in the picture. The man before us has been face to face with cannibals. He has seen the grave dug in which the sick were buried alive. He speaks sadly of the blight of the Kanaka traffic, of disease and outrage, of a dwindling population in the islands. But the note of triumph rings out at the end. He has been privileged to lead cannibals to the feet of Jesus, and he challenges our unbelief in face of this great apologetic of the Gospel. We have now reached the supreme moment of the even- ing, when the little circle of youthful volunteers are solemnly dedicated to the work to which they have given their hearts. They rise and are presented to the Modera- tor, one by one, while the name and destination of each is announced. '' To Kaffraria, to Rajputana, to Living- stonia, to the zenana mission in Poona, to the orphanage at Bhandara, to the Medical College in Mukden, a teacher to Lovedale, a nurse to Aden, a carpenter to the Institu- FOREIGN MISSION NIGHT 3 tion at Duke Town." With every announcement there is a round of sympathetic applause, which deepens in emphasis as some field of special difficulty is mentioned or some young volunteer steps forward bearing a name known and beloved in the Church. A moment later the applause is hushed and three thousand heads are bowed while in the tense silence the voice of some father of the Church is lifted up, imploring Heaven's blessing upon those who, in their fresh devotion, have responded to the Church's call, and are faring forth upon her errand. A missionary hymn is sung and helps to relieve the tension of feeling, which has become almost unbearable. The heat is overpowering, many have been standing for hours, but the vast audience remains unbroken. Most would find it impossible to get out even if they would, for the crowd is still straining round every door, and pressing the wedges deeper in. But nobody wants to stir. Three of the greatest of the Church's pioneers have yet to be heard. We are back again in India, this time in the jungle. The whole assembly has sprung to its feet to welcome a massive figure, stepping heavily on to the platform. He looks round on the vast; cheering crowd, turning his head in a slow, bewildered way, much as an old lion might have done, which had been dragged from its lair to make an imperial show in the arena. He has, in fact, been dragged from his lair. Year after year he has absolutely ignored furloughs, and at last has reluctantly obeyed the Church's imperative command to come home and show his face. His speech is deliberate and halting, as if his English were half forgotten. But we know the man. He is the uncrowned king of the Santals. He has followed the hardy huntsmen of the Parganas, has captured and tamed them, has trained them in useful arts, has fed them in famine, has broken to them the bread of life. A medical missionary from the Far East follows, keen-eyed and alert, with hair that has turned to silver. " Why does he not wear his medals ? " somebody whis- 4 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS pers, and begins to explain that he has been decorated by three Emperors. We knew that, but we like him none the worse for his plain black coat. " Old things are passing away in the Far East," he says. " All things are becoming new." With rapid touches he conveys to us an impression of swift, kaleidoscopic change. Every Chinese institution is in the melting-pot. Presently it will be poured out to take shape and harden in the mould. What mould ? Let the Church of Christ an- swer. Again we seem to hear the sharp ring of the ' Now or Never.' Another great ovation greets the last speaker. To all appearance he might be a burly Aberdeenshire farmer, bearded and broad-shouldered, with eyes brimful of good humour, and wearing an expression of modesty amount- ing almost to bashfulness. That man was the first to put a steamer on any of the great African lakes. He has fought the Arab slave-driver and beaten him. He has done more than any living man to heal the running sore of Africa. He has seen every change from savagery to civilisation, from bloody raids to settled peace, the development of trade and commerce, the springing up of churches, schools, colleges. And we, who sit at home, ive him a quarter of an hour, or twenty minutes by a tretch, to tell us all about it ! The great night is over. The concluding strains ring out like a trumpet call to the wide world. " Let every creature rise and bring Peculiar honours to our King. Angels descend with songs again, And earth repeat the loud 'Amen.' " The vast audience pours out of the Assembly Hall. Half dazed, with mind and heart burdened and over- charged, we stand for a moment, looking down on the lights of the city and up at the shining stars, drinking in the breath of the soft spring night with its subtle fragrance of unseen flowers and budding trees in the gardens at our feet. Then, homeward in "thoughtful silence. FOREIGN MISSION NIGHT 5 What a mighty work is this that has fallen to our Church to do ! We cherish the pride of an Empire on which the sun never sets. We glory in the high destiny of our British race. We honour the pioneers who hold the frontiers of the Empire, who break up the prairie and fell the lumber, who carry the rail-heads deeper into the forest and extend the bounds of peaceful human habitation. But there is a nobler pride in belonging to a Church on which the sun never sets. Our missions girdle the globe, and every hour of the twenty-four sees our pioneers at work somewhere. The mind wanders in- voluntarily to the far-off places where they live and work. We see them in the bazaars and temples of India, and in the sprinkled islands of the sea. We picture them cutting pathways through the malarial swamps of Africa, or crossing the frozen plains of Man- churia, rumbling along in great ox-waggons or mounted on sure-footed mules, travelling by steamer and canoe on the bosom of mighty rivers, camping in the wilds where, at night, the howl of the hyena and the lion's roar is heard. We watch them at their work, with coats off, taming the passionate savage, disputing with the subtle Hindu and the proud Mohammedan preaching, teaching, healing the sick, building houses, making roads, printing, weaving, tilling the soil, and labouring by every means to make the desert blossom as the rose. Heroic pioneers ! more than five hundred of them, devoted men and women who have followed the arduous path of foreign service at the call of Christ. Empire builders are they all, forerunners of the King, who " prepare the way of the Lord, and make straight in the desert a highway for our God." Travel and adventure, valour and virtue, are all to be found in plenty on the trail of the pioneers. Follow the trail as it winds around the world. Up the Rhine and down the Danube, through the isles of Greece and the Holy Land, down the Red Sea to the barren rock of 6 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS Aden, across our Indian Empire, through the Straits of Malacca and up the China Sea to Manchuria. Then a long southward run to the New Hebrides, round the back of the world to Jamaica, across the Atlantic to the West Coast of Africa, round the Cape to Kaffraria, up the Zambesi to the great lakes, and then home. Thirty thousand miles over land and sea, but you will not regret an inch of the road. You will come back missionary hero-worshippers. You will come back with eyes opened, having learnt that all these foreign lands have their own romance, and these foreign peoples, whom we in ignorant contempt call heathen, however diverse they be in appearance, in speech, in customs, are all of them just as human as we are ourselves, and just as dear to Jesus. CHAPTER II THE SISTER ON THE HILL HER real name was Princess Marie Dorothea, and she was the wife of the Archduke Joseph, whose lordly palace looks down on the Danube at Budapesth. She had come from Wiirtemberg in Germany and was a Protestant. At first she cared little for her religion, else, as she said afterwards, she could never have married a Roman Catholic prince. God had a strange work for her to do and she was prepared for it by weary years and sharp sorrows. Though she loved her husband and children dearly she often felt lonely in a land where the Bible was a closed and forbidden book, and gradually she learned to love it and turn to it more and more. Then her eldest son, a bright, handsome boy of seventeen, was taken from her, and in her sorrow she was driven for refuge to the Word of God and prayer. Her private apartments in the palace looked down across the Danube to the crowded city and the vast Hungarian plains beyond, and, as she gazed on the scene with softened heart, she sighed for the spiritual destitution of the land. Day after day she knelt at the window and, sometimes stretching out her hands to heaven in passionate desire, she prayed God to send some messenger of the Cross to Hungary. Thus she continued for about seven years. One night in the summer of 1839 she started out of sleep with an eerie feeling that something was about to happen to her. Every night for a fortnight the strange dream was repeated. Then she chanced to hear that, in one of the hotels of the city, a Protestant minister 7 8 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS was lying at the point of death. Instantly she said to herself, " This is what was to happen." But what was it ? To explain that, we must go back to Scotland. Foreign missions were then in their in- fancy. Many saw no need of them, maintaining that the heathen were better left alone. Some even de- nounced missionary societies as dangerous and treason- able. But a more enlightened and Christian spirit had begun to prevail. The Church of Scotland, remembering that the Gospel belonged ' to the Jew first,' resolved to send out four ministers to travel as far as Palestine, and discover the most suitable place in which to establish a Jewish mission. These deputies were Murray McCheyne and his friend Andrew Bonar, with Dr. Keith and Pro- fessor Black of Aberdeen. They set out, and, by and by, reached Egypt, intending next to visit Palestine. On one point they were all agreed, that of all the countries where Jews dwelt it was most hopeless to visit Austria, for no Protestant mission would be tolerated there. But an overruling Providence brought the unex- pected to pass. Dr. Black was hurt through a fall from his camel. The accident made it necessary that he and Dr. Keith, instead of going on to Palestine, should travel straight home by the Danube, passing thus through the heart of the Austrian Empire. On reaching Buda- pesth they could not but see that here was the very metropolis of the Jewish race in Europe. There ap- peared, however, not the remotest possibility of a mis- sion. As they looked up at the Archduke's palace, frowning down upon them, little did they dream of that lonely kneeling figure at the window, and the strange quarter from which their help would come. Before they could proceed on their journey Dr. Keith was struck down with fever, and, while he lay at the point of death, news of him reached the palace. Princess Marie at once came to, visit him and, thanks to her unwearied care, he slowly recovered, During the days of his convalescence the Princess poured into his THE SISTER ON THE HILL 9 ear the whole story of her sorrows and of her prayers. Dr. Keith, on his part, told her of the reason that had brought him to the city. Both were impressed by the strangeness of their meeting, and the Princess eagerly undertook to use all her influence towards the establish- ment of a mission in the city. Thus it came about, by means so singular and romantic, that our first mission to the Jews was planted in Budapesth. In the summer of 1841 a little band of missionaries under the leadership of Dr. John Duncan, a famous Hebrew scholar, sailed up the Rhine to Mayence, and, travelling from Frankfurt by Niirnberg to Ratisbon, steamed thence to Linz and Vienna. Another 120 miles on the broad bosom of the Danube brought them to Budapesth. They received a warm welcome from the Princess Marie. She and Dr. Duncan discovered a curious connecting link in the fact that both owned the same spiritual father. Twenty years before, the Princess had heard Cesar Malan preach in Geneva words never to be forgotten, and in far-away Aberdeen, by the same voice, ' Rabbi ' Duncan had been led into the light. So strangely interwoven are the threads of human life. At first the mission had to encounter the most deter- mined opposition, and but for the powerful protection of Princess Marie it could not have held its ground in the city. She was ever ready to interpose in time of danger and foiled many a plot. On one occasion in her absence, one of the missionaries was arrested and sen- tenced to be expelled from the city. The Princess, re- turning at the critical moment, appointed him her private chaplain, to preach every Sabbath in the palace and bring his congregation with him. It was amid these alarms, when priests and spies were continually on the watch, that the mission company, for reasons of secrecy, learned to speak of the Princess as ' the sister on the hill.' In these early days some bright jewels were won for the Redeemer's crown. No Israelite in the city was more 10 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS respected than Mr. Saphir. He was a devout worshipper of Jehovah, and, coming into contact with the mission, he became an earnest seeker after light. At length he declared his faith in Jesus as the Messiah and, with adoring reverence, would join in the hymn, "To Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, The God whom we adore, Be glory as it was and is And shall be ever more." In D. O. Hill's great picture of the Disruption a bright boy may be seen in front beside a venerable man who is showing him something on a map of Palestine. The old man is Dr. Duncan, and the boy is Adolph Saphir, Mr. Saphir 's famous son, who became a distinguished preacher in London and wrote in defence of the Scrip- tures books that will long be read. Another interesting case was that of Alfred Edersheim. He was a student at the university when Dr. Duncan came to Budapesth. After being led to Christ he took his degree at Oxford, and curiously enough became a minister in Dr. Duncan's native city of Aberdeen. He is best known, however, as the author of a valuable life of Christ, in which he brings all his vast Jewish learning to explain and illustrate the Gospel story. Had the Budapesth mission done nothing else but bring these two young Jews, Saphir and Edersheim, to the feet of Christ it would have been a great work. There is an impression in many minds that Jews cannot be converted and that missions among them are vain and fruitless. An amusing story is told of Dr. Kidd of Aberdeen, a quaint but worthy old divine. He was present at a meeting called to form a Jewish missionary society, and, being asked to take the opening prayer, he proceeded, "O Lord, convert the Jews. But they will not be converted till the appointed time. Some are now trying to convert them, but let them not be too confident, for Israel, poor Israel, is fit for nothing as yet but going through the streets crying ' Old clo' ' ! " Many people seem to share Dr. Kidd's opinion of ' poor THE SISTER ON THE HILL 11 Israel,' and in particular have no hope of the Jew re- sponding to the Gospel. It should be known that already one in every forty-five Jews is a baptised Christian, whereas, of heathen and Mohammedans, only one in sixty-six is a convert. Six hundred Jewish con- verts are ministers of the Gospel in Europe to-day. " The time to favour Zion, yea, the set time," may be nearer than many think. CHAPTER III FROM THE DANUBE TO THE GOLDEN HORN BUDAPESTH is a double city with the Danube flowing through the heart of it. As we sail down the river, following the route taken by the pioneers of the mission, Buda lies on the right and Pesth on the left, linked by several bridges thrown across the river. Pesth stands on the plain, but Buda is built on rising ground that mounts up steeply from the river-bank. Conspicuous on the heights towers the palace of the Archduke, and up there, in the southmost wing of the building, is the window at which the Princess Marie knelt to pray. We pass under a magnificent suspension bridge which, like the palace, has a link of connection with the early days of the mission. It was being built at the time Dr. Duncan arrived, and a hundred British workmen with their families were resident in the city. Dr. Duncan at once commenced services among them, and this proved an excellent plea for toleration. In spite of the powerful influence of the Princess, it is doubtful if Dr. Duncan would have been permitted to settle in the city unless he had had his fellow-countrymen to minister to. Two-thirds of the whole Jewish population of the world are within easy reach of Budapesth as a centre. In the city itself there are 180,000, and the management of municipal affairs is largely in their hands. It is said that Roosevelt, driving through the streets and looking over the crowds that had come out to welcome him, turned to his host with the question. " Biirgermeister, have you any Christians in your city ? " Solitary, in this metropolis of Judaism, stands our mission. Fine new buildings have been erected near the 12 THE DANUBE TO THE GOLDEN HORN 13 centre of Pesth. They are arranged round the four sides of a quadrangle, and consist of a hall seated for four hundred people, a school with accommodation for as many pupils, a boarding-house for over fifty girls, with apartments for missionaries and teachers. High up on the front is carved the familiar emblem of the Burning Bush. Here the mission has entered on a new era of life and usefulness. The suspicion and hostility of the Govern- ment have passed away and the mission is a recognised institution in the city. In proof of this it may be mentioned that the Educational Council voted 2000 towards the erection of the new buildings. Almost every form of mission work is carried on. More than 24,000 pupils have been educated in the school. Meetings and classes are held in which the claims of Jesus as their Messiah are pressed on the Jews, and steadily, if slowly, the outcasts of Israel are gathered in. At the same time the mission serves a wider field. It has quickened into new life the Reformed Church of Hungary, one of the largest Protestant churches in the world. Copies of the Scriptures and of Christian books, in eighteen languages, are distributed and sold in the city and surrounding districts. Thus through many channels the influence of the Gospel flows throughout the land. And far beyond it. The man who translated the Old Testament into Chinese was a convert of the Budapesth mission. The Jewish race in the whole world is one, and from this central and strategic point circles of influence go widening out till they break on the most distant shores. From the Danube the next stage of our journey brings us to the Golden Horn. We pass through lands that have been for centuries the battleground of Turk and Christian. In the age of the Reformation the Turks, at the height of their glory, were the terror of Europe. The ensign of the Crescent waved over Budapesth, Hungary was a Turkish province, and Suleiman the Magnificent led his troops to the walls of Vienna. There the tide 14 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS turned, and ever since has slowly ebbed away, till now Europe has all but shaken off the horrible nightmare of Turkish oppression. In Constantinople we have our second Jewish mis- sion. How tragic the reverse of fortune that has be- fallen the city ! Founded by the first Christian Emperor and called by his name, she was for long the seat of empire and one of the shining lights of Christendom. In solemn procession Constantine marked out the boundaries of his new capital. Bearing a lance in his hand, he continued to advance till his astonished followers ventured to observe that he had already exceeded the most ample dimensions of a great city. " I shall still advance," he replied, " till He, the in- visible guide who marches before me, sees fit to stop." A thousand years of Christian history followed. Then came the fatal day when the ruthless Turks stormed the city and all Europe trembled at her fall. From a distance the city wears an enchanted look. The seven low hills on which she stands are covered with buildings of every shape and colour. Above is the soft, blue Eastern sky. Beneath are the waters of the Sea of Marmora, reflecting like a mirror the numerous domes and minarets. The Bosporus sweeps along the city front, carrying the waters of the Euxine with rapid and incessant flow towards the Mediterranean. Up through the centre of the city the Golden Horn ploughs its way, a deep, curving lane of water six miles in length and a quarter of a mile in breadth. It parts Stamboul, the ancient city, from the northern suburbs of Galata and Pera. On entering the city the charm is rudely broken. Filth, dust, and evil smells, narrow, wretchedly paved alleys for streets, terrific din of yelling muleteers and hawkers, such is Constantinople seen at close quarters. Of the five settlements of Jews in the city the chief is in Galata, where the Polish Jews reside. There are, besides, two settlements of Spanish Jews on the Bos- porus and two on the Golden Horn. Our mission, which THE DANUBE TO THE GOLDEN HORN 15 is in Galata, was planted as long ago as 1842, and for nearly fifty years was the scene of the labours of Alex- ander Tomory, one of the early converts of Budapesth. Here, in the narrow lanes, with their terrible poverty, their reeking filth, their unhidden vice, our missionaries work. The tourist who visits the city thinks that what he sees is bad enough, but he rarely, if ever, penetrates into the depth of the cesspool. A doctor, on being shown the mission, declared that though he had lived in Constantinople for over thirty years he had no con- ception there could be such abject poverty. He sug- gested that the most necessary adjunct of the mission would be a barrel of cod-liver oil, to stand at the Dis- pensary door and be ladled out to all comers ! The scourge of cholera is never long absent, and war has brought an accumulation of miseries upon the wretched populace. Under such conditions the work is done. In the school there are over five hundred pupils. In the little church the son of a Jewish rabbi preaches, Sabbath after Sabbath, to a crowded audience of his fellow- countrymen. Above all there is the Dispensary, where eight or nine thousand suffering people annually receive the help of the Christian doctor and are brought into contact with the Gospel. We cannot leave the city without a visit to St. Sophia. Across the Golden Horn the great dome rises in the heart of Stamboul, surrounded by a cluster of half domes and shelving roofs. " Glory be to God, I have vanquished thee, O Solomon ! " cried the Emperor Justinian who built it, at the festival of dedication. Alas, that this magnificent temple, reared by Christian hands, and adorned with gold and marble of every hue, the gifts of Christian devotion, should now be a Mohammedan mosque ! See where the Crescent replaces the Cross on the summit of the great dome. Inside, a Mihrab has been cut in the wall in the south-east corner to point the direction of Mecca, and towards it the Moslem worshippers turn their faces when they pray. They squat 16 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS upon the floor, each one on his rug a congregation sitting squint and praise Allah and Mohammed, where once the praise of Christ was sung. The minister reads from the Koran, and, as he reads, he grasps a naked sword in his hand, as the Moslem custom is where they occupy Christian churches. It is a fierce reminder that the faith of Mohammed has been propagated by the sword. Now see this strange thing. Here is the Royal Gate by which the Emperor was wont to enter the church and where the Patriarch stood to receive him. Look up, and there, above the cornice that surmounts the gate you can make out a figure of Christ upon His throne, holding in His hand a book open at these words, " I am the light of the world." When the Moslems de- faced the building and removed every Christian emblem from it, they washed over the figure with lime, but it has reappeared. May we not read in it a prophecy that the true light will shine out again in these ancient Chris- tian lands ? As we travel through scenes once fair and prosperous but now desolate, once blessed by the feet of Christ and His apostles but now blighted by the unholy Turk, we shall not forget what we have seen above the Royal Gate of St. Sophia. CHAPTER IV THROUGH THE ISLES OF GREECE TO GALILEE No part of our journey is so full of romance as that upon which we now enter. Almost every island and stretch of curving shore has an immortal name, every league of sea has been ploughed by ships of heroes from the most ancient times. And of higher renown than the Isles of Greece are those hills of Galilee and that little inland sea, made sacred by the blessed feet of the Son of God. Sailing out of the Golden Horn, we cross the Sea of Marmora and enter the Dardanelles. Here in the narrow strait that parts Europe from Asia, Xerxes made the bridge of boats across which he led his countless hosts to conquer Greece. Seven days and nights with ceaseless tramp they passed along the swaying bridge. Here, a century and a half later, Alexander the Great led Greece to the conquest of Asia. The more tender memory of Leander comes to mind, how, time, after time, he swam across to visit Hero, till the dark, stormy night when the love gleam in the lady's tower went out and her lover was cast up dead upon the shore. Passing the Dardanelles, we enter the renowned ^Egean, rich in the beauty of the immortal Isles of Greece, " the sprinkled isles Lily on lily that o'erlace the sea, And laugh their pride when the light wave lisps ' Greece.' " On our left, between Mount Ida and the sea, is the plain of Troy, where Priam's city stood and where Achilles fought and fell, as Homer sings. Here we come upon the track of the Apostle Paul. It was from Troy (or Troas) that he sailed across this very sea to c 17 18 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS Europe, after he had seen in a vision the man of Mace- donia, who prayed him, saying, " Come over and help us." Yonder in the west are the hills of Macedonia, rising over Imbros and Lemnos. To Troas Paul re- turned on his last journey to Jerusalem, and from this point onward to Palestine we follow the route of his voyage as described in Acts xx-xxi. But, alas, what desolation has befallen these coasts ! Where are Troas and Assos, Miletus and Ephesus ? Nothing is left of them but harbours silted up, frag- ments of colossal masonry, and hill-sides strewn with broken columns. Once the home of enterprise and liberty, they have sunk under a slow decay, or been crushed by the heel of the ruthless Turk. The exquisite beauty of land and sea and sky remains, but the glorious works of man are fallen. The lamps of the Seven Churches have gone out. We sail past Rhodes, the Queen of the -lEgean and once the last outpost of Christendom, where the desperate valour of the Knights of St. John held the Saracens at bay. We cannot touch, as Paul did, at Patara, for the city is in ruins, the harbour is silted up, and the bay is a desert of moving sand. We cast, how- ever, a kindly glance at the spot, remembering that here was the birthplace of the good Saint Nicholas, the children's friend, more familiarly known to us as Santa Claus. Now we cross the Levant to Syria, passing Cyprus on the way. We do not land at Tyre, as did Paul, for the ancient glory of Tyre is gone and the stream of commerce flows through the busy seaport of Beirut, fifty miles farther north. How enchanting is our first view of Palestine. Mount Lebanon stretches along in front of us, its majestic head crowned with virgin snow, which glitters dazzling white in the clear air. Thus it must have looked to the eyes of Abraham when he came from Ur of the Chaldees to the Promised Land. Between Lebanon and the sea is a rich and beautiful plain, adorned with orange and lemon gardens, palms and sycamores, fig trees and almonds. The city rises in lovely terraces above the harbour and looks out on the blue Mediterranean. St. George is the patron saint of Beirut. Here he killed the dragon. When or why or what dragon nobody knows, but the dragon is dead, so it must be true. And, for the proof, the bay is called the Bay of St. George, and you can see the well into which he cast the dragon and the place where he washed his hands. We travel south along the shore by Sidon, Sarepta, and Tyre. This maritime plain, stretching along be- tween Lebanon and the sea, is " the coasts of Tyre and Sidon," once at least honoured by the Saviour's presence. From here He returned to the Sea of Galilee (Mark vii. 31), and we may be following the very road He took. Now we strike inland through the hills of Galilee. All along the way we have an almost continuous view of the great white head of Hermon, which, standing far in the north, towers over the nearer hills. The Jordan rises at its base and is fed by its melting snow. At last we come to the brow of a hill overlooking the Sea of Galilee. Deep, deep down, at the bottom of a great cup, gleams the blue lake. Steep, guardian hills stand round it and cast their changing shadows upon the water. The bright green plain beneath our feet is the plain of Gennesaret, where Capernaum once stood. Across the lake are the cliffs of Gergesa, down which the herd of swine rushed headlong to the sea. The grey limestone flushes like pink marble in the evening sun. Yonder white spot, half-way down the nearer shore, marks the town of Tiberias, whither we are bound. Every detail of hill-side and shore and lake is sacred as the earthly home of the Son of God. Many changes have passed over the scene with the passing years. Capernaum, Chorazin, Bethsaida, are all gone. Long ago the busy fishing boats vanished and the once-populous shores lay silent and deserted. Only in recent years have there come signs of reawakening life. Enterprising 20 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS Jewish colonists from abroad have established a pros- perous fishing industry, and a little steamer and motor launch ply to and fro upon the lake. In spite of changes the scene brings back to us with wonderful vividness the ministry of Jesus. Within the circle of these hills most of His mighty works were done. On these waves He walked and bade the storm be still. Down there in Capernaum He dwelt, in " His own city." In all the villages round about He preached and healed. Down every hill-road they came in streams bringing their sick with them. It is early spring, and crowds of pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem have come thronging about the lake. Jesus sails out from Capernaum in Peter's boat to find a place of retirement on the other side. But the people have seen Him, and there they go, streaming in long lines round the head of the lake. When He steps ashore they are waiting Him and He cannot send them away. On the green meadow yonder, just where the Jordan flows into the lake, He makes them sit down, and with the five loaves and the two fishes He feeds them until all are satisfied. In the summer of 1839 Andrew Bonar and McCheyne, two ardent lovers of the Jewish race, visited the lake. They had been sent out by the Church of Scotland to discover the most suitable places for planting Jewish missions. On the shore of the lake they walked together and talked of Jesus, feeling " an indescribable interest even in lifting a shell from the shore of a sea where Jesus had so often walked." What their thoughts were McCheyne has recorded in his beautiful poem " The Sea of Galilee ": " How pleasant to me is thy deep blue wave, Thou Sea of Galilee ! For the glorious One who came to save Hath often stood by thee. Fair are the lakes in the land I love, Where pine and heather grow, But thou hast loveliness far above What nature can bestow. THE ISLES OF GREECE TO GALILEE 21 Graceful around thee the mountains meet, Thou calm reposing sea, But ah, far more, the beautiful feet Of Jesus walked o'er thee. O Saviour, gone to God's right hand, Yet the same Saviour still, Graved on Thy heart is this lovely strand And every fragrant hill." It was felt that surely nothing could be more grateful to the Saviour than to preach the Gospel where He Himself had so often preached. But, in the sluggishness of the Church, nearly half a century passed away before the founding of a mission at the Sea of Galilee. CHAPTER V WHERE JESUS TAUGHT AND HEALED FOUR cities in Palestine are counted sacred by the Jews, Jerusalem and Hebron, Tiberias and Safed. In three of these our Church has planted missions. Tiberias and Safed are worked together. In summer, when the heat grows unbearable down by the shore, a move is made to Safed, which stands on a hill-top near the north-west corner of the lake. Very possibly our Lord pointed to Safed when He said to His disciples, " A city set on an hill cannot be hid." Certainly Safed answers to that description, for it is conspicuous from all over Galilee. So steeply is it perched upon the sum- mit of the hill that the flat roofs of the houses below form the street above. In the earthquake of 1837 the whole town slid down the hill, street crashing upon street, till all lay together in one immense mass of ruins at the foot of the slope. Tiberias, the white town by the lake shore, is the chief seat of the mission. It was built by Herod Antipas, " that fox," who beheaded John the Baptist, and to whom Jesus was sent by Pilate to be tried. There is no evidence that our Lord ever visited Tiberias, though He lived so near it. The devout Jews of His day had scruples about going into the town because Herod had built it partly on an ancient burying-ground. Perhaps the fact that Herod's palace was there may have kept Him away from it. Like most Eastern towns, Tiberias looks best at a distance. One would hardly choose to live there. It lies nearly seven hundred feet below sea-level, and is oppressively hot, and there are those who aver that 22 WHERE JESUS TAUGHT AND HEALED 23 it is the residence of the King of the Fleas ! The inhabitants, of whom there are five or six thousand, are by no means an attractive lot. They have been described as " the most unpleasant looking of all the inhabitants of the land." Mark Twain's picture of them is not flattering: " long-nosed, lanky, dyspeptic-looking ghouls, with the indescribable hats on, and a long curl dangling down in front of each ear .' ' Many lead lives of indolence, subsisting mainly on the Zalukah, money sent by pious Jews in Europe and America for the support of their poorer brethren in the Holy Land. Near the town are the hot springs, famous from ancient times, where the people love to sit for hours, immersed up to the neck in almost boiling water. Indolent, pauperised and de- graded, is not their degradation the measure of their need ? As we approach the town from the north the most conspicuous buildings are those of the mission, con- sisting of a hospital with two houses adjacent for the missionaries. They stand close to the shore, facing the lake which Jesus knew so well. In front are a few palm trees and a well-tilled garden sloping down to the water. Everything within and around the hospital is clean, wholesome, and attractive, all in vivid contrast to the filth and negligence of the town. Inside the wards the white walls are hung with Arabic and Hebrew texts, and pictures such as Jesus walking on the sea. How strangely thrilling it is to turn from the picture and look out at the window over the very sea on which He walked. From the end windows of the women's ward, which face the north, a distant view is had of the snowy head of Mount Hermon. Every morning a motley crowd of men, women, and children gathers at the hospital, black- turbaned Jews with their dangling side-curls, veiled Jewesses, Arabs of various kinds from the town, Fellaheen from the sur- rounding country, Bedouins from the desert, all sorts and conditions of men. The hospital bell rings and the doctor with his assistants enters the waiting-room. A passage 24 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS of Scripture is read, followed by a short address, prayer is offered, and then the various cases are attended to. On Sunday morning an Arabic service is held for the patients and their friends, and every afternoon the kindly Bible-reader goes through the wards from bed to bed. Strange and touching scenes have been witnessed in these wards. Look at that bright-faced old man sitting up in bed in the corner of the ward. He seems an irre- pressible comic. " How is it, Elias," the doctor asks him, " that you are always so cheery ? " " Praise the Lord, the times are good," replies this Syrian Mark Tapley. What is his story ? Some weeks ago he was j ourneying from Jerusalem. When passing near Shechem he fell among thieves, who stripped him, wounded him most brutally with their iron-spiked clubs, and left him for dead on the road. By chance some men came where he was, and taking pity on him, put him on an ass and brought him to Nazareth. From there he was sent on to Tiberias and laid down at the hospital gate. One leg had to be amputated, and his life was despaired of, but the cheery old fellow is pulling through. How he will ever get home to Aleppo neither he nor anybody else knows ; but he counts it a lucky day when he came under Christian care and skill. Good old Mark ! Give us a handshake, and may time deal gently with you. Over yonder is Derwish, the son of a Bedouin chief beyond the lake. He grasps the doctor's hand and calls down blessings on his head. He has been several weeks in the hospital recovering from a serious operation. One day his father and three brothers came to visit him, stalwart fellows with belts stuck full of huge pistols. The father looked round the spotless ward, gazed awhile at the comfortable bed on which his son lay, and then, grasping the coverlet, he said earnestly, " This shows love and the fear of God." On leaving he gave the doctor three gold coins. "Come and visit me," he said. ' You will be welcome, with a hundred of your friends." WHERE JESUS TAUGHT AND HEALED 25 The lights are low in the ward. It is long past mid- night. On one of the beds a Jew lies dying. As the nurse bends over him and whispers the name of Jesus in his ear, the dying man opens his eyes. " I am trust- ing in the Lord Jesus," he whispers. " I am a Christian at heart." He tries to gasp out his story, how he had somewhere received a New Testament and learned from it to know Jesus as the Messiah. A few moments more and his spirit has fled to seek mercy of Him whom he had followed, though but secretly " for fear of the Jews." It is no easy thing for Jew or Moslem to confess Christ openly. Those who do so are often compelled to leave the country and seek in some foreign land the freedom of conscience denied to them at home. So for nearly thirty years the work in Tiberias has gone on, till now the fame of the hospital has travelled throughout all Syria. As in the days of Jesus, they bring the sick from far and near. Dr. Paterson of Hebron relates the following incident: "Riding up the steep hills which mount westward from the Sea of Galilee, I met, one morning in spring, a poor Arab walk- ing beside a donkey which carried his sick wife. He called to me to stop, he seized my bridle. Did I know of one who healed at Tiberias ? Was he wise ? Was he kind ? Would he cure the woman ? And as I rode on towards Nazareth, having reassured the man, I fell to thinking that just such a scene might have been enacted on that very road in the days of Him in whose name the missionary doctor at Tiberias ministers to the suffering to-day. For down every road leading to the Sea of Galilee there flocked men and women bearing the sick, half in doubt, half in hope, that One who healed, whom they knew only by hearsay, might be gracious to them also." The sick, when they returiLhome, carry with them as of old, and spread abroad everywhere, the fame of Jesus. So that to-day, through the skill and love of His servants in Tiberias, He has again become known to the people round the lake as the great Physician. " I 26 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS never expected to see a sight like this on earth," ex- claimed a visitor. " Now I understand the life of Christ as I never understood it before." And indeed one might search the wide world in vain to find anything liker the Saviour's own ministry than this mission of healing to the body and salvation to the soul beside the Sea of Galilee. CHAPTER VI HEBRON IN THE HOLY LAND THE road from Tiberias to Hebron leads through the heart of the Holy Land. The distance is not great in miles, for Palestine is the least of all lands. From Ti- berias to Jerusalem is about as far as from Dundee to Aberdeen, and Hebron is some twenty miles farther south. Yet within that narrow compass was enacted all that is most significant in the world's history. Half a day's journey to the south-west brings us to Nazareth, lying in a cup-shaped hollow among the hills. The town itself has little interest for us. The peaceful village of Gospel days has disappeared, and in its place is a town of seven or eight thousand people, cursed with seventeen public-houses. We climb the hill to the south of the town and view a scene that Jesus must often have gazed on as a boy. We are on the southern edge of the hills of Galilee. At our feet a broad plain stretches across the whole country from the Mediterranean to the lip of the Jordan valley. Many a battle has been fought on that plain since the day when Deborah and Barak swooped down on the hosts of Sisera. The bold, solitary hill to the west is Carmel, where Elijah contended with the prophets of Baal. At the other end of the plain, where it begins to dip down towards the Jordan, Jehu came driving furiously to avenge the iniquities of the house of Ahab. In front, across the plain, are the rounded hills of Sam- aria. Mark that little hill standing well out into the plain, with the road to the south running like a ribbon up the face of it. On the summit is the village of Nain, 27 28 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS and somewhere on that road Jesus met the funeral of the widow's son. We cross the plain and note, here and there, surprising signs of up-to-date cultivation. Jewish colonists are settling in increasing numbers on the plain, and bid fair, with the help of modern implements, to change it from a rough, neglected prairie to a place of waving harvests. The road, winding among the hills of Samaria, brings us to the neighbourhood of Jacob's well. It seems hardly worth while to visit it. A church has in recent years been built over it, and the well-mouth opens in the musty vault below. Moreover, as the well is really dry, the wily priests pour water down it, which they draw out again for guileless pilgrims to drink. Better leave the place un visited, and preserve the picture of our Saviour sitting by the well-side in the sunshine, with the fields around Him ripening to the harvest. By and by the road gets clear of the Samaritan hills and begins to ascend up towards Jerusalem. The land of Judah is in reality a great, broad-backed mountain, with steep sides that go plunging down by tremendous ravines to the Jordan valley on the one hand and the land of the Philistines on the other. The summit is a bare, stony upland, wind-swept and waterless, fitted to breed a race of hardy, highland shepherds. Up and up the road climbs, winding round Gilgal and past Bethel. Now Jerusalem appears in sight, the Holy City, city of David and Solomon, to which the tribes went up, city of Gethsemane and Calvary and Olivet. The north road enters by the Damascus Gate, but ere we reach the gate we turn off the road a little to the left and pass along outside the wall. Often have we sung : " There is a green hill far away, Without a city wall, AVhere our dear Lord was crucified Who died to save us all." Here is that sacred hill, with its bare and gently HEBRON IN THE HOLY LAND 29 rounded top. The side next the city wall is broken by a steep cliff, with two holes like eyes in the face of it, which may have given to the hill the name of Calvary, the place of a skull. At the base of the cliff is a little garden in which is a rocky tomb that has been used once and is now empty. It might possibly be the very tomb in which the body of our Lord was laid. The city is full of interest. Every stone in it is elo- quent of a royal and sacred past. Here stood the throne of David. Here Isaiah and Jeremiah fulfilled their ministry. Outside the walls are ancient tombs of kings and prophets. Through these streets Christ bore His cross to Calvary. The city shows a strange ming- ling of races and religions. Jew, Christian, and Mo- hammedan, each claims it as his own. Imposing processions move along its crowded ways. Pilgrims kneel on the ground and passionately kiss the sacred places. Jews stand beneath the massive ruins of the Temple and, leaning their heads against the wall, bewail the sorrows of their people. Above them Moslems pray in the Holy of Holies. Perhaps the most striking scene of all is the view of Olivet from the Beautiful Gate of the Temple. Walk along the eastern side of the city on the path that runs along at the base of the wall. The ground breaks away at our feet, falling down a steep slope to the Kidron, three hundred feet below, and mounting al- most as steeply on the other side. The opposite hill is Olivet, not clothed with olives now as it must once have been, but bare and desolate save for a few scattered trees. Right over against us three roads branch out at the foot of the hill and climb the slope at different angles. One road goes straight up. It is the road to Jericho, which, after crossing the ridge, plunges down nearly four thousand feet into the suffocating abyss of the Jordan valley. Up that road King David went, when he fled from Absalom, barefoot and with his head covered, weeping as he went. The other two roads, which slope away to the right, both 30 lead to Bethany at the back of the hill. By one of these roads the Saviour must have come when He made His triumphal entry into Jerusalem. At the point where the three roads meet in the valley there is a garden with some gnarled old olive trees in it. It is the garden of Gethsemane. On the very summit of the hill a lofty spire pierces the sky. It is the Church of the Ascension, a memorial of the fact that Christ ascended up from the Mount of Olives. This explains the immense number of graves that are strewn about the base of the hill. Multitudes have desired to be laid to rest there, in hope of a glorious resurrection when the Lord shall come again. Turn now and look at the city wall that frowns above us. Once it was part of the outer wall of the Temple, but the Temple is long gone and the Mosque of Omar stands in the holy place. You can trace in the wall the outline of a great gateway which has been built up. It was the Gate of the Temple. Here the lame man sat for Beautiful alms, till one day, as the shadows of the Temple began to lengthen over the Kidron valley, Peter and John passed in at the gate and bade him, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk. The Moslems have built up the gate because there was a tradition among the Jews that when the Messiah came to recover the city, He would enter by that gate. So there stands the Mosque of Omar in the Holy Place, and here is the Beautiful Gate built up to shut the Saviour out. But Mohammed is dead and Christ is risen. Yonder the Church of the Ascension points a triumphant finger to the sky, and the Beautiful Gate looks across the valley to the Mount of Olives as if waiting the day of the Lord's return. But we must hasten on to Hebron. The road runs along the broad, bare ridge of the mountain of Judah, which shelves down on the left into the bottomless pit of the Dead Sea, with the hills of Moab rising like a wall beyond. Towards these hills Ruth must often have turned her eyes as she gleaned in the harvest field EH < o ij 13 in H b <j w CQ CQ HEBRON IN THE HOLY LAND 31 of Boaz, perhaps the very field we are passing. Five miles out the road we come to Bethlehem. The flocks of sheep on the plains remind us that David spent his boyhood there, remind us also of that never-to-be-for- gotten night when the angel appeared to the shepherds as they watched their flocks and brought the glad tidings that Christ was born in yonder little white town. At last Hebron appears in sight, lying in a long and fertile valley which opens towards the south. It is a most ancient and sacred city. Here Abraham came and dwelt under the oak in Mamre. Abraham's oak is still shown, a wide-spreading and venerable tree, under whose shade the Jews of Hebron love to picnic on the green sward, but it cannot be so old as the days of the patriarch. A far more interesting spot is the cave of Machpelah. It is enclosed and jealously guarded by the Moslems, who venerate Abraham as the Father of the Faithful. The building rises conspicuous on the east side of the town, and one gazes upon it with a strange thrill. There can be little doubt that the mingled dust of Abraham and Sarah, of Isaac and Rebekah, of Jacob and Leah, lies there. Hebron is a town of twenty thousand inhabitants, of whom only two thousand are Jews, the rest being fanatical Moslems. " The sullenness of the people you meet on the road," says a recent traveller, " gives token of its spirit before you enter. The street scenes were the worst we saw from south to north. Women drew aside their veils to curse us as we passed. Stones were flung by unseen hands behind walls. In the centre of the town a man was twisting the arm of a boy, beating him furiously on the head and neck, flinging him on the road to kick and trample on him." In the outskirts of this fanatical Moslem town a medical mission was planted in 1893, and there is at least one foreigner whose presence is welcome every- where the good doctor who presides over the mission. Sullen faces break into smiles when he appears, for Chris- 32 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS tian love and skill and patience are wearing down the barriers of fanatical hate. More than ten thousand cases are treated in the course of the year, and the influence upon the whole community is very marked. A visitor from Scotland, accompanying the doctor on one of his rounds, witnessed a sight which, he declared, it was worth going thousands of miles to see. Among the patients was a little child, whose father was a sheikh of a somewhat fanatical character, but who was glad to call in the skill of the Christian hakim. A successful operation had been performed and the little fellow was almost fully recovered. The father accompanied the doctor to the road, and as they talked, suddenly mastered by his emotions, he threw himself upon the doctor's neck, exclaiming, " What is it that makes you Christians show such kindness to us poor Moslems ? " Love is stronger than hate, and the day is surely coining when, in the sunny vale where Abraham pitched his tent, the God of Abraham will yet be wor- shipped, and those who are his children after the flesh, Moslem and Jew alike, will become his children in spirit through the faith that is in Jesus Christ. CHAPTER VII DOWN THE RED SEA A FEW days ago we stood under the oak in Mamre, now we are nearing Port Said. A quick run by rail from Jerusalem down to Joppa, thence by steamer, has brought us in sight of Egypt. Nothing is visible but a clump of dingy houses on a dead-flat shore, with an absolutely featureless country behind them. Can this be Egypt, that ancient and royal land ? Where are the mighty pyramids and the rolling Nile ? Yet that boundless stretch of sandy plain has a strange fascination. It leads the mind to horizons far be- yond the line where the sky meets the level sand. Away out across that arid waste, lads from our Scottish glens have marched to conquer the wild sons of the desert. The fanatical valour of the dervish was shattered against British discipline, and now the land enjoys the blessings of a settled peace. But a more momentous struggle is going on, and the prize is not Egypt alone, but Africa. Five thousand missionaries ten thousand the Moslems say are train- ing in Cairo, to go forth and win Africa for Mohammed. Up the Nile and across the broad Sudan, down on Uganda in the east and the Gold Coast in the west, they are pressing eagerly forward. Whole tribes and nations have already been subdued, and the thin red line of Christian missions, that stretches across Central Africa, is in danger of being swept away. Shall the Crescent or the Cross wave over Africa ? That is a question which the next few years will decide. As soon as we step ashore at Port Said we are assailed by a frantic, yelling crew. Men and women, beggars and r 33 34 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS cripples, dogs and donkeys, threaten to tear and trample each other for the possession of us. They thrust picture post-cards at us, they insist on being our guides, they give us not a moment's peace. A shrill-voiced urchin hails everybody with the astounding remark, " I've been to Auchtermuchty." He evidently finds this an effective means of drawing the reluctant Scotch bawbee. Another black imp salutes us familiarly with, " Hello, Jock Ferguson frae Aiberdeen." We turn coldly away and he goes elsewhere in search of Jock. But his friend from the Granite City has either not come out this trip or is keeping modestly in the background ! Ah well, it is a saddening business, this degradation of human nature. The East, they say, meets the West at Port Said. Alas for such a meeting, which has stripped the East of her ancient dignity and clothed her in motley rags of contempt. We can at least avoid the gross error of the globe-trotter who hastily judges the whole wide East by the swarms of shameless beggars that yell and struggle on the quays of seaport towns. Right glad we are to get aboard again. Now we pass slowly along the Suez Canal, that wonderful thread of water which divides two continents and unites two oceans. It is much like what one would expect, a mere trench dug in the sand, straight, narrow, monotonous, except where it broadens out in the middle at the Bitter Lake. A welcome relief it is when the boat ploughs into the deep blue water of the Gulf of Suez. Still there is little to be seen, but we remember the wonders of old. Near the head of the gulf the Israelites made their memorable crossing, and beneath these waves the proud hosts of Pharaoh sleep their sleep. Down along that dreary, barren coast, and in the wilderness that lies behind it, Israel spent forty years of wandering. In the heart of these rugged, granite crags towers the thunder-riven peak of Sinai. Half-way down the Red Sea we pass the port of Jidda, and again we scan the bare hills with interest, DOWN THE RED SEA 35 for away behind them, in a narrow, barren valley, lies Mecca, the holy city of the Moslems. Strange that this desolate region should have been the cradle of two of the world's great religions. Yet perhaps it is not so strange, for the lonely, boundless desert, the solemn mountains, and the changeless sky are most fitted to impress on man his own nothingness and the omni- potence of God. Aden is our next stopping-place, and it may be of interest to learn something of the founder of our mission there, one of the noblest of missionary heroes. I lived as a boy near a high old bridge, with narrow roadway and low parapets. A long, straight avenue led down to the bridge and, after crossing it, took a sharp turn to the right. One of my earliest recollections is of seeing a cyclist coming down the avenue at breakneck speed, across the narrow bridge, and round the corner like a flash. These were the days of high bicycles, and even they were not very common. So it made an im- mense impression on us to see a splendid fellow of six foot three, mounted on a wheel of the same height indeed he once rode a cycle seven foot two. When, moreover, we knew that he had ridden from Land's End to John o' Groats, had beaten the world's champion, and broken more records than any living man, it is little wonder that we watched him with feelings akin to awe. The old folks shook their heads, saying he would go over the bridge some day and break his neck. But he lived to become our Church's pioneer in Aden. His name was Ion Keith-Falconer, son of the eighth Earl of Kintore. His was a strenuous life. Endowed with the most brilliant talents, added to the natural advantages of wealth and noble birth, he might have aspired to a dis- tinguished public career. When only twenty-nine he was appointed Professor of Arabic at Cambridge. But from his earliest boyhood the supreme passion of his heart had been the winning of souls for Christ. Both in Cambridge and London he laboured among the outcast, 36 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS but ever he heard the cry of the heathen world and was at last constrained to give his life to Arabia. In 1886 he arrived in Aden, accompanied by his wife and a medical missionary. With characteristic vigour he set to work to establish a hospital and a school, bearing the whole expense of the mission himself. The beginnings were most hopeful, and it seemed as if he was destined to become the apostle of South Arabia. But it was not to be. Living in a low hut in the terrible climate of Aden, he fell a victim to fever and died ere he was thirty-one. How often it has happened that the beginning of a mission has been the digging of a grave. It may seem strange that God should take away one so strong and gentle, so learned and humble, so true and lovable, at the beginning of his career. But his death moved the world more deeply than perhaps a long life- time of service would have done. Many chivalrous young hearts were thrilled by the devotion of this young nobleman, and there were not wanting volunteers to fill his place. He had intended to hand over the hospital, when finished, to our Church. When he died little more than the foundations were laid. These the Church received as a sacred legacy, and named the mission after its founder. Thus the memory of Ion Keith-Falconer will be kept alive in the land he loved and among the people for whom he gave his life. CHAPTER VIII THE BARREN ROCK OF ADEN WE emerge from the Red Sea through the Strait of Bab- el-Mandeb, and a hundred miles to the east is Aden, the Gibraltar of our Empire in Asia. As we sail into the wide, open bay there towers up on the right a repulsive- looking mass of black, barren rocks. In front, the low sandy shore stretches away towards the illimitable desert. The harbour is at Steamer Point, on the western side of the rocky peninsula. We visit first, as is fitting, the grave of Ion Keith- Falconer in the little British cemetery. It is a dreary spot, without a tree or a flower, but only the black rocks behind and the barren sand in front, and choking dust clouds driven along on the scorching wind. " If any man serve Me, let him follow Me." As we read the in- scription on the simple headstone, we think of that noble young servant of Christ who might have enjoyed a life of comfort and luxury amid earth's fairest scenes, but who chose to follow the Master to this, the most arid and dreary spot in the habitable globe. At Steamer Point stands the Keith-Falconer Memorial Church, a pretty little building, looking down on the sea. It was built by the pennies of the Sunday School scholars of the old Free Church, for the use of our Scottish soldiers who may be in garrison at Aden. During the week the soldiers use the vestry as a reading- room, and tales could be told of both soldiers and sailors who have been led to Jesus in that little church. Now look straight north, across the bay and the flat, sandy shore. On the distant horizon you can see the top of a solitary building, outlined against the sky. 37 38 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS It is the mission hospital at Sheikh-Othman, the greatest blessing, perhaps, that ever came to South Arabia. But ere we go out to it we must pay a brief visit to the town of Aden. The road plunges in among the black rocks and, winding through a narrow pass, runs into the crater of an extinct volcano. Here we find the town, shut up as in an oven, with a wall of cinder-like rock a thousand feet high all round it, except for an opening towards the sea. What must it be like to live, or rather to bake, in this awful hole ! Water is worth money here. In the rainy season it streams down the bare rocks into great tanks prepared to catch it. This is all that is to be had, unless you drive a well a hundred feet down into the solid rock, or distil the sea-water, as they do at Steamer Point. Sheikh-Othman was chosen as the site of the hospital because the place is healthier than Aden and is on the highway to the interior. On the road we meet endless strings of camels. Surely it must be some great market day or camel show ! But no, they tell us, it is always like this. These are the camels that bring to Aden for shipment the coffee and gums and spices of Arabia. More than a quarter of a million pass along this road every year. As we watch their long, stately stride across the level sand, our thoughts follow them to the mysterious desert out of which they have come and to which they are returning. A strange and unknown land is Arabia, where the wild bedouin pitches his tent beneath the palm trees beside the spring. Rivers it has like every other land, but none of them ever reach the sea. All are swallowed up in the thirsty sand. Yet they do not run their course in vain. Along their banks a little strip is rescued from the desert and made green and fertile. A mystic land, towards which the heart of every true Moslem yearns. It is the cradle of his faith. Daily, as he kneels on his carpet to pray, he turns his face to Mecca. Seventy thousand pilgrims visit the holy city every year, to kiss the Black Stone of the Kaaba, and THE BARREN ROCK OF ADEN 39 drink of the well Zemzem. Then they return home again to die content, in the sure hope of Paradise. At the southern gateway of this mysterious land stands the mission hospital of Sheikh-Othman. Sorely is it needed, for " Happy Araby " knows little of the true healing either of body or of soul. Fifteen hun- dred miles you may journey north from the hospital and never meet a Christian missionary. Along the four thousand miles of coast, from Sinai round to the head of the Persian Gulf, there are but four mission stations. To us it has fallen to lead the assault upon the homeland of the Moslems and help to win its millions from their blind devotion to the False Prophet to a saving knowledge of Him who is the truth. The hospital is a plain, substantial, square block, three storeys high, with verandas on all the sides. On an average more than a hundred patients come for treatment every day. In the morning a brief service is held on the veranda, and then a long, arduous day of medical and surgical work begins. Many are cases of desperate need. Patients have come long distances to this as their last and only hope. Some have even been weeks on the road, for the fame of the hospital has spread far and wide. With the fame of the hospital has spread also the name and the love of Christ. Mohammedans everywhere are hard to win, and in Arabia their fanatical hatred of infidels is peculiarly intense. It is their boast that no Christian may set foot in Mecca and live. But, even in Arabia, hearts are touched by the gentle kindness of the Christian physician. His work is a perpetual wonder and mystery to the people. Who ever heard of a Moslem helping a Christian ? Yet here are Christians spending their lives in helping Moslems. Especially when they have been healed, or someone dear to them has been brought back from the gates of death, when the blind man sees again the light of the sun, or the deaf woman hears again the sweet voices of her children, then human gratitude conquers Moslem hate. 40 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS The mission doctor can travel unarmed and unharmed through wide districts, far from Aden, where no other foreigner would dare to go. Once he ventured into a lawless district where was a notorious haunt of robbers. The roadside was thickly marked with little cairns, under each of which lay a murdered traveller. When he entered the village and made himself known a woman came hurrying out of a house with a bowl of milk and a handful of scones. " You have come to me as the guest of God," she said, " for you healed my son." On another occasion three armed men rushed towards his camel, seized the bridle and commanded it to kneel. The doctor thought his last hour had come, but he was speedily reassured when he found that the men had been patients at the hospital, and now only wished him to drink a cup of coffee with them ere he went on his way. Yet with all this friendliness and gratitude, it is des- perately hard to be a Christian in Arabia. In some places it would be certain death. Not long ago, the Sultan of Lahej, the district immediately to the north of Aden, threw a man into prison for no other offence but suffering his sister to return to her husband who had become a Christian. It is hardly to be wondered at if few have the courage openly to confess Christ. Shall we pray that the reign of the False Prophet may come to a speedy end, and the fierce Moslems be sub- dued by the love of Christ ? PART II INDIA CHAPTER IX A TRIANGLE AND TWO RIVERS FROM Aden we pass to India, the greatest and, in some respects, the most entrancing field of our Church's foreign mission work. At the magic name of India there rise up before the mind's eye palaces and temples, with their shining domes and gilded minarets, processions of ponderous elephants go trooping past, stealthy tigers creep through the jungle, stately palm trees lift their graceful heads to the sunny sky. It is a land of old renown and of thrilling story. When we speak of " Oriental splen- dour " we pay a tribute to the magnificence of India's princes and the matchless palaces of the Great Mogul. When we think of the Mutiny the pulse beats high at the memory of Lucknow and the Ridge at Delhi. India is not a single country, but a continent, over- whelming in its vastness and bewildering in the variety of its races and tribes and tongues. Here 300 millions of the human race find their home. No one knows the whole of India. Those who have lived there longest are the most ready to confess their ignorance. It is left to the restless globe-trotter, who has rushed across country from Bombay to Calcutta, or the self-confident shipman who has sailed up the Hugli, to speak with authority about this mighty land. A glance at the map of India shows that the southern part has the shape of an inverted triangle. Near the 41 42 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS three corners of the triangle, roughly speaking, will be found the three great cities of Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras. In each of these cities our Church has a mis- sionary college. Draw a line from Bombay to Calcutta and near the middle of it is Nagpur, the capital of the Central Provinces, where a fourth college is planted, not so large as the other three. A closer scrutiny of the map reveals the fact that the hills of India also form a triangle, lying within the first. Starting near the southern end of the peninsula, two ranges, the Eastern and Western Ghats, run up parallel to the two coasts, leaving a strip of flat land between their bases and the sea. Across the north run the Vindhya and Satpura Mountains. Within the triangle thus formed lie the Highlands of Hindustan and, in the south, the great upland known as the Dekhan. The north-west corner is marked by the Aravallies in the centre Of Rajputana, while at the north-east corner stands the sacred hill of Parasnath, concerning both of which we shall have .more to say. Beyond the .mountain triangle stretches an immense plain which covers the whole of North India and forms the basin of two of the world's mightiest rivers, the Ganges and the Indus. Rising together in the far north, the Indus flows south-west to the Arabian Sea, the Ganges south-east to the Bay of Bengal, and between them they drain the half of India. Beyond the two rivers, shutting off India from the rest of Asia, runs the gigantic rocky wall of the Himalayas, whose glittering snowy peaks, as they pierce the blue, can be seen far over the burning plain. Of the peoples that inhabit this land many, strange to say, are our own cousins, though the exact degree of cousinship would be hard to tell. Ages ago our ancestors and theirs lived together somewhere in the heart of Asia, forming one people and speaking one language. But, by and by, when our ancestors moved west into Europe, the Hindus moved south and occupied India. They were not the first inhabitants, but found an RELIEF MAP OF INDIA To face page 42 A TRIANGLE AND TWO RIVERS 43 older race whom they drove up into the hills, just as our ancestors drove the Celts. Some of these aboriginal tribes still survive, of whom may be mentioned the Bhils in the Aravalli Mountains and the Santals in the jungle around Parasnath. Among both these peoples our missionaries work. It is curious to reflect that there is a wider difference of race between a Rajput and a Bhil, or between a Brahmin and a Santal, though they are next-door neighbours, than between a Scotsman and a Rajput or a Brahmin. About the time of the Norman Conquest there came another great invasion of India. Hordes of Mohamme- dans forced their way through the mountains of the north-west and poured down upon the plain of the two rivers. There they gradually established a powerful empire, till the Great Mogul, seated on the Peacock Throne in Delhi, was the overlord of all India. This accounts for the fact that there are over sixty million Mohammedans in India to-day. Two Hindu races, however, maintained, in their mountain fastnesses, a heroic struggle against the proud Mohammedans. They were the Rajputs and the Marathas. Immediately to the south of Delhi, in the north-west corner of the mountain triangle, dwelt the Rajputs, whose hill-forts among the Aravallies even Akbar the Great could never thoroughly subdue. The hills to the south-east of Bombay were the home of the Marathas, among whom arose a hero second to none in the annals of daring and chivalry. As the Mogul Empire decayed the Marathas overran Central India and their wild cavalry carried the terror of their name to every corner of the land. The chief seat of their power was at Poona, and from there westward to Nagpur is still known as the Maratha country. Having now gained some idea of the land in general, and especially of the chief centres where our missions are to be found, it will be most natural and easy to visit them in the following order. We land at Bombay and take our first impressions of the country and the people 44 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS and the work. Next, we shall visit the Maratha country. Then, returning to Bombay, strike due north to Rajpu- tana. From there cross the north of India to Calcutta, travelling down the Ganges valley through the renowned cities of the Moguls and the Mutiny country, and visiting on the way the Santals in the jungle around Parasnath. From Calcutta a voyage down the Coro- mandel coast to Madras will complete our survey. CHAPTER X IN THE BAZAAR THE approach to India is not impressive. Seven days east of Aden, a lone, low hill appears on the horizon and behind it is the city of Bombay. The island, on which the city stands, lies close to the shore, making a sheltered roadstead between it and the mainland. At the south end of the island is a wide, horseshoe bay, and, as we sail past, we see a fine esplanade sweeping round the sea front. Yonder, at the head of the bay, stands our missionary college, named after its founder Dr. John Wilson, one of the greatest names in the missionary history of India. Immediately behind the college can be seen the Towers of Silence, where the Parsees expose their dead to be devoured by vultures, so that the sacred elements of fire, air, earth, and water may not be pol- luted. Steaming round the eastmost horn of the bay, with the gaudy lighthouse at its extremity, we enter the spacious harbour, beautified with islands and crowded with shipping. The city opens out before us, not in the least like the India of our dreams, but exactly like one of our home cities, with massive lines of warehouses, and scores of factory chimneys blackening the air with their smoke. We land and find the tramcar, the post office, the railway station. Do not be deceived nor disappointed. This is not India, it is but England on Indian soil. The real India has yet to be seen. All over this great land our fellow- countrymen are to be met rulers, soldiers, planters, traders. They have done much for India, but they are not India. For the most part their life is separate 45 46 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS and distinct. The European quarter in the cities lies apart from the native, and the military cantonment is a town by itself. Many live in India for years and never see the native in his own home. Some of these are the people who come back and declare they never met a native Christian nor saw a native church. I knew a man who lived for years in India and never saw a snake but then he never went to look for snakes. We have come to see the real India, and get to know, as far as may be, the heart of its people, and what the Gospel is doing for them. We turn our steps, therefore, to the native quarter of the city for our first glimpse of the people in their own homes. The bazaar is a feature of every Indian city. The word has no such associations as it has with us. It simply denotes the quarter of the city where the native shops are. Usually it is a terrible tangle of narrow streets and crooked lanes. The houses are thrown to- gether without any uniform plan, except the uniformity of being all awry. They " reel like a row of drunken men arm in arm." The shops have neither doors, windows, nor counters. The whole front is open to the street and the shopman sits on the floor inside with all his goods around him. Here he lives, cooks his dinner, washes his face, changes his clothes all in the face of the public. Many of these shopkeepers are craftsmen as well. The potter sits at his wheel, next door is the blacksmith. Here is the goldbeater, and, beside him, the worker in brass. Every variety of handi- craft is to be found in the bazaar. An hour or two of wandering through these bewilder- ing lanes has stamped some vivid impressions on our minds impressions which a wider experience of India will only confirm. The first impression is of a land teeming with life, human and animal. The narrow streets and lanes are thronged and congested with endless moving masses of brown people. Yet only a fraction of India's millions live in the cities. The profusion of animal life is even IN THE BAZAAR 47 more striking. All sorts of strange creatures thrust themselves into the streets in the most incongruous fashion. Grey Indian crows and chattering minas hop about as thick as sparrows, goats plough their way through the traffic, ponderous bullocks saunter along the pavement and lie down to sleep at the shop doors, troops of monkeys scream and fight upon the house- tops. Another impression is of glaring light and vivid colours. The sun beats with dazzling effect on the white walls, the shadows are black and deep. The moving crowd has all the colours of a carnival, the men in white with turbans of green and yellow, the women in hoods of blue. All so different from the dull browns and sombre greys that fill our streets at home. But impressions of a less pleasing kind begin to pre- vail. On every hand we are assailed by filth and evil smells. Rudyard Kipling, who was born in Bombay, can say no more than this for his native city, that its odour is a degree less horrible than Calcutta's. Bombay, he assures us, has " a veneer of asafoetida " which Calcutta lacks ! Mark the three little red circles on the door yonder. That spells three cases of plague. In these stifling lanes and filthy hovels the dreaded plague lurks and festers continually, and, at times, rising on the putrid air, it carries off its victims in tens of thousands. The sun glares down mercilessly out of an aching empty sky. We begin to feel the oppressiveness of a dusty, weary land, and as we gaze more narrowly on the passing crowd, we seem to see on many faces a weary, burdened look. They wear the aspect of a soft-treading, much-enduring people, patiently bowing under the yoke of their fate, but with little zest in life and less hope in death. But, hark, the singing ! It sounds like " Rock of Ages." How strange to hear the old familiar tune in a place like this ! The music comes from a little group gathered at the street corner, exactly like an open-air meeting at home. 48 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS It is one of our missionaries preaching in the bazaar. He stands in the centre of the group with a ring of native helpers round him. One leads the singing with a concertina. The tune is familiar but the words are strange. We may hazard a guess that they are Marathi or Gujarati, although sixty languages are spoken in the city. The crowd increases, shopmen lean out of their shops to listen, passers-by linger a few moments. The hymn concluded, the missionary begins to speak. He is inter- rupted, somebody in the crowd appears to ask a ques- tion, a rough fellow moves away with a harsh laugh. A face here and there betrays interest, but most show merely blank indifference or idle curiosity. Another hymn and the crowd breaks up. What do these brown men and women think of it all ? The missionary stands for a few moments survey- ing the ceaseless throng. In his heart is a prayer that the good seed sown by the wayside may not be lost, but may spring up somewhere and be reaped in God's great harvest day. As he passes up the street he sees an old man at his shop door, with spectacles on, poring over a tract that was put in his hand an hour ago. CHAPTER XI CASTE AND OUTCAST \ OVER, two hundred millions of the people of India are Hindus. They, with the sixty-two millions of Moham- medans, make up nine-tenths of the population. The remaining tenth is divided into various sects, of which one only need be mentioned here the Parsees. There are less than a hundred thousand of them in all India, but seventy thousand live in Bombay and are by far the wealthiest and best educated of the natives. Many of the merchant princes of Bombay are Parsees. The Hindu religion is an amazing labyrinth. There are actually more gods in India than human beings. The sacred books give the number as 330 millions. All these are regarded as in some way part of one divine essence, though some are more renowned and more widely worshipped than others. The whole land is filled with sacred places, from the stateliest temple to the rude shrine at which the peasant offers his handful of rice. Images abound everywhere under a tree, down by the stream, at the end of the village street for everywhere are the demons and spirits that need to be appeased. At certain seasons gorgeous festivals are held, and the holy cities draw their thousands of pil- grims from all parts. The Hindu believes that at death his soul will enter another body, it may be of man or bird or beast. " Do you hear the bird singing yonder in the tree ? " said an aged Hindu to his friend. " If you hear such a voice when I am gone, think that it may be me. I will come and sing to you if I can." But no Hindu can tell what E 49 50 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS his future life will be, and the awful uncertainty lies dark upon his spirit. Hindu society is divided into a number of castes or grades which are rigidly separate from one another. The members of a caste are held to be descended from a common ancestor, and they usually follow the same occupation, generation after generation. No man can ever rise to be a member of a higher caste than that in which he was born. The highest caste is that of the Brahmins, the here- ditary priests of India, who number fifteen millions, though less than three millions are actually engaged in religious service. In all, over two thousand castes have been enumerated, shading down through varying degrees from the Brahmin at the top to the Pariah at the bottom of the scale. Each caste has its own rules and customs which strictly govern the lives of its members, prescribing in minute detail what they must eat and drink and wear. These rules are as binding as the Ten Commandments. The one deadly sin is to break caste. A Hindu would shudder at the thought, as we should at suicide. His own mother would sooner see him laid in the grave, his whole family would be overwhelmed with grief and shame. Caste is the bitterest foe of the Gospel in India. Where caste reigns there can be no Christian brother- hood. To sit at the Lord's Table and break bread with foreigners or with men of other castes is impossible till caste is utterly renounced. What that means can only be imagined by those who know the tyranny of caste. Our earliest native convert in Western India, when he came to his first communion, was torn with fearful emotions, and when, at length, the sacred bread was offered him, he started up, crying out, " I cannot break my caste," and rushed distracted from the church. It may be imagined then what a storm arose in Bombay when Dr. Wilson, having planted our mission- ary college in that city, began to make converts among CASTE AND OUTCAST 51 his students. The whole city was in an uproar and the young men had to take refuge in Dr. Wilson's house. Appeal was made to the law courts, parents took per- jured oaths that their sons were under age and must be given up, the lives of the missionary and his con- verts were in daily peril. Similar scenes were witnessed in Calcutta and else- where, and the same bitter spirit still lives in India, especially in the small towns and secluded villages, where feelings of caste are strongest and the Brahmin holds undisputed sway. Young converts have been kidnapped and imprisoned, some even put to death. Over the fate of others a dark cloud hangs. They dis- appeared and were never more heard of. The bitterness, the fury, the cruel bigotry of caste can barely be imagined. Venkata Rau was a drunkard and a profligate whose family and friends had turned their backs upon him. The only exception was his wife, who still fondly clung to him. By God's grace he became a Christian, and, as soon as she heard it, his faithful wife fled away from him in horror. A drunkard and a profligate she could endure, but not a Christian, not a man who had broken caste. It is an appalling prospect for a Hindu when he stands on the brink of decision for Christ. His heart is rent in twain, every tender link of home and childhood must be snapped, he must literally forsake all if he would follow Jesus. No wonder there are many secret dis- ciples among the Hindus. Who could greatly blame one who says, " I cannot break my mother's heart. Let my old father go down to the grave in peace." In some cases a man's own family will entreat him, saying, " Worship God as you will. Be a Christian at heart. Only we beseech you, do not bring sorrow and shame upon us all by breaking caste." Is it surprising if some yield, and silence, as best they can, the reproaches of an uneasy conscience ? But there are others who have heard the voice of Jesus, saying, " He that loveth father or mother more 52 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS than Me is not worthy of Me," and at that voice they have forsaken all. Among Dr. Wilson's early converts there were two whose names became household words in Scotland. The first was a Parsee, called Dhanjibhai Nauroji. With two student friends he confessed Christ in 1839. The wealthy and powerful Parsees were furious at his conversion. He had to be guarded by soldiers in Dr. Wilson's house. He was shot at through the window. For six months he dared not show face. But he stood firm, and, after three years of study in Edin- burgh, he was ordained to the Christian ministry by Dr. Candlish in Tanfield Hall. His dark face, with pointed turban, appears in D. O. Hill's famous picture of the Disruption, inserted along with that of Adolph Saphir as the first-fruits of the Church's work in foreign fields. Nauroji lived to become the " grand old man " of the Church in Western India, and died in 1908, in the eighty-seventh year of his age and the sixty -third of his ministry the last survivor of all the notable faces in the historic Disruption picture. The other convert was Narayan Sheshadri, a Brahmin, who was baptised in 1843. Thirty years after, referring to that never-to-be-forgotten day, he said, " It was terrible to be torn from a beloved father, from four brothers and three sisters, and from a loving mother the like of whom I have not seen among my people. My elder brother received such a shock, when he heard of my conversion, that he went out of his mind. But, when I thought of the Lord Jesus leaving the bosom of the everlasting Father and shedding His precious blood upon the accursed tree, I saw that it was worth while giving up everything for His sake even life itself, if need be." This noble Brahmin, leaving his home and renouncing the exclusive privilege of his priestly caste, made him- self the servant of the meanest of his people for Jesus' sake. He spent a long life as a Christian minister, labouring at Jalna among the Mangs and Mahars, the CASTE AND OUTCAST 53 lowest castes in the Marat ha country people whose very shadow in passing is pollution to a Brahmin. Such a life foretells the day when, in Christ, there shall be neither caste nor outcast, but one great brotherhood, embracing India's millions. CHAPTER XII THE PRIDE OF THE PESHWAS THE country to the south-east of Bombay is known as the Maratha country. The railway runs through the Konkan, a narrow strip of plain between the Western Ghats and the sea, and interesting as the place where Scotland first preached the Gospel in India. Gradually we draw nearer the hills, which tower like a great wall on the left. Now we begin the steep ascent with the help of a special engine. Up and up the line goes for fifteen miles. Every mile the air feels fresher, still hot, indeed, but not like the sweltering plain below. Now we reach the summit and rush away across the broad Dekhan. Forty-two miles more and we are in Poona. Poona is an important and historic city. Here, on the bank of the Mutha, 150,000 people find their home. In the busy streets can be heard the click of the silk and cotton weaver's loom, and the ring of the metal- worker's hammer. Four months in the year the Gover- nor of Bombay comes up to Poona to escape the stifling heat of the capital, and breathe the purer air of the Dekhan. But Poona has little respect for the Government. On the contrary, it has long been a stronghold of Hindu- ism and of disloyalty. The Brahmins of Poona are the cleverest, proudest, and bitterest of their race. Watch some of the faces in the street. Mark the small, square, shaven head, the heavy brows shadowing the glittering eyes, the thin and tightly drawn lips. These are men of subtle mind, of invincible pride, of pitiless cruelty. Poona is a most religious place. On a low hill to the 54 THE PRIDE OF THE PESHWAS 55 south of the city stands the temple of Parvati, a famous shrine of Hinduism. Unhappily religion here does not mean morality. Quite the reverse. At that abominable shrine on the hill fair young girls are bought by the priests or dedicated by their parents to a life of shame. So that, as a native Christian said, the whole region round has " the smell of Satan." The pride of Poona has roots of patriotism as well as of religion. The city is divided into seven wards, named after the seven days of the week. In the Saturday ward stands the ruined palace of the Peshwas. Only the wall remains, but to the Brahmin it speaks stirringly of a glorious past. Two centuries and a half ago, about the time our forefathers were contending for Christ's crown and cove- nant, there arose a hero among the Marathas, by name Sivaji, who performed amazing exploits against the powers of the Great Mogul. From the city can be seen a bold, square peak in the range of hills to the south. On that peak was " the lion's den," as the Marathas called it, the old fort of Singarh, in which Sivaji lurked and out of which he leaped with unerring swiftness upon his prey. A " mountain rat " the Great Mogul dubbed him in contempt, but Aurungzebe could neither catch nor kill the rat. His gorgeous armies were worn out in the long campaigns, and, as the Mogul Empire decayed, the Marathas became a power in the land. But the Peshwas ? They were the hereditary Prime Ministers of the Maratha state, who gradually took into their own hands the whole royal power, till the Peshwa's palace in Poona became the governing centre of the kingdom. Still their empire grew and spread over the broad Dekhan. Nothing could withstand the wild onrush of their cavalry. Flying squadrons of marauders watered their horses at every stream in India, while English merchants trembled behind their desks in Cal- cutta and dug the Maratha trench in front of the town. Then Wellington came he was not the Iron Duke in those days, but plain General Wellesley and he 56 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS smashed the Maratha power. The battle was fought at Assaye, a hundred miles west of Poona, in the district where we now have our Jalna mission. It was the most fiercely contested battle our soldiers had up till then fought in India, and by it the Empire of India passed from the Marathas to the British. When our missionaries first went to Poona in 1831, these events were fresh in the minds of the people. Men were still living who had seen the Peshwa's palace in flames. It could hardly be expected that they should welcome the Gospel. The hand that had smitten with the sword now offered the Bible. It seemed treason to accept it, and, to this day, it is counted unpatriotic among the Marathas to be a Christian. Nowhere is Christian love and patience more sorely tried than in the proud city of Poona. The preacher of the Gospel, as he stands in the street delivering his message, is an object of public scorn. Passing Brahmins jeer at him and sometimes he may require police pro- tection from the violence of the mob. Now and again some precious fruits are gathered, and a little Christian congregation worships in Poona. A hospital also has recently been built, where works of healing, done in the name of Christ, may help somewhat to soften preju- dice. But the ranks of the proud Brahmins remain practically unbroken. They turn from the Gospel with disdain. It is written that God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the base things of the world and things that are despised to confound the mighty. So has it come to pass in India. As the Brahmins are above all other castes, so, beneath all others, are the Mangs, or village menials, who stand next to the Pariahs or outcasts. One step above the Mangs are the Mahars or village messengers. In the old days in Poona the Brahmins imposed three degrading laws upon the Mahars. They must wear a necklace of black wool to mark them out when they went on their errands. They must trail a palm branch tied to their waists and THE PRIDE OF THE PESHWAS 57 hanging down behind so as to sweep the road and cleanse it from the pollution of their footprints. They must also carry a vessel in which to spit that the road might not be defiled. Meantime my lord the Brahmin stalked along spitting to his heart's content. Such is Brahmin pride, and such the contempt with which the lowest castes are regarded. Now, behold the grace of our Saviour. While the Brahmin has rejected the message of salvation multi- tudes of the lowest castes have gladly welcomed it. From among the Mangs and Mahars have come most of our converts in the Maratha country. Of course, the Brahmin sneers and says the Gospel is only fit for sweepers, even as of old the Pharisees said, " the friend of publicans and sinners." A hundred miles north-east of Poona is Jalna, and there you will find hundreds of low-caste people in our mission churches. It was among them that Dr. Narayan Sheshadri spent his long life of noble and Christ -like service. He it was who founded in 1869 the Christian village of Bethel, for the relief of those who, through accepting the Gospel, had lost their employment. Sometimes we hear talk at home about " rice Chris- tians," and it is said that these low-caste people come to the mission for what they will get. If that is their motive they soon find out their mistake, for even Mangs and Mahars have much to suffer for Jesus' sake. An incident which happened not long ago in one of the villages near Jalna will show the splendid faith and fortitude of these despised converts. It is the duty of the Mangs to beat the drums at the village festivals. After becoming Christians many still continued to do so, saying they could beat the drum without worshipping the idol. It was dangerous ground, and the missionary, when he came to visit them, urged them to be out and out for Christ, even at the risk of their daily bread. The Mangs discussed the matter among themselves and prayed about it. It was a terrible strait to be in, for they were pitifully poor. 58 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS " I was sitting at my tent door in the bright moon- light," writes the missionary, " when I heard the village drums begin to beat. Nearer and nearer the sound came, mingled with shouting. What could it mean ? Were the people defiant ? At last I caught the words, ' Christ maharajki jai ! ' Victory to Christ ! and then I knew what it meant. Up they came, a triumphant throng, the drummers drumming as they had never drummed before. Casting down the drums upon the ground, they raised again the shout, * Victory to Christ ! ' Then, standing in the moonlight, grouped around the fallen emblems of their bondage, we sang together the doxology, and it was as the voice of a mighty host that had gained a great victory." How miserable is the Brahmin's pride ! " Hath not God chosen the poor of India, rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which He hath promised to them that love Him?" CHAPTER XIII AS THE SAND OF THE SEA IN the spring of 1845 a tall horseman rode out of the city of Poona, accompanied by a lady borne along in a palanquin. The horseman is Stephen Hislop, our first missionary to Nagpur. He has a six weeks' ride before him ere his destination is reached, five hundred miles east of Bombay. The church in Nagpur will long cherish the memory of his remarkable career and work, how he preached and taught and studied, how he discovered the coalfields of Central India, how his first convert lay four months in prison till Hislop made all India ring about it, how he saved the English residents from massacre at the time of the Mutiny, and how, at last, his brave and noble life came to a tragic end, on the dark night when he rode over the bank of a swollen stream, and horse and rider were swept away. Nagpur, in the old Maratha days, was the seat of the Bhonsla princes, to-day it is the capital of the Central Provinces. Our mission here has been called a " model mission." It embraces every department of missionary work. There is the Hislop College with its hostels. There are street preachers and zenana visitors. There are schools for boys and girls, a dispensary, and a book- shop for Christian literature. In the country districts round there are numerous centres of work among the villages. India is, above everything, a land of villages. Take the biggest wall-map of India and a pepper-box. Sprinkle the pepper all over the map, giving an extra shake or two above the part that represents the Ganges 59 60 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS valley. Then say to yourself, " Each of these innumer- able grains is a village." The land is covered with them. They seem to have fallen as thick as snowflakes on every plain and vale and hill. Their actual number is over half a million, and 285 millions of people live in them. So that, for every native that lives in the cities of India, twenty live in the villages. Now shut your eyes and think. Here we are at Nagpur, in the heart of this mighty land. A thousand miles it stretches to north and to south of us ; the dis- tance east and west is hardly less great. Everywhere throughout the length and breadth of it the villages are scattered, " as the stars of the sky in multitude and as the sand which is by the seashore innumerable." If one were to start on a journey through the villages of India, spending only a single day in each, it would take fourteen hundred years to complete the journey. Need- less to say, nobody has ever attempted it, nobody has ever been in all the villages of India. Yet there they all are, each one containing on an average five to six hundred men, women, and children, who are born and die, toil and play, joy and sorrow, just as people do in a Scottish village. The headman of the village is the patel, and, assisting him, is the patwari or village clerk, usually a Brahmin, who keeps a record of the village lands. Besides those who cultivate the land there are the village artisans the carpenter, the blacksmith, the potter, the barber, etc., who are paid for their work by receiving a share of the harvest. Each of the trades belongs to a separate caste, so that the carpenter's son must be a carpenter and the potter's son a potter. The village houses are mere huts with thatched roofs, but many have quite an air of respectability with their whitewashed walls and neat verandas. Outside the village wall are huddled together the homes of the out- casts, wretched hovels where dwell the leather workers and pariahs of all sorts who are counted too unclean to tread the village street. AS THE SAND OF THE SEA 61 Such is the Indian village, and such it has been from time immemorial. India's thrilling history has left no mark upon her villages. Invaders have come down from the mountains and up from the sea, empires have risen and fallen, but ever the village ryot followed his patient oxen, and the village potter spun his wheel. It is said there may still be found, in remote districts, some who believe that the Great Mogul is reigning to this day in Delhi. It is evening, and the lengthening shadows are wel- come after the glaring heat of the day. Round the village well the men have gathered for their chat and smoke in the gloaming. Suddenly there is a stir, caused by the appearance of a company of strangers. It is the missionary, who is on tour with some of his native helpers. This is not the first time he has been in the village, else the excitement would be greater, and end- less questions would have to be answered. The mis- sionary has been here before, and indeed there are one or two Christian families in the village. The news spreads and the crowd about the well thickens rapidly. Not that there is general interest in the preacher's message. Far from that ! But the meeting is a welcome diversion, and the people are dis- posed to be friendly, keeping, at the same time, on their guard, for they have heard of magic powders that can bewitch the soul. So they gather round with some curiosity, but no sense of reverence. The native evangelist is the first to speak, and, with marvellous patience and earnestness, he holds on his way, under a running fire of comments, questions, and objections, foolish and otherwise. Meantime darkness has fallen, and the magic-lantern is produced and focussed, the screen being simply stretched across the street. The lantern is always a draw. Even the supercilious Brahmin comes sneaking up at the back of the crowd. Pictures of the Saviour are never shown, for fear it should be thought they were sacred pictures to be worshipped. But the parables are 62 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS depicted and many other Bible scenes, familiar to us but wonderfully fresh to the people of the East, who, to-day as of old, are never weary of a story. By and by a bitter opponent discovers himself in the audience. He interrupts, mocks, questions, till the speaker is in despair. The situation is rapidly getting beyond endurance when relief comes from an unexpected quarter. A certain long-eared animal, that is wandering round the outskirts of the crowd, suddenly commands the attention of the company by uttering a loud hee- haw. Whereupon the speaker, fixing his eye upon the obnoxious individual (not the donkey), says, in quiet, clear tones, " You may go home now, your brother is calling you." This sally is greeted with general laughter, and the objector is sufficiently discomfited to hold his tongue. The Gospel story is resumed, and the attention of the hearers deepens. It seems as if the Word has gripped. After a long hour the service ends and the crowd breaks up. " Sahib, it is a good word," some of them say, but they feel that, somehow, it belongs to a different world from theirs. They cannot dream of change. To the Christians in the village this visit has been as water to a thirsty land. After the meeting they sit and talk with the missionary, far into the night. They have much to tell of trial and difficulty. Work has been hard to get, an attempt has been made to forbid them water from the village well, scorn and abuse have been heaped upon them. Yet they are hopeful and confident. Pre- judice is beginning to break down, and Christian patience will surely win the day. They have a request to make which has long lain on their hearts. Could not a native teacher be stationed in the village ? They have spoken to the patel about it and he is favourable. Ground could be got, and a little house built for church and school. But the missionary sadly shakes his head. It is a splendid opening, for the village lies in the centre of a densely AS THE SAND OF THE SEA 63 populated district. But it would cost twenty pounds, and he knows he cannot get a single penny more. Stretched upon his tent bed, he turns it over in his mind. " Oh the pity of it ! Only twenty pounds ! If every member of the home Church would give but a single halfpenny in fifty years, that would do it. Surely not a heavy tax a halfpenny per lifetime, centenarians one penny ! " He smiles a weary smile which is a sigh, and so sleeps. At the first streak of dawn he is up and out, for another long day is ahead of him. Some of the villagers stand round to see the start. " Sahib, when will you return ? " one asks. But the sahib cannot tell. There are sixteen hundred other villages in his parish, every one as needy as this one. Who knows when he will be back, or how the little handful of disciples will fare till his return ? God give them grace to stand true ! As he moves off, again the thought conies to him, " Ah, that twenty pounds ! " CHAPTER XIV BEHIND THE PURDAH A HINDU writer has said that, though there are many sects in India, all are agreed on two main points, the sanctity of the cow and the depravity of women. There is, unhappily, too much truth in that saying. The life of the women in India is full of dark tragedy. They suffer many things we dare not write about, and shudder to think of. Multitudes, no doubt, are con- tented and happy enough, never having known any other mode of life, but multitudes more carry weary hearts, and daily feel the degradation and misery of their lot. Home in India is not what home is in Scotland. When the young bridegroom is leaving the house on his wedding morning, his mother asks him, " Baba, where are you going ? " "To bring in your maidservant," he replies. And that, in reality, is what he does. The young couple do not settle in a cosy little home of their own, but the bride comes to live at her husband's father's house, where his married brothers with their wives and children live, and where she is under the rule of her mother-in- law. She does not sit at table with her husband, but serves him first and then eats what is left. In every way she is treated as an inferior being. Three great wrongs are inflicted on the women of India. First, the zenana. All the Mohammedan and Hindu women of the higher classes are practically prisoners in their own homes. Incredible care is taken to keep them hidden. Cases are on record of jealous husbands putting their wives to death because some man had accidentally caught a glimpse of them. The purdah lady herself counts it highly indecent to be seen. When she goes 64 BEHIND THE PURDAH 65 out, she either drives in a purdah ghari, a cart covered with curtains, or she walks closely veiled. The zenana, or women's part of the house, may vary from the extensive wing of a Rajah's palace, walled round and guarded like a prison, to a dingy room or two in the back part of some humbler dwelling. There the womenfolk of the family spend their tedious days and nights, cut off from all the sights and sounds of the out- side world, and often seeing nothing from the window but a little strip of sky. Thus life passes with them, dull, monotonous, debasing, often embittered by the jealousy of a rival wife or the spite of a sister-in-law, and with no events of note, save the births, marriages, and deaths of the members of the household. This purdah system is strictest in the north, where Mohammedans are most numerous, but its bane- ful influence is felt all over India. The second great wrong is early marriage. Girls are married when only ten or twelve years old, and happy childhood comes to an end. Some will have one or two children by the time they are fourteen. Many die, the rest grow old before their time, worn out in body and spirit. Hindu women in middle life look painfully aged and decrepit. But the most tragic wrong of all is compulsory widow- hood. It would need a pen dipped in blood and tears to record the sorrows of the widows of India. There are twenty-three millions of them, many of whom have never really been married at all. A little baby girl is betrothed to a baby boy, or it may be to an old man. You meet a marriage procession coming down the village street, the bridegroom walking in front, his spindle legs and feeble gait plainly indicating that his best days are over. But where is the bride ? Observe the string tied to the bridegroom's arm, the other end of which is tied to the infant in that woman's arms. She, poor, wee mite, is the bride, though she little knows it. To- day she is betrothed and bound to this old man for life. When he dies she is a widow and may never marry again. 66 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS These millions of widows, then, have in many cases never lived with their husbands, nor even seen them. They were widows since before they can remember, and widows they must remain to the last. Their lot is un- speakably hard. The child-widow has her beautiful hair shorn off ; her sisters get pretty dresses and bright jewels, but she must wear none ; she keeps out of sight on feast days, for her presence is unlucky ; when her brothers bring home their wives she is their servant and the household drudge. Her whole life is under a curse. Through her sin, she is taught, her husband died, and for this she must endure the punishment of a cheerless existence, till death sets her free. These conditions under which the women of India live explain the need of special women's missions. Only the lady missionary can teach in girls' schools, visit the zenanas, and do medical work among the purdah ladies. Men could not possibly do such work, and yet it must be done if India is to be saved. The mothers must be converted ere there can be Christian homes, and the girls must be educated as well as the boys. Let us visit one of our girls' schools. There are a hundred of them, but one will suffice. We enter, and find classrooms and desks as in a school at home. But, over the desks, rows of brown faces peer at us with curiosity. Many look bright and bonny, with their big, dark eyes and glossy black hair. All wear long dresses, and the little girls of the infant class look like dolly women with their wee bare feet peeping out. The roll is called " Tarabai, Sitabai, Venubai, Chun- drabai." How queer their names should all end in ' bai ' ! No queerer than that other names should end in ' -ie,' as Jeanie, Maggie, Jessie. It simply means that little girls in India, like little girls in Scotland, are dear pets. The work of the school begins. It is amusing to listen to the infants learning the alphabet, and swaying to and fro as they chant the syllables, " kaka, kiki, kuku, BEHIND THE PURDAH 67 kekei, kokau." Another class is at arithmetic, and they reel off the multiplication table at an amazing rate, for they have excellent memories. A pencil falls on the floor, but nobody stoops to pick it up. Only a little brown foot creeps out from below the desk, the toes grip the pencil, and swiftly convey it to the hand. We sadly realise how much we lose by wearing boots ! The most precious hour of the school day is the Bible hour, when all the old familiar stories are told to little ears that never heard the name of Jesus at a mother's knee. How eagerly they listen, and how keen they are to answer. Who can tell how much of the truth they will carry away and repeat at home ? Lulloobai was a little princess who once came to school in Nagpur. She told the teacher that her elder sister, who was the Rajah's queen, and was shut up in the zenana of the palace, had sent her to learn all she could, and repeat the lessons when she went home. Unhappily the authorities of the palace soon put a stop to her coming. But many other scholars carry the story of Jesus into Hindu homes. It is school prize day, the crowning day of the year, and all the girls are dressed in their brightest. The little ones sit on the floor in front, and the varied hues of their saris make the room look like a bed of gorgeous flowers. A hymn is sung, followed by a programme of action songs. Then comes the great event, the pre- sentation of the prizes. It is a charming sight to see the wee tots making their pretty salaams of thanks. Some fairly beam with delight as they clasp a dolly in their arms and toddle away, looking more than ever like little mothers. The prize of the school falls to a girl of nine, whose winsome face looks very happy. As she takes the prize she flashes a radiant glance to her teacher. These two have a secret between them. Radhibai had set her heart on the prize. On the morning of the examina- tion her grandmother bade her go and pray to the family god. She refused, saying she prayed to Jesus only. 68 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS Then said her grandmother, " If you don't get the prize you will know it is no use to pray to Jesus." But Radhi- bai declared she would pray to Jesus whether she got the prize or not. So when the results came out and she knew that the coveted prize was to be hers, her little heart was so full she could not help but tell her teacher all about it. But, all this while, we are saying to ourselves, " Where are the big girls ? " Our question is soon answered. The school has no Standards V and VI because the girls of that age have all been married. A few are allowed to come back to school after marriage, but not many. If in their new homes their lessons are forgotten, and the Gospel story fades from memory like a dream of child- hood, who can wonder at it ? The zenana workers try to follow up the teaching of the schools by visiting the women and girls in their homes. They go from house to house, wherever they can find admission, and carry the Gospel to those who are shut in from hearing it in any other way. Follow one of our zenana ladies in her round of visits, and we shall get some idea of the work. The first house she enters is of some pretension. The ladies' apartments are done up partly in European style, or, to be more exact, they have the taste and elegance of furnished lodgings. Into this home one of the school- girls has recently come as a bride. She gives her friend a shy welcome, and her dark, wistful eyes speak eloquent things. One can see the little creature is wearying for her mother. The mother-in-law, who rules the house- hold, is aggressively dirty, and wears, in fact, the appear- ance of a withered old hag. Quite a contrast are her daughters-in-law, who flaunt gaudy dresses and an amount of glittering jewelry. Some children are play- ing on the floor; other, more minute inhabitants, if unseen, will presently begin to be felt. The visitor sings a hymn and is asked to sing another. Conversation follows, but it is not easy to make headway. A boy of fourteen or fifteen keeps running in and out. BEHIND THE PURDAH 69 Every time he enters the little bride has to veil her face, for the boy is her husband's uncle ! By and by one of the sisters-in-law grows impatient and begins to flounce about the room, jingling her abundant jewelry. The visitor feels it is time to take her leave. Still her sweet singing and gentle courtesy have made a favourable impression, and a hearty invitation is given to come again. When she is gone the old lady changes her clothes and takes a bath to get rid of ceremonial un- cleanness, which is the only form of pollution she dreads. The next house is a house of mourning. The visitor's little friend and pupil is dead. Her sister-in-law tells how, as the end drew near, she spoke strange things about a shepherd. Then the mission lady remembers that, on her last visit, the dying girl asked her to sing " The Lord's my shepherd," and she thanks God for one poor lamb who went down through the dark valley fearing no evil because the Good Shepherd was near. It is the close of the afternoon, and the visitor feels she has hardly strength for her last visit. The narrow street is stifling, and not a breath of air reaches the dingy little court in the centre of the house. It is hardly possible to sing or speak in the cruel heat, with parched lips and throbbing head. She rises to take her leave, with a dull sense of the hopelessness of it all. As she reaches the door, a little brown hand slips a tiny silver coin into hers, and a girl's voice whispers, " That is for the Lord Jesus." In that Hindu home a girl had been quietly praying to Jesus for her father's recovery, and this is her thank-offering. It would be a mistake to imagine that many secret disciples are hidden in the zenanas, yet there are some. For if it is hard for a man to confess Christ in India, it is a thousand times harder for a woman. As well might a lamb try to escape out of the paw of a lion as a Hindu woman attempt to break the fetters of caste. Yet the Gospel, with patience and sympathy, is working wonders, and there will yet be seen this crowning wonder, of India a land of Christian homes. CHAPTER XV THE KEY TO A PRINCE'S HEART RETURNING to Bombay from the Maratha country, we strike due north to the land of the Rajputs. Raj- putana lies at the north-west corner of the mountain triangle. Up through the middle of the country run the Aravallies, which in olden times were the refuge of the Rajputs in their struggle for liberty against the Great Mogul. To the west, the land is mostly barren veldt, stretching out into the Great Indian Desert. To-day the Rajputs are governed by their own native princes, in loyal subjection to our king. One district in the centre, Ajmer, is directly under British rule, and round about it are grouped the native states, twenty in number, of which the most important are Jaipur to the north of Ajmer, Jodhpur to the west, and Udaipur to the south. The native princes bear the title of Maharaja, except the prince of Udaipur, who is called the Maharana. Of the ten million people who inhabit Rajputana, scarcely one million are genuine Rajputs. They form, however, the ruling caste, and no matter how poor a Rajput may be, he holds his head high, for he knows he is kin to the prince. They belong to the same race as ourselves, and many a Rajput, with his stalwart frame and bushy beard, bears not a little resemblance to a burly Scotch farmer. There is among them, too, the high-spirited pride and independence which we associate with the land of heather. A small farmer, who had been ruined by the famine, was offered seed corn by the Government, but he drew himself up proudly. " I am a Rahtor," he said, " I cannot take charity." 70 THE KEY TO A PRINCE'S HEART 71 Proceeding up the east side of the Aravallies, we reach Chitor, the junction for Udaipur, which lies sixty-nine miles distant among the hills. Before we enter the little train which climbs up the narrow-gauge line to Udaipur, we must give more than a passing glance to Chitor, for here, perhaps better than anywhere, we may learn the pride and matchless prowess of the Rajputs. In the days of the Great Mogul Chitor was the capital of Udaipur. Perched on a towering rock, that rises five hundred feet sheer out of the plain, the fort and royal palace are still to be seen, magnificently strong, but, alas ! not impregnable. When the Moslem hosts came sweeping south from Delhi and Agra, it stood right in the line of their march and bore the brunt of their terrible assault. Three times the fortress of Chitor was stormed, but let it be told to the immortal glory of the Rajputs ! on each occasion the princes of the royal house, when all hope was lost, sallied forth sword in hand, and died fighting to the last man, while their ladies within the palace kindled a great funeral pyre and cast themselves upon it. When the lustful conquerors burst into the palace they found their prey had escaped them through the flames. The Maharana of Udaipur is the proudest of the Rajputs, for no daugh- ter of his princely house was ever a slave girl in the Mogul's palace, an indignity to which all the other Rajput princes had to submit. From the oft-ravaged Chitor the capital was removed to Udaipur in the heart of the Aravallies. The sturdy little engine toils up and up, till we arrive in one of the loveliest scenes, and perhaps the loveliest city, in India. Udaipur lies in a hollow of the hills, with a placid little lake gleaming in the heart of the town, and reflecting in its blue waters the shining walls of the white palace. In the lake are two tiny islands, on each of which is built a summer palace of purest marble, seeming as if reared by fairy hands. One of these, we imagine, might well have been the palace where the fairy prince and the princess lived happy ever after. 72 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS If Udaipur be the chosen home of beauty and romance, Jaipur, on the contrary, is astonishingly modern. As the prince of Udaipur retired into the hills for safety in the ancient times of war, so, in later and more peaceful days, the prince of Jaipur moved down from his mountain fastness and built his royal city on the plain. Amber, the ancient capital, sits perched aloft among the crags, her narrow, tortuous streets clambering up to the fretted marble palace, which looks as if it had been deserted but yesterday. Down in the plain below, the modern capital spreads out spaciously, every street as straight as a ruler, the main street two miles long and a hundred and eleven feet wide. The founder, Prince Jai Singh, was a great astronomer and a man far in advance of his age. His descendants, the Maharajahs of Jaipur, have ever loved to keep in the van of pro- gress, and their city is the most prosperous and advanced in Rajputana. When our missionaries began work, fifty years ago, they found themselves face to face with an acute difficulty. It was easy to settle in Ajmer, the British district, but to gain a footing in the native states was another matter. If a prince did not care to have a missionary in his city there was no appeal, for the Government leaves the native rulers free to act as they please in such matters. Strange stories could be told of what Christian con- verts have had to suffer in some of the native states, while the Imperial Government refused to interfere. In Mysore and Travancore it has been decided that a convert loses all his property, his children may be taken from him, and he himself, as a native judge said, is " classed with madmen and idiots." It seems a burning shame that under a Christian Government such things should be tolerated. Still there is the fact, and the problem before our missionaries in Rajputana was, how to win the favour of the Rajput princes. Needless to say, it has been done, thanks especially to the influence of medical mission work. Rajputana THE KEY TO A PRINCE'S HEART 73 is a striking proof of the power and value of medical missions. They have been the key that has unlocked every door, and won for the Gospel an entrance into the cities and palaces of the Rajputs, as well as into their villages and peasant huts. It is the story of a conquest such as was never made by the sword of Akbar. Jaipur was the first to surrender, in 1866. Dr. Valen- tine was passing through the city when the wife of the Maharaja was taken ill, and he was called in to attend her. Under his treatment she recovered, and in the meantime Dr. Valentine had so won the prince's con- fidence that he resolved to make him his private physi- cian. To induce him to accept the post he appointed him Director of Public Instruction, and gave him full liberty to preach in the city. Eleven years later Dr. Shepherd unlocked the gates of Udaipur. Cholera had broken out in the lovely city among the hills, and the people gladly welcomed him. The only opposition came from the Maharana's favourite counsellor. When, however, this courtier's own little daughter fell sick, he forgot his prejudice in anxiety about his child, and the missionary doctor was called in. By the time the little patient was well again her father was singing his praises, and, soon after, the site for a mission hospital was granted by the prince. Last, but not least romantic, is the story of how the door was opened in Jodhpur. That city lies to the west of the Aravallies, on the edge of the wide plain that stretches out into the desert, and the Rahtors of Jodhpur are among the proudest and bravest of the Rajputs. When Dr. Somerville went there in 1885, he was told by the prince that he was not wanted, and it seemed as if the door was closed. But an English engineer, a friend of the Maharaja, died, and his widow, being asked what she would like for a memorial of her husband, replied, " A mission bungalow." So the prince, not to go back on his word, was constrained to build it. No doubt the gift was given with a grudge, but in a short time the heart of the prince and of his people was 74 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS completely won. To-day there stands in the city a splendidly equipped hospital, built for Dr. Somerville entirely by his friends in Jodhpur, the Maharaja himself contributing two-thirds of the cost. About the time the hospital was opened, the Durbar, or Council of State, presented Dr. Somerville with a silver salver in recogni- tion of his distinguished services. Yet an English traveller, who visited Jodhpur, seems to have heard nothing of this work, and devotes two chapters of his book to creating the impression that, in Jodhpur, prince and councillors and people have no other interest in life but the breeding and racing of horses. Our mission doctors in Rajputana give medical aid to nearly a quarter of a million sufferers every year. What that means in the relief of pain and hopeless misery, only those can imagine who know the super- stitious folly and cruelty of native methods of healing. But it must not be supposed that this work among the Rajputs is unique. Medical missions achieve the same results everywhere, breaking down prejudice, giving an object-lesson in Christian love, and unlocking the door of many a heart which would otherwise be shut, bolted and barred against the Gospel. CHAPTER XVI THE CITY OF HOPE FOUR miles north of Nasirabad, in the Ajmer district of Rajputana, lies the City of Hope. Such is the meaning of Ashapura, and never was name more fitly given. Those who come expecting to find a city will be disap- pointed. A dormitory, a few workshops, a plainly built church, and, beyond it, a tiny village that is all. No, not all ! Look at the massive embankment, three hundred yards long, that runs across the valley, and holds up a little lake, a mile long and half as wide. It is that talao, or reservoir, which has made the City of Hope worthy of a place in the brightest annals of mis- sionary enterprise. The most important event of all the year in India is the coming of the monsoon, which brings the annual rain. If the monsoon fails famine is the result, and in years of famine, Rajputana, lying on the border of the Great Desert, suffers worst of all. A disaster of this kind befell Rajputana in 1869, and brought upon the people unspeakable suffering. The rain failed. Week after week the heavens were as brass and the earth as iron. The grass withered up and the cattle died. The peasant's little store of grain gave out, and he had to leave home and wander with his family in search of food. Thousands and tens of thousands thronged the roads leading to the south, but the famine was sore in the lands of the south, and back they came, weary and emaciated remnants, seeking only to reach the old home and die. The land was filled with starving men and women and 75 76 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS children. They stripped every leaf from the trees, and gnawed the bark. They tracked the ants to their nests and plundered their winter store of seeds. They sifted the dust of the road to see if, perchance, some passing waggon had dropped a few grains. Round the doors of every mission bungalow pitiable creatures flocked for help, some so weak they could only crawl. It was 'impossible to stand still and see them perish, so everything was laid aside for the work of famine relief. Doles of food were given out, barely sufficient to keep body and soul together, the sick were nursed, and hundreds of destitute orphans were taken in charge. Thus passed a year, and the season of the monsoon came again. Again it failed, and the condition of the famine-stricken people was worse than ever. Utter despair settled upon them, and hundreds of thousands simply lay down and died. Among our missionaries were two brothers, William and Gavin Martin. By their enterprise the City of Hope was built. They secured a grant of land on which to plant a Christian village, on condition that they should construct the great embankment across the valley that holds up the talao. Thousands of famine-stricken people were employed upon the work. Their wages varied from threepence a day for a strong man to a halfpenny a day for a child, yet it sufficed to keep them in life. William Martin, fondly remembered among the Rajputs as the " Talao Sahib," lived among the people in a mud hut thatched with grass. He super- intended the work, nursed the sick, cheered the de- spairing, was the ruler and father and saviour of all. When the Sabbath day came round work ceased, but, to the surprise of the hungry multitude, food was given as usual, and many for the first time had experience of the blessings of the Christian day of rest. The famine passed, but it left two notable legacies, a legacy of gratitude and goodwill to the missionaries on the part of those whose lives they had preserved, and a THE CITY OF HOPE 77 legacy of orphans. Said a Government official to one of our missionaries, " There are six hundred orphans in my district, and I do not know what to do with them. Will you take some ? " "I will take them all," was the reply. In that spirit a vast number of boys and girls, whom the famine had left destitute, were adopted and brought up under the care of the mission. Thirty years went by and another famine came in 1900, more widespread and disastrous than the first. It was severely felt all over India, and our missionaries at Poona, at Nagpur, in Santalia and elsewhere did a vast amount of relief work, for which they received cordial thanks, and in some cases marks of distinction, from the Indian Government. In Rajputana the Government did everything pos- sible, as did also some of the native princes, notably the Maharaja of Jaipur, but other princes simply sat still and let their people die. Scenes were witnessed too awful to describe. The dead lay strewn along the roads and by the well-sides with none to bury them. It will never be known how many perished, but the number goes into millions. As in the first famine, our missionaries had thousands of orphans thrown upon their hands. When, as often happened, they found a little naked baby lying on the road, what could they do but take it home ? Or when a mother with her dying breath committed her children to their care, how could they refuse the charge ? Many parents laid down their children at night on the veranda of the mission bungalow, and went away, probably to die. By the end of the famine the mission family had grown to thousands. Of these, in the first months, hundreds died from the after effects of the famine, but the greater part speedily recovered. More than a thousand boys were sent to Ashapura, and a true City of Hope it became to them, in which they began a new life of industry and happiness. To see them at work, some carpenters, some blacksmiths, some weavers, healthy, sturdy lads, one could scarcely 78 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS believe that a few years ago they were wasted little skeletons, at the point of death. With health and work came zest for play. It is Satur- day afternoon, and the first eleven have gone to Nasira- bad to play a cricket match with the soldiers in the cantonment. The missionary is captain, and three hundred supporters of the team are there to cheer them on to victory. It is a keen match and a great finish. The soldiers are all out for sixty-one and Ashapura's last man is in with five runs to make. The excitement is intense, and all hope centres in the captain, who is still at the wickets. Well hit, captain, right into the middle of the cheering crowd of orphans ! Two soldiers dash after the ball, but what can they do, with six hundred little brown feet dancing like mad on the top of it. Lost ball ! The match is won, and Ashapura goes home triumphant. Next day is the Sabbath. The merry din of the work- shops is silent and the peace of God broods gently over the City of Hope. As the bell stops ringing, the long column of boys files into the church, packing it to the door. The captain of the eleven enters the pulpit, and perhaps the minds of some of his audience wander to the glories of yesterday. But if so, it only imparts an added vigour to the singing. Then they settle into stillness, to hear afresh the story of the love of Christ, which, ere they are aware, has made its impress, deep and sure, upon their hearts. Life to-day in the City of Hope is reduced once more to its old dimensions. The orphans are mostly gone, each one to fend for himself in the big world. Some are farmers in the Christian settlement of Piploda, some are in the printing-press at Ajmer, some are far away in Nagpur. And what return is there for all the expense and care bestowed upon them ? What profit is there from the work ? Much every way. To have saved so many precious lives, to have trained so many boys and girls in habits of industry and usefulness, and, above all, THE CITY OF HOPE 79 to have implanted in their minds principles of truth and honesty and Christian love, surely is a work that brings its own reward. But more than that, the saving and rearing of these famine orphans has brought a rich blessing to the mission. Although the missionaries had no thought of that when they rescued the perishing, yet it has paid better, perhaps, than any other part of their work. One of the orphans rescued in the famine of 1869 is the Rev. Devi Ram, the well-known pastor of the Church in Ajmer. Others of the orphans are pastors, teachers, and elders, while many more are among the choicest and most intelligent of the church members. Of the orphans rescued in the famine of 1900 it is almost too soon to speak, although some have begun to make their mark. The older among them are just settling down. Some are happily married to orphans from the girls' orphanage, and have established for them- selves Christian homes. Judging from the experience of the past, it may safely be predicted that these orphans will live to be the strength of the next generation of Rajput Christians. CHAPTER XVII THE TAJ MAHAL AND THE WHITE ANGEL LEAVING Rajputana, to pass across the north of India, we travel through a country of old renown. Here the Great Mogul reigned in splendour, and here, in more recent times, was enacted that awful mingling of tragedy and glory we call the Indian Mutiny. Delhi and Agra, Lucknow and Cawnpore, are names that can never die, and no traveller passes them without a visit. From Jaipur a short railway journey brings us to Agra, the ancient capital of the Mogul Empire. Its massive red fort on the bank of the Jumna was built by Akbar the Great, a contemporary of Queen Eliza- beth. To him Elizabeth wrote letters of commendation in behalf of certain English merchants who purposed trading in his dominions. Little did they dream that the next great queen of England would be proclaimed Empress of India, and would wield a wider dominion there than Akbar himself. Agra is immortal because of the Taj Mahal. It was built by Shah Jehan, the grandson of Akbar, to mark the resting-place of his young wife, whom he dearly loved, and whose memory he would not willingly let die. Twenty-two thousand men laboured for twenty years to finish it, and it claims to be the one perfect building in all the world. We pass through the deep, dark gate- way, and it bursts upon our view, a miracle of purest marble that glistens like the driven snow. It stands at the end of an avenue of crystal water, on which it seems to float as on a liquid mirror. Even so did "The swaii on still St. Mary's Lake Float double, swan and shadow." 80 TAJ MAHAL AND THE WHITE ANGEL 81 The traceries on the marble are as delicate as the finest lace, save where the plain towers stand at the four corners, like giant sentinels on guard. Often has the Taj Mahal been described, and as often pronounced indescribable. Now look away back, across the dusty plain and the bend of the Jumna, to the great red fort of Akbar. You see the fairy palace of white marble which crowns its summit. It also was built by Shah Jehan, and there the lady who sleeps beneath the Taj reigned for one brief year a queen. There, too, her husband, now grown old, wore out his days in slow captivity. Often must he have gazed wistfully from the window of his lonely turret, towards the snowy dome beneath which his love lay sleeping, and longed for the day when he would be laid beside her. A hundred miles up the Jumna this same Shah Jehan founded a new capital at Delhi, and built there a wonder- ful palace which boasts the proud inscription, " If there be a heaven on earth, it is this, it is this." But Delhi proved no heaven on earth, either to him or to his race. There in the days of the Mutiny the tottering throne of the last of the Moguls went down in a sea of blood. Miles upon miles of massive ruins attest the magnificence of the ancient capital. Now, at the bidding of our King, a new Delhi is rising, to become again the Imperial city of India. A hundred miles east of Agra we pause to visit another tomb, to us a more touching sight than the Taj Mahal. Who has not heard of the White Angel of Cawnpore, that stands in the memorial garden by the Ganges' bank ? It is the best known and saddest spot in all India. Down by the side of the garden flows the great Ganges canal, which, after wandering through many branches for thousands of miles and scattering its waters over a thirsty land, is returning to the parent stream. Yonder, below the canal mouth, is the railway bridge that carries the line across the Ganges to Lucknow, forty miles away. 82 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS The mind goes back to the awful summer of '57. We picture the Residency at Lucknow, lifting its head above a raging sea of rebellion, the walls battered and pierced with shot, and, proudly waving above the tower, the flag that never was taken down. Oh, the long weeks of heat and thirst, of carnage and fever, while every day the watchman climbed the tower, and gazed down the Cawnpore road for some sign of the relieving force. Will they never come ? They were to have come in fifteen days, now it is more than eighty. Can the shat- tered walls be held for another day ? Look ! a dust cloud, far down the Cawnpore road. Hark ! the booming of distant guns. They are coming Havelock and his Highlanders ! The scream of the bag- pipes rises on the quivering air. They are hewing their way through streets swarming with rebels, they reach the Residency, they pour in over the breach. The long- imprisoned women rush out to welcome them, and the bearded soldiers, snatching the babies from their mothers' arms, kiss them with the big tears rolling down their cheeks, and thank God they have been saved from the fate of Cawnpore. Ah ! Cawnpore, was ever so pitiful a tragedy ? This memorial garden was the scene of a deed of fiendish cruelty, and the angel yonder, so white and still, marks the grave of the slaughtered innocent. When the Mutiny broke, it found eight hundred British in Cawnpore, half of them women and children. To them came no relief, but bitterest death. Nana Sahib, the rebel leader, was the son of the last Peshwa of Poona, and, though a pensioner of the Government, he plotted to restore the ancient glory of his house. Hatred was in his heart, but smooth words of treachery upon his tongue. Professing concern for the safety of the British, he provided boats to take them down the Ganges, he escorted them to the river's bank, and then, in a moment, let loose his bloodthirsty followers upon them. After the massacre, the miserable remnant of two hundred women and children were imprisoned in TAJ MAHAL AND THE WHITE ANGEL 83 a shed, till, on the very day before Havelock entered Cawnpore, they were hewn in pieces and flung into a deep well. It was a bare, ghastly spot, the circular well -mouth surrounded by a parapet the height of a man's knee, and, behind it, three naked, twisted trees that seemed to turn away in agony from the horror below. Here Havelock's men stood, and vowed eternal vengeance with hearts in which pity was dead. For us the scene is changed. Every trace of the tragedy has been wiped away. Over the well broods the white angel with folded wings. The day of vengeance is past, and holier thoughts come gently stealing to our minds. Look again at that angel form, and think what it means that we can put the white angel of the Resurrection above our mangled dead. It is the emblem of some- thing that sword and bullet cannot destroy the peace of those who sleep in Jesus. There is no white angel in the Taj Mahal. CHAPTER XVIII ASHES AND TRAMPLED FLOWERS ON the Ganges, two hundred miles below Cawnpore, we pass through Benares, the holy city of India. Here, as nowhere else, the religion of the Hindus can be seen in all its glory and mystery, in all its pathos and re- pulsiveness. The city itself is a type of this. How grand and im- posing it looks, piled high up on the north bank of the river, which sweeps round its feet in a broad, majestic bend. For three miles the city stretches along the river- side, and, throughout the whole distance, immense flights of steps lead down to the water. They are the world-famous ghats of Benares, and the imposing array of domes and minarets, rising above them, makes one of the most striking scenes in existence. The religious glories of Benares are beyond all telling. The city contains fifteen hundred Hindu temples, and nearly two hundred Mohammedan mosques. Every corner has its shrine. Holiest of all is the Golden Temple of Siva, with its Well of Salvation, believed to be filled with the sweat of Vishnu, the Preserver. Here, too, is the Well of Wisdom, the chosen abode of Siva, the Destroyer. All India looks to Benares with reverence and longing, as the city of salvation and the place of holiness. Every year thousands upon thousands of devout pilgrims come to visit it, and millions more would fain come if they could. To visit Benares is the life dream of every Hindu, and to die there is sure salva- tion. But Benares, at close quarters, is a sad and dismal 84 ASHES AND TRAMPLED FLOWERS 85 place. The streets are but narrow lanes, filthy and stifling. They swarm with religious beggars, who batten on the charity of the pilgrims. The antics and self- tortures of the fakirs are a ghastly sight. Here is one who has fallen in a swoon after whirling round and round with incredible rapidity. Here is another lying on a bed of iron spikes which cruelly pierce the flesh. Look at that man whose right arm is uplifted. It has remained like that for years, and probably is now so stiff that he could not take it down, even if he tried. These are the holy men of Benares, and by such antics they seek to win salvation. Still more repulsive are the great fat bulls that push lazily through the crowd. The pilgrims deferentially make way for them. If you laid a finger on one of them you would be in danger of being torn in pieces by the mob, for these brutes are sacred beyond anything human. As we approach the Well of Wisdom, the crowd grows denser, till it is impossible to move. Most of the pil- grims carry flowers which they mean to fling into the well as an offering, others have jars of water drawn from the Ganges. They struggle together and jostle each other in frantic efforts to get near the holy place. The flowers are crushed and broken and trampled under foot, till the narrow lane is littered with them. Many, in despair of getting any nearer, fling their flowers and splash their water over the heads of those in front. Out of the well itself there rises a horrible stench beyond all the odours of this filthy city, for the well is choked with the dead flowers of centuries, lying there in one putrid pulp. How sordid and pitiable it all is ! To think that these pilgrims have come from all the ends of India, have spent, perhaps, the earnings of a lifetime in this pil- grimage, have trudged hundreds of miles on foot, begging their bread along the way, and all for this to struggle in a stinking lane, jostled and crushed and splashed, to fling their poor offering of flowers to be 86 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS trampled in the dust, and perhaps never so much as see the sacred well. We push through the crowd and make our way down to the ghats to see the great sight of Benares. Viewed from a distance, how majestic was the sweep of the broad stairs round the river bend, but a nearer inspection brings other sights and other thoughts. Men and women are down in the river in thousands, standing up to the waist in the water, dipping down, bathing, drinking. No matter though the great sewer of the city is dis- charging its filth in the middle of them. It is the holy Ganges whose waters can cleanse away sin. Not a voice is heard among the bathers, nor a laugh. There is none of the merry sport that bathers delight to in- dulge in. The scene before us is not pleasure, it is religion. This is the purging away of sins, this is the way to heaven. So the bathers think. All round about us on the stairs are laid the sick and the dying. It was their dearest wish to be brought here to die. This is the best that can be done for them in preparation for another world. A poor woman, with death written upon her face, is lifted up by her friends and carried down to the water's edge. They lay her down with her feet in the water. She has reached her journey's end, and she breathes her last, poor soul, with a sigh of content. Three hundred million Hindus would choose to die as that woman died. Look yonder at the gap in the stairs where, on the bare bank, boats are unloading wood, and smoke of fires is rising steadily. It is there the bodies of the dead are burned, and, when consumed, the ashes are thrown into the river. A hideous black streak of sooty water, mingled with cinders and rotting flowers, comes trailing down among the bathers. Still they dip and drink. Nor is that the worst. It costs money to purchase a funeral pyre of sufficient size to consume the body laid upon it. So the charred limbs and half -burnt bodies of the poor are, without ceremony, sent adrift, and float sullenly down the crowded river. ASHES AND TRAMPLED FLOWERS 87 It is an unforgettable sight India's children seeking salvation down in that putrid water, amid the bones and ashes of the dead. What is it we sing ? ' ' A river is whose streams do glad The city of our God." Oh that these benighted multitudes might hear that song and come for cleansing to the one true river of the water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb ! CHAPTER XIX UNDER THE SHADOW OF PARASNATH THE Grand Trunk Road, issuing out of Calcutta, crosses the whole of the north of India, through Benares and Cawnpore, through the North-West Provinces and the Punjab, till it climbs into the Kyber Pass above Pesha- war. Between Calcutta and Benares it cuts through the corner of the Mountain Triangle, and passes close to the south of the sacred hill of Parasnath. Life to-day on the Grand Trunk Road is shorn of its glory. In days before the railway it was the main artery of commerce and the great highway in peace and war. Many a glittering cavalcade of native prince and British Raj has swept along it, many a weary regiment has trudged its dusty length, hurrying to the front or coming home victorious. Up this road came Havelock and his Highlanders to the relief of Lucknow. Now all are gone, with all the stir and the romance, and only the road remains. Yet it is beautiful, much of it, and travelling on it is pleasant. Indeed it has the reputation, perhaps not wholly deserved, of being the world's finest cycling track. Two hundred miles down the road from Benares brings us into the heart of the hills. Parasnath appears, towering up on the left, a little higher than our own Ben Nevis. On the summit, standing out clear against the sky, is a famous Jain temple, to which pilgrims come from every part of India. Within the temple are shown thirty giant footprints, deep in the marble floor, off which thirty saints of the olden time stepped into Paradise. But, from the hill-top, scenes are visible which to us 88 UNDER THE SHADOW OF PARASNATH 89 have a deeper interest. All the country to the north and east is the home of the Santals, and the field of our Church's mission. Below our feet, nestling under the shadow of Parasnath, is the little Christian village of Baritand. Twenty miles due north is Pachamba, the oldest of the mission stations, from which, in a clear day, one can see the temple on the hill. Pokhuria is as far to the east, and all the country-side is dotted with out- stations. It is a lovely country of hills and woods and streams, reminding one of the scenery in Perthshire. Only, instead of the oak and beech and pine, there are the stately semel, the wide -spreading banyan, and the graceful tamarind. The story of how the Santals came to settle here is an interesting one, and belongs to comparatively recent history. The Santals are of an entirely different race from the Hindus. Originally they were rude tribes of wandering hunters, without cities and without civilisation, but strong, fearless, and truthful. The Hindu scorns the Santal as a barbarian, and the Santal scorns the Hindu as a poor weakling. The Santals have a story that, in the beginning of the world, there was a footrace, the prizes consisting of different kinds of food. The ancestor of the Santals won the race and carried off the prize of beef strong meat for strong men ; the Brahmin came in last, and got a little rice and milk ! Less than a century ago, when the British Government was establishing law and order throughout India, the Santals were induced to settle down in what is now known as the Santal Parganas, a tract of country which had long lain desolate because so exposed to the raids of the hillmen from the south. The Santals soon taught these Peharias to keep a respectful distance. But there are worse foes than Highland rievers. The Santals would have done well on their little farms, but they fell into the hands of the Bengal moneylender. Knowing nothing about mortgages, it seemed to them so easy to get ready money by simply putting a mark 90 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS on a bit of paper. But it opened the door to a long train of calamities. Things went from bad to worse, till, in 1855, they rose in desperation, and marched, twenty thousand strong, to lay their grievances before the Vice- roy in Calcutta. Nobody knew what they wanted, for not a single European could then speak the Santal language. British troops were moved against them and they were cut to pieces. After the rebellion their grievances came to light. One man, who had borrowed a few shillings, had toiled all his life to pay it back, his son spent his life at the same task, and now the debt had descended to the grandson and was no whit smaller than at the beginning. As a result of these revelations their rights have been safe- guarded, and they are now as loyal and happy as any race in India. Another result of the rebellion was the starting of Christian missions among the Santals, a work in which our Church has borne an honourable part. There is no time to traverse the whole district and see all the work, but we cannot pass without at least a brief visit to the haunted village, where the man who broke the spell lives like a prince among the Santals. Twenty miles down the Grand Trunk Road from Parasnath a side road branches off to the north-west through the jungle, a road made by famine labour under the supervision of the missionary. Ten miles up this road we come to the haunted village. Half a century ago Pokhuria lay, dark and deserted, in the heart of the jungle. Of the Santals who dwelt there, many had died and the rest had fled. A colony of Mohammedans then took possession, and they died to a man. Henceforth the place was shunned as the haunt of demons. But in 1879 there came to the place Dr. Campbell, one of our great missionary heroes, and he broke the spell. Having decided that here was the most suitable centre for his work, he camped on the spot, sang the Hundredth Psalm, and the demon- possession was at an end. UNDER THE SHADOW OF PARASNATH 91 As we approach the village he comes out to meet us, a big, burly man with the kindliest eyes. His speech is slow, for he has more than half forgotten his English. Here is his home, here he has toiled and grown grey, here he would fain die and be laid to rest among the people whom he loves. What a happy, busy place it is, with its flocks of wheeling pigeons and its friendly family of dogs and cats. It is a paradise for children, and many a Santal boy, left destitute by the famine, thinks of it as his only home. Dr. Campbell might be called the missionary that can do everything. He is a magistrate and sits on his veranda dispensing justice. He has written books and made dictionaries. He runs a printing-press and pub- lishes the " Darwak." He is a botanist, a doctor, a farmer, a builder, and a road-maker. He instructs the boys in carpentry, and the girls in silk weaving. He leaves nothing untried in his effort to make his beloved Santals a civilised and prosperous people. But, amid all his work, he gives supreme place to the Gospel, and all his heart goes into his preaching. The story he loves best to tell is of a little Santal girl who came to school in Pokhuria, and while there was touched with the love of Christ. Returning to her native village, she read to the people from St. Luke's Gospel, till their hearts also were stirred. On Dr. Campbell's first visit he found thirty-five men and women ready for baptism. This was but the beginning of the movement, which spread through the whole country- side. On his second visit he baptised nearly a hundred people in the presence of thousands of interested on- lookers. In the village of Kolhor to-day there is a Christian community of three or four hundred, all led to Christ through the devotion of one Santal girl. A single other fact must be mentioned. In this corner of India lie the great tea-gardens in which most of our tea is grown, and thousands of the Santals go to work as coolies in the gardens. " They are the very finest of my coolies," said a planter, and he drew the prettiest 92 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS picture of them at their work, the girls with clusters of bright flowers in their dark hair, singing from morn till night, while their nimble ringers nip off the two leaves and a bud, and toss them in handfuls into the great baskets on their backs. Some years ago our Santal mission was extended by the sending of a missionary to work among the coolies in the gardens of South Sylhet. So, when we sit at the tea-table, it is fitting we should bestow a kindly thought upon the Santals, and perhaps a prayer. CHAPTER XX ON THE BANKS OF THE HUGLI FOURTEEN miles east of Pokhuria we strike the East Indian Railway, 130 miles from Calcutta, and soon we are speeding through the rich rice-fields of Bengal. The mighty Ganges finds its way to the ocean through a hundred mouths, the most important of which, though not the largest, is the Hugli, on whose banks Calcutta stands. All this well- watered region swarms with people, who, amid chronic poverty and malaria, patiently cultivate their patches of mud. Thirty miles above Calcutta the railway strikes the Hugli, and swings round to run down the river-side. A few miles below this point we arrive at Chinsurah, a busy town of thirty thousand inhabitants, and the centre of our Bengal rural mission. In the town itself there is a high school, while in the district round, colporteurs visit among the people, and out-stations are dotted here and there, like little lamps twinkling in the dark. Thirty miles farther up the Hugli lies Kalna, where our medical mission brings relief to thousands of sufferers, who carry back to their homes in all the villages some knowledge of the Gospel and some experience of Chris- tian love. From Chinsurah a short run brings us to Calcutta, or at least to Howrah, the part of the city that stands on the west bank of the river. Pause for a moment as we cross the Hugli bridge. See, in front the vast city, belching smoke from scores of factory chimneys, on our right down the river miles of wharves and a forest of masts and funnels, on our left up the river the bathing ghats, for the Hugli is a daughter of the Ganges and 93 94 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS partakes of her sanctity. On the bridge itself are two ceaseless streams of brown people, one going into the city, another coming out. A million human beings are packed in these crowded tenements, and hundreds of thousands more flock into the city every day from the densely populated country round. Calcutta has many sights to show worthy of an im- perial city Government House, the Fort, the Maidan but to us it is the city of Dr. Duff, and the place to which our steps turn most eagerly is the historic Chris- tian College in Cornwallis Square. In Calcutta, before the days of Duff, there was little regard for the Gospel and less for the missionary. The half-century following the Battle of Plassey had seen a vast increase of wealth and expansion of territory. Traders had become rulers and Calcutta the seat of empire. Hundreds of our fellow-countrymen went out there and made fortunes. Their faded mansions may still be seen in the older parts of the city. But, alas ! most of them, in leaving their fatherland, had forsaken their fathers' God. No Sabbath was kept in those days in Calcutta. The Government, as long as it could, shut the door against missions, through a mistaken and most unworthy fear that Christian teaching would cause trouble among the natives. In the closing years of the eighteenth century, William Carey had to enter India under the protection of the Danish flag, and commence his im- mortal work in the Danish settlement of Serampore. Other missionaries followed, but their presence was viewed with suspicion and they thought it best to keep clear of Calcutta. Any success they had met with was among low-caste people, the ranks of the Brahmins were unbroken, and few believed they could be con- verted. Whatever education the Government gave the natives was given in the ancient languages of the East, and was Hindu in its spirit, or, worse still, atheistic. Clever young Bengalees were taught in the Government schools ON THE BANKS OF THE HUGLI 95 to despise the name of God and laugh at the Ten Com- mandments. Then came the man who did more than any other to turn this fearful tide of godlessness and folly. His name is immortal Alexander Duff. On the 27th of May, 1830, he arrived in the city, drenched with mud, for he had been shipwrecked at the mouth of the Hugli. All his books, save only his Bible, lay at the bottom of the Atlantic, for he had been wrecked on the coast of Africa. Still, there was the man, and there was the book that gave him power. Picture him, a young man twenty-four, a splendidly built Highlander of tall, commanding presence, with flashing eye and thrilling voice destined to move three continents. The sole injunction he had received from the home Church was, not to settle in Calcutta, but, after looking round and examining the work of previous missionaries, he decided that Calcutta was the place for him. Dr. Duff originated a new thing in missions. He said, " I will take the boys and clever young men of India, and teach them English. Through the medium of English I will pour into their minds Western knowledge, truths of science, of philosophy, of literature, hinging all upon the supreme truths of Scripture. Thus I shall undermine their false notions, explode their supersti- tions, and burst up, as with gunpowder, their heathen systems." Everybody pronounced it a mad dream. All the missionaries shared this opinion, with the ex- ception of one whose judgment outweighed all the rest. Duff went to visit the immortal Carey, and "the little, yellow old man in the white jacket " approved his plan, and with outstretched hands solemnly blessed him. The school was commenced. On the opening day there was present the noblest of all the Hindus, Rajah Rammohun Roy, a man who had spent a long life in the search for truth and was now not far from the kingdom of God. When the students showed some hesi- tation about taking the Bible into their hands, he rose 96 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS and exhorted them to study it as a priceless manual of the highest teaching. The school rapidly grew till it began to take on the appearance of a college, and was becoming a centre of light to hundreds of eager young Brahmins. Then came the explosion. Some of the students renounced Hindu- ism and professed their faith in Christ. Instantly Calcutta was in an uproar. One morning only six students appeared, the rest had been withdrawn. But Dr. Duff held on his way, and by and by the college was more crowded than before. The work of education was far from exhausting the energies of this extraordinary man. He fought for every noble cause in India, he inspired the churches with a zeal for missions formerly unknown, he thrilled with his golden eloquence the Old World and the New. To recount all his labours would, however, lead us too far away from Calcutta and its Christian College. Duff's work, as may be imagined, met with much opposition from Europeans as well as Hindus. Many disliked the idea of natives learning English. " You will deluge Calcutta with rogues and villains," they said. The Government had no love for converts, and refused to give them countenance. Incredible as it must now appear, every baptised sepoy was in those days actually drummed out of the army. At last men's eyes were opened in the awful days of the Mutiny. The fanatical Brahmins, whom the Govern- ment had pampered, repaid the favours bestowed upon them with rebellion and fiendish cruelty. The despised and neglected converts were loyal to a man, and pressed forward with offers of service to the Government that had despised and neglected them. When the crisis was past, Lord Palmerston rose in his place in Parliament and said, " We seem to be all agreed. It is not only our duty but our interest to promote the diffusion of Christianity, as far as possible, throughout the length and breadth of India." It had been proved, and all the world should know, that Christianity in India means ON THE BANKS OF THE HUGLI 97 civic righteousness and active loyalty to the British throne. To-day there is unrest in India, and education, many say, has caused it. Rather it should be said, education without the Gospel. Seventy years ago, Dr. Duff fore- told with the utmost precision what is now happening. Education without religion, he said, given to the Hindus, would destroy their faith and send them adrift on blind night seas of discontent, disloyalty, and crime. All these years the Government colleges have been giving educa- tion without religion, and it has come to pass as Dr. Duff predicted. But, wherever the youth of India have studied in our Christian colleges, and, with their learn- ing, have drunk in some of the spirit of the Gospel, they are loyal, peaceful, and law-abiding. It is, not less education, but more religion, that will allay the unrest of India. A generation has passed since the days of Dr. Duff, but his work still lives and grows. In the year of the Dis- ruption he was evicted from the college he had built in Cornwallis Square, because the law decreed that it belonged to the Established Church of Scotland, while Duff, like every other missionary of that time, adhered to the Free Church. It was a cruel and unrighteous act, for every stone of the college belonged, in equity, to Dr. Duff. With the help of many generous friends he erected another building in a different quarter of the city, and for sixty years the Scottish Churches had each their separate college in Calcutta. In 1907, however, the two were united under the name of the Calcutta Christian College, which occupies the historic site in Cornwallis Square. Thus began a new era of expansion and increased efficiency, and it is a pleasing thought that in the city of Dr. Duff such a monument of his work should stand, and continue to bring to future generations of Bengalees the blessings of true wisdom and righteousness. CHAPTER XXI BUILDERS OF EMPIRE HAVING seen something of India, west, north, and east, we turn our faces to the far south. Eighty miles of careful piloting through the changeful sandbanks of the Hugli, eight hundred miles of swift steaming down the Coromandel coast, brings us to Madras, the metro- polis of the south. The coast runs in one unbroken line, with no sheltering headland or quiet bay, and the angry surf which beats ceaselessly upon it makes landing at all times hazardous, and often impossible. But Madras, in recent years, has stretched out two long arms of breakwaters through the surf, and in the calm water be- tween them we come ashore in safety and comfort. Now at last we are in the India of our dreams, the India we pictured to ourselves when we sang of the spicy breezes and the coral strand ; the India of the cocoanut palm and the weird pagoda. Here the proud Brahmin holds undisputed sway, especially in the re- moter towns and villages, where the pariah must turn aside out of the highway to let him pass. Forty miles south-west of Madras is Conjee veram, second only to Benares in sanctity, and attracting to its festivals, in thousands, the pilgrims of the south. Madras is the cradle of our Indian Empire. Here, on the surf-beaten shore, a few English traders settled and built a fort, more than two and a half centuries ago. Soon they were opposed by French rivals, who established themselves at Pondicherry, eighty miles down the coast. At one time it appeared as if the Empire of the East was destined to be won by the French. Fort St. George was captured, and the traders of Madras 98 BUILDERS OF EMPIRE 99 were led in triumph through the streets of Pondicherry. Dupleix, the French leader, held in his hand the supreme power of Southern India. Then Clive appeared, the man of Britain's destiny. A young clerk in the Company's warehouse at Madras, he transformed a handful of ragged troops into an invin- cible army, scattered the forces of the enemy at Arcot, at Conjeeveram, at Chingleput, and quenched for ever French dreams of dominion in India. A few years later he avenged the Black Hole of Calcutta on the plains of Plassey, and laid, broad and deep, the founda- tions of our Indian Empire. A century after the days of Clive, there landed in Madras, in December, 1862, another young man, then unknown, who is worthy to be called an empire builder. His name, William Miller. No apology is needed for naming him as a man of destiny. One of the noblest of India's viceroys has said, " Notwithstanding all that the English people have done to benefit India, the missionaries have done more than all other agencies combined," and of missionaries who have laboured for India, William Miller is among the very greatest. To him alone has been given the rare honour of having his statue erected in his lifetime. It stands on the Esplanade, and inscribed on the pedestal are these words, uttered by Lord Napier in the House of Lords, " A missionary teacher whose services in the cause of higher education are probably unsurpassed in India." From the harbour we turn south along the shore, and in a few minutes arrive at the Esplanade, a fine open space in the heart of the city. Yonder, at the far side, is Fort St. George, in the angle between the river and the sea. On the ground where we stand the French planted a battery when they besieged the fort. The magnificent line of buildings immediately on our right is the Madras Christian College, perhaps the finest in all India, and a noble monument to the liberality and genius of William Miller. Dr. Miller was not the actual founder of the college. 100 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS That honour belongs to John Anderson, who laboured here about the middle of last century. But Dr. Miller may well be called the second founder, for at the time of his arrival in Madras, the school had fallen into decay and he raised it up to its present position of eminence and efficiency. The ten o'clock bell is ringing, and dense masses of students are trooping in at the gateway. There are nine hundred boys in the school department, and eight hundred students in the college seventeen hundred in all. From every district of Southern India they have come, and some even from Ceylon and the distant north. Many wear English dress, but most retain the picturesque costumes of the East. Only a fraction of them are Christians. Brahmins are there, and must, perforce, sit on the same benches with men of every caste and of none, for caste distinctions must be left outside the college gate. The bell ceases, and in five minutes the classes have settled down to work. We enter, and are at once struck with the singular fact that half the students have bare heads, the other half bare feet. Those in English cloth- ing have removed their hats, those in Eastern dress, while keeping on their turbans, have taken off their shoes. Each acts in accordance with his own law of good manners. On the whole, the long white tunic of the East is the prevailing fashion. Now comes the glorious first hour of the college day, the hour of Bible study. No student may attend the college and miss the Bible hour from ten to eleven o'clock. But indeed compulsion is unnecessary, for it is the most popular hour of the day with the students. This is due to two facts. The Hindu student is natur- ally interested in religious study, and his teachers regard the Bible hour as the supreme hour of the day. Think of it ! Seventeen hundred of the choicest youth of Southern India studying the Scriptures for an hour daily, under the guidance of professors whom they are accustomed to regard with respect as their instructors O BUILDERS OF EMPIRE 101 in all branches of secular knowledge. What a field is here for the sowing of the good seed of the Kingdom. Beyond the Scripture hour we do not venture to follow the classes, else we should immediately be in- volved in the mysteries of Telegu and Tamil, Sanscrit and Kanarese, with science and philosophy to follow. Instead, we make a tour of the buildings, passing through a maze of halls and corridors, libraries and classrooms, every one of which is fully occupied, up to the topmost room in the square tower, where the advanced students have their consulting library. Next we visit the hostels, built by the magnificent liberality of Dr. Miller, and each providing accommodation for forty to fifty students. Two hostels are for Brahmins, one for non-Brahmins, and one for Christian students. It must not be imagined that all this immense college is maintained, and all these hundreds of students educated, at the expense of the home Church. Far from it ! The students pay five thousand pounds a year in fees, and earn in Government grants nearly as much again. The home Church pays less than a seventh of the total cost. Surely never was money better spent. At the end of the long line of college buildings stands a beautiful little church, as if to complete and crown the whole. Here, from time to time, some of the brightest of the youth of Southern India have stood forth at the baptismal font, confessing Christ before their fellow-students. But the work of the college is not to be measured by the number of converts. If that were so, then other branches of the work in Southern India might be counted of more importance. In the lovely district of Chingle- put, thirty-five miles south-west of Madras, many converts have been gathered in from among the down- trodden pariahs, and Christian villages are springing up. Our medical missions also, and our zenana workers in Madras, in Conjeeveram, and elsewhere, are busily sowing and reaping. Yet all would acknowledge that the importance of the college is supreme. 102 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS Try for a single moment to conceive what the college has done. Thousands of its old students have gone to take their place among the natural leaders of their people. They are to be found in the service of the Government and in the councils of the native princes, many are professors and teachers, editors, lawyers, bankers, and doctors. Some hundreds of them are Christians, but the great majority have made no such profession. What of them ? A certain number are secret disciples, who order their conduct by the laws of the Gospel ; but of all of them it can be said that they carry with them in heart and mind the imperishable seeds of divine truth. Their teachers lose sight of them, but the loving and patient spirit of Jesus follows them in all their wanderings. They have been in friendly touch with the Saviour, and, be sure, He will not willingly let them go. PART III EAST OF THE BARRIER CHAPTER XXII BEYOND THE STEAITS OF MALACCA SLOWLY the Coromandel coast sinks down into the west as we steer south-east across the Bay of Bengal, a bay in name, but in reality wide as an ocean. In four or five days we enter the long strait of Malacca and turn south to round the Malay Peninsula. We plough through a glassy sea, thickly studded with fairy islands, rich in all the verdure of the tropics. The heat grows oppressive, wrapping us in its breathless, clammy folds, drenching and soaking everything. At the end of the Peninsula, just on the Equator, we come to the great city of Singapore, built on a lovely island, its spacious and beautiful harbour filled with the craft of all nations. The square-shaped form of the Chinese junk is easily recognised. Little sampans swarm about, rocked along by the movement of a single oar projecting from the stern. We have seen nothing like these before, and they are a sign that we are drawing into the region of China. In Canton, on the Pearl River, nearly half a million people make their home in such junks and sampans. Now the ship is heading north, and the breeze blows fresh and begins to have a nip. We have left the tropics behind and are far up the China Sea. Three days from Hong-kong to Shanghai, three days more from Shanghai to New-chwang, the port to which we are bound, and 103 104- ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS all the time we are sailing along the vast seaboard of China. No country in the world is more difficult to speak about than China. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that what is true of China to-day may not be true to-morrow. The once forbidden land has suddenly thrown open all her gates to the inrush of the West. The sleeping giant has wakened from the long slumber of centuries. " Changeless China " is now a ridiculous misnomer. Changes so sudden and sweeping have never been known before in history, not even the history of Japan. The sphere of our Church's mission is Manchuria, three provinces of China lying in the extreme north- east, and touching Siberia on the north and Korea on the east. Manchuria lies outside the great wall of China, and hence its name, " East of the Barrier." Formerly it was an independent kingdom and the an- cestral home of the Manchu dynasty. Near Mukden are the splendid and once jealously guarded tombs of the Emperors, embowered in shady groves. Rather more than two and a half centuries ago, when Cromwell was fighting King Charles, the Manchus conquered China and ruled it till the revolution of 1911. Two laws they imposed upon the vanquished the men must wear a pigtail, and the ladies must cease to bind their feet. The men obeyed, and thus the pigtail became the badge of a loyal Chinaman. Only when- ever there was a rebellion against the Government, off went the pigtails. But it was not so easy to change the fashion of the ladies, and to this day multitudes, in spite of royal edicts, have continued to bind the feet of their little girls. But no lady with bound feet was ad- mitted to the Palace, and none were to be found among the Manchus. Since the Revolution everything is changed or chang- ing. The pigtail, so characteristic of the Chinese, is becoming a thing of the past. The custom of foot- binding shows signs of dying out, and ladies whose feet BEYOND THE STRAITS OF MALACCA 105 have been crushed and crippled are now fain to conceal the deformity in boots of natural size. Opium smoking is on the verge of extinction. The dens have been closed, the pipes gathered in heaps and burned. Only the hopeless victims over sixty years of age are allowed a slight indulgence. Schools and colleges for Western learning have sprung up like mushrooms. Scott and Dickens, Spencer and Huxley are household names among the students. Conan Doyle brightens their leisure hours. Daily newspapers have come into exist- ence by the hundred, a network of railways, telegraphs, and telephones is rapidly spreading over the country, mines have been opened, furnaces are in full blast, factories and workshops fitted with the most modern types of machinery employ thousands of hands. A new China has been born. Upon this swirling tide the China of the past is being swept away, bewildered by it, hating it probably, but helplessly borne along. The wonderful elaborations of Chinese etiquette become impossible under the new conditions. The stately courtesies and graceful circum- locutions, which seem so ridiculous to us when rendered in a rough translation, were the finished product of centuries on centuries of quaint old-world culture. Never to say, or do, or even hint at, anything disagree- able, never to make a man lose his ' face,' is the Chinese ideal of good manners. The outspoken, straightfor- ward ways of the foreigner appear boorish and brutal. You arrive at a dirty little wayside inn and the sign above the door informs you it is the " home of heavenly repose." Mine host is to be addressed as " the honour- able Number One." Strangers greet one another with the question, " What is your honourable name ? " and there is a contention which shall most profoundly abase himself. A formal call is a matter that requires the most delicate handling. You go to the front gate to meet your visitor, otherwise he would not venture to come in. On no account shake hands with him. That would 106 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS be most vulgar. Clasp your own hands and bow, while he does the same. After a pressing invitation he will be constrained to enter. At every door he comes to, he will stop and entreat you to go in first. You assure him you would never dream of such a thing and again you get him on the move. When at last he is reluctantly persuaded to enter, do not fail to give him the chair farthest from the door, which is the most honourable in the room. You implore him to sit down, he implores you to be seated first. In the heat of the argument a compromise is reached. You begin to sit down slowly and so does he. By skilful manoeuvring you reach your chairs at the same moment and politeness is satisfied. With all this the Chinaman at his best is a capital fellow, a man of solid sense and generally of good morals, industrious and sober, contented and peaceable. He is grave in manner, deliberate and trustworthy, and of a character altogether opposite to the smart, fussy, little Jap. He honours his parents while they live, and may be almost said to worship them when they die. He erects a tablet in his house to their memory, and often goes to bow before it. Religion, like everything else in China, presents a strange mingling of the old and the new. All the Chinese reverence Confucius, a wise and noble sage, who was a boy in his teens when the Jewish exiles were returning home from Babylon. Much of his teaching is pure and good, but he professed no knowledge of God nor any hope of heaven. Many of the Chinese are Buddhists nominally, but Buddhism in China as a religious force is dead. Among the common people there is a strong belief in magic and many superstitious notions regarding the power of spirits. The great Fox Temple in Mukden is dedicated to the Father of all the foxes, doubtless a very sly old gentleman, and it became a sort of Man- churian Lourdes, to which multitudes flocked to be healed of all diseases. Walk down some narrow lane in one of China's crowded cities, and you may see a sad-eyed woman at BEYOND THE STRAITS OF MALACCA 107 her door waving a little coat in the air and looking wistfully about. Her child is dead and she thinks its wandering spirit may not be very far away, and perhaps if it should see the little coat it might come home again. She has no other hope in her sorrow. She has never heard the sweet strains of " Safe in the Arms of Jesus." Meantime the new learning has brought to China the irreligious books of the West. The students are greedily devouring them and many have cast every form of faith aside as superstitious. Multitudes more, in the confusion between the old and the new, are be- wildered, not knowing what to believe or think. The ancient landmarks are gone and they have no sure word of truth. And so this vast country, where four hundred millions of the human race have their home, is a land that sorely needs the light of Christ. No hand but His can lead through the dimness of the uncertain dawn to the broad, clear day. CHAPTER XXIII ABOUT THE BOXERS " IF a horrible stag beetle of the tropics were to crawl on to the white hand of an English child it could scarcely cause more alarm and uneasiness than does the foreigner who drops down into an unsophisticated part of China with an eye to business. The child's instinct would be to knock the awful thing off, and that is the impulse of the Chinaman." So wrote a distinguished traveller some years ago, and his words explain the Boxer Rising. To the ' man in the street ' in China all the rest of the world was just Foreigndom, and all its peoples Foreign Devils. Fearsome things these Foreign Devils could do by their magic. They could make little paper men to go out at night and rob the Chinaman's house. Every wise housewife should have a basin of water set on the window-sill, so that when the tiny burglar flew in through the window he might fall into the basin and be drowned. Nothing was too absurd to be believed. No wonder, then, when the Foreign Devils began to overrun the country, build railways, claim concessions, and do all sorts of unheard-of things, the Chinese felt that something desperate must be done to save the Flowery Land. " Let us sweep the Foreign Devils into the sea," they said, " and the good old times will come back again." Such was the motive that prompted the Boxer Rising of 1900. The actual Boxers were comparatively few in numbers, and were quite distinct from the lawless mobs that followed them. Each man had passed through a ceremony of initiation. Mysterious words had been spoken into his ear, at the sound of which he had fallen 108 ABOUT THE BOXERS 109 down in a hypnotic trance. Those who did not fall down were dismissed as not having the gift or calling of a Boxer. On waking from the trance the man was asked, " Who are you ? " to which he replied in a sepulchral voice, giving the name of some god or spirit by whom he believed himself to be possessed. Hence- forth he was safe from sword and bullet, and commis- sioned to purge the land of the foreigner. He led the multitude through the streets, entered the shops and threw out every foreign article to be burned, stopped the passers-by and if they were found wearing a bit of Lancashire cotton or a Birmingham button he stripped them of it. To the Boxer this was a solemn, religious work of purification, but the mob followed to riot and plunder. The whole country was in a flame. Nothing, it was believed, could withstand the mystic power of the Boxer. The ambassadors in Pekin were besieged in the British Embassy, and all Europe was in an agony of suspense till a combined army fought its way up from the coast and rescued them. But away in the interior of China, hundreds of missionaries and thousands of native Christians were cruelly done to death. Why did the fury of the Boxers fall on the mis- sionaries, and why did they kill the native Christians ? The explanation is easy. Jesus was the King of Foreign- dom, according to the Boxers. These missionaries were His agents, sent to steal away the hearts of Chinese people, so that when their King came with His army He might more easily subdue the land. The missionary was slain as an enemy, and his converts as traitors, to China. In Manchuria our missionaries were warned of the coming storm and succeeded in escaping, some down to the coast, some north to the Russians. But churches, hospitals, and schools were all burnt down. Many of the native Christians were put to death, while others were cruelly abused and robbed of everything. All had to flee for their lives and lurk in the woods or among the 110 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS tall millet, where they lay, cold and hungry, and at times hardly daring to breathe while they could hear their persecutors ranging about in search of them. Those who survived that awful time came back to find their homes in blackened ruins. Perhaps the most notable martyr was Blind Chang. Some years before, he had come to the mission hospital in Mukden to see if anything could be done for his eyes. It was found that nothing could be done, so, after a few weeks, he was sent home, with sightless eyes but with the light of God's love shining in his soul. As he groped his way along, he sang the one hymn he had learned, and to everyone he met he spoke of Jesus. He was a born evangelist. Hearing that the blind could be taught to read, he made his way, with the help of friends, to Peking, returning by and by wonder of wonders ! a blind man reading a book with his finger. It was the Book of books, and by his reading of it many were brought to Christ. When the persecution broke out he was a marked man. It was impossible for him to escape, and as he steadily refused to renounce his faith he was be- headed. Thus Blind Chang won the martyr's crown. There were many others, some of them mere chil- dren. " Are you not afraid to die ? " they asked a young girl whom they had caught among the millet with her Bible under her arm. Her friends had refused to shelter her unless she would throw away the book. " Are you not afraid to die ? " " No," replied the brave little maid, and smiled brightly as the sword flashed out to cut her down. All were not so steadfast. Many re- canted to save their lives, some of whom afterwards, like Peter, were filled with shame and penitence. These we shall not judge too harshly, remembering the dreadful alternative that was before them. When the tide of persecution had turned, one of our missionaries took a noble revenge on those who had driven him out. The story was first told by a war correspondent, who called it, " The bravest deed I ever saw." When the Russian forces advanced from Port ABOUT THE BOXERS 111 Arthur to drive out the Boxers, Dr. Westwater of Liaoyang accompanied them to tend the wounded and gather together the scattered remnants of the native church. On approaching Liaoyang the Russians de- manded its surrender, but the city gates were closed and the Boxers fired upon the envoys from the wall. The Russian general ordered an instant bombardment. Dr. Westwater interposed and asked leave to go and speak to the men on the wall. Leave being granted, he walked out from the Russian lines, a solitary unarmed man, and approached the city. By and by the gate was seen to open and he entered. After a long and anxious time of waiting the gate reopened and the brave man appeared, bearing the welcome tidings that he had persuaded the town to surrender. Historic truth compels the remark that the incident was not so dramatic and spectacular as the journalist, with his brilliant imagination, depicted it. There was no question of a bombardment as the garrison had fled on the approach of the Russians, but Dr. Westwater, at considerable personal risk, entered the city the day before the Russians and succeeded in allaying the fears of the panic-stricken inhabitants, who expected nothing less than the destruction of their city. When peace was restored and the people of Liaoyang had time to reflect on the service Dr. Westwater had rendered, they sent a deputation of leading citizens to present him, accord- ing to Chinese custom, with an illuminated umbrella. The Russian officer was not without some sense of the fitness of things who quaintly said, " Scotland has produced two men for whom I have the highest admira- tion, Sir Walter Scott and Dr. Westwater ! " How strangely, in God's providence, good comes out of evil ! The Boxer Rising did more than almost any- thing to make possible the new China of to-day. When the Boxers fell beneath sword and bullet it shattered the faith of the people who believed in them. Millions of quiet, thoughtful Chinese saw that they had trusted in vanity, and they were filled with silent shame. The 112 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS courage and triumphant bearing of the Christian martyrs also made an immense impression, and the wakening of China was quickened by a generation. From this time begins a new era in the history of the Church in China. Realising the hopelessness of the old ways, many turned to the missionaries for guidance, and to the Gospel as their only hope. Native Chris- tians increased in numbers and activity. When the Revolution came it found its leader in the son of a native evangelist. The first President of the Republic is a warm friend of missions and has made liberal gifts to the missionary college in Tientsin, where his boys are being educated. This is the hour of China's destiny. A golden oppor- tunity has arisen of making her a Christian nation if the Churches of Christ have but the courage and faith and energy to grasp it. May Heaven avert the tragedy of a Christless China ! CHAPTER XXIV A LAND OF FAMOUS BATTLEFIELDS MANCHURIA is the home of twenty millions of the Chinese. It is a land of mountain and forest, of square, walled towns, of fertile plains and rivers swarming with fish ; a land where the wind blows chill in winter and the ground is iron-bound with frost, for it borders on Siberia. In recent times it has become a land of famous battle- fields. The rocky headland, rising on the right as we enter the Gulf of Pe-chi-li, is the world-renowned Port Arthur, once the great arsenal of the Russians on the Pacific, but wrested from them by the Japanese after a desperate siege. Around us are the scenes of the great Russo- Japanese war. Away to the east is Korea, where the Japs landed and drove the Russians back across the Yalu River into Manchuria. Ten years before, they had driven the Chinese over the same ground. On that occasion Mr. Wylie, one of our missionaries, was mur- dered in a street of Liaoyang by some Manchu soldiers, who were passing through the city on their way to the front. Back the Russians were pushed to Liaoyang, where they fought desperately, back to Mukden, where again they joined battle, the most tre- mendous battles, perhaps, the world had ever seen. And our missions, scarcely recovered from the Boxer persecution, had to pass through the fire again. We land at New-chwang, where the pioneer of our mission, William C. Burns, found an early grave after only a few months' labour in the field. He was followed in 1872 by Dr. Ross, the father of the Manchurian Church. How great a change has taken place since these early I 113 114 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS days ! Now there are over fifty missionaries in the field, with several hundreds of native helpers, while up from the coast, for six hundred miles and more, there stretches a line of churches and preaching stations, schools and hospitals, in which the Gospel is preached to tens of thousands. Old Wang, the first convert, was a remarkable man and set a high type of Christian character for the infant Church. He was a confirmed opium smoker, but, when he found Christ, he resolved to break the habit or die in the attempt. Locking the door of his house, he threw himself, face downwards, upon his bed and prayed with all the intensity of his nature for deliverance. Thus he lay motionless through three days and nights of mortal agony, during which he neither ate nor drank. At the end he rose up a free man, and full of the Spirit of God. He became the first evangelist, as he had been the first convert, and many were won to the faith by his patient reasoning and earnest pleadings. We travel up-country to Haicheng, " the city by the sea," once entitled to the name but now forty miles inland. Then on to Liaoyang, the city saved by Dr. Westwater. The immense plain of the Liao stretches on every side to the horizon, flat and uninteresting but richly fertile. The approach to Liaoyang is heralded by a lofty pagoda, the finest in Manchuria, which lifts its graceful head to the sky and is visible for miles around. It marks the site of a " self-come Buddha." According to the legend, a statue of Buddha, neither made nor brought by human hands, was suddenly discovered here, and the pagoda was built over it. But Buddha no longer draws the credulous crowd, his shrine is a vacant and lifeless place. The only faith in Liaoyang that is living is the Christian. Besides the missionaries who superintend, two native pastors with twenty evangelists and as many teachers are at work there, and a Christian community exists of more than two thousand souls. Everywhere we meet with people who went through A LAND OF FAMOUS BATTLEFIELDS 115 the great war. It was a dreadful experience. Ruin and desolation was on every side. First the Russians and then the Japs passed through the land like locusts, devouring everything. They stabled their horses in the churches, broke up doors and windows for firewood, and made thousands destitute. Then came the battle. For five days it raged around the city, and the shells, bursting in the streets, wrecked peaceful homes and smashed babies at their mothers' breasts. From Liaoyang the war passed north to Mukden, and there too the havoc and suffering was indescribable. Our missionaries toiled day and night, nursing the wounded and feeding the hungry. At one time they had no fewer than ten thousand homeless and starving people on their hands. Many who before had given little heed to their preaching were touched by the gentle power of Christian love. The black war cloud rolled away, and brighter days have dawned for the sorely tried Manchurian Church. It is Sabbath morning in Mukden, and we enter the stately church, the St. George's Edinburgh of Manchuria. A great congregation of nearly a thousand people is assembled. Pastor Liu enters the pulpit and the service begins. We cannot understand a word of it, but we feel the thrill of its power. What impressiveness in the preacher, what earnestness in the hearers, what manifest signs of devotion and holy joy ! This is the fruit of the Revival of 1908. It passed over the land like a mighty rushing wind from heaven, or like the sweet breath of spring which fills the air with the fragrance of flowers and the music of birds. Men saw what sinners they were, and they broke down with strong crying and tears. They saw what a Saviour Jesus is, and they sang for joy. Now life is a new thing for them. " Do not venture into the Christians' meet- ing," said the heathen in awestruck whispers. " Their God has come down among them in power." The Revival came from Korea. One is reminded of Solomon's words, " Cast thy bread upon the waters : for 116 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS thou shalt find it after many days." Thirty years ago, when Korea was a forbidden land and no foreigner might enter it, Dr. Ross, our pioneer in Manchuria, translated the Gospel into Korean and succeeded in smuggling copies of it across the Yalu. To-day Korea is open, missions are established throughout the country, and the Koreans are flocking in multitudes to the feet of Christ. Probably in no other land is the Kingdom of God advancing so rapidly. It was a spark from this fire that kindled the flame in Manchuria. Two Chinese evangelists went from Liaoyang to see the work of God in Korea. They re- turned filled with the spirit of it. At the same time a Canadian missionary from Honan, Mr. Goforth by name, came to conduct special meetings. The Revival broke out and spread from town to town, as in former times the fiery cross flew from glen to glen of our Scottish Highlands. The whole Church in Manchuria was moved to its deepest depths and literally born again. Those who passed through it will never forget the ex- perience as long as they live. They tell us they felt like the returning exiles of Babylon who sang, " When Zion's bondage God turned back, As men that dreamed were we ; Then filled with laughter was our mouth, Our tongue with melody." The first tumultuous tide of joy is past, but the river flows steadily on. It has been said, " Convert a heathen and a soul is saved, but convert a Chinaman and a power is gained." Because a converted Chinaman works so zealously for Christ. This has been found true in Manchuria. On one occasion, out of 110 converts baptised in Mukden, at least a hundred confessed that they had been led to Christ by their. Chinese friends. Now, by the Revival, a fresh impulse has been given to Christian service. " The whole Church," says Dr. Ross, " is animated by missionary zeal and the spirit of Chris- tian endeavour." A LAND OF FAMOUS BATTLEFIELDS 117 The fruit of this is already apparent in the wide- spread influence of Christian ideas among the people. Heathen China knew nothing of a day of rest. Now the new Government schools in Manchuria are closed on the Sabbath, and many shopkeepers have begun to follow the Christian custom. Everywhere men have lost confidence in the old faiths, and heathenism has begun to hide its diminished head. Worshippers on their way to the village temple have been seen to turn aside shame- facedly if a Christian appeared on the scene. Even at the great Fox Temple in Mukden there are not twenty worshippers where a few years ago there were a thou- sand. The future of Manchuria lies with the Christian Church. The past has been troubled and stormy. But now, over this vexed land, where battles and perse- cutions raged, there dawns the promise of a glorious victory of the Cross. CHAPTER XXV THE ROMANCE OF THE SOUTH SEA ISLANDS LEAVING China, we pass, with a long, swift southward run, across the Equator and into the South Pacific. Who has not heard of the South Sea Islands, sprinkled in bunches upon the ocean and woven round with coral reefs, beautiful as fairyland but, alas, the home of hideous cannibals ? Our Church's mission is in the New Hebrides, a group of thirty islands, extending in a long line of four hundred miles from north to south. They are, in reality, a gigantic chain of mountains standing up to the neck in water. They are situated a thousand miles east of Australia, and about the same distance north of New Zealand. The Presbyterian Churches of Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, unite with our own in carrying on the work among the islands. Our Church is directly responsible for the missions in Santo and Aneityum, the north- most and southmost islands of the group, but a number of the missionaries on the other islands are sons of our Church. Landing on Santo, we are at once confronted with strik- ing evidence of what the Gospel has done for the natives. There is a central institution here, in which about eighty young men, gathered from all the islands of the group, are undergoing a four years' course of training. Smart fellows they look, and one can hardly believe 118 ROMANCE OF THE SOUTH SEA ISLANDS 119 them to be the sons of cannibals. They are the leaders of a new age, and a living proof that the backbone of heathenism has been broken. Yet one might still find, at some inland village, the degraded savage glutting himself at the inhuman feast. The voyage through the islands is a dream of beauty and delight. The islands are lofty, and their steeply sloping sides are richly decked in green, down to the water's edge. Cocoanut palms and tree ferns, massive flowering shrubs and luxuriant creepers display their exquisite foliage. Changeful lights shimmer on sea and sky, from the pearly dawn to the last deep tints of sunset. There is an indescribable charm and softness in the atmosphere. The sea, held in check by the barrier reef, hardly makes a ripple on the pebbly shore, and, deep down in the pale green water of the still lagoon, fantastic forms of coral can be seen. Yet these fairy islands, at times, are shaken by earthquakes or stripped bare by the raging tornado. There, in front, is the mighty peak of Ambrim, peaceful to-day and floating double on a sea of glass, but mark that grim scar on the mountain-side from its summit to the sea. Down that track, in the eruption of 1894, Ambrim poured a red-hot stream of lava, which, as it plunged into the ocean, sent the scorched water hissing in clouds of vapour to the sky. On Am- brim is the mission hospital, where native and white trader alike receive the benefit of Christian care and skill. As we touch at the various islands, missionaries join us on their way south to the Annual Synod. Each lonely worker gets a royal welcome from his comrades as he steps aboard. This is their annual reunion and there is much to hear and tell after a year's separation. To us how fascinating is the talk, especially of the older men, some of whom, sons of missionaries, were born in the islands. What tales they can tell of the bad old days, when bloodthirsty savages, cooped up within the narrow limits of the same little island, tore and de- 120 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS voured each other like wild cats in a cage. Some of these men have seen the cannibal's living victim, slung on a pole between two carriers, and hurried along, writhing and shrieking, to the horrid feast. They could tell of the living burial of the sick and the aged, while the covering earth heaved with their feeble struggles. But they speak rather of the wonders of the new dawn, before whose brightness these accursed practices are vanishing away like hideous nightmares. Of their own trials they speak but little the wasting fever and ague, the terrible loneliness, years of separation from children, graves of loved ones, some of them so pitifully small, dread of murder by brutal savages. How did flesh and blood endure it all, especially in the old days when letters and supplies came but once a year ? Then it was that the Dayspring, the children's ship, be- came an angel of mercy, as she flitted in and out among the islands. After weary months of waiting, what a thrill when, at last, " Sail O ! " sounded from the hill- top, and was echoed by every voice about the mission house. Then the rush to the beach and the agony of suspense till it should be known what tidings of good and ill a year was bringing ! When we have traversed more than half the length of the group, the bold heights of Erromanga come in view. Half- way down the western side of the island we cast anchor in Dillon's Bay. How exquisite is the scene the bay, the beach, the thickly wooded hills, and the river winding down between them to the sea. But the hideous mem- ories of the past go trooping by, like sheeted ghosts. On that lovely beach, on the 20th of November, 1839, John Williams, the apostle of the South Seas, and his young friend Harris were clubbed to death within three minutes of landing, and their bodies devoured by the cannibals of the island. A hundred yards beyond, on the south bank of the stream, is the grave of the martyred Gordons, husband and wife butchered in one day, after nearly four years of patient Christian ministry among these ruthless savages. Gordon's heroic brother stepped '" ROMANCE OF THE SOUTH SEA ISLANDS 121 into the breach, and his murdered body sleeps beyond these hills, by the eastern shore of the island. Even then Christian devotion refused to be baffled. It was one of the most calmly heroic deeds recorded in his- tory, when, three months after Gordon's death, Henry A. Robertson came ashore at Dillon's Bay, with his tremb- ling but dauntless bride, and confronted a ring of dark, inscrutable faces, while the white sails of the Day spring grew smaller and disappeared across the vacant sea. At evening they knelt together in the martyr's house, to utter the faltering prayer, " Erromanga for Christ." Who shall tell the gloomy solitude, the alarms, the haunting dread of those first days, and the agony of that night when the stricken father crept out, under cover of the darkness, to lay his firstborn in a tiny grave at the feet of the martyrs, and crept home again, hardly daring to hope that the mother's life would be spared. But the turn of the tide had come, and brighter days for the Martyr Isle. Look how sweetly the sunshine falls on the cosy mission house, with its fronting veranda, and pleasant garden stretching down to the river. The pretty white church, the Martyrs' Memorial, breathes on the scene an air of heavenly peace. Its foundation- stone was laid by the son of John Williams's murderer. A joyous clamour of eager, friendly voices greets us as we step ashore, and the hideous past is forgotten. Next morning as we are leaving, just as the missionary steps into the boat, a strapping fellow rushes down and asks for a dose of medicine ! "I cannot return and give it you," says the missionary ; " besides, you are not ill, are you, Uluhoi ? " " No, Missi," is the reply, " but I may be before you come back." With laughter and cheers we pull away, and then we hear the strains of " God be with you till we meet again," borne across the bay from the children of cannibals, standing on the spot where their fathers murdered the messengers of Christ. Continuing southward, we approach the sublimest sight of the islands, the volcano of Tanna. Every two 122 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS or three minutes this gigantic lighthouse of the southern seas bursts into greater brilliance, while, at times, the white-hot lava plays in the sky like a fountain of fire. It is a sight never to be forgotten. And this is " dark Tanna," memorable as the scene of the early labours and sufferings of John G. Paton. There he slid down the rock in the dark, there he spent the night in the tree while the savages ranged about seeking his blood, there he laid his young wife and her baby in a common grave. That tiny island, away to the east, is Aniwa, where he settled when he was forced to flee from Tanna, and which he won for Christ. " I claimed Aniwa for Jesus, and by the grace of God Aniwa now worships at the Saviour's feet." All the world has read of the digging of the well on Aniwa, of Namakei and Naswai, of the Litsis and the strange, sad fate of Mungaw. Then, to crown all, the tender pathos of the closing days upon the island, while the simple islanders, his children in the faith, hover round the old man as if they could not bear him to be out of sight, run to anticipate his slightest wish, and then, as he stands at the tiny graves beside the mission house, utter their gentle reproach, " Why do you leave us ? But the little ones lying there will never leave us. They will rise with the people of Aniwa at the Resurrection." It was a great and Christ-like life. At length we reach Aneityum, the southmost island of the group and the first to be Christianised. Here Geddie and Inglis laboured, and native evangelists from Aneityum became the Apostles of the New Hebrides. The harbour of Aneityum has one pathetic memory. It was here that the first Dayspring went down in one of the wildest hurricanes that ever swept the islands. Above the harbour stands Dr. Geddie's church. A new generation has grown up, to whom heathen and savage customs are unknown, save by tradition. Lest they should forget what once they were, they have erected a memorial tablet to Dr. Geddie above the pulpit, and inscribed on it these words, in the language of ROMANCE OF THE SOUTH SEA ISLANDS 123 Aneityum, " When he came here in 1848 there was not one man of light, when he left in 1872 there was not a man of darkness." Perhaps it would be impossible to find in all Christendom the record of a ministry greater or more complete. CHAPTER XXVI THE SORROWS OF THE SOUTH SEAS THE coming of the white man to the South Seas has proved but a mixed blessing. Dark deeds have been done among the islands which fill the mind with horror and loathing. A multitude of scattered islands, peopled by savages speaking a babel of tongues, remote, out- landish, unvisited, presented a paradise for the scoun- drels of the earth, who might, if well armed, range about with impunity, and commit deeds of lust and bloodshed, never to be heard of till God's great judg- ment day. First there were the wild doings of the sandal wooders. Picture the Hover's Bride on a trading cruise through the islands. She is a brigantine, mounting several swivel guns on her bulwarks. No greater crew of cut- throats ever trod the deck of a pirate. It is the early days of the trade, and the islanders have not yet learned the value of the sandal wood. At the first island the offer of a cat is sufficient to secure a number of fine logs. But the price, paltry as it is, is not paid. As soon as the logs are on board the ship sails away. The chief on the next island, made wary by experience, demands prepayment. But the poor fellow pays dearly for his wisdom. When the timber is secured he is suddenly seized and thrown into the boat. Next day he is sold for sandalwood to the cannibals of a neighbour island. The Rover's Bride continues her remorseless cruise till she comes to anchor in Cook's Bay. Here the natives seem eager to trade. See, they are already swimming out with a great log. A boat is lowered, and rows to meet them. It had been well if the captain had reflected that the frowning headland above the bay bears the 124 THE SORROWS OF THE SOUTH SEAS 125 ominous name of Traitor's Head. In a moment the islanders dive below the boat and upset it. Every savage has his tomahawk, and every trader's head, as it rises above the water, is cleft. Before the ship's company realise what has happened the murderers are swimming fiercely to the shore. Muskets and swivel guns rain bullets on them, and the waves are dyed crimson. Thus the bloody feud went on, and though later the trade fell into better hands, yet it was no loss when the islands were stripped of the fragrant wood. In these circumstances the wonder is that missionaries ever got a footing on the islands, where every white man was hated as a member of the sandalwooder's tribe. The murder of Williams and Harris at Dillon's Bay was not due to the innate savagery of the people, but was an act of revenge for atrocities inflicted on them by traders not long before. Next came the days of the Kanaka traffic. Not in trees this time was the trade, but in human beings. Labour was needed for Queensland and New Caledonia, and, to secure this, ships went " blackbirding " among the islands. By deceitful promises natives were in- duced to indenture themselves under conditions of which they knew nothing. Touching the pen was equivalent to signing on. Three fingers held up indicated the term of service as three years, not three moons as the poor fellows imagined. As time passed and few returned the islanders grew warier. Then other arts were tried. Surely the gramo- phone was never put to baser use than when it sang out in familiar tones to an astonished crowd upon the beach, " Come along Queensland. Plenty eat, plenty money." Often a boat's load would respond to what they took for the call of a friend. Force was used as well as fraud, and many were simply kidnapped. Numpunavos (Bonny Head) had lived fourteen happy years on the braes of Unepang. She had played with the manse children, for her father, Nelat, was an elder 126 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS of the Kirk. One day a boat put in shore from a ship lying out in the bay, and Bonny Head ran down with the rest to the beach. The Tanna man tried all his arts of persuasion, but in vain. He could get no recruits. In an evil moment his eye fell on Bonny Head. Making a sudden dart, he seized her hand and began dragging her to the boat. " Name, name (father, father)," screamed Bonny Head. Nelat rushed forward and fell, shot through the heart. The girl was flung into the boat, and ere her friends could secure their muskets and run down to the beach, the boat was out of range. Yet, because some futile shots were fired after it, the un- scrupulous Kanaka men published in all the Australian papers that they were attacked and fired upon below the mission house while peacefully pursuing their trade. Little Bonny Head was never seen or heard of more. The horrors of the Kanaka traffic became so clamant that the Australian Government, after vainly trying to regulate, finally abolished it. Unhappily it still goes on under the French flag. Recently the High Commissioner for the Western Pacific called at Santo. Speaking of the bad old days, he remarked that of course kidnapping was a thing of the past. " Come up to my station," said our missionary, " and I will show you a boy and girl who were rescued only last night from a French vessel." The Commissioner went, saw the chil- dren, and heard the little fellow tell his graphic story, how the Kanaka man grabbed his wrist, how he fixed his teeth in the man's hand and got a smashing blow in the face, of which his black and swollen eye remained a witness. " This is worth the evidence of six men," said the Commissioner, when the story was finished. It would be far from the truth to say or imply that all recruiters practised such atrocities, or that every trader in the islands was a rogue and an evil liver. Some were honest, sober, and humane. Yet the sad fact remains that, since the coming of the white man, two-thirds of the population of the islands have been swept away. The cannibalism and savage wars of the THE SORROWS OF THE SOUTH SEAS 127 old heathen days were not so destructive of human life as the kidnapping and bloodshed of the sandalwood and Kanaka traffic, together with the curse of strong drink and the introduction of strange diseases. Under such depressing conditions the work of the mission has been carried on for three-quarters of a cen- tury. The missionary has borne the burden of his own and his people's sorrows. He has incurred the bitter enmity of those who looked on the islanders as their lawful prey. Traders have cursed him because he taught the men their rights and the women the sanctity of Christian marriage. Diabolical lies have been sent the round of the newspapers, to blast his character and ruin his influence at home. Hard as it is to bear all that, yet harder far has it been to see his beloved islanders dwindle and perish, to find, perhaps, a village where he had established a little school, stripped of all its young men and only a dying remnant left. It cannot be counted less than a tragedy that, just when a new era had begun to dawn, when those who had sat at cannibal feasts were now found sitting at the Lord's table, this awful blight should fall upon the islands. Should the islanders be still further diminished, and perhaps, like the natives of New Zealand, in time become extinct, what fruit will remain of the mission ? Will all have been in vain the years of lonely exile, the labours and sufferings and prayers, the martyr graves that consecrate the island ? Has it all been wasted sacrifice ? Not for a single moment can the thought be entertained. The mission is an unparalleled monu- ment of Christian heroism. It has also given to the world such a proof as could not elsewhere be found, of the power of the Gospel to reach the lowest of mankind. If it should ever again be said, as it often has been said, that some races are too degraded to receive the truth, then, for answer, Christians will point to Gospel triumphs in the South Seas, and will tell the story of how cannibals were won for Christ. CHAPTER XXVII THE OLD SLAVE DAYS IN JAMAICA IT is a far cry from the New Hebrides to the West Indies. Even if we steer straight for the Isthmus of Panama, the voyage is immense across the whole breadth of the Pacific and round the back of the world. Strange things happen at the back of the world, and this is one of the strangest. We go to bed on Saturday night, and waken with the feeling of Sunday morning upon us. But the captain says no, it is Saturday morning. We protest that yesterday was Saturday. True, he replies, but to-day is also Saturday. We have crossed the invisible line where the remotest East meets the remotest West. Last night we were in the far East, this morning we are in the far West. Last night Scotland lay many a league behind us, this morning Scotland lies ahead and we are homeward bound. But the extra day ? Simple enough. All the time of the eastward voyage, we have been putting our watches forward to suit the times of the countries to which we came, till we have actually cheated Father Time to the extent of twelve hours. Now we give him a day in compensation and he owes us twelve hours. But we shall continue putting our watches forward, and by the time we reach home, the account will be square. The narrow strip of land that unites the two Americas, separates the Pacific from the Caribbean Sea, which on its other side is girt round by the curving chain of the West Indies. Through the winding channels that divide these islands the waters of the Atlantic rush in fierce and variable currents, that drive many a gallant ship 128 THE OLD SLAVE DAYS IN JAMAICA 129 to her grave on the jagged coral reefs. Inside the barrier of the islands, like the jealously guarded jewel of the sea, lies Jamaica, " the land of woods and waters." The island is oval in shape, and about a seventh of the size of Scotland. A range of mountains, running east and west, forms the backbone of the island, from which side spurs jut out like ribs, dividing the land to north and south into a series of glens. Streams pour down these glens, often with the music of cascades, sometimes plunging underground, to reappear as sud- denly in the valley below. This sunny island, so fertile and beautiful, has been the scene of two of the darkest episodes in human his- tory. First there was the tragedy of the gentle Caribs. When Columbus discovered the island on his second voyage to America, he found it peopled by a peaceful and friendly race, who flocked to the shore to welcome him, little dreaming that the coming of the white man sounded the death-knell of their race. The story can be told in a single brief but terrible sentence. The Spaniards took possession of the island, enslaved its miserable inhabitants, and worked them to death. When the Caribs were exterminated the haughty Spaniards must needs find other slaves. Then com- menced the long-drawn tragedy of the negro, which, begun by the Spaniard, was carried to its height by our own countrymen, when Jamaica became a British colony. Men and women, boys and girls were torn from their homes in West Africa, driven in chains down to the coast, and shipped across the Atlantic to work in the sugar plantations. No tongue can tell the horrors of that inhuman traffic, in which hundreds of thousands perished. A sugar estate in good order was a fine sight, with its luxuriant fields of cane, its factory buildings gleaming white in the sun, the workers' village half buried in a grove, while, overlooking all, the stately mansion of the proprietor stood in the middle of a noble park. But the sugar planter's paradise became the black 130 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS man's hell. At earliest dawn the crack of the driver's whip roused the slaves to their work. With half an hour for breakfast and an hour and a half in the heat of the day they toiled on as long as they had light. Besides that they had to work half of every second night in the mill. Only at Christmas were they allowed three days of revelry, which, it was hoped, would put them in humour for another year. Christian morality was unknown among the slaves, and wholly disregarded by their masters. A black man or woman might be abused, outraged, worked to death, flogged to death, but nobody cared and the victim had no remedy. From the house of bondage there was no escape. Seven-and-twenty times did the slaves rise in rebellion, only to suffer each time the ruthless vengeance of their tyrant masters. By the beginning of last century the conscience of Britain began to be aroused to the iniquity of the slave trade. The exportation from Africa was stopped, and Wilberforce was pleading for emancipation. Meantime, in Jamaica, the glory of the " great house " had gone for ever. Most of the owners lived at home, and left the management of their estates to plant- ing attorneys, who, as might be expected, proved more tyrannical than their masters. The lot of the unhappy slave grew worse. Yet in the end good came of it. Some of the estates passed into the hands of owners who, not being brutalised by daily contact with the slaves, began to take thought of their welfare as human beings, and agreed, in some cases, to have the slaves taught on their estates. Such work roused the deadly opposition of the attorneys, who deemed it essential that the negroes should be kept in darkness. The early preachers had much to contend with. In 1802 an Act was passed by the Parliament of the island, making it illegal to preach to the slaves, and some Wesleyan missionaries were thrown into prison. When our first missionary landed in 1824, the authorities were urged to send him back THE OLD SLAVE DAYS IN JAMAICA 131 by the boat in which he came, else there would soon be bloodshed and assassination. The field was hard. Not that the slaves were hostile, but many were too weary to care for anything. " Minis- ter," said one, " the living we live here is too bad. Our hearts are broken with work and punishment." The overseers also, like Pharaoh's taskmasters, increased the work to keep the people from the meetings. " Time for meetings," shouted the attorney of Blue Hole, " I would not give five minutes for any such purpose." Meetings and classes had to be held at night. Who can read, without emotion, the story of the weary slaves in the night school, reading and sleeping by turns, one half with their books round the table, the rest asleep on the floor. " Whoever moved out of his place had to pick his steps among the prostrate scholars. When their turn came, the sleepers jumped up, rubbing their eyes, while the others took their places and were fast asleep in a moment." The work thus begun grew and prospered. Sites were secured and churches built, each of them a centre of light and hope to a despairing people. At the end of eight years there were six missionaries at work in the north-west of the island. Meantime the slaves were growing impatient for their liberty. They had heard rumours of emancipation, and they came to believe that the King had already granted it but their masters were unjustly withholding it from them. At the Christmas of 1831 many of them rose in rebellion and set fire to the sugar factories. About a dozen whites lost their lives, but in the swift vengeance which followed, hundreds of slaves were put to death. After the rebellion there was an outcry, "The mis- sionaries are to blame for this," and a union was formed among the planters to expel them from the island. Yet it was afterwards proved that the Christian negroes, acting on the advice of their ministers, had taken no part in the mad outburst, but continued peacefully at their work. At length the cause of emancipation triumphed. 132 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS The soul of Christian Britain could no longer tolerate the ancient wrong of slavery, and, at a cost to herself of 20,000,000, she gave liberty to every slave within the bounds of the Empire. Of the ransom price, nearly six millions went to Jamaica, and more than 300,000 slaves in the island were set free. Dismal were the predictions of what would happen when the day of emancipation came. Riot, bloodshed, pandemonium, the total ruin of the island, was the least the planters expected. The missionaries, on their part, toiled to instruct and restrain the slaves, whose excitement was rising to fever heat as the fateful day approached. Some fall sick with impatience. They can neither eat nor sleep nor work. Overseers and magis- trates say they are shamming. The minister stirs them on with ringing words of cheer and rebuke. Up and to work ! The weary race is almost over. Let them finish like men and Christians. At last the creeping hours bring round the evening before Emancipation Day. The panting slave finishes his task, and throws down his hoe, never again to be lifted save in free and honest labour. Whither are they hastening away in crowds ? To riot and plunder ? No, but to praise and pray. As midnight chimes the hour of freedom, all the churches are filled with kneeling worshippers, who bless God for their redemption and pledge their new-born selves to His service. Prayer ended, they spring to their feet with shouts of Halle- lujah ! They laugh, they weep, they dance, they sing, they embrace each other in a delirium of joy. They pour out of the church with freedom tingling like new wine in their veins. Many climb the hills and, standing on the loftiest summits, hail the rising sun with shouts and songs of jubilee. Returning to the village, they organise a great thanksgiving service. Over the church floats an ensign, bearing a figure of the Cross, and the motto " By this we conquer." Over the school is another, with an open Bible and the words 4 Christian Education." Every company as it marches THE OLD SLAVE DAYS IN JAMAICA 133 in, bears aloft a banner suitably inscribed. The various mottoes are hailed with acclamation. " This is the Lord's doing " ; another, " No bond but the Law " ; and yet another, homelier but no less Christian, "We will work for our wives and children." Never was such holy rejoicing since that glorious day on the shore of the Red Sea, when Moses sang and Miriam with her timbrel led the dance. Well might they sing: " The race that long in darkness pined Have seen a glorious light, The people dwell in day, who dwelt In death's surrounding light." And that day the blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon Christian Britain. CHAPTER XXVIII THE STORM-VEXED QUEEN OF THE ANTILLES EMANCIPATION did not bring the millennium, as per- haps some of the slaves expected. On the contrary, there followed a period of great depression and misery in the island. It has been usual to lay the blame of this at the door of the negroes, who refused, it is said, to work any more for their old masters. Well, if many of them did refuse, who could blame them ? After all they had endured, what more natural than to say, " Let me never see the old plantation more, nor hear again the tyrant voice of the overseer." A little cabin all his own, a tiny strip of garden, whose fruits would suffice for the simple wants of his family, and where he might enjoy to the full the sweets of liberty, that seemed to every slave the ideal life. Many of their old masters did nothing to smooth the way, but, on the contrary, to quote the words of a Royal Commission, " having prophesied the ruin of the island, did their best to fulfil their own prophecy." Wherever the slaves got the offer of fair wages and fair treatment the bulk of them continued steady at their work, and to-day the Jamaica negro has the reputation of being the finest workman in the tropics. From the north-west corner of the island, where our mission was first planted, we take our way eastward through the hills and down to the city of Kingston. The loveliness of the country and the luxuriance of its trees and flowers and fruits, is truly wonderful. " Santa Gloria," Columbus christened it, and later travellers have been moved to equal admiration by the beauteous " Queen of the Antilles." Here dwells perpetual 134 STORM- VEXED QUEEN OF THE ANTILLES 135 summer. At every season of the year fruits of some sort are ripe, and flowers are in perpetual bloom. Yet, in this earthly paradise, no voice of singing birds is heard, nor is there any flutter of little wings among the branches. The redoubtable mongoose, introduced into the island to wage war on snakes and rats, has not only destroyed these, but exterminated the little birds as well, and is now the pest of the island. A hidden danger, too, lurks in the grass. Minute red creatures hang in clusters under the spikes and scatter themselves like soot upon every living thing that brushes past. Then they burrow under the skin, causing endless torment. Night, when it falls, is more vocal than the day. Then begins the serenade of the insect world, a tre- mendous murmur of innumerable myriads of tiny voices, rising and falling on the burdened air. Fire- flies dart about or sail in stately procession to and fro, lending brilliance to the scene. Jamaica might stand for a picture of the Promised Land. It is such a land as Christian saw from the battlements of the Palace Beautiful, " a most pleasant mountainous country, beautified with woods, vineyards, fruits of all sorts, flowers also, with springs and fountains, very delectable to behold." There are two terrors from which this lovely island is never safe, the cyclone and the earthquake. They may come in a moment without warning, and leave behind them universal ruin. When the cyclone rages over sea and land, trees are uprooted, sugar plantations laid flat, houses unroofed, and the people, who in the morn- ing had enjoyed the prospect of a bountiful harvest, are in the evening homeless and destitute. The great cyclone of 1880 was said to have destroyed five-sevenths of the produce of the island. More dreadful than the cyclone is the earthquake when it smites the foundations of towns and cities. Kingston is proudly seated above her magnificent har- bour. Electric cars clang along her crowded streets. 136 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS Everywhere, from her richly laden wharves to the pala- tial villas in her suburbs, there are signs of enterprise and prosperity. Yet in a single moment it may all be brought to ruin. It has happened before and it will happen again. Look across the bay to the long, low spit of land which forms the breakwater of the harbour. There, on the Palisades, stood Port Royal, which, two centuries ago, was reputed the wealthiest and wickedest city in the world. Its warehouses were filled with the treasures of the Indies, in its streets swaggered bold buccaneers, enriched with Spanish gold. At the height of its pride and luxury the earthquake fell upon it. Whole streets sunk into the ground, three thousand of the inhabitants perished, and Port Royal was no more. Kingston took its place, and inherited its wealth and wickedness. Atrocious scenes have been enacted here. Slaves have been crucified on the Parade, and languished in mortal agony for days in full face of the gaiety of the city. On the 14th of January, 1907, the earthquake came. " The morning of the fateful day," wrote an eyewitness, " broke full of promise and hope for Kingston and Jamaica. It was the day of the opening of the great Agricultural Conference of the West Indies, and such an assemblage was gathered as Kingston had never seen. The town was unusually gay, the moment one of the proudest in the history of the colony. Ere sundown our joy was turned into sorrow, our pride humbled in the dust, for over two thousand of our brave citizens lay sleeping in the arms of death or frightfully wounded, and such a wail as Jamaica had never heard broke from sixty thousand bleeding hearts." At half -past three in the afternoon, with a horrible subterranean growl, the earthquake leapt on the city and laid it in ruins. After the earthquake came the fire, which swept the ruins, and lit with its lurid glare the horrors of the ensuing night. Every church was wrecked and most of their members rendered destitute. STORM-VEXED QUEEN OF THE ANTILLES 137 Those were counted happy who, though they had lost their earthly all, had their family circle still unbroken. Throughout the island the damage done by the earth- quake was enormous, houses and churches being every- where overthrown. Relief poured in from the home country, distress was alleviated, and Kingston began to rise from her ruins. In time the disaster will be forgotten, as others have been before. Life will glide on placidly under sunny skies in that queenly island, Nature will lavish all her gifts, till suddenly, as if wearied of her fairest work, she will leap up with tiger roar and rend it in pieces. Through storm and earthquake the work of the mission goes steadily on. Faithful servants of Christ labour to gather imperishable fruits and to build the city that cannot be moved. Their labours have been crowned with a large measure of success, and there is now, under their charge, a Christian community of forty thousand. Poor they mostly are, for a man's wage in Jamaica is no more than five shillings a week, a frugal, industrious folk, to whom the Sabbath day brings a welcome rest. The little village church is the centre of their life and interest. A fervour pervades the service unknown in our colder clime. Jamaica to-day is reckoned a Christian country, but the work of our missionaries is still far from complete. These dusky children of the slaves have much to learn. Their grandfathers were devil-worshippers, and super- stition is in their blood. They are easily swept away by their emotions. Sometimes a great revival comes, at other times an uncontrollable religious outburst, when Christian hymns and prayers are strangely mingled with heathen incantations. Long time will be needed ere the spirit of love and of a sound mind prevails and casts out heathenish fears. Meantime the work must be continued in patience, for we have a debt to pay. Our country, at a great price, purchased for the slaves their liberty, that liberty which belongs by right to all the sons of men. Now 138 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS we, as Christians, must help them to attain the enjoy- ment of a diviner liberty, the liberty of the sons of God. Shall not the reward be great when many children of plantation slaves join in the triumph song of Christ's redeemed ? PART V THE DARK CONTINENT CHAPTER XXIX IN THE HOMELAND OF THE NEGRO THE next stage of our journey takes us across the broad Atlantic to the West Coast of Africa. In the inmost recesses of the Gulf of Guinea, a hundred miles east of the Niger, the Cross River rolls its waters to the sea. There, in what is now part of Southern Nigeria, lies Calabar, the scene of one of our oldest and most roman- tic missions. In sailing from Jamaica to Calabar, we are following in the wake of the pioneers of the mission. Calabar is the offspring of the Jamaica mission. When the planta- tion slaves were emancipated, many of them turned their thoughts to the ancestral home of their people in West Africa, and longed to carry thither the story of the Cross. In this desire their missionaries warmly sympathised, and one of them, Mr. Hope Waddell, came to Scotland to arouse the interest of the home Church. Having secured the necessary help, he sailed for Calabar in 1845, in his little brigantine the Warree. After some months there, spent in laying the foundations of the mission, he took the Warree over to Jamaica, and brought thence an additional band of helpers. The Cross River cannot compare in volume with those giants of Africa, the Nile, the Niger, the Congo or the Zambesi, yet, as we sail up its noble estuary, it gives a surprising impression of magnitude. For the 139 140 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS first thirty miles it maintains a breadth of ten miles. Above that point, though the breadth is not diminished, the channel is filled with a labyrinth of islands. Beyond these islands the Calabar River comes in from the east, rinding its way by various channels to the main stream. Near its mouth, on opposite banks and with an island between them, lie Duke Town and Creek Town, where the mission was commenced. How vastly changed is the scene from that which met the gaze of the heroic little band of pioneers on board the Warree. The broad river is unchanged, with its low islands and swampy shores, where the mangroves thrust their tangled roots into the water. But, as we come in sight of Duke Town, we see rising conspicuously above the town a noble building with tower and clock. It is a Christian church, built by the natives themselves at a cost of five thousand pounds, a church where every Sabbath day a thousand worshippers assemble. Could the pioneers of the mission have foreseen this they would surely have danced on the deck for joy. That church is an index of the changes that have passed over the face of the country. Sixty years ago, when the Warree cast anchor here, a few trading ships lay in the river for barter with the natives. No white trader was allowed to settle on shore, and few had any desire to do so, for the country was regarded as a white man's grave. Kings were plentiful in Calabar. Every town of any size had its king, some of whom were prosperous traders and men of influence, especially King Eyo Honesty of Creek Town. But mostly they were raw savages who sustained their kingship with ridiculous solemnity, robed in a strip of yellow cotton and crowned with a battered pot-hat. The wealthier chiefs and traders had their houses packed full of sofas and mirrors and every variety of English furniture which they knew not how to use. King Eyamba of Duke Town had even two lumbering carriages standing in the corner of his yard, in a land where no roads existed and a horse had never been seen. These "cow houses" IN THE HOMELAND OF THE NEGRO 141 his Majesty was never known to enter, except on one historic occasion when he was dragged and hoisted at the risk of his neck on a state visit to the mission-house on the hill. This slight contact with the civilised world had done nothing to banish the superstitions or mitigate the savage cruelties of heathenism. Belief in evil spirits was universal. They were supposed to have their abode in trees and houses and all conspicuous places. Once a year in every village an attempt was made to clear out the spirits by a carnival of frightful noises. The towns on the river-bank offered human sacrifices to the spirit of the river for the success of the fishing. When anyone fell sick, all who might possibly have caused the sickness by witchcraft were forced to eat the poison bean to prove their innocence. By this inhuman ordeal sometimes a village or even a tribe would be poisoned wholesale. The miserable people had no refuge from the tyranny of the witch-doctor. Home life as we understand it was utterly unknown. When a young lady of quality was to be married she was sent to a farm and fattened to an enormous size. Thereafter she was put on exhibition in the market- place ere she was sent home to her husband, to be shut in with the rest of his wives. When twin children were born they were, as quickly as possible, buried alive, and the unhappy mother killed or driven into the bush. At the death of the chief or any man of importance there was a cruel slaughter among the people. A huge cavern was dug for a grave, into which the body of the chief was placed, resting on the bodies of four of his wives, bound hand and foot but living. Slaves were then brought to the grave-side, their heads struck off, and their bodies tumbled in till the pit was full, when all was covered over with earth and trampled down. To such hideous customs add the horrors of tribal wars, of slavery and slave raiding, and there rises before us the picture of a land covered with gross darkness and full of the habitations of cruelty. 142 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS The history of the mission in its early days is an agonising record of perils and conflicts, of labour and weariness, of the ravages of a deadly climate, of noble lives laid down. Eager as the natives were to learn English and the secret of the white man's magic, they were loth to change the cruel customs of their race. With a devotion above all praise, Christian men and women lived in the midst of all this savagery and wit- nessed against it, while daily their ears were assailed with shrieks of victims and their souls were sick of blood. Slowly and by degrees the powers of superstition and wickedness were broken down. Sunday markets were abolished and the people began to assemble to the " God-palaver." King Eyo was the first to hoist a Union Jack over his town, to signify no trading on the Lord's Day. New-born twins were rescued and nursed at the mission-house, and the native women, when at last they were induced to look at them, learned with amazement that twins were not the monsters they had imagined, but were just like other babies. The poison ordeal and the slaughter of slaves for the dead lingered long and died hard. The old order of things has passed away, at least in the district round Duke Town and Creek Town. British law is extending up-country, and Duke Town is the seat of Government. The nouses are mere mud huts, but many of them are happy Christian homes. It was a great event when Eyo Onsa was married in " God-man fashion," in 1855, and led his bride home amid the ridi- cule of the whole town. Now the young people love to be married in church, with all the happy ongoings we are familiar with at home. In time of sickness and when death enters the home, there is no longer witchcraft and bloodshed, but tender ministries and the comfort of the Christian hope. The Word of God is known and loved. Many even of the old folks are eager to learn to read it for themselves. The children go to school and are taught Christian hymns and Bible stories. In many homes a new genera- IN THE HOMELAND OF THE NEGRO 143 tion has grown up who from infancy have known of the love of Christ. Old Eshen Ukpabio was the first convert of the mission, and now his son William occupies his father's pulpit at Adiabo. Perhaps the spot where we can best realise the changes that have been wrought in Calabar is on Institution Hill at Duke Town. It is a steep climb up from the landing-stage, and we pause for a moment on the brow of the hill and turn to enjoy the fine view of the town and the river at our feet. Creek Town is visible three miles distant beyond the islands, its lofty church tower and clock rivalling that of Duke Town. Now look at the magnificent range of buildings with which the hill is crowned. Sixty years ago, when this hill-top was granted to the mission by King Eyamba, it was thickly strewn with decaying bodies of the un- buried dead, flung down there by friends who could not be troubled to find them a grave. The natives employed to clear the ground could not face the loathsome work till the bush was burned down and the bodies consumed, after which the bones were gathered and interred. Now, on the same ground, stands the finest educational institution in West Africa, and the pride of our mission. The buildings are in the form of a huge square. There are classrooms and dormitories for two hundred boys, with schools for carpentry, tailoring, printing, and book- binding, besides houses for the teachers. The open space in the centre is the playground, and many a keen game has been fought out between these goalposts. To the institution are sent sons of chiefs and Christian lads of promise from the village schools. On them depends the hope of the country. Some become minis- ters, some teachers, others enter Government service, others again follow some useful trade. But all leave the institution with some knowledge of Scripture and some impression of what it means to be a Christian, and many of them, returning to their homes in the various districts, are becoming the apostles of their people. CHAPTER XXX THE GATEWAY OF THE ENYON CREEK AT Duke Town we stand, as it were, on the edge of an impenetrable forest, peering into its gloomy depths. Little footpaths have been made into the forest here and there, venturous travellers have plunged farther in, some never to return, but vast tracts are still un- trodden and unknown to the white man. Nowhere is the darkness of darkest Africa more dense than in the hinterland of the West Coast. Into this darkness our mission seeks to penetrate, bearing the light of life. The Cross River forms the natural line of advance to the interior, and, step by step, we have planted stations along its banks at Ikorofiong, at Ikorama, at Unwana, and at Itigidi, a hundred and forty miles up. From each of these central points a circle of light radiates to the villages round, and so the darkness is slowly pushed back. As the natives come to understand the blessings of Christian education they welcome the teacher among them, and many earnest petitions come from villages for which no teacher is available. Some even go the length of building a little church and then come, saying, " The house is ready. Will you not give us a teacher, even a boy? " Could any plea be more touching ? The situation is perhaps without parallel in the world houses for Christian worship built by heathen hands, and standing empty in dark African villages waiting the coming of the messengers of the Cross. The story of Itigidi reads like a romance. A boy from that place, Ejemut by name, was brought down and trained at the Institution in Duke Town. Return - 144 GATEWAY OF THE EN YON CREEK 145 ing home, he commenced to teach his people the truth of God, but soon had to leave the place to take up the work of a Government interpreter. One Sunday morn- ing the people of Itigidi came down the river in their canoes to Unwana, and asked the missionary there if a teacher could not be sent up to their town. They offered to build a church and teacher's house, and contribute nine pounds a year to his support. The church was built, but no suitable teacher could be found. Ejemut heard of it and, immediately resigning his post under Government, he returned, at little more than half the salary, to be the teacher of his people. To-day there is a congregation of four hundred at Itigidi, who worship in a new church which stands on the ground where formerly the village idol stood. Half-way up the river to Itigidi we reach the town of Itu, where the Enyon Creek branches off to the north- west. In recent years it has become a wide, open gate- way for the Gospel. Until lately our mission was confined to the east bank of the Cross River. The country lying to the west was closed to the white man. Strong, clever, cannibal tribes occupied the whole of the Ibo country, right across to the Niger. In the depths of their impenetrable forests they perpetrated every form of savagery. Little was known of them save the ominous fact that they poured down the Enyon Creek a continuous stream of slaves to the great slave market at Itu. A renowned centre of their barbarous worship was at Arochuku, near the head of the Creek, where stood a famous idol known as the Long Ju-Ju. Pilgrims to this shrine were often seized and offered in sacrifice, while the bloody slave raids of these fierce tribes kept the whole country in terror. In 1902 a British army marched to Arochuku, sub- dued the tribes, and demolished the Long Ju-Ju. Thus a vast and densely populated country was thrown open to the Gospel. Five or six million people, all speaking the same language, occupy the region between the 146 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS Niger and the Cross River. Missionaries from England are working eastward from the Niger, and our mission must push to the west, till we join hands and stretch a chain of mission stations right across the country. The pioneer of the Enyofi Creek is Mary Slessor. She has been longer in Calabar, and knows its customs and its people better than any other, whether missionary or Government official. Some day the story of her life will be written, and her name will live in history with the names of Elizabeth Fry and Florence Nightingale. She has ever been in the forefront of the battle, living in mud huts, trudging through the forests, toiling with hands and brain, nursing families of orphans and rescued twins, recklessly regardless of health and com- fort. Her life has been an utter abandon of devotion such as our age has rarely seen. When the Ibo country was opened up, Miss Slessor came to the Enyofi Creek and built a little church in Itu, while at the same time she journeyed with tireless energy among the villages up and down the Creek. Now Itu has its dispensary and hospital fitly named the " Slessor Hospital," in charge of a medical mission- ary, and the indomitable pioneer has carried the flag farther on. A few miles up the Creek we reach Akani Obio, where the chief Onoyom, a fine fellow and a tower of strength to the Christian cause, has built a new church costing three hundred pounds. Every Sabbath morning he runs up the Union Jack, as an intimation to all passers- by on the Creek that it is the Lord's Day, and no trading is to be done in his town. Would that our country's flag might ever wave in the breeze as the symbol of holy peace ! We push on up the Creek, with its swarms of villages, into a country where, ten years ago, no white man could venture. We receive a friendly welcome from men who have eaten human flesh. We reach Arochuku itself, the once renowned shrine of the Long Ju-Ju. There, on the very spot where devilish wickedness reigned, GATEWAY OF THE EN YON CREEK 147 we find a Christian church, and, to crown all, we listen to the high priest of the Ju-Ju leading the congregation in prayer. It is a land of the strangest contradictions. Here are some of the old warriors, who hurled themselves against the British troops, now sitting among the children in school and wrestling with the ABC. Here is the great pioneer herself, presiding over a jury of natives for she holds a judge's commission under Government trying a case of assault. On the ground at her feet is a human skull, over which the witnesses take their oath in native fashion, and she patiently labours to bring out the truth, while the jury, no less than the prisoner, have to be instructed in the first principles of humanity and justice. The progress achieved is wonderful, and on every side the fields are white unto the harvest. We are yet only entering the gateway of the Ibo country, and the bulk of its millions lie beyond. One thing makes the situation intensely critical. Nigeria lies on the fringe of the Mohammedan world which dominates North Africa throughout its whole extent. The emissaries of the False Prophet are pushing southward, and whole nations, which a few years ago were heathen, now own allegiance to Mohammed. It is a vast and imminent peril, threat- ening the whole of Central Africa. The issue trembles in the balance. Shall the Crescent or the Cross pre- vail ? So an urgent call has come to us to press in and win this land for Christ. Here, perhaps, is the hottest part of all our far-flung battle line. Here is the place for those who seek for glory and honour and immortality. Here, if we fail not, the victory of the Cross will be as decisive as the peril now is great. CHAPTER XXXI BESIDE THE GREAT KEI RIVER THE imposing spectacle of Table Mountain, with its white ' tablecloth ' streaming from the summit, assures us that we have reached the great portal of South Africa. A few hours ashore in Cape Town make a welcome break after our long voyage down the west coast, but we speedily re-embark and sail along past Port Elizabeth to East London, which is the port for Kaffraria and our numerous mission stations among the Kaffirs. The big liner cannot cross the bar of the Buffalo River, so she lies out in the roadstead till the fussy little tender comes alongside, down to the heaving deck of which we are lowered in a basket an eerie moment. Soon we are ashore in East London, and aboard of the train that is to take us up-country. We begin to gather our first impressions of the land. The scenery is not to boast of. The bare, brown veldt stretches on and on, with here a rocky krantz and there a hollow kloof sheltering a few scrubby trees and bushes. An occasional farm-house, with corrugated iron roof, marks the lonely home of some Dutch or Scottish settler. Every now and then there appear along the ridges clusters of big beehives. These are the round huts of Kaffir kraals, walls of mud and wattle, low thatched roofs, with neither window nor chimney. When you have seen one you have seen all. Monoto- nous like the dreary veldt itself is the architecture of the kraal. The veldt rolls steadily upward in broad terraces till it breaks at the foot of the Drakensberg, a hundred 148 BESIDE THE GREAT KEI RIVER 149 miles inland. The country that stretches along between the Drakensberg and the sea is the home of the various Kaffir tribes the Gaikas, Galekas, Fingoes, and the rest. Less than a century ago they roamed with their cattle over the veldt and the land was all their own, now they are hustled by the white settler and penned in locations. This change did not take place without many a desperate struggle and many a deed of blood. A few miles to the north, the Great Kei River flows down from the Stormberg to the sea. Once it was the boundary of Cape Colony, and the country through which we are passing was the scene of the nine Kaffir wars. The fierce and warlike tribes beside the Great Kei broke again and again like an avalanche upon the Colony, murdered families of isolated settlers, drove off cattle, spread panic far and wide, and even inflicted reverses on British troops. In these lawless times it was not to be expected that the raiders would distinguish between the land-grabbing colonist and the peaceful missionary. In the war of 1835, the first Lovedale was burned. The second was for a time held by British troops as a fort. Many were the dangers and discouragements that befell the pioneers. Yet their presence in the country was not without its effect. " For the preservation of peace between the colonists and the natives," said Sir Charles Warren when Governor of Natal, " one missionary is worth a battalion of soldiers." In the more peaceful times that followed the Kaffir wars, the mission steadily pushed to the north-east, crossed the Great Kei, and gradually extended through Fingoland, Tembuland, Pondoland, and Griqualand East, up to Natal and the Tugela. Scattered over this wide field there are now 130 missionaries of our Church, who with their native helpers preach the Gospel at 450 stations, where they have gathered round them a Christian community which numbers nearly 30,000. We leave the train at the little wayside station of Dohne, from which a ten-mile drive across the veldt 150 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS will bring us to Emgwali. Lovedale lies forty miles to the south-west. The springs of our spider rock and heave as we jolt along over the frightful ruts that go by the name of a road. Kaffirs pass with a cheery salute, walking, as always, in single file. Here comes a family, apparently on the move, the man stalking in front, knobkerry in hand, his wife toiling on behind with the baby strapped on her back, and burdened with the household furniture, consisting mainly of a three-legged pot and a grass mat. A waggon rumbles along, drawn by twelve oxen yoked in pairs. " Hollaand ! Scotlaand ! " shouts the driver as he urges on the leading pair. He has geographical names for all his team, and is as proud as Punch about it. The road climbs over a low hill, from the crest of which we see before us a shallow valley surrounded by bare ridges. Two Kaffir kraals lie on opposite sides of the valley, and the road winds like a thread between them. The scrubby mimosa bushes, straggling thinly about, seem to emphasise the dreariness and poverty of the land. In the foreground is a more pleasing scene. A sub- stantial clump of school buildings, with a refreshing avenue of young pines and gum trees running down to the white gate on the road, behind the school a manse, and beyond that again a church. This is Emgwali, a little garden of God in the immense solitude of the veldt. We are heartily glad to jump out of the spider with bones still unbroken after the terrible jolting. So here is the home of the Kaffir missionary " um- fundisi " the natives call him. The house stands in the middle of a large garden. Behind are several outhouses and sheds, for umfundisi is thrown upon his own re- sources and must do a bit of farming and carpentry in fact, must be ready to put his hand to anything. Emgwali will ever cherish the memory of Tiyo Soga, the first Christian minister of the Kaffir race, who laboured here for ten years. He came to Lovedale, a keen-eyed Kaffir boy, clad in a sheepskin and grasping BESIDE THE GREAT KEI RIVER 151 his knobkerry. Soon he outstripped all competitors and was sent to Scotland to complete a university education. Thereafter he returned to Kaffraria to become the apostle of his people " such a man," says the historian of South Africa, " as any nation in the world might be proud of." To him the Kaffirs owe their translation of the " Pilgrim's Progress." The centre of life at Emgwali is the girls' school. It has been in existence for over seventy years, and provides accommodation for a hundred boarders and a hundred day pupils. The girls come from all the districts about the Great Kei and beyond it. Some are daughters of chiefs or wealthy tribesmen who have learned to value education, others are the more promising pupils from the schools in the kraals. They come here to be trained for teachers, or to carry back to their homes some knowledge of housekeeping and needle- work. Simple fare and strenuous work is the rule of the place. In school the girls wrestle with the three R's and various other subjects till their woolly heads ache. How convenient these woolly heads are to be sure ! No end of pencils and pen-nibs, needles and pins can be stowed away among the spiral twists, not always to be found again when wanted. They are excellent pen- wipers too, and a swift stroke across the wool cleans the inkiest ruler. The girls sing exquisitely, in all the four parts, especially bass. They would not be Kaffirs if they could not sing. Every Kaffir is born with music in his soul. Out of school hours there is house work and garden work to be done. On Sunday they go out in bands, armed with Bible pictures, and teach the children in the neighbouring kraals. It is a busy, happy life, and the influence of the place is incalculable. Raw Kaffir girls, full of their native superstitions and tribal enmities, are brought into contact with Christian womanhood, and taught to be gentle and wise and pure. " The beauty of this world," said one of them, " is the good character of the girls. 152 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS Therefore we girls must keep ourselves pure." But it is not easy, when they leave the shelter of the school, and go to some isolated kraal to teach, or, in some cases worse still, go back to their own people, where the power of the old life is strong, and Christian help and com- panionship are far away. It is a terrible battle they have to fight, and only the spirit of the living Christ can give them the victory and keep them pure. The missionary, too, has his battle. He, too, is isolated, weighed down by the surrounding heathenism, worn with long journeys, for his parish is as big as a Scottish county, and at times thoroughly disheartened and spent. Far away on the veldt, beyond the Great Kei, a mis- sionary is riding slowly home, with his head sunk low upon his breast. He is returning from one of his out- stations where he has found his people in open revolt. Crafty men have been among them and seduced their minds with the cry, " Africa for the Africans ! Why should we be children any longer ? Why submit to the control of the white man ? Let us have a church that is all our own." The poison of race prejudice is in- stilled into many hearts, and there is now no welcome for umfundisi when he comes to visit them. Some of his most trusted helpers have failed. They avoid his presence or regard him with sullen, averted looks. He returns home baffled and dispirited. To these people he has given the best twenty years of his life, for their sakes he made his home on the lonely veldt, for them he toiled and prayed. It all comes back to him, from the day he first preached in the kraal, and the old chief Matwa rose and said, " Umfundisi 's message from God is an egg, let us wait till it is hatched." They had waited, he had toiled and prayed ! How he had toiled ! What arts he had used to win their confidence ! How often had he sat with the men, on the lee side of the cattle-pen, holding a friendly indaba, telling them of the great lands be- yond the sea, of the wonders of nature, of science, of BESIDE THE GREAT KEI RIVER 153 industry, of the benefits of education, of the folly of clinging to the old ways in face of the white man's coming, of the need of cultivating their land, and a hundred other things. He had watched the barriers of indolence and superstition slowly breaking down. Ah ! the joy of the first convert, when Mduba was baptised before them all, confessing his faith in Christ. Others followed, one by one, then in twoes and threes, till one could speak of a Christian congregation, though but small. Then came the opening of the little church, on which months of labour had been spent. Surely that was the crowning day. Everybody was there from all the country round, with such singing and such feasting as never had been. And the collection ! At the remembrance a smile lights up the weary man's face. He can see it all as plain as yesterday, the table set out on the veldt, the wide circling crowd, the keen rivalry among the givers. Matwa leads the way, and lays a sovereign on the table. Others follow, every man gracing his gift with more or less of a speech. When the stream slackens Matwa lays a second sovereign on the table for en- couragement, and they go at it again. " I give a shilling to open Mnyanda's mouth," says one. Mnyanda re- sponds with half a sovereign. " I give a shilling to open Mnyanda's mouth wider." There is a laugh, for Mnyanda is reputed as close as he is wealthy, and the victim reluc- tantly doubles his subscription. Now begins the collection in kind. " I give an ox because I am the same age as Queen Victoria." " I give a shilling to tie up the ox." " I give two oxen." " I give a sheep." Poultry follow, and mealies, and other useful things. It all comes to the best part of one hundred pounds, and the church is opened free of debt. Ah, that was a day worth living ! And now, to think it should all end in this. Um- fundisi had long known that the restless Ethiopian movement was sowing seeds of discord and ill-will among the native churches, but never once did he dream that the evil spirit would lay hold on his beloved chil- 154 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS dren. Yet, now that it has come, he remembers to have noticed looks of suspicion and dark mutterings at other stations. How far will the spirit spread ? One never knows. He seems to see his whole life work slipping through his hands. As he rides on, a low mound appears beside the track. How well he knows the spot. There he built his first home on the veldt a mere mud hut, but to him a very Bethel in the first months of ardour and glowing hope. Now nothing remains but this shapeless mud heap, which will soon be indistinguishable from the veldt. " Perhaps it is an emblem of my life's work. All sinks back to the old level." He draws nearer, and now he sees, springing out of the mud heap that was once his hut, an arum lily with its perfect flower fit for the paradise of God. A new strange light kindles in the weary man's eyes, and he hears the voice of ancient prophecy making music in his soul : " The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them ; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose." Thank God ! It has not been in vain. He lifts his head and rides on with courage and hope renewed. CHAPTER XXXII SOMGXADA, THE SWIFT STRIDER His waggon had broken down on the veldt, and he was far from home. He went to the nearest kraal for help. The men were sitting by the cattle-pen. " Who are you ? " they asked, not in the least disposed to trouble about a stranger. " I am Dr. Stewart." Not a man stirred. " I am Somgxada." Instantly every face lit up and every man was upon his feet. To the world at large he was known as Stewart of Lovedale, but the Kaffirs, who watched his long, quick, tiger step, and fierce, resistless energy, spread his fame among their people as Somgxada, the Swift Strider. Lovedale is the glory of South African missions, and a rock that splinters the shafts of the missionary critic. All who would know what can be made of the native must visit it, and the visitor will carry away an inspiring memory. From the railway station of Alice one has a pleasant view of a well-wooded valley, with many roofs of scattered buildings rising over the trees. Then follows a mile of a drive between hedgerows of quince, and along a stately avenue. The spreading oaks and lofty pines, the flower and shrub plots, the trim turf, the well-kept gravel paths, are a refreshing .sight in this land of dreary veldt. At the head of the avenue stands the main building of the Institution, which con- tains a central hall with classrooms, library, and book- store. To the right are the boys' dormitory and dining- hall, the workshops and technical buildings, and, in the distance, the Victoria Hospital. To the left, along a shady avenue, are the buildings of the girls' school. 155 156 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS Scattered through the grounds are the teachers' houses, and, in the bottom of the valley, the Tyumie murmurs along within deep banks. At Lovedale are gathered in hundreds the brightest of the native youth of South Africa. They belong to every tribe from the Cape to the Zambesi. Fingoes, Gaikas, Basutos, Zulus, Barolongs, Bechuanas, Mata- bele, are all mingled in friendly rivalry of work and sport. The six o'clock morning bell rings out over the valley, and soon the whole community is astir. A busy hum resounds through the classrooms and workshops till three o'clock in the afternoon, when there is a general parade for outdoor work which lasts till five. On Saturday the centre of life and interest is the ' Oval,' where many a keen game is contested, and when the Primrose and the Flying Stars meet in the final, the excitement is intense. Sunday brings its own activi- ties. By 6.30 in the morning little mission bands are on their way to preach the Gospel in neighbouring kraals. In the evening, when the sacred labours of the day are over, all assemble for worship in the great central hall. In January of the year 1867, while as yet this noble institution was a thing of the future, and the Tyumie flowed through the naked valley, there came to Love- dale a stalwart Highlander of six feet two. In appear- ance he was lean, even gaunt, but the well-knit frame, the quick step, the keen eyes, showed a man of unusual decision and abounding nervous energy. Already he was an experienced African traveller. He had explored the Zambesi and the Shire. He had stood with Living- stone when Mary Moffat was laid to rest " on Shupanga brae that beeks foment the sun." His early ambition had been to follow in the steps of Livingstone, and make the Zambesi a highway for the Gospel into Central Africa. But the time was hardly ripe, and so in God's Providence it came about that Lovedale was the scene of his life's work. For forty years before he came to the valley there had been a SOMGXADA, THE SWIFT STRIDER 157 mission station and a school there. But his coming marked the beginning of a new era. Somgxada was an imperial dreamer. He saw a great future for the despised and down-trodden African, when he should no longer be the white man's beast of burden, but should take his place in the brotherhood of nations ; when he should be raised up by the Gospel, by education, by honest labour, to fulfil his duties as a man, and enjoy his heritage as a son of God. With this vision came another, of the bare Tyumie valley, beauti- fied and enriched by cultivation, adorned with buildings and every equipment of Christian civilisation, drawing to itself the flower of South African youth, and sending them forth again to uplift their people. Not every dreamer is also a doer, but such was Somgxada. He was fond of quoting the African proverb, " The dawn does not come twice to waken a man," and no dawn, when it came, found him a laggard. With tireless energy he planned and toiled. No detail was counted trivial, no task too humble. " Is Dr. Stewart at home ? " inquired a party of visitors who had come to see Lovedale when its fame was spread through all the Colony. They had found a gang of Kaffir boys busily digging, and they addressed the foreman of the gang, who stood spade in hand. " Yes," was the reply, " Dr. Stewart is at home." " Can you tell us where to find him ? " " He is here. I am Dr. Stewart." He had great faith in the Gospel of work to redeem the native from his indolence. When a Kaffir is asked, " What are you doing ? " the not infrequent answer is, " I am just staying." It is his favourite occupation. But no Kaffir boy about Lovedale ever spent his time "just staying." Every pupil in the Institution must do some manual labour daily. In the workshops the boys were trained in carpentry and waggon-building, printing and brickmaking, with other useful arts. Not all the hun- dreds who came to Lovedale were fitted to become preachers and teachers, but to master an honest trade was no less needful for the elevation of the race. 158 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS By example as well as precept, Somgxada inspired the Kaffir with a new sense of the dignity of labour. His is the day's work of a giant. All the needs of the great community he has built up and gathered round him are his constant burden. He is a teacher and must meet his classes daily, a preacher and must prepare for his Sabbath congregation, a physician and must attend his patients. An endless stream of telegrams, letters, and messages pours in upon him. His office is the seat of authority and the universal court of appeal. The door is continually on the swing, and a fine is im- posed on such as enter by the window. Dawn often steals upon Somgxada, toiling at the arrears of yester- day's work. Fresh fields continually open out before him. Now he has planned some big extension and must plead his cause before the churches and raise the necessary thousands of pounds. Now he is across the Great Kei, planting at Blythswood among the Fingoes, a daughter of Lovedale. Anon he is guiding the counsels of a Parliamentary Commission or presiding over a General Assembly. A year is spent in laying the foundations of Livingstonia, and exploring Lake Nyasa. At the age of sixty-one he is again at the head of a missionary caravan, toiling through the Taro Desert above Mombasa, the only member of the expedition who had not an hour's illness. In all his multifarious labours the missionary aim was ever supreme. To lead all these Kaffir lads and girls into the Kingdom, to develop among them strong, pure Christian character, was his constant endeavour. Nor were his labours and prayers in vain. The record of the old boys of Lovedale makes heartsome reading. A thousand of them are ministers, evangelists, and teachers, another thousand are farmers and tradesmen. Several thousands more are in occupations too numerous to mention. Kimberley, in .he old days, could never find reliable telegraph messengers till Lovedale boys were tried, and against them, said the Postmaster of SOMGXADA, THE SWIFT STRIDER 159 the Cape, there was " not so much as the shadow of a complaint." Down along the east coast, shipmasters, struck with fine cheery faces, and unusual marks of intelligence among the men handling the cargo, have inquired where they came from, and the answer was almost sure to be, " Lovedale." Not that all have turned out well, but at least 75 to 80 per cent are known to be leading industrious and useful lives. Of the rest only three per cent have been brought before the magis- trate as lawbreakers. " Can Oxford do better than that ? " asked Somgxada, with pardonable pride. At last the time came when the step of the Swift Strider grew slow, and the tireless worker went to his rest. On Christmas Day, 1905, a vast procession of natives and Europeans wended its slow and mournful way through the Tyumie valley, and up to the summit of Sandili's Kop. There, in a rock-hewn tomb, they laid him with Christian prayer and praise. All knew that a prince and a great man was fallen in Israel, but the Kaffirs mourned as for a father, and thus they spoke of him. " The friend of the natives is gone. To-day we are orphans. Dried up is the fountain at which we were wont to drink. The wings that were spread over us are folded, the hands that were stretched out to aid the native are resting. The eye that watched all danger is sleeping to-day, the voice that was raised in our behalf is still. We are left sorrowful, amazed, and troubled, but in our sorrow we say, God is not dead." Three days later a great convention of natives from all the races of South Africa gathered round the grave on Sandili's Kop, and held a memorial service. They had come together to plan the establishment of a College for natives, and they honoured the memory of him who had done more than any other to make this possible. At the convention it was resolved to found an Inter- state College for natives at Lovedale, and the delegates pledged themselves to raise among the tribes the sum of 50,000. Thus was the work of Somgxada crowned. CHAPTER XXXIII REDS AND WHITES THE ' red Kaffir ' is a picturesque figure, as he stalks along, knobkerry in hand, his red blanket thrown round him, and his skin shining like polished mahogany. No doubt, at close quarters, he is found to be altogether too red. His blanket is powdered with red ochre, his skin is smeared with ochre and grease. He reddens everything he handles, and nothing that has once been in his hut will ever be clean again. Still he makes a fine picture, and when you see the ridiculous attire of some of his friends who have begun to ape the white man's ways one clad in an old waterproof, another radiant in a blazer out at elbows, a third balancing on his woolly head a rimless hat, you are disposed to look on the red Kaffir as nature's gentleman. But the red blanket is doomed. Everywhere it is disappearing before the face of the white man, and its passing marks a new era for the Kaffir race. The native sees his land overrun by a strange and masterful people, the power of his chief broken, and tribal distinctions swept away. Towns have sprung up, and shops to supply and increase his needs. New spheres of labour are open to him, on the railways, in the mines, and at the wharves. No kraal escapes the attention of the trader, the labour agent, and the tax-collector. So the red blanket must be laid aside, and the Kaffir must learn to live in a new world. Many white settlers hold the Kaffir in supreme con- tempt. According to them, he is a soulless nigger, " a useless and dangerous brute," whose incurable laziness can only be dealt with by frequent applications of the 160 REDS AND WHITES 161 sjambok. But a patient study of the facts will not bear out these sweeping statements. The Kaffir, like the white man, will not work unless he has something to work for. In the old days his wants were few and easily supplied. Why should he work ? It was pleasanter to sit in the sun beside the cattle-kraal. But to-day he is taking his place in the world's great army of workers. Practically all manual labour in South Africa is done by him. He dislikes intensely to work in the mines. " A man," he says, " should not be put under the ground till he is dead." Yet thousands and tens of thousands go to the mines every year. The Kaffir also is not destitute of ambition and enter- prise. He is more and more coming to see the value of civilisation, and is bitten with the desire to get on in the world. At Lovedale alone, natives have paid fees amounting to 100,000 for the education of their sons and daughters. The story of Blythswood is another evidence of the same spirit. The Fingoes beyond the Great Kei having conceived the idea of building for themselves ' a daugh- ter of Lovedale,' invited the co-operation of Dr. Stewart. He replied, offering to raise pound for pound, but stating that nothing could be done unless they could subscribe 1000. Never before had such a proposal been made to natives. After four or five months there came a message, " Come up, the money is ready." When Stewart arrived he found a table standing on the veldt, heaped with silver coins to the amount of 1450. " There are the stones," said the spokesman of the tribe, " now build." Nor was this all. To enlarge the building the Fingoes subscribed another 1500, and finally, in clearing off the debt, they increased their gift to the grand total of 4500. In the old days the Fingoes were the slaves of the Gaikas and Galekas, to-day they are foremost among the tribes in intelli- gence and material prosperity. But education, it is said, only spoils the native. " Lovedale boys are a bad lot. Give me the red Kaffir. 162 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS He knows his place, and there are no airs about him." A great volume of Colonial opinion is hostile to all educational and missionary work among the natives. The wildest misstatements are believed, and the most dogmatic of the critics are often the least trustworthy. At the Manufacturers' Association in Port Elizabeth, the Grahamstown tinsmiths complained that their trade was being ruined by the tinware made at Lovedale with the aid of a Government subsidy. The Association passed a unanimous resolution of protest. The reply of Lovedale was to offer one thousand pounds for every piece of tinware made at the Institution. None was ever forthcoming. In estimatingthe influence of missions upon the native, this must be carefully borne in mind, that every native who has been at a mission school is not a Christian. To talk a little English, to wear English clothes, to take on a veneer of civilisation does not make a Kaffir a Christian. Are there no clever rogues at home who turn their education to bad uses ? Are there no hypo- crites who glibly profess a religion whose power they do not feel ? Allowance must be made for such cases among the Kaffirs. Still, after all allowance is made, let it be frankly admitted that missionary education does spoil the native effectually and for ever spoil him for certain purposes. Some years ago a trader passing through Nyasaland committed a series of outrages upon native women. The missionary reported the case to the Govern- ment. The man was arrested, brought back to the scene of his crimes, and punished. As he left the court he cursed the missionary for " spoiling the country for the white man." " Yes," was the reply, " and we will go on spoiling it till there is no room in it for scoundrels like you." Many a white man would fain act the bully among his Kaffir boys. His only argument is an oath and a kick. Such tyrants find that the red Kaffir exactly suits them. As a boy he was kicked about the kraal REDS AND WHITES 163 for an unclean dog. He belonged to nobody in particular. He dared not sit down in front of a man, and was glad to pick the bones and lick the dish which the men had left. Not till he attained to the possession of a hut, some cattle, and a wife could he hope to count for anything. When such a boy enters a white man's service he will stand any amount of abuse without complaint. But a boy who has been at school has been accustomed to just and kindly treatment. He knows his rights, a spark of manhood has been kindled in his breast, and he will not stand to be kicked or sjamboked like a beast. To the bully this is cursed pride and impudence. The missionary has spoiled him. South Africa is face to face with an appalling problem. From the Cape to the Zambesi, a million whites are scattered among ten million natives, and the ten million are increasing twice as rapidly as the one million. The whites are determined that this shall be a white man's land, and the blacks are raising the cry, " Africa for the Africans." The problem is, what will it end in ? One thing is certain. The native will claim the right to fulfil his manhood. He will demand education, he will insist on the opening of every avenue to success. Only blindness and bigotry would seek to keep him down. His progress hitherto has vindicated the work of missions, and that policy must continue to be pur- sued. The African Native Affairs Commission, after collecting evidence all over South Africa, came to the unanimous finding, " that the natives must be educated and civilised, that the only people who have tried to elevate them are the missionaries and some Christian families, and that the hope of their elevation must depend mainly on their acceptance of Christian faith and morals." Some members of the Commission were opponents of missionary work when these investigations began, when they closed all were its ardent friends. The native problem in South Africa perplexes and dismays the statesman. He averts his eyes from the future, for he sees no solution of it. But, as we believe 164. ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS in the power of the Gospel, may we not dare to cherish a hopeful picture of the Kaffir that is to be ? When the red blanket is discarded, he will not don the filthy rags of the white man's vices, to corrupt and pollute the land, but will be found at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. CHAPTER XXXIV UP THE ZAMBESI TO LAKE NYASA A THRILL ran through all the Christian world when the news came home that Livingstone was dead. The un- paralleled journeys of the greatest of missionary travel- lers had opened up the heart of Africa, and brought to light vast countries and populous tribes hitherto un- known. For years the world had been without news of him, save for Stanley's visit. Now the remnant of his faithful followers appeared on the coast, bearing his lifeless body, which they had brought from the interior after months of toil. On the 4th of May, 1873, they had found him dead upon his knees at Chitambo's village in Ilala. There they buried his heart, his body they delivered to his countrymen, by whom it was brought home and buried in Westminster Abbey. Scotland felt that the fittest memorial of David Livingstone would be to send the Gospel to the people among whom he died. In this undertaking it was appropriate that the Free Church should take the lead, for though Livingstone went to Africa as a missionary of the L.M.S., he said that, had he been at home, he would have cast in his lot with the Church of the Dis- ruption. Eleven years before, Stewart of Lovedale had been with Livingstone on the Zambesi. Together they had laid Mrs. Livingstone in her lonely grave at Shupanga, and they had held much earnest conference about the need of Central Africa. Livingstone pointed to Lake Nyasa, as the best centre for mission work. He had dis- covered the lake on one of his journeys, a great inland sea as big as Scotland, from the south end of which the 165 166 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS Shire River flows down to the Zambesi. Here, there- fore, it was now resolved to establish the Livingstonia Mission. It was no light undertaking for the mission party to reach the lake, and establish themselves upon its shores. The leaders of the expedition were Lieutenant Young of the Royal Navy, who had helped Livingstone to explore the Zambesi, and Dr. Laws, who will ever be revered as the apostle of Nyasaland. In July, 1875, they disembarked with their stores at the mouth of the Zambesi. Their destination lay four hundred miles inland. They had brought out with them a little steamer in sections, which they hoped to place on Lake Nyasa. This they now proceeded to bolt together, and after a fortnight of hard work the llala was gallantly steaming up the Zambesi. After considerable difficulty the mouth of the Shire was discovered, and the llala headed north for Lake Nyasa. But here a formidable barrier was encountered. The course of the Shire is broken by seventy miles of cataracts, where the river plunges through dark glens, swirling among the rocks and leaping over precipices. There was nothing for it but to take the llala to pieces, carry it seventy miles through the hills, and rebuild it again at the head of the cataracts. This might have proved an impossible task had it not fortunately hap- pened that the faithful Makololo were settled in the neighbourhood. These people gave the mission party an enthusiastic welcome as friends of Livingstone, and readily volunteered their help. A thousand carriers assembled, each man shouldered his load, and, threading their way by narrow, precipitous mountain paths, in five days they carried the llala beyond the cataracts. To their honour be it said that when the loads were delivered up, not a plate nor a bolt was missing. Soon the llala was afloat on the upper Shire, and the last stage of the journey begun. At sunrise on the 12th of October, 1875, the lake was reached. No steamer had yet appeared on any of the UP THE ZAMBESI TO LAKE NYASA 167 great inland seas of Central Africa. As the Ilala ploughed the virgin waters, the throbbing of the engine was hushed while the whole company assembled on the deck and sang the Hundredth Psalm. " All people that on earth do dwell Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice. Him serve with mirth. His praise forthtell, Come ye before Him and rejoice." No such song of praise had been heard in these dark regions since the beginning of the world. But Africa's children have not been slow to respond to the summons, and now a numerous company of dwellers around the lake have learned to sing the songs of salvation. Dr. Livingstone had supposed Lake Nyasa to be little more than a hundred miles in length, but a more com- plete survey of it revealed a length of 360 miles with a breadth varying from fifteen to forty miles. It is the third in size of the great African lakes. The mission party came ashore on the sandy beach at Cape Maclear, a lovely promontory at the southern end of the lake, and for some time the work was carried on there. The place, however, proved to be most unhealthy, and after several deaths had occurred a move was made to Bandawe, half-way up the western shore. This has continued ever since to be the centre of the mission. The condition of Nyasaland was found to be truly pitiable. Dark superstitions oppressed the minds of the people. In every village the witch-doctor held cruel sway. All whom he suspected of evil were com- pelled to drink the Muavi poison. Those who recovered were innocent, those who died were guilty. Sometimes all the inhabitants of a village would have to undergo this frightful ordeal. The land was distracted by savage wars. The fierce Ngoni who dwelt in the hills would swoop down upon the Atonga who dwelt by the lake shore, burn villages, slaughter all who came in their way, and carry off the plunder. The miserable people by the lake were re- 168 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS duced to the last extremity. They built their huts in secret and inaccessible places, and there they lived in constant terror of their lives. Sir Harry Johnston, the Governor of British Central Africa, expressed the opinion that, but for the timely arrival of the mission, the Atonga would have been wiped out. But the most hideous evil of all was the slave trade. Bands of Arabs, armed with guns, wandered through the country, raiding villages, shooting down the men, and carrying off the women and children. Bound to- gether in long lines, these miserable victims were marched down to the coast and shipped off to other lands. Many fell down and died by the way, and these might well be counted happier than the survivors. A mother, sinking under the double weight of a load of ivory and her baby, would have the little one torn from her arms, its head dashed against a tree, the quivering body tossed into the bush, and she herself urged forward by merciless lashes of the whip. It was a regular trade. As many as twenty thousand slaves annually crossed the lake on their way to the coast. This was what pierced the heart of Livingstone. " Blood ! blood ! Everywhere blood ! " he groaned in anguish. Almost his latest prayer was that Heaven's blessing might descend on anyone, be he Englishman, American, or Turk, who should help to heal this running sore of Africa. Even after the arrival of the mission, this awful traffic continued with almost no abatement, and the lives of the missionaries themselves were at times imperilled. At last the strong arm of the British Govern- ment reached the slave-driver and brought his devilish cruelties to an end. The unhappy dwellers by the lake shore, oppressed by the slave-raider and the Ngoni warrior, gave a ready welcome to the mission party. The friendship and pro- tection of white men was a new experience, and soon they began to gather round Bandawe as a city of refuge. But it was no easy task to teach them divine truth, or indeed knowledge of any kind. So ignorant were they UP THE ZAMBESI TO LAKE NYASA 169 that they did not know what a straight line meant, and they could not recognise a picture when they saw it. " This is a cow," said Dr. Laws, holding up the picture. Shouts of laughter greeted the idea that that thing was a cow. " See its legs, its head, its tail," continued the patient instructor, but none of them could see it. Suddenly a precocious youth leaped body high and shouted, " I see it. It is a cow." That was the dawn of education in Nyasaland. With infinite patience and energy the work was carried on, but six long years were to elapse ere a single convert was gained. The following extract from the Mission Journal records that notable event : " Sabbath, March 27th, 1881. This is a red-letter day in the history of the Livingstonia Mission. By the blessing of God the work of the past years has not been for nought, nor has He suffered His word to fail. . . . Albert Namalambe was baptised to-day. The school was crowded, and the attention throughout the whole service was intense. Dr. Laws asked Albert to address the people. This he did in a humble yet manly and true-hearted way. He told them the reasons why he had sought baptism, and his desire to obey God's laws. He had been living among them, he said, and they knew if he were speaking the truth. He pleaded earnestly with all to accept of Christ's mercy. Prayer was offered, after which Namalambe was baptised in the name of the three-one God by the name of Albert." Thirty thousand of his people are in the Christian Church to-day. The seed of the Kingdom has sprung up and borne fruit in Nyasaland beyond all human expectation. M 2 CHAPTER XXXV SPEARS AND PRUNING-HOOKS A MISSIONARY blacksmith, on the eve of his departure for Livingstonia, said, " The kind of blacksmith work I am most anxious to do is to teach men to beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning- hooks." On his return to Scotland some years after, a friend recalled his words and asked what progress had been made. " I had completely forgotten my words," said the worthy blacksmith, " but the thing has come to pass. Just before I left I saw the Ngoni reaping their harvest with their long-headed assegais." The story of the taming of the fierce Ngoni is one of the romances of missionary history. They belong to the race of the Zulus, and are cousins of those fearless warriors who, armed with shield and assegai, hurled themselves upon British armies and were only subdued after a disastrous war and at a heavy cost in men and money. They came to Nyasaland in a curious way. About a century ago a great king arose among the Zulus, Chaka by name, who has been called the Napoleon of South Africa. He organised his warriors and sent them on expeditions in all directions till at length his dominions extended from the Cape to the Zambesi. If any of his armies came home defeated every tenth man in it was put to death. The ancestors of the Ngoni formed one of these armies, and, not meeting with success, they feared to face the wrath of their great chief. Instead of returning, therefore, they fought their way north- wards, crossed the Zambesi, and settled among the hills that look down on Lake Nyasa. Here they became the 170 SPEARS AND PRUNING-HOOKS 171 terror of the whole country round. They retained all the warlike habits of the Zulus, and their young warriors did not think they had accomplished their manhood till they had washed their spears in blood. By their oppressions the Atonga were reduced to the greatest misery and brought to the verge of extinction. Dr. Laws tried every means to win the friendship of this warlike people, but they rejected his advances unless he would remove the whole mission to the hills and leave the Atonga to their fate. This, of course, he could not consent to do. After some years, however, he persuaded the Ngoni to receive among them a native preacher who came from Lovedale and was familiar with the Zulu language. William Koyi was his name and it deserves to be remembered, for through many lonely and perilous days this heroic man kept the lamp of God burning in Nyasaland. In 1885 Dr. Elmslie settled among the Ngoni, and soon his sagacity and courage, together with his medical skill, began to make a powerful impression upon them. Still there was fierce opposition to the Gospel of peace. The younger warriors, foreseeing the end of their bloody raids, plotted the destruction of the mission. At one critical time Dr. Elmslie had his valuables buried under the floor of his hut, ready at a moment's notice to flee for his life. The turn of the tide came in a most dramatic way. A prolonged drought befell the land. Prayer was made to the spirits in vain, and the witch-doctors exhausted all their incantations. At last, in despair, the people came to Dr. Elmslie and asked him to pray to his God for rain. Next day there was a great assemblage. Dr. Elmslie disclaimed all magic power and tried to guide the people's mind to truer thoughts of God's Providence. Earnest prayer was then offered for rain. Ere the service closed the first big drops were pattering down, and all over the land there was the sound of abundance of rain. Who will deny that it was the finger of God ? The Ngoni, 172 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS at least, were sure of it, and they said, like Israel of old, " The Lord, He is God." It was the dawn of a new era in Ngoniland. From that day the Gospel has spread far and wide over the hills, bring- ing in its train the blessings of peace and of civilisation. When Ngoniland was annexed as part of British Central Africa, the High Commissioner, knowing the warlike character and prowess of the Ngoni, hesitated to enter the country till he had sufficient troops to support his authority. On the assurance of the missionaries that no military force was needed he at length ventured among them with a simple escort and was received with the greatest friendliness. To his amazement he found that the once fierce warriors had become a nation of peaceful farmers, industrious carriers, builders, printers, who blessed the name of Britain, and were proud to belong to the Empire. After a year's experience he declared that, as the Ngoni had not cost the Government a penny for police, it was only fair that no tax should be imposed upon them. How different is the story of Britain's dealings with the Zulus and the Matabele, men of the same race as the Ngoni ! In their case, cruel and costly wars have left behind them the smouldering embers of distrust and hate. It is the power of the Gospel that has wrought this mighty change. It has rescued the Ngoni from, super- stition and savagery, and filled their hearts with the love of God. They have beaten their swords into plough- shares and their spears into pruning-hooks, and they study war no more. When the people thread their mountain paths and come together in thousands, it is for no bloody raid as of old, but for a communion season at Ekwendeni or at Loudon. The songs they sing on the march are the songs of Zion. From six hundred village pulpits every Sabbath day the Word of God is preached, and every year thousands are baptised in the name of Christ. Schools are established everywhere. At first the people could see little good in them, and parents demanded payment for allowing their children SPEARS AND PRUNING-HOOKS 173 to "do the work of the book." Now the benefits of education are understood and nearly fifty thousand boys and girls are in the schools. On the shoulder of Mount Waller, one of the noble heights that overlook the lake, a second Lovedale is being built up, which has every prospect of becoming in time the University of Central Africa. Not even Livingstone in the moment of his brightest vision could have dreamed of so speedy and so vast a change. Could his spirit revisit those regions where in loneliness he agonised and died, regions whose tragic sufferings wrung from his soul the anguished cry, "Blood! blood! Everywhere blood!" how transfigured beyond recognition he would find them. Now would he see of the travail of his soul. Trim cottages and well-tilled fields and gardens, people decently clothed and wearing an aspect of intelligence, busy steamers plying on the lake and telegraph wires thrilling with the news of all the world, happy troops of children on their way to school, pleasant chime of Sabbath bells and the grave, sweet melody of Christian congregations all speaking of settled peace, of advancing civilisation, of human brotherhood, and the love of God. Not in vain did that seed of an heroic life fall into the ground and die, for now it abideth no more alone, but bringeth forth much fruit. CHAPTER XXXVI AT THE GRAVE OF LIVINGSTONE NEARLY three hundred miles west of Lake Nyasa is the hallowed spot where the heart of David. Livingstone is buried. At Chitambo's village in Ilala he reached the end of his wanderings, and entered into rest. It has fallen to our Livingstonia Mission to evangelise this district, and the most sacred plot of ground in Africa has been committed to our care. There, on the borders of the Congo Free State, where the waters begin to flow westward to the Atlantic, we have planted our farthest outpost. The journey from the lake is long and arduous, over rugged hills and through stifling valleys. The inter- minable forest is broken here and there by open glades or dankoes, which in the rainy season become impassable malarial swamps. It is an exciting experience to be carried shoulder-high across rivers swarming with crocodiles. But they are brave, strong hands that have a grip of us. A missionary was crossing one of these streams, borne on the shoulders of four carriers, when they plunged suddenly into deep water. In the single instant that elapsed before their heads went under, each of the four gasped out, " Don't let him go." And they didn't. When they gained the bank the missionary said, " Why were you all so anxious about me ? " They looked surprised at the question, and the leader replied, " How could we ever show face again among our people if we had lost our man ? " After crossing the high plateau which is the home of the Ngoni, we see stretching out before us the broad valley of the Loangwa, and far away in the west the 174 AT THE GRAVE OF LIVINGSTONE 175 dim blue of the Muchinga Mountains. Beyond these distant hills lies Chitambo. We cross the valley well to the north, for lower down is a deadly area where sleeping-sickness has broken out, and all the roads are closed. We toil along day after day as through a fiery furnace. What must have been the sufferings of Living- stone during his years of wandering, as he crossed and recrossed the whole breadth of the continent. Nothing but sinews of steel and his unconquerable heart could have carried him through. At length we reach Chimpondo, twenty miles from Chitambo and the Monument. The principal station has been planted here as being the healthiest and most central spot in the district. Here the nephew of David Livingstone has taken up the work where the great pioneer laid it down. At twenty-two out -stations the Gospel is preached, and the people are pathetically eager for instruction. When the first native teachers came from Bandawe the villages quarrelled for the possession of them. The lads of one village actually ran off with the baggage of a teacher, and then triumphantly said, " Now you must come to us." It is a land of grown-up children, simple-hearted and willing to learn. " Why do you smoke, Chikweti ? " said the missionary to a chief who had sat throughout the service puffing a huge pipe. " When we are worshipping the Great Spirit about whom we have come to tell you, you should not smoke." Chikweti looked very startled and said, " Sir, how do I know ? We have waited and waited for teachers and no teachers come." From Chimpondo we set out for the Monument. The last stage of the journey is through the solemn stillness of the forest. It seems to deepen and become almost oppressive as we approach the grave. There, gleaming through the trees, is the white cross that surmounts the Monument. It stands in the middle of an open glade in the forest. The grave with three acres of land round it has been committed by the British Government to the 176 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS care of our mission. The ground is kept clear, and a little rest-house has been built upon it. One could have wished that the central station had been here with a happy Christian community around the grave, but that was impossible as the immediate neigh- bourhood is infested with the tzetze fly, and Chitambo's village has disappeared. After all, it is perhaps most fitting that this sacred spot should lie solitary in the heart of the forest, with no sound to break the stillness. This is the grave he would have chosen. " I have often wished," he wrote, " that my own resting-place might be in some far-off, still, deep forest, where I may sleep sweetly till the resurrection morn." And again four years before his death, on passing a solitary grave not far from here, he wrote in his diary, " This is the sort of grave I should prefer, to be in the still, still forest, and no hand disturb my bones." The monument, a massive pyramid of brick and ce- ment, stands on the spot where the great mvula tree, now fallen, overshadowed the grave. " He died here." We stand with heads uncovered and read the simple inscription copied from the tree. The mighty heart that loved the African so well lies here. To the village hard by he came, weary and sick unto death. For weeks he has waded through the flooded plains that surround Lake Bangweolo, drenched with the pitiless, pelting rain, and perishing of hunger and cold. This last journey has occupied seven years, during which time he has seen no white man's face but Stanley's, and it is more than a year since Stanley left. Too ill to walk, he is carried on a litter to Chitambo's village. Nearly thirty thousand miles of African travel lie behind him. Now he is finishing the last weary mile. In the grey dawn his faithful followers peer into the rude hut and find him on his knees as if in prayer. He has been dead for hours. Somewhere about midnight his spirit had taken its homeward flight to the bosom of God. AT THE GRAVE OF LIVINGSTONE 177 " He died here," and here, as was most fitting, they buried his heart, that great loving heart which had throbbed and bled for the sorrows of Africa's children. The divine impulse that led him on may be found in these words of his : " The great and terrible God, before whom angels veil their faces, had an only Son, and He was sent to the habitable parts of the earth as a mis- sionary physician." Surely never had the Son of God a more devoted follower than David Livingstone. CHAPTER XXXVII HOMEWARD BOUND FROM the lone grave in the depth of the forest, our thoughts turn homeward to Westminster Abbey, where the body of Livingstone was laid to rest. His devoted followers were resolutely possessed with the conviction that they should bear his body down to the coast and deliver it into the hands of his countrymen. The chief Chitambo bade them renounce the attempt as an im- possibility, but they were immovable. They set out, after carving the name on the tree and preparing the body for the journey. Nine long months of incredible toil lay before them, through unfriendly and superstitious tribes, to whom the strange passing of the dead was abhorrent. Doggedly they pushed on, making their way now by force, now by stratagem. It is little less than a miracle how these leaderless men accomplished such a journey. At last they walked into Bagamoio and laid their precious burden at the feet of the British consul of Zanzibar. Of the long train that set out with Livingstone eight years before, only five remained to answer to the roll-call. They now rendered back to his own people him whom, in life, they had followed. He had loved and trusted them and this was their response. Reverently the body was carried on board a cruiser and borne to Suez, thence, by the Malwa, to England. On the 18th of April, 1874, it was laid to rest in West- minster Abbey. The burial was such as is given only to our country's greatest sons. The vast concourse of onlookers, stand- ing in reverent silence, showed the heart of the nation 178 HOMEWARD BOUND 179 moved beyond its wont. The procession passed to the Abbey with every accompaniment of solemn pomp. Around were the monuments of England's mightiest dead. " Open the Abbey doors and bear him in To sleep with king and statesman, chief and sage, The missionary come of weaver kin, But great by work that brooks no lower wage." Yet England's noble tribute to the mortal remains of Livingstone was far surpassed by Africa's, when her dusky sons, who had followed all his wanderings, bore him through weary months down to the coast. That little company of toil-worn, scarred, and weather- beaten men, trudging into Bagamoio with the rude bier upon their shoulders, has an essential sublimity that makes all other honours to the dead appear, in comparison, formal and lustreless. Standing by the open grave, Dean Stanley reads the burial service. Then loving hands gently lower the body to its last resting-place. In the little circle round the grave one face is black. His were the hands that carved the name of Livingstone on the mvula tree above that other grave, and as men look at him they feel as never before the debt we owe to Africa for the love her children bore to Livingstone. On the black marble slab that lies upon his grave we read the record of their love and of our debt. ' ' Brought by faithful hands over land and sea, here rests DAVID LIVINGSTONE. Other sheep I have which are not of this fold, Them also I must bring and they shall hear my voice." To Livingstone was given a grave in Westminster among England's mighty dead, and none more worthy of such an honour than our greatest missionary pioneer. But there have been others who gave their lives as freely 180 ON THE TRAIL OF THE PIONEERS as he did, and who sleep in uncouth places and in name- less graves. Beneath the sun-baked soil of India and in fever-stricken Africa, in the Far East and in lonely islands of the sea they lie, waiting the resurrection morn. They reaped no earthly fame nor ever heard, per- haps, the resounding praise of men, but not one of them is forgotten before God. Honour to all the noble dead ! True followers of Him who came to seek and to save the lost ! They counted not their lives dear, but gladly laid them down that the dark lands and degraded races of the earth might be redeemed. Each consecrated life was as an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard, exceeding precious, broken in love and poured upon the Saviour's feet, and the fragrance will yet fill all the world. WILLIAM BKKNUON AND SON, LTD PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH DC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A 001 185 106