THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 ESHCOL
 
 ESHCOL 
 
 IJY 
 
 S J HUMPHREY D D 
 
 INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 F A NOBLE D D 
 
 NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO 
 FLEMING H REVELL COMPANY 
 
 Publishers of Evangelical Literature
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1893, 
 by Fleming H. Revell Company, in the office of the Libra- 
 rian of Congress, at Washington.
 
 THIS CLUSTER OF NARRATIVES IS GATH- 
 ERED FROM A GOOD LAND WHICH THE 
 LORD GIVES TO HIS PEOPLE WITH THE 
 COMMAND THAT THEY GO UP AT ONCE 
 AND POSSESS IT. 
 
 IT IS ONLY A SPECIMEN CLUSTER FROM A GLO- 
 RIOUS VINTAGE NOW IN PROGRESS. 
 
 IF THESE "FRUITS OF THE LAND" SHALL 
 STIMULATE THE FAITH OF ANY BELIEV- 
 ERS AND SHALL AWAKEN IN THEM AN EX- 
 PECTATION OF GREATER THINGS TO FOL- 
 LOW, THE PURPOSE OF COLLECTING THEM 
 INTO THIS LITTLE VOLUME WILL HAVE 
 BEEN ACCOMPLISHED. 
 
 THE AUTHOR.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION BY REV. F. A. NOBLE 5 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 THE MAHARAJAH DHULEEP SINGH 
 
 PART I. THE MAHARAJAH n 
 
 PART II. THE MAHARANEE 28 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 FOUR MEMORABLE YEARS AT HILO 51 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 EVANGELISM IN THE PACIFIC 89 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE STORY OF NIWE 97 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 MISSIONS AND THE SKEPTICS log 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 AN EVENING WITH AN OLD MISSIONARY.. .. in 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 A VISIT TO THE DAKOTAS 130 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 THE GENESIS OF A WINDMILI 145 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 TALAMAS-MIC-O 157 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Two CATASTROPHES 168 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 Is IT A WASTE? 174
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Good books, whoever writes them, are of 
 God; and they help to do God's work in the 
 world. Had we the cunning to trace back in- 
 tellectual and moral influences to their source 
 we should find, doubtless, that never yet was 
 there a good book issued which did not become 
 the starting-point and impulse of some soul to 
 a new and nobler life. 
 
 The book from whose delights these few words 
 of mine are to detain the reader for a moment 
 unless, as is more likely, he is wise enough 
 to skip them altogether is a remarkably good 
 one. 
 
 It is good in the literary skill and delicacy 
 with which the matter composing it is handled. 
 The author of this book is master of the fine 
 art of clear statement. He has a subtle sense 
 of the meaning of words, and one who studies 
 his writings will see that he never misses in 
 his choice of exactly the right word to convey 
 the idea he has in mind. But he knows how 
 to be attractive as well as clear. He has an 
 eye for the picturesque; and he is sensitive 
 to whatever may be touching or dramatic in 
 any given situation. There are stories in this 
 volume as charming in style, and as fascinat-
 
 VI INTRODUCTION 
 
 ing, as anything to be found in our best mag- 
 azines. 
 
 It is good in the testimony it renders to the 
 high and splendid heroism of our beloved mis- 
 sionaries. One need not "turn to novels for 
 exciting narratives, nor for lofty ideals of manly 
 and womanly character, so long as this stir- 
 ring book is within reach. How it thrills the 
 soul, and at the same time makes us ashamed 
 both of our attainments and our standards in 
 the Christian life, to read these stories of the 
 Coans and the Lymans in the Sandwich Is- 
 lands, of the Whitmans and the Spauldings of 
 early Oregon, of the Williamsons and the 
 JRiggs and their associates and descendants 
 among the Dakotas, and of the much-enduring 
 and brave Wheelers up in their then remote 
 Lake Superior region. There is tonic, energy, 
 and material for the kindling of an unbounded 
 enthusiasm, in the records here disclosed of 
 personal loyalty to Jesus, and of undaunted 
 courage in taking up the work He has appoint- 
 ed, and of toils and sacrifices and victories for 
 the Master. It is a precious service to Christ 
 and to humanity to write these names, and all 
 names like them, on our banners, and to hold 
 them high aloft as we press forward to the 
 final triumph of the Captain of our salvation.
 
 INTRODUCTION yii 
 
 This book is good, further and eminently, 
 in the fresh demonstration it affords of the 
 active participation of God in the affairs of 
 men, and in the setting forward of His king- 
 dom in the world. 
 
 Dr. Humphrey has had exceptional opportu- 
 nities for gathering facts and studying inci- 
 dents and movements which bear on the prog- 
 ress of the divine righteousness. For a quar- 
 ter of a century his office has been a focal point 
 of rays of intelligence from all parts of the 
 globe. It has been a condition of highest 
 efficiency in his calling that he should have a 
 mind open and alert, not only to interests spe- 
 cifically religious, but to all that was going on, 
 whether in spheres of war and rebellion, or 
 politics and diplomacy, or trade and commerce, 
 or invention and discovery, amongst all the 
 peoples, and in all sections of the earth. As 
 intelligence has reached him from time to 
 time concerning various events, and from vari- 
 ous lands he has been quick to detect the 
 presence of Him who was in the burning bush, 
 and who authenticated the mission of His Son 
 by a voice from out the clouds. Hence a se- 
 ries of narratives which are just as conclusive 
 of God's interest and activity in the establish- 
 ment of His kingdom among men as is the 
 Book of Acts.
 
 Vlll INTRODUCTION 
 
 A dozen pages or so of the volume are de- 
 voted to the discussion of the specific subject 
 of Missions and the Skeptics. But the whole 
 book is a challenge to skepticism. The changes 
 wrought in opinion and habit and custom and 
 character here noted, many of them so sudden 
 and radical, are simply unaccountable on any 
 other theory than that of the grace of God 
 moving indirectly .and in vital currents on 
 human hearts. As our author well says: "If 
 one needs an argument for the divine presence 
 in the world let him study the work of God in 
 Micronesia. It will be difficult for the tough- 
 est unbelief to stand against the evidence fur- 
 nished by the fifty churches and the five thou- 
 sand Christians in twenty years gathered out of 
 the pollution of heathenism in these far is- 
 lands of the sea." Yet, as is further intima- 
 ted, Micronesia is not alone in furnishing this 
 evidence. As often as any soul anywhere is 
 born into the kingdom fresh proof is afforded 
 of the presence and power of God. "Regen- 
 eration is the paramount miracle." 
 
 This book purports to be a collection of 
 missionary narratives types of many similar 
 stories which might be told. This it is. But 
 it is more. It is a treatise on the evidences 
 of Christianity and the immanence of God. We
 
 INTRODUCTION IX 
 
 have a living God, and a living Christ, and a 
 living Spirit; and this divine life is all the 
 time coming into manifestation in the renew- 
 ing of souls and in the upbuilding of the 
 kingdom which cannot be moved. 
 
 This is a book to be read and re-read by all 
 who love our Lord, and are in sympathy with 
 His servants who labor in the "regions be- 
 yond." It ought especially to be read by young 
 Christians. A broadened knowledge of the 
 things of the kingdom, a higher conception of 
 the privilege and duties of discipleship, and 
 a quickened zeal, will be sure to follow the 
 mastery of the facts here so luminously set forth. 
 "Mission Bands," "Societies of Christian En- 
 deavor," "Monthly Concert Committees," and 
 ministers as well, will find abundant material in 
 this book to work into missionary programmes. 
 
 It may not be quite kind to cry for more 
 while what we already have has not yet been 
 disposed of; but if others, as I doubt not they 
 will, find "Eshcol" as sweet to their taste as I 
 have found it to mine, there will be a general 
 demand that the author go back into the rich 
 vineyard from which he has gathered these 
 clusters and bring others of the same delicious 
 flavor and nutritious quality. 
 
 F. A. NOBLE. 
 Union Park Cong. Church. 
 Sept. 7, i8 93 .
 
 ESHCOL 
 
 THE MAHARAJAH DHULEEP SINGH. 
 PART FIRST. 
 
 The reported death of the young Indian prince, 
 Victor Albert, of which mention has been 
 made in the daily press, recalls the some- 
 what remarkable life of his father, Dhuleep 
 Singh. This story derives a peculiar interest 
 from his romantic marriage with a young Egyp- 
 tian girl of humblest birth, who was thereby 
 raised to a station little short of royalty. 
 
 As an illustration of an overuling providence 
 which sometimes leads human lives into ways 
 of which they could not have dreamed ways 
 stranger than any fiction portrays and espec- 
 ially as a beautiful example of the power of 
 divine grace under most trying circumstances, 
 it may repay the reading, as it has already 
 given abundant recompense for the labor of 
 11
 
 12 ESHCOL 
 
 gathering up, from many diverse sources, the 
 fragments of the story and of giving them an 
 appropriate setting. 
 
 INDIA AND THE PUNJAB. 
 
 It will be well at the outset to glance at the 
 province of which, until dispossessed by the 
 English, Dhuleep Singh was the hereditary 
 Prince. The Punjab lies about the five prin- 
 cipal tributaries of the Indus. It takes its 
 name from this circumstance, and is sometimes 
 called the Province of the Five Rivers. Con- 
 stituting the northwestern angle of India, it 
 pushes itself up to the southern slopes of the 
 Himalayas within which lie those elevated 
 plains, poetically called "The Roof of the 
 World." These stupendous mountain masses 
 with peaks whose altitudes would not be over- 
 matched if Alps were piled upon the Rockies, 
 some of whose valleys even rise above the line 
 of perpetual snow, would form an invincible 
 barrier against incursions from the north were 
 it not for certain treacherous passes. Through 
 these and through others toward the northeast, 
 from times reaching back into the dim mists 
 of antiquity, successive waves of invading hosts 
 have poured themselves over the rich plains of
 
 DHULEEP SINGH 13 
 
 India, ravaging its cities and subduing its 
 peoples, each succeeding flood depositing some 
 sediment of its race, language and religion. 
 
 The Aryan invaders, more than three thou- 
 sand years ago, found, and in part subdued, 
 aboriginal tribes who themselves had dispos- 
 sessed earlier and ruder races, as they in turn 
 had pushed others before them, until the arche- 
 ologist sees the clue disappearing in the trace- 
 less vista of the Bronze and Stone Ages. Since 
 then Scythians, Greeks, Tartars, Arabs, Turks, 
 have had their turn, and have each left some 
 fragments of their peoples and customs. 
 
 There have been invasions of religions as well 
 as of races. Upon the simple and rude faith 
 of the earlier tribes Brahminism imposed itself. 
 In the sixth century before Christ, Buddhism 
 swept over the land. After five successive in- 
 vasions, beginning in the year 1000 A. D., the 
 followers of Mahomet secured a foothold and 
 an empire, and now England holds sway and 
 Christianity is slowly disintegrating the faiths 
 that for so many centuries have held in a cruel 
 and debasing thrall the millions of India. 
 
 THE HINDOO PEOPLE, 
 
 which constitutes the bulk of the population, 
 is an amalgam of these tribes and races, the
 
 14 ESHCOL 
 
 elements being mixed in varying proportions 
 in different parts of the country. But there 
 are fragments, some of them large, which 
 refuse to be melted into the composite mass. 
 Still existing in remote corners are found the 
 dog-faced man-eaters of a prehistoric age. Sev- 
 eral aboriginal tribes, numbering about eighteen 
 millions, hold their own in the recesses of the 
 mountains. More Mohammedans bow to the 
 scepter of England's Queen in India than are 
 ruled from the Sublime Porte in Turkey. And 
 the proud Brahmins, having not far from 
 eighteen millions claim identity with the fair 
 skinned Aryans, and so hold cousinship with 
 the mighty peoples of Greece, Rome and the 
 Anglo-Saxon race. 
 
 India is a very paradise for the student of 
 language, the ethnologist and the antiquarian. 
 In looking over the pages of its history one 
 feels as if he were turning a kaleidoscope. It 
 is an interlacing jungle of invasions, races, 
 dynasties, governments, religions, almost as 
 impervious and interminable as are the dense 
 tropic growths alqng its river banks. A land 
 of romance and mystery, it has been the 
 world's story book for thousands of years, its 
 marvels reaching into the cloud regions of 
 mythologic ages. The history and conditions
 
 DHULEEP SINGH 15 
 
 of this wonderland have engaged and fascinated 
 some of the best minds of the world and the 
 volumes they have produced in number reach 
 into the hundreds. 
 
 THE NORTHWESTERN GATEWAY. 
 
 The Punjab lying at the northwestern gate- 
 .way of the Hindoostan peninsula has had its 
 full share in the tramplings of invaders and in 
 the intermixture of their races. Through its 
 passes the Aryans found their way into India. 
 Here they lingered long, attracted by the per- 
 ennial streams, fed by the melting snows of the 
 Himalayas, and by the fertile valleys of which 
 they sang as the Holy land "fashioned of God 
 and chosen by the Creator." 
 
 Here, while Moses was leading Israel out of 
 Egypt, and Miriam was singing her jubilant 
 song, they were settling down from their 
 nomadic state into communities of peaceful 
 husbandmen, and here, out of their gentle 
 pastoral life, grew up that great and most ven- 
 erable literary memorial of ancient India, the 
 Rig-Veda. In it they praise "Him whose 
 greatness the snowy ranges and the sea and 
 the serial river declare." "In all its long 
 wanderings through India the Aryan race never 
 forgot its Northern home. There dwelt its
 
 16 ESHCOL 
 
 gods and holy singers, and their eloquence 
 descended from heaven among men." 
 
 After the invasion of Alexander in 327, B. C., 
 Greeks settled in the Punjab, and the impress 
 of their genius is still seen in the shrines and 
 images of Buddha. Twelve centuries after 
 began the successive Mohammedan invasions 
 which resulted in the founding of the Mughal 
 empire under Baber in 1525, and which lasted 
 in form at least, long after England appeared 
 on the scene. 
 
 In the events which brought Baber to the 
 throne, there arose in the Punjab a people 
 called the Sikhs. They were a religious sect 
 
 and not a race. 
 
 
 
 Beginning as reformers of the gross religions 
 around them, through persecution they became 
 compacted into a tribe of warriors, and in 
 1798 one of their young chiefs at the age of 
 twenty was made ruler of Lahore. This was 
 
 RUNJIT SINGH, 
 
 the father of prince Dhuleep Singh. He was 
 the son of Maha Singh, a Jat Sikh who died 
 in 1792. The career of Runjit was one of the 
 most notable among all the princes of India. 
 He had no education, for his youth was spent 
 in a wild revel of dissipation, but possessing
 
 DHULEEP SINGH 17 
 
 a strong will, immense energy and a peculiar 
 acuteness in gaining information, he soon 
 reached a commanding position among the 
 various clans of his sect. Collecting an army 
 which ultimately numbered a hundred thousand 
 soldiers, he secured the services of European 
 officers who drilled his troops and greatly im- 
 proved his artillery. It is said that this army 
 for steadiness and religious fervor has had no 
 parallel since the "Ironsides" of Cromwell. 
 
 Managing with consummate courage and ad- 
 dress, Runjit subdued the Punjab and, setting 
 up the kingdom of Lahore, for a time bade 
 defiance to England itself. "When I cross the 
 Sutlej," he said, "the foundations of the Gov- 
 ernment House at Calcutta will rock!" To the 
 English viceroy's proposal for a conference 
 he haughtily replied "Hindoostan is not large 
 enough for me and you!" But later he wisely 
 entered into friendly relations with the English 
 which he honorably maintained till his death. 
 
 An ancestor of his, laying aside the name 
 Sikh, a disciple, adopted the designation 
 Singh, a lion and this became from that time 
 on the designation of the reigning prince. 
 Runjit has been properly called the veritable 
 "Old Lion of the Punjab."
 
 18 ESHCOL 
 
 A HINDOO FUNERAL. 
 
 He died in 1839 His last obsequies were 
 celebrated after the manner of the Hindoos. 
 Four of his wives and seven of his favorite 
 female slaves, some of whom were young girls 
 of fifteen, were marched in procession to the 
 pile of sandal wood where his body lay in 
 state. They being disposed about the dead 
 monarch, the whole pile was thickly covered 
 with jungle grass saturated with oil. The 
 oldest son applied the torch, and in the fierce 
 burning the whole mass, the living and the 
 dead, was consumed. To complete the ceremony 
 the ashes were carefuly gathered up and cast 
 into the sacred river. 
 
 Runjit left no son capable of taking his 
 place. For ten years Lahore was torn with 
 conflicts between rival generals, ministers and 
 queens. Dissensions sprung up in the royal 
 family, and the various branches, Orientalwise, 
 began a process of mutual extermination, until 
 almost none were left. 
 
 If this seems incredible, let us recall the fact 
 that early in this century upon the death of a 
 Sultan at Constantinople, his successor gathered 
 out from the royal harems the wives and the 
 female slaves with their relations of the de-
 
 DHULEEP SINGH 19 
 
 parted emperor, in all to the number of two 
 hundred, and tying up the wretched creatures 
 in sacks had then quietly dropped into the 
 Bosphorus. Truly "the dark places of the earth 
 are full of the habitations of cruelty." Let us 
 congratulate ourselves that the spirit of Chris- 
 tianity is making progress, for, outside darkest 
 Africa, no monarch of the world would now 
 dare repeat such an outrage as that. 
 
 That the child Dhuleep, who was but four 
 years old at the time of his father's death, 
 escaped assassination with the others must 
 have been owing to the superior craft of his 
 mother, the Maharanee Junda Kowr. She was 
 a shrewd woman, bold, unscrupulous, flagrantly 
 immoral, and quite capable of helping to clear 
 the way to the throne for her infant son. After 
 this ten years of anarchy the English govern- 
 ment laid its hand upon the distracted pro- 
 vince. The Maharanee, who had secretly fo- 
 mented the misrule, and the young prince were 
 separated from their people and brought to 
 Futteghur. 
 
 In lieu of his kingdorn Dhuleep now fourteen 
 years of age, received an allowance of ^50,000 
 a year, a title and a princely estate in Norfolk, 
 England, to which he subsequently retired.
 
 20 ESHCOL 
 
 THE RULE OF ENLAND IN INDIA, 
 
 is by many quite misunderstood. Doubtless 
 there have been evils and injustice in the pro- 
 cess, but the control which she has now estab- 
 lished in that country ranks among the highest 
 achievements of modern civilization. India 
 is as large as all Europe excepting Russia. 
 The people are quite as diverse in race, lan- 
 guage and religion. In the twelve provinces 
 and 150 feudatory states no less than a hun- 
 dred different tongues and dialects are spoken. 
 England rules over more than twice as many 
 people in India as the Roman Empire num- 
 bered in its palmiest days. Were it not for 
 her wise and firm hand the country would be 
 filled with a chaos of contending races, break- 
 ing out, judging from the past, into deadly 
 strife and inhuman cruelties. To harmonize 
 such a conglomerate mass of people; to abolish 
 the gross and revolting customs of hook-swing- 
 ing, infanticide and widow-burning; to introduce 
 education ; to open avenues for civil service 
 to competent natives; and to put into opera- 
 tion many sanitary and beneficent measures 
 and this among a people sensitive, jealous 
 and fanatical these and other great measures 
 have required the highest qualities of the
 
 DHULEEP SINGH 21 
 
 soldier and the statesman. England exceeds 
 all modern nations in its capacity to govern, 
 in an effective and beneficent way, the inferior 
 races. It is for the interests, not only of the 
 people themselves, but of our common human- 
 ity that England should continue to rule India. 
 
 THE MOUNTAIN OF LIGHT. 
 
 Among the treasures which came to the Eng- 
 lish in the transfer of the Punjab was the 
 celebrated Koh-i-noor diamond, poetically 
 called the "Mountain of Light." We cannot 
 resist the impulse to stay a moment to speak 
 of this remarkable stone. It was formerly much 
 larger than at present, having been cut more 
 than once by the art of the jeweler to bring out 
 its peerless beauties. In size and shape it 
 resembles the pointed half of a small hen's egg. 
 The value of it has been variously estimated 
 at from $2,000,000 to $10,000,000. It is almost 
 beyond conception that such an insignificant 
 pebble, which a boy might carelessly shy at a 
 bird should have a valuation like this or should 
 have played such a part in the history of kings 
 and empires. 
 
 Weird and occult powers have been attribu- 
 ted to diamonds, and among the ruder peoples 
 they have ever been held in a profound rever-
 
 22 ESHCOL 
 
 ence. Strange and unpropitious events have 
 attended on their possession, and poets have 
 made them the subject of wild and fanciful 
 imaginings. The Koh-i-noor is, beyond every 
 other stone, the diamond of history and 
 romance. 
 
 It has come down from an unkown antiquity. 
 The fables of the Hindoos declare that it be- 
 longed to the gods and was worn by their 
 heroic ancestors more that 5,000 years ago. Its 
 history coming through a tragic tangle of own- 
 ership, has ever been one of rapine and blood. 
 The Hindoo believes that the empire of India 
 is destined to its possessor. It was one of the 
 chief boasts of the Emperors at Delhi. They 
 regarded it as a type of universal sovereignty. 
 But it has always in the East been an ill-starred 
 stone, and Indian prophets have invariably 
 foretold the downfall of the dynasty owning it. 
 No mortal eye can foresee what chapters, 
 tragic or otherwise, are yet to be written re- 
 specting this bewitching but uncanny stone. 
 For 550 years it has been authentically traced 
 as being chief among the hereditary gems of 
 the Rajahs of Central India. It came into the 
 Mogul line by conquest and adorned the famous 
 Peacock Thone of the Great Mogul at Delhi, 
 forming one of the eyes of that celebrated bird.
 
 DHULEEP SINGH 23 
 
 In 1739 Nadir, a Persian Shah, conquered the 
 Mogul and carried off the coveted stone to 
 Khorassan. In time an Afghan prince seized 
 it, and from him it came by force and strate- 
 gem into the hands of Runjit Singh, to whom 
 it was transferred with imposing ceremonies 
 and he ever after wore it in a bracelet on his 
 arm. On his death bed the wily priests made 
 strong efforts to induce him to present the 
 mighty stone to the famous shrine of the god 
 Juggernaut. But the crown jeweler refused to 
 give it up and in due time it came into the hands 
 of the English government. It is related that 
 Lord John Lawrence, the Enlish envoy, when 
 the transfer was made, in a preoccupied way, 
 dropped the bauble into his vest pocket, where 
 it remained days until, horrified at his careless- 
 ness, he found it and committed it to trusty 
 hands to be borne to England. A model of it 
 may be seen among the crown jewels in the 
 Tower at London, but the stone itself is jealousy 
 guarded at Windsor Castle. 
 
 THE MAHARAJAH DHULEEP SINGH. 
 
 But we have tarried too long in our approach 
 to the personal history of the Maharajah Dhu- 
 leep Singh. We get only one or two glimpses of 
 his boyhood. In the political confusion which
 
 24 ESHCOL 
 
 followed the death of his father, the con- 
 tending factions each issued proclamations in 
 his name. At a great national festival in 1837 
 the little Maharajah is represented as doing 
 the honors of the occasion in a most graceful 
 manner. A British war correspondent, who 
 saw him four years after when the fight with 
 the English was still on, describes him as "a 
 mere stripling, wearing a white camel's hair 
 jamee, sitting his gray Arab horse in the 
 midst of a magnificent staff, looking down from 
 the Sikh batteries at our perpetually renewed 
 and as pereptually frustrated efforts to effect a 
 lodgment on the west bank of the river." 
 
 A STROKE OF THE SWORD OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 But we now come to the vital point on which 
 turned all his after-life. At the age of eighteen 
 we find him at Futteghur living in semi-royal 
 state, surrounded with attendants, among whom 
 was a gurtt, who was expected to hold him 
 faithful to the religion of his fathers. For a 
 companion a young Hindoo was assigned him, 
 who, although not a Christian, had attended 
 a mission school at Furruckabad, and had pos- 
 sessed himself of a Bible in which he was much 
 interested.
 
 DHULEEP SINGH 25 
 
 "What are you reading so much?" said the 
 Prince to him one day. 
 
 "It is the Bible, the Englishmen's sacred 
 book," replied his companion, putting it out of 
 sight. 
 
 "Read me some of it," insisted the Prince. 
 
 Turning to the Gospel, he read, as it is 
 thought, the closing scenes in the life of Christ. 
 Suddenly looking up, he saw the sensitive 
 Prince was in tears. But it was too late. 
 Contrary to all plans the mischief had been 
 wrought. The "true Light that lighteth every 
 man that cometh into the world" had shined 
 into his dark soul. Although his native com- 
 panion was a Hindoo (and remains such to 
 this day), he explained to him further the 
 doctrines as he had learned them at the school. 
 And in due time, deeply moved, and doubtless 
 having had other instruction, he declared him- 
 self a Christian, and sought baptism at the 
 hands of the English chaplain of the post. 
 
 It may seem strange that no direct efforts had 
 been made to reach the Prince with Christian 
 influences. But it has ever been the policy of 
 the English government to interfere officially 
 with the native religions only so far as to re- 
 press the more outrageous and revolting rites, 
 leaving it to the volunteer efforts of mission-
 
 26 ESHCOL 
 
 aries to present the claims of Christianity. In 
 earlier days even Bishop Heber, the author of 
 the Missionary Hymn, declined to baptize a 
 Hindoo convert, on the ground that he was 
 officially connected with the government as 
 chaplain. 
 
 The occasion of his baptism was a day of 
 days to the young Prince. In a letter written 
 at the time and quoted in the "Woman's Mis- 
 sionary Magazine" we find this extract : 
 
 "On the 8th of March, 1853, Dhuleep Singh 
 was baptized in the presence of all the servants 
 of his retinue, and the missionaries, native 
 Christians, and European residents at the 
 station. He was clad in the royal costume of 
 his country and when he took off his jeweled 
 turban and bowed his head to receive the rite 
 of baptism, many a heart offered prayer that 
 he might have grace to keep his solemn vows. " 
 
 Works followed swift upon his new faith. 
 Although but eighteen years of age, he at once 
 began to found relief societies at Futteghur 
 and at his ancient capital, Lahore, and later 
 he sustained a large number of mission schools. 
 
 A transformation so sudden and complete 
 can scarcely be accounted for save by the 
 mystery of the New Birth. In the first flush 
 of early manhood, he was leading a life of lux-
 
 DHULEEP SINGH 21 
 
 urious idleness. The riot of a fierce and 
 lustful hereditary heathenism, coming down 
 through many generations, was coursing in his 
 veins. It had been necessary to separate him 
 from his mother that he might be remove from 
 the influences of her corrupt example. He had 
 the means and the opportunity for an unbridled 
 self indulgence. But one thrust of the sword of 
 the Spirit radically changed all this. The 
 supreme miracle had been wrought. The whole 
 trend of his life was turned into a totally new 
 direction and he became a humble follower of 
 the lowly Jesus. 
 
 Speaking of this in after years he said, "God 
 has deprived me of an earthly kingdom, but 
 he has given me the blessed hope of a heavenly 
 one by my conversion to Christianity." 
 
 In due time it was found desirable that he, 
 accompanied by his mother and her gold im- 
 ages, for she remained an idolater to the end 
 should be sent to England. Here he took 
 possession of his immense estate of 16,000 
 acres which the government had granted him, 
 and settled down in the capacity of a quiet 
 English gentleman. And now we must leave 
 him here while our story transfers itself to 
 totally different scenes on the banks of the 
 Nile.
 
 THE MAHARAJAH DHULEEP SINGH. 
 
 PART SECOND. 
 THE MAHARANEE. 
 
 The Cairo of forty years ago was a very dif- 
 ferent city from that which the modern traveler 
 sees. It is described "as little better than a 
 labyrinth of tortuous lanes, narrow, unpaved, 
 and continually swept with clouds of dust 
 blown from huge mounds of rubbish outside the 
 walls." To this day "most of the houses of the 
 poorer classes consist of miserable mud hovels, 
 with filthy courts, dilapidated windows and tat- 
 tered awnings." 
 
 From one of these humble dwellings, having 
 scarcely simple furnishing or comforts, early in 
 the sixties, a young Coptic maid, veiled doubt- 
 less, but bare-footed and carrying her simple 
 midday repast of boiled rice wrapped in a 
 plantain leaf, threaded her way for miles 
 through these tangled lanes and presented her- 
 self at the door of a small and crowded mis- 
 sion school-room. Her name was Bamba, to 
 which was added that of her father, Muller, a 
 28
 
 THE MAHARANEE 29 
 
 German merchant of Alexandria, who seems 
 to have furnished the humble abode which she 
 occupied with her mother, and to have kept 
 some track of this poor woman and of the 
 daughter which had been born to them. In 
 some manner Bamba had already learned to 
 read and was in possession of a New Testa- 
 ment in Arabic, the tongue of her people, 
 but of whose contents she knew almost noth- 
 ing. She was received at the school-room with 
 favor and speedily won her way into the 
 warmest affections of her teachers. One of 
 them writes: "Her sweet thoughtful face and 
 graceful form, united to a quiet dignity pecu- 
 liarly her own, were very marked, and excited 
 an interest that was strengthened day by day 
 in our pleasing relations of teacher and pupil." 
 That a sweet and pure soul should have grown 
 up amid such most unpromising environments 
 is one of the mysteries of Providence. She 
 had indeed a home with the only parent she 
 knew and was happy in her love and compan- 
 ionship. But the mother seems to have been 
 an ignorant woman of the lower class, if not a 
 slave, and the degradation of the people around 
 her was not exceeded by that of any other 
 Oriental city. 
 
 The diseases which infested the people, such
 
 30 ESHCOL 
 
 as the plague, ophthalmia and malignant fevers, 
 originating in its "stifled filth," and which 
 gave it a higher death-rate than that of any 
 European capital, was only a type of the pes- 
 tilential moral conditions which lay about the 
 path of this young maiden whenever she set 
 foot beyond the threshold of her home. 
 
 But nature furnishes its parallels. Out of 
 the murky bottoms of stagnant pools, which 
 men instinctively shun, where live snakes and 
 lizards and all the ugly things that crawl, 
 come up and spread themselves out to the 
 sun, the most beautiful lilies, and orchids, 
 it is said, can be found only where malaria 
 breeds fever and almost certain death. It would 
 seem as if a special providence had watched 
 over her from the beginning, and that it was 
 now already preparing her for the remarkable 
 position to which she was soon to be introduced. 
 
 THE BUD UNFOLDS. 
 
 Under the influence of the school and of its 
 choice teachers her mind and heart, which had 
 been shut in by such cramped surroundings 
 rapidly unfolded, and the question of all 
 questions soon began to press itself upon her 
 awakened soul "What shall be my personal 
 relations to the Lord Jesus Christ?" No
 
 THE MAHARANEE 31 
 
 thought of this had ever come to her from the 
 dead service, in an unknown tongue, of the 
 Coptic church in which she had been reared. 
 The priests themselves were vicious and 
 ignorant, and even the bishop could neither 
 read nor write. But the spiritual aptitudes 
 which seemed to be innate in this singularly 
 sincere young heart, found their proper food 
 in the simple truths of the New Testament. 
 She deeply felt the need of a divine Savior. 
 She opened her heart gladly to the renewing 
 power of the Holy spirit, and through all the 
 afterlife gave most satisfying evidence that the 
 great work of regeneration had been wrought 
 in her soul. The joy of her new-found faith 
 at once led her into most earnest Christian 
 work. Having become a pupil teacher, she 
 opened a prayer meeting with the thirty younger 
 scholars, given into her charge, and numbers 
 of these, under her teaching and prayers, came 
 into the Christian fold. 
 
 At home in the humble mud hovel she 
 kindled the fires of the family altar, and the 
 mother, dying the next year of cholera, gave 
 evidence of a renewed heart. 
 
 A PRINCELY STRANGER APPEARS. 
 
 In the midst of these simple and gladly
 
 32 ESHCOL 
 
 rendered duties, an event interposed itself, as 
 strange and incomprehensible to her as if an 
 inhabitant of another planet had suddenly 
 dropped into her path. One day there ap- 
 peared in the school-room, unannounced, a 
 young Indian prince. "He was richly arrayed 
 in the costume of his native country and was 
 bedecked with a profusion of rare jewels. " It 
 was the Maharajah Dhuleep Singh. His mother 
 on her dying bed had requested him to take her 
 body to India to be burned, and by permission 
 of the English government, specially granted, 
 for he was prohibited from returning to his 
 native country, he was on his way to perform 
 that last sad office. The sickness of a servant 
 had detained him at Cairo for a time, and as 
 he was interested in missionary work, he made 
 a tour of the highly successful mission schools 
 of the United Presbyterian church, in that 
 city. It is probable that Bamba with her high 
 sense of duty was so occupied in keeping her 
 children intent upon their books that she took 
 little notice of the gorgeous stranger. Not so 
 the prince. From the moment he saw her he 
 had only eyes for the modest but womanly 
 teacher, and upon learning that she was a con- 
 vert, quietly remarked: "How beautiful to see 
 one so young so zealously serving Christ." On
 
 THE MAHARANEE 33 
 
 the following Sabbath he visited the mission 
 Sunday-school where Bamba as usual was en- 
 gaged. We are not surprised to read that he 
 "was greatly interested in the varied exercises 
 of the hour." 
 
 THE DECLARATION. 
 
 It is not difficult rightly to divine what were 
 the thoughts of the prince on that Sunday 
 afternoon. He had now reached the full prime 
 of early manhood. His associations were with 
 the highest ranks of English society. With an 
 ample annuity and an almost regal estate it 
 would seem that he had all that heart could 
 wish. There were not wanting high-born 
 daughters of England who perhaps would not 
 have been altogether unmindful of an offer of 
 a share in his fortunes and a place in his 
 heart. But he had continually said "I am an 
 Oriental and I want an Oriental wife." Was 
 not providence now about to realize his wish? 
 Like lovers generally it doubtless seemed to 
 him that it was a special interposition that had 
 brought him to Cairo just at this time and had 
 so unexpectedly detained him in his journey. 
 Here was the attractive Oriental maiden, and, 
 what was equally essential to him, she was an 
 earnest Christian. Whereupon he was not dis-
 
 34 ESHCOL 
 
 obedient to what seemed to him a heavenly 
 vision and that evening dispatched a letter to 
 the missionaries saying that he would call on 
 the following morning. There was great sur- 
 prise and then long and anxious deliberation, 
 not without prayer, when the prince had made 
 known his wishes and had asked that through 
 them he might propose to Bamba to become 
 his wife. It was a great responsibility. She 
 was so young and so utterly unacquainted with 
 the ways of the great world. 
 
 Useful and happy in her work, might it not 
 turn the head of the unsophisticated child to 
 have such sudden splendor burst upon her. 
 But it was finally determined that the lady 
 teacher who had been her special friend from 
 the beginning should break the matter to her 
 as wisely and gently as she could. 
 
 Meanwhile Bamba "in maiden meditation 
 fancy free," into whose sincere and simple 
 heart no shadow of a dream had come of what 
 was awaiting her, obeyed the summons of her 
 teacher and came to her room. It was a pict- 
 ure which the highest genius might well de- 
 sire to catch and throw upon the canvas, the 
 simple and sincere-hearted girl sitting at the 
 feet of her teacher, her arms resting upon her 
 knee and looking up with wide open and won-
 
 THE MAHARANEE 35 
 
 dering eyes as the astonishing message was 
 quietly unfolded to her. It might be expected 
 that she would be dazed, if not confounded, 
 by the amazing announcement, but on the con- 
 trary, as soon as the teacher paused for a reply 
 she quickly and resolutely said: "I do not 
 wish to marry. I wish to serve Christ in the 
 school." And to a further and fuller expla- 
 nation of the matter she only persistently made 
 the same reply. But at last as her mind more 
 fully grasped the situation, in response to the 
 appeal that this might be the voice of God 
 calling her to a higher sphere of usefulness, 
 she said, "I will pray much over it, and if 
 God shows it to be his will that I should 
 marry I will do so." "But," she added inno- 
 cently, "I do not think it will be his will!" 
 
 The Maharajah was greatly moved at the 
 result of this interview, but it only increased 
 his respect and love for Bamba. Leaving a 
 costly bracelet and a ring for her, with the re- 
 quest that, whether she consented to his wishes 
 or not, she would wear them for his sake, he 
 soon departed for Bombay, providing, however, 
 that if there was a favorable issue he should 
 be informed at the earliest moment. 
 
 It sometimes happens, under the pressure 
 of a great question, that the growth of years
 
 36 ESHCOL 
 
 is compressed into the measure of a few weeks. 
 Like the flower stalk of a century plant Bamba 
 speedily shot up from an unsophisticated girl 
 and opened out into an appreciative and sen- 
 sible woman. The momentous question which 
 had thus suddenly dropped into her life, one 
 that could not be delayed or evaded, was con- 
 tinually taken to the Lord in earnest and be- 
 lieving prayer. Under the enlightenment thus 
 received she came at length to feel that the 
 new way opening before her was God's way, 
 and she signified her acceptance. 
 
 DISCOVERY OF A FATHER. 
 
 Being released from the school, one of the 
 teachers was deputed to take her in special 
 charge, teaching her English and giving her 
 some idea of the amenities of the high station to 
 which she was soon to be called. Her father, hav- 
 ing years before married an English lady, with 
 the full consent of his wife, recognized her 
 among his children, and invited her to his home, 
 where, attended by her faithful teacher, for 
 the intervening weeks her education and the 
 preparation for the wedding went on. A very 
 touching scene was enacted at her father's house 
 on the day of her arrival. After the evening 
 repast the teacher said, "We have been in
 
 THE MAHARANEE 37 
 
 the habit of having prayers together and with 
 your permission we will not omit it now." 
 She then read a passage from the Arabic Bible 
 and all kneeling Bamba led in prayer. Ac- 
 customed to open her whole heart to the Lord, 
 with great feeling she innocently poured out 
 her thanksgivings that she had at last found 
 her father and her brothers and sisters. The 
 whole circle were deeply moved and as they 
 rose from their knees her father threw his arms 
 about her and embraced her with the utmost 
 tenderness. 
 
 Fortunately the pens of the cultivated teach- 
 ers who had watched over Bamba's unfolding 
 give us glimpses here and there of the pro- 
 gress of events both before the marriage and 
 in the later years of her life. To these we 
 are indebted for the larger part of the facts 
 here recorded. 
 
 In about two months the Maharajah returned 
 bringing "an almost endless variety of the 
 choicest jewelry" for Bamba. Although she 
 could not appreciate their rare beauty and 
 value, she modestly admired them, adorning 
 herself with only a few, but in exquisite taste. 
 "Speaking of her jewels sometime after, as she 
 twirled her fingers in the sparkling chain about 
 her neck, she said, 'How thankful I am that
 
 38 ESHCOL 
 
 the love of Jesus was first put into my heart, 
 otherwise I might think too much of these 
 things which are as dust compared with that." 1 
 
 COURTSHIP UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 It is one of the mysteries of life how the 
 gentle entanglement of these two hearts went 
 on, for he understood only English, and she 
 only Arabic. But the customs of the country 
 of each require a "go-between," and the wise 
 and trusted teacher could easily make smooth 
 the path of their true love. Some one who 
 evidently kept a diary and who was fond of 
 being strictly accurate in his facts records this: 
 "Prince Dhuleep Singh visited the mission 
 schools for the first time on the nth of Feb- 
 ruary 1864, and proceeded to India on the 2gth 
 of the same month; he returned to Egypt on 
 the 2gth of April, and on the yth of June was 
 united in marriage to one of the daughters of 
 our Cairo mission." The civil service took place 
 in the British consulate at Alexandria. The re- 
 ligious ceremony was solemnized at the house 
 of the bride's father by one of the missionaries, 
 Dr. Hogg. "Dhuleep Singh," said the papers 
 of the day, "wore European costume, excepting 
 a tarbush. "The bride's dress was also Euro- 
 pean." "She wore but few jewels, a necklace
 
 THE MAHARANEE 39 
 
 of fine pearls, and a bracelet set with diamonds 
 being her only ornaments!" The next week in 
 her first call as a bride on her beloved teachers 
 she placed in their hands, from the prince, for 
 the use of the mission, a check for '$5,000, a 
 gift, which he repeated on every anniversary 
 of their marriage for the sixteen following 
 years. And then in due time Bamba, with her 
 Maharajah, as if she were passing out of the 
 real world which she had always known into 
 some strange dreamland, sailed over the great 
 sea to the distant England. 
 
 THE MAHARANEE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 Here the gentle Maharanee, partly because 
 of her romantic story, but more by her self 
 possession; the good sense and quick appre- 
 ciation with which she adapted herself to the 
 forms and courtesies of the most refined life; 
 by her imperfectly acquired but quaint Eng- 
 lish; but above all by her unaffected goodness 
 and piety won her way at once to the hearts 
 of the Queen and the noble ladies with whom 
 she now came into almost constant association. 
 
 The rapidity with which these events march 
 before us almost takes one's breath away. In 
 three brief months the humble Coptic maiden 
 is removed from her poor hut on a miserable
 
 40 ESHCOL 
 
 street of Cairo and becomes the mistress of a 
 princely mansion in a noble English park. And 
 she who was a charity scholar in a mission 
 school comes into the presence of royalty and 
 on state occasions, as the wife of a prince, 
 stands next to the Queen. 
 
 A NILE PICTURE. 
 
 There are storms ahead as well as sunshine 
 in the path of this narration, and for the re 
 mainder of the way .it must hasten its pace. 
 We cannot refrain, however, from quoting en- 
 tire a picture of the happy life of these persons 
 two years later. The prince and his Maharanee 
 are revisiting the scenes of their courtship and 
 marriage: "It was on the Sabbath; Bamba had 
 been up to the mission house to attend morning 
 service, and was riding down the bank of the 
 Nile on a richly saddled donkey to join her 
 husband on the boat. He helped her on board 
 with great gallantry, brought up from the sa- 
 loon an easy chair, which he placed for her 
 under the awning, and, as we viewed the scene 
 from our boat, a picture was presented which 
 I can never forget. Dhuleep stood conversing 
 with his wife in the kindest and most affable 
 manner. In the background was the yellow 
 old Nile bank, with a few palm trees; while
 
 THE MAHARANEE 41 
 
 beyond rose through the lurid air the great 
 pyramids, whose solemn majesty is the same 
 that looked down on Joseph and his brethren. 
 The surroundings were worthy the strange, 
 romantic history of Dhuleep and his wife." 
 
 Upon their return to England the use of this 
 boat named the Ibis which belonged to the 
 prince, was freely given to the mission. A 
 little later it was made over to them in full 
 ownership, and now for thirty years it has car 
 ried up and down the Nile from Damietta to 
 Assouan, devoted men and women, distributing 
 the Word, establishing schools and preaching 
 the Gospel of the kingdom. 
 
 ELVEDON HALL. 
 
 The almost royal estate granted the Mahara- 
 jah is called Elvedon Hall. It is nearThetford, 
 Suffolk County, about 90 miles from London 
 and near the extensive grounds of the Prince 
 of Wales at Sandringham. The house is a 
 noble mansion. There for a number of years 
 went on a most beautiful family life. The 
 cares of her exalted station did not hinder the 
 Maharanee from taking a special interest in 
 the spiritual welfare of her servants. She per- 
 sonally ministered to the sick and needy of 
 their tenantry and a class of village boys came
 
 42 ESHCOL 
 
 to her on the Sabbath for Bible lessons. Their 
 "Chaplain," himself a man of singular piety, 
 said, "I have never met one so spiritually 
 minded. Her influence in her home and in the 
 parish cannot be over-estimated." And the 
 prince, rejoicing in her gracious life and godly 
 walk, declared, "I thank God every day for 
 my wife." Missionaries from Egypt and from 
 India who were the almoners of his bounty, 
 were frequent visitors at this home and were 
 always most cordially welcomed. 
 
 On one such occasion the dining table was 
 found spread with a service of gold, the prince 
 apologizing said it was not for the sake of 
 ostentation," but was in memory of his mother 
 whose idols he had caused to be melted and 
 moulded into this table service." He thought 
 that nothing could be more appropriate than 
 that it should be spread for the use of missiona- 
 ries. The dail)' family worship enlisted the whole 
 household. The six chambermaids, each with 
 the white badge of service on her head and with 
 Bible in hand, respectfully stood until the 
 family and the guests were seated, and the 
 Maharajah joined most heartily in the service. 
 
 Three sons and three daughters were born 
 into this household. It gives a hint of their 
 intimacy with the royal family to know that at
 
 THE MAHARANEE 43 
 
 the baptism of Victor Albert, the eldest of 
 the sons, the Prince and Princess of Wales 
 stood as godfather and godmother, and that 
 the Queen herself acted as godmother to more 
 than one of the other children. But the mother 
 gave over to no other hands the care for the 
 souls of these dear ones. She carried them 
 continually in the arms of her faith, and sed- 
 uously taught them the way of life. 
 
 A SERPENT ENTERS PARADISE. 
 
 And so the happy years went by. 
 
 But into this home, as near an earthly para- 
 dise as few families are permitted to en- 
 joy, the trail of the serpent began to appear, 
 and there followed a sad train of misfortune 
 and woe. Our hand refuses to draw aside the 
 veil which hides the trying scenes of the later 
 years. Only glimpses revealed in the white 
 light of charity can be given. 
 
 "Pride, fullness of bread and abundance of 
 idleness" are the bane of the British aristoc- 
 racy. It has furnished not a few of the noblest 
 specimens of Christian manhood the world has 
 ever seen. But through the curtain with which 
 what is called the highest circle hides itself, 
 there now and then break rumors of scandals 
 which, if true, ought to bring into permanent
 
 44 ESHCOL 
 
 and utter disgrace those concerned in them. 
 Into this circle the prince was freely admitted 
 and here he had his chief associations. If the 
 estate furnished him had been further away 
 from Sandringham the case might have been 
 different. But what wonder, if some of those, 
 set about with the gathered safeguards of 
 many Christian generations, and upon whom 
 lay the highest motives to integrity and noble 
 living, should fall "into temptation, and a 
 snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, " 
 what wonder that this converted heathen 
 prince, with a most vicious heredity behind 
 him, flattered by the companionship and se- 
 duced by the example of those who stood not 
 far from the highest places in this Christian 
 kingdom should be drawn into games of chance 
 and into the attendant evils until the moral 
 force broke down and for the time the old bar- 
 baric instincts came into play. 
 
 How the sad truth broke upon the unsuspect- 
 ing Maharanee cannot be known. But to the 
 quick eye of the loving wife, that a change 
 was coming about could not long be concealed. 
 There can be known only to the Omniscient 
 Mind, the prayers, the tears, the entreaties 
 upon the one side; the repentings, the con- 
 fessions, the resolves upon the other, through 
 which the downward course kept on.
 
 THE MAHARANEE 45 
 
 BACCARAT. 
 
 The finances of the estate fell into confu- 
 sion. Debts accumulated. Through the vicious 
 necromancy of baccarat, the funds that should 
 have kept the Maharajah's credit sound were 
 transferred to the coffers of those who were 
 bound by every principle of honor to protect 
 the interests of this Indian prince he, who 
 while still a youth had given over to the Eng- 
 lish government his kingdom with its rich rev- 
 enues for this stipend which was now being, 
 vampire like, slowly sucked out of him. 
 
 It is no wonder that in such circumstances 
 a deep sense of wrong and injustice done him 
 entered the heart of the prince ; that, brought 
 up to believe himself heir of the Throne of the 
 Five Rivers, he should have asked for a read- 
 justment of his claims; that he should even 
 have demanded a restoration of his kingdom, 
 which had been bartered away from him while 
 he was a mere youth, and the return of the 
 Koh-i-noor diamond which had somehow, in 
 the transfer found its way from the treasure 
 house of the Punjab King into that of the 
 Queen of England. 
 
 Of course these claims received no attention. 
 What could this quasi-captive do against the 
 might of Great Britain! It may have been
 
 46 ESHCOL 
 
 wrong certainly it had great mitigations but 
 it is not surprising that a strong passion of 
 enmity and revenge came upon him ; that he 
 should have publicly declared himself "Eng- 
 land's implacable foe;" that he should have 
 renounced Christianity, alleging that he could 
 not be in connection with a religion or identi- 
 fied with a government that could tolerate his 
 wrongs: that he should have thrown himself 
 into the arms of Russia, and that he should 
 have started for India, probably with some 
 vague idea of a revolution. Of course the gov- 
 ernment turned back his steamer at Aden. Rus- 
 sia could not make him available for her pur- 
 poses, and so, baffled and broken in spirit, he 
 took up his residence in Paris where he still 
 lives. 
 
 SIGNS OF HOPE. 
 
 We go back now for a little time to the sad 
 home at Elvedon Hall. The prince having 
 gone into exile, leaving his family unprovi- 
 ded for, they were tenderly looked after by 
 their royal friends. The Maharanee broken 
 in health by the sudden and violent change 
 which had fallen upon the once happy home, 
 never lost her hold upon the Infinite hand. She 
 wrestled much in prayer for the absent prince
 
 THE MAHARANEE 47 
 
 and with an unfaltering faith to her dying day be- 
 lieved that he would yet be restored, if not to 
 the kingdom which he vainly sought, to citi- 
 zenship in the Kingdom of God. And it is per- 
 mitted others to join her in this faith. The 
 venerable and now sainted Dr. Lansing, senior 
 missionary at Cairo, always cherished the belief 
 that the prince would be reclaimed to the faith 
 and life of the Gospel. He and his wife, with 
 an officer of the Mission Board, a letter from 
 whom now lies before us, in the summer of 
 1882 spent some days at the little less than 
 royal residence, Elvedon Hall. "Each morning 
 and evening," the letter runs, "at the Maha- 
 rajah's request we had family worship. All the 
 household were present, the Maharajah, Bamba, 
 all their children and all their domestics. It 
 was a most reverent and attentive company 
 and none were more deeply affected than the 
 Maharajah himself." "A year ago last fall," 
 the letter continues, "one of our missionaries 
 called on him in Paris and had a most interest- 
 ing and affecting interview with him. And 
 looking at all that was said by the Maharajah 
 he feels that notwithstanding all that has oc- 
 curred, he is a subject of saving grace." We 
 cannot but believe in the prayers of the de- 
 parted Maharanee. She was a princess among
 
 48 ESHCOL 
 
 men and she had power with God and pre- 
 vailed. In all his wild passion there is little 
 doubt but that down deep in his heart still 
 remained the loving influence of Bamba. Even 
 after his affairs had become embarrassed he 
 offered to borrow money to continue the gift 
 of $5,000, which for so many years, as a token 
 of his grateful love, he had annually g.'ven to 
 the mission where he had found his wife. And 
 now we read in the report of the Mission 
 Board of the United Presbyterian Church for 
 1892 this item : "In a most generous spirit 
 His Highness, The Maharajah Dhuleep Singh 
 contributed during the year ^2,000, ($10,000) to 
 our missionary work." It is even reported that 
 repentant, he has become reconciled to the 
 English government and has been restored to 
 his former estate. 
 
 THE GATEWAY OF HEAVEN. 
 
 But we anticipate the closing scenes at El- 
 vedon Hall. In her declining health Bamba, 
 clinging to her early love, sent an earnest re- 
 quest to her teacher, Miss Dale, who had now 
 become Mrs. Lansing, to visit her. "On reach- 
 ing London," this lady writes, "we were much 
 grieved to find her so much changed a mere 
 wreck of her former self, but still the loving.
 
 THE MAHARANEE 49 
 
 hopeful, trusting Bamba of earlier days." A 
 change for the winter to the more genial skies 
 of her native land, with her younger children, 
 was suggested. In the possibility of this she 
 was greatly elated and said with much enthu- 
 siasm, "It is such a beautiful idea; it will be 
 so delightful to go to Egypt again!" But the 
 gates of a more beautiful country were already 
 ajar. A fuller life-giving river than any earthly 
 Nile was waiting to bless her weary eyes. It 
 was a gracious providence that three days 
 after, as she lay dying, the arms of the same 
 teacher who had been her trusted friend in her 
 wonderful experiences at Cairo, encircled her 
 in the supreme moment and handed her depart- 
 ing spirit on into the company of the Celestials ! 
 
 In the little cemetery surrounding the chap- 
 el at Elvedon, "beneath the shadows of the 
 wide spreading trees that adorn the beautiful 
 grounds," they gently laid her away in her 
 last resting place to await the resurrection. 
 "Among the lovely floral wreaths that lay in 
 such profusion upon her casket were several 
 from the Royal family, the Queen, the Prince 
 and Princess of Wales, and the youg prin- 
 cesses, silent but sweetly fitting tributes to un- 
 obtrusive worth." 
 
 But this narrative must close. We cannot
 
 50 ESHCOL 
 
 refrain from asking as its final word, what was 
 the power that held this woman steady and 
 strong upon the wild sea of her strange lor- 
 tunes? Something was due doubtless to native 
 endowments. But the secret of all was, that, 
 in the beginning of her new life, she went over, 
 wholly and irrevocably, with all the forces of 
 her affections and purposes, to the Lord Jesus 
 Christ. "Do you love my Jesus!" was the ques- 
 tion that never failed to tremble on her lips 
 as she conversed with the noble ladies that 
 sought her acquaintance. Through daily study 
 of the Word, and constant communings with 
 the Lord, his will became her will, and in the 
 full sense of His abiding presence she stood 
 unmoved by the pomp and circumstance that 
 surrounded her, and looked modestly but un- 
 abashed into the face of royalty. 
 
 And now she looks upon the King eternal 
 in his beauty. It may be that when the trans- 
 action is weighed in the celestial balances, it 
 will appear that the ancient and priceless dia- 
 mond worn by the British Queen belonged up- 
 on her modest brow. But it matters not. 
 Living she was ever adorned with "the orna- 
 ment of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in 
 the sight of God of great price." And now 
 sainted and glorified, she herself is a resplend- 
 ent jewel in the diadem of the King of Kings.
 
 FOUR MEMORABLE YEARS AT HILO. 
 
 THE PARISH AND THE PEOPLE. 
 
 A strip of island sea-coast from one to three 
 miles wide, and a hundred long, dotted with 
 groves, and seamed across by the deep chasms 
 of mountain torrents; behind this, for twenty- 
 five miles, a belt of impervious jungle, fencing 
 in, since the days of Vancouver, numberless 
 herds of wild cattle; beyond, in the interior, 
 a rough, volcanic wilderness, culminating in 
 a summit 14,000 feet in height a chaos of 
 craters, some on the peaks of mountains, and 
 some yawning suddenly before you in the for- 
 est, some long idle, some ceaselessly active, 
 making the night lurid with their flames and 
 still building at the unfinished island; one, 
 a vast, fiery hollow, three miles across, the 
 grandest lava caldron on the globe; 15,000 na- 
 tives scattered up and down the sea belt, 
 grouped in villages of from 100 to 300 persons, 
 a vicious, sensual, shameless and yet tractable 
 people, slaves to the chiefs, and herding to- 
 51
 
 52 ESHCOL 
 
 gether almost like animals to this parish, a 
 strange mingling of crags and valleys, of tor- 
 rents and volcanoes, of beauty and barrenness, 
 and to this people, a race of thieves, drunk- 
 ards and adulterers, sixty years ago, was called 
 the young missionary, Rev. Titus Coan. And 
 here, for four memorable years, went on a 
 work of grace scarcely paralleled elsewhere 
 since the days of Pentecost. 
 
 This parish, long and narrow, occupies the 
 eastern third of the shore belt of Hawaii. It 
 comprises two districts Puna, stretching off 
 toward the south in black lava fields, with here 
 and there a patch of verdure, and a cluster of 
 cabins, and Hilo, on the north, a fertile tract, 
 but exceedingly rough. The central point is 
 Hiio Bay, which opens out to the Pacific to- 
 ward the east and north. Some leaven of the 
 gospel had already been cast into this lump of 
 heathenism. Different missionaries had resided 
 here for brief periods. Several schools had 
 been established, and about one fourth of the 
 natives could read. Rev. D. B. Lyman and 
 wife, most efficient co-laborers with Mr. Coari, 
 were already on the ground. There had been 
 a marked change in the mental condition of 
 the natives. A little knowledge of divine truth 
 about as much, perhaps, as our street Arabs
 
 FOUR MEMORABLE YEARS AT HILO 53 
 
 possess was had by most of the people. There 
 were a few hopeful converts, and a little 
 church of thirty-six members had been formed. 
 
 A BEGINNING. 
 
 After a voyage of just six months around 
 Cape Horn, Mr. Coan reached the islands 
 June 6, 1835, and at once engaged in the 
 work. 
 
 To Mr. and Mrs. Lyman came the charge of 
 a boarding school, and much other labor at the 
 home station, while to Mr. Coan, robust in 
 health, and fervid as a speaker, the preaching 
 and the touring naturally fell. His mental 
 force and abounding physical life revealed 
 themselves at the outset. In three months' 
 time he began to speak in the native tongue, 
 and before the year closed he had made the 
 circuit of the island, a canoe and foot trip of 
 300 miles. On this first tour, occupying thirty 
 days, he nearly suffered shipwreck, or rather 
 canoe-wreck, as also twice afterward; he 
 preached forty-three times in eight days, ten 
 of them in two days, examined twenty schools 
 and more than 1,200 scholars, conversed per- 
 sonally with multitudes, and ministered to 
 many sick persons, for he was, in a mild way, 
 a physician withal. A letter of his, written
 
 54 ESHCOL 
 
 at that time, says also: "I have a daily school 
 of ninety teachers, and Mrs. C. one of 140 
 children, besides a large class of more advanced 
 pupils." 
 
 This vigorous beginning, however, was but 
 the prelude to the more incessant labor and to 
 the marvelous scenes of the years following. 
 
 When God has a great work for his servants, 
 he usually gives them some special training 
 for it. Mr. Coan was a townsman and cousin 
 of Nettleton. In his early ministry he was a 
 co-laborer with Finney. He had seen God's 
 Word in the hands of these men be as a fire 
 and a hammer. He had learned what truths 
 to use, and how to press men to immediate 
 repentance, and he had witnessed many con- 
 versions. Before he went to the Islands his 
 spiritual nature was charged with the divine 
 electricity of a revival atmosphere. An ex- 
 ploring tour in Patagonia, where he had been 
 sent by the Board, and where he lived for sev- 
 eral months, on horseback with savage nomads, 
 had compacted his frame and inured him to 
 hardship. Who shall say that the natives were 
 not also in some sort trained for what was 
 to follow? May it not be that there was an 
 educating power in the volcanoes near which 
 they lived? They were the frequent witnesses
 
 FOUR MEMORABLE YE/tRS A7 HILO 55 
 
 of grand and terrible sights the shudder of 
 earthquakes, the inflowing of great tidal waves, 
 the dull red glow of lava streams, the leaping 
 of fire cataracts into deep lying pools, send- 
 ing off the water in steam, and burning them 
 dry in a night time. There was no day when 
 the smoke-breath of subterranean furnaces was 
 out of their sight. Once they traced a river 
 of lava burrowing its way to the sea, 1,500 feet 
 below the surface, and saw it break over the 
 shore cliff and leap into the hissing waves. 
 Once from their loftiest mountain, a pillar of 
 fire 200 feet through, lifted itself, for three 
 weeks, 1,000 feet into the air, making dark- 
 ness day for a hundred miles around, and leav- 
 ing as its monument a vast cone a mile in cir- 
 cumference. 
 
 The people who were familiar with such 
 scenes could understand at least what Sinai 
 meant, and what are ''the terrors of the Lord." 
 
 A SOUND OF GOING IN THE MULBERRY TREES. 
 
 There were signs of unusual attention to the 
 truth on Mr. Coan's first tour, the latter part 
 of 1835. 
 
 "Multitudes flocked to hear/' we quote from 
 our pencilings of frequent interviews, and 
 from his letters to the Board "many seemed
 
 56 ESHCOL 
 
 pricked in their hearts." "I had literally no 
 leisure, so much as to eat." "One morning I 
 found myself constrained to preach three times 
 before breakfast, which I took at ten o'clock. " 
 He could not move out of doors without be- 
 ing thronged by people from all quarters. They 
 stationed themselves in small companies by 
 the wayside, and some followed him for days 
 from village to village to hear the gospel. 
 Much of this, doubtless, was surface excite- 
 ment or 'the mere curiosity of an idle people. 
 But some of it, as the event proved, was the 
 working of a divine leaven. 
 
 The tours of 1836 he was accustomed to 
 make four or five a year revealed that the 
 work was deepening. "I began to see tokens 
 of interest that I did not talk about, that I 
 scarcely understood myself. I would say to 
 my wife on returning, 'The people turned out 
 wonderfully.' More and more came to the 
 meetings and crowded around me afterward to 
 inquire the way. I preached just as hard 
 as I could. There was a fire in my bones. I 
 felt like bursting. I must preach to this peo- 
 ple." 
 
 A TWO YEARS' CAMP-MEETING. 
 
 In 1837 the great interest broke out openly. 
 It was the time of a wonderful stir through all
 
 FOUR. MEMORABLE YEARS AT HILO 57 
 
 the Islands. Nearly the whole population of 
 Hilo and Puna turned out to hear the Word. 
 The sick and lame were brought on litters and 
 on the backs of men, and the infirm often 
 crawled to the trail where the missionary was 
 to pass, that they might catch from his lips 
 some word of life. And now began a move- 
 ment to which the history of the church fur- 
 nishes no parallel since its first revival. The 
 exigencies of the case demand unusual meas- 
 ures ; 15,000 people, scattered up and down 
 the coast for a hundred miles, hungry for the 
 divine bread what is one preacher, or at most 
 two among so many? He needs the wing as 
 well as the tongue of an angel to preach to 
 them the everlasting gospel. But he is mor- 
 tal. The preacher cannot go to them. They 
 must come to him. And so whole villages 
 gather from many miles away and make their 
 homes near the mission house. Two-thirds of 
 the entire population come in. Within the ra- 
 dius o*f a mile the little cabins clustered thick 
 as they could stand. Hilo, the village of ten 
 hundred, saw its population suddenly swelled 
 to ten thousand, and here was held, literally, 
 a camp-meeting of two )^ears. At any hour of 
 the day or night a tap of the bell would bring 
 together a congregation of from 3,000 to 6,000.
 
 58 ESHCOL 
 
 Meetings for prayer and preaching were held 
 daily. But it was not all this. The entrance 
 of the word gave light in every way. The peo- 
 ple wrought with a new industry at their little 
 taro patches. The sea also gave them food. 
 Schools for old and young went on. "Our 
 wives held meetings for the children, to teach 
 them to attend to their persons, to braid mats, 
 to make their tapas, hats and bonnets. " "Nu- 
 merous and special meetings were held for all 
 classes of the people, for the church, for pa- 
 rents, mothers, the inquiring, and for church 
 candidates." There was no disorder. A Sab- 
 bath quiet reigned through the crowded harnlet, 
 and from every booth at dawn and at nightfall 
 was heard the voice of prayer and praise. 
 
 THE GREAT CONGREGATION. 
 
 Let us look in upon one of the great congre- 
 gations. A protracted meeting is going on. 
 The old church, 85 feet wide by 165 feet long, is 
 packed with a sweltering and restless mass of 
 6,000 souls. A new church near by takes the 
 overflow of 3,000 more, while hundreds press 
 about the doors, crowding every opening with 
 their eager faces. What a sight is there to 
 look upon. The people sit upon the ground 
 so close that no one, once fixed, can leave his
 
 FOUR MEMORABLE YE4RS AT HILO 59 
 
 place. You might walk over them, but to walk 
 among them is impossible. It is a sea of 
 heads with eyes like stars. They are far from 
 being still. There is a strange mingling of 
 the new interest and the old wildness, and 
 the heated mass seethes like a caldron. An 
 effort to sing a hymn is then made. The rude, 
 inharmonious song would shock our ears, but 
 the attempt is honest, and God accepts it as 
 praise. Prayer is offered and then the sermon 
 comes. The view is most affecting, and calls 
 for all the power of the reaper to thrust in 
 the sickle. The great theme is, You are sin- 
 ners, dead in trespasses and sins: Christ died 
 to save you. Submit your hearts to God. Be- 
 lieve in Christ and you shall live. And mul- 
 titudes do submit. Under the pungent setting 
 home of the truth, the whole audience tremble 
 and weep, and many cry aloud for mercy. 
 
 THE PREACHER AND THE PREACHING. 
 
 It must have required rare gifts to control 
 such meetings, in order to secure good results. 
 But Mr. Coan seems to have had the tact and 
 ability to do it. "I would rise before the 
 restless, noisy, crowd and begin. It wasn't 
 long before I felt that I had got hold of them. 
 There seemed to be a chord of electricity binding
 
 60 ESHCOL 
 
 them to me. I knew that I had them, that 
 they would not go away. The Spirit would 
 hush them by the truth till they would sob 
 and cry, 'What shall we do?' and the noise of 
 the weeping would be so great I could not go 
 on." 
 
 "The themes preached were the simple old 
 standard doctrines. It has been an object of 
 deep and uniform attention to keep the holy 
 law of God constantly blazing before the minds 
 of all the people, and to hold the claims and 
 sanctions of the gospel in near and warm con- 
 tact with their frigid hearts." "I preached 
 just as plain and simple as I could; applied 
 the text by illustrations until the whole con- 
 gregation would be in a quiver; did not try to 
 excite them ; did not call on them to rise and 
 show interest." It was God's truth sent home 
 by the Spirit that seemed to do the work. 
 
 And there were not wanting those 
 
 PHYSICAL MANIFESTATIONS 
 
 which have usually accompanied the mightier 
 works of grace especially among ruder peo- 
 ples. Under the pressure of the truth there 
 would be weeping, sighing and outcries. 
 "When we rose for prayer some would fall 
 down in a swoon. There were hundreds of
 
 FOUR MEMORABLE YEARS AT HILO 61 
 
 such cases. I did not think much of it. On 
 one occasion I preached from 'Madness is in 
 their hearts.' I can see them now. It was 
 such a scene! The truth seemed to have an 
 intense power. A woman rose she was a beau- 
 tiful woman and cried, 'Oh! I'm the one; 
 madness is in my heart!' She became a true 
 Christian. A man cried out: 'There's a two- 
 edged sword cutting me in pieces; my flesh is 
 all flying in the air!' There was a backwoods 
 native, wicked, stout, who had come in to 
 make fun. When we rose to pray he nudged 
 those about him with his elbow to make them 
 laugh. All at once he dropped like a log fell 
 suddenly. When he came to, he said, 'God 
 has struck me.' He was subdued and gave 
 evidence of being a true Christian. Once, on 
 a tour, I was preaching in the fields at a pro- 
 tracted meeting. There were perhaps 2,000 
 present. In the midst of the sermon a man 
 cried out: 'Alas! what shall I do to be saved !' 
 and he prayed 'God be merciful to me, a sin- 
 ner!' and the whole congregation did the same, 
 joined in with ejaculations. It was a thrill- 
 ing scene. I could get no chance to speak for 
 half an hour, but stood still to see the salva- 
 tion of God. There were many such scenes. 
 J3ut men would come and say,
 
 62 ESHCOL 
 
 'WHY DON'T YOU PUT THIS DOWN.' 
 
 My answer was, 'I didn't get it up.' I didn't 
 believe the devil would set men to praying, 
 confessing and breaking off their sins by right- 
 eousness. These were the times when thieves 
 brought back what they had stolen. Lost things 
 reappeared and quarrels were reconciled. The 
 lazy became industrious. Thousands broke 
 their pipes and gave up tobacco. Drunkards 
 stopped drinking. Adulteries ceased and mur- 
 derers confessed their crimes. Neither the 
 devil nor all the men of the world could have 
 got this up. Why should I put it down? In 
 the Old Testament church there were times 
 when the weeping of the people was heard 
 afar. I always told the natives that such 
 demonstrations were of no account, no evidence 
 of conversion. I advised to quietness I said, 
 if they were sorry for their sins, God knew it; 
 if they were forgiven they need not continue 
 to weep. And I especially tried to keep them 
 from hypocrisy." 
 
 THE GREAT TIDAL WAVE. 
 
 In this work God's providences wrought 
 with his Spirit. Notwithstanding .the great 
 interest, many opposed it and hardened them- 
 selves. But God had a sermon for them more
 
 FOUR MEMORABLE YEARS AT H1LO 63 
 
 pungent than human lips could utter. It was 
 Nov. 7, 1837. The revival was at its height, 
 and a protracted meeting was going forward. 
 The crescent sand-beach, the most beautiful 
 in the world, dotted all over its mile and a 
 half of length with the native booths, and 
 reaching up into the charming groves behind, 
 smiled in security. A British whaler swung 
 idly at its moorings in the harbor, and the 
 great ocean slept in peace. The day opened 
 as usual with the natives out en masse for the 
 daybreak prayer-meeting, and the customary 
 routine went on, a scattering for breakfast, 
 a flocking together for the nine o'clock sermon 
 there were four preached each day with the 
 accustomed crush of 6,000 inside the old 
 church, and the swarms pressing about the 
 doors and windows, then the usual surging of 
 inquirers and the crowds following the mis- 
 sionaries to their homes, and then again the 
 sermon at twelve and a half, and so on through 
 the day. There must have been a funeral that 
 day, for the natives tell, although the preacher 
 does not remember it, that the text was, "Be 
 ye also ready." At seven o'clock in the even- 
 ing, just as Mr. Coan was calling his family 
 together for prayers a heavy sound was heard, 
 as of a falling mountain upon the beach. Im-
 
 64 ESHCOL 
 
 mediately a great cry and wailing arose, and a 
 scene of indescribable confusion followed. 
 "The sea, by an unseeen hand, had, all on a 
 sudden, risen in a gigantic wave, and, rushing 
 in with the rapidity of a race horse, had fallen 
 upon the shore, sweeping everything into in- 
 discriminate ruin. Men, women, children, 
 houses, canoes, food, clothing, everything 
 floated wild upon the flood. So sudden, so 
 unexpected, was the catastrophe, that the peo- 
 ple were literally 'eating and drinking,' and 
 they 'knew not till the flood came and swept 
 them all away.' The wave fell upon them 
 like the bolt of heaven, and no man had time 
 to flee, or save his garment. In a moment 
 hundreds of people were struggling with the 
 raging billows and in the midst of their earthly 
 all. Some were dashed upon the shore, some 
 were drawn out by friends who came to their 
 relief, some were carried out to sea by the re- 
 tiring current, and some sank to rise no more 
 till the noise of the judgment wakes them." 
 Through the great mercy of God only thirteen 
 were drowned. But the loud roar of the ocean, 
 the cries of distress, the shrieks of the perish- 
 ing, the frantic rush of hundreds to the shore, 
 and the desolation there presented, combined 
 to make it a scene of thrilling and awful inter-
 
 FOUR MEMORABLE YEARS AT H1LO 65 
 
 est. There was no sleep that night. "To the 
 people it seemed to be as the voice of Al- 
 mighty God when he speaketh. " The next day 
 the meetings went on with renewed power, and 
 through all the week, as the sea gave up, one 
 after another, its dead, and the people with 
 funeral rites bore them to their resting places, 
 the Spirit set home this new sermon with di- 
 vine effect. 
 
 A SANDWICH ISLAND CHORAZIN. 
 
 The scenes of the Bible seemed to repeat 
 themselves with an almost startling likeness 
 in some of the incidents of this work. We 
 will speak of but one. In a secluded valley of 
 Puna there was a village a small one pecu- 
 liarly wicked. It was a depth below the deep 
 of the heathenism around. The missionary 
 took special pains with them for two or three 
 years with no good results. The people hard- 
 ened themselves, and with a "superfluity of 
 naughtiness" denied food to those who came 
 to them with the gospel. "One time I went 
 there with a number of native Christians to 
 hold a meeting. 'Haven't you any food' I 
 said, 'not even a potato?' 'No, not half a 
 potato.' Night came on and my men lay down, 
 hungry as bears. When the villagers thought
 
 66 ESHCOL 
 
 we were asleep, we heard them go to the foot 
 of a tree, uncover their food and eat. In the 
 morning I said to them, 'I have come time 
 after time preaching, and you never gave me 
 so much as a cocoanut. I do not care for 
 myself, but here are these hungry men. I 
 shake off the dust of my feet against you. I 
 will never come again till called.' In a short 
 time, although they were forty miles from port, 
 the small-pox singled them out, and nearly 
 every person died. There were only three or 
 four survivors. And in 1840 a lava flood came 
 down upon them, scathing every tree, burning 
 every house, obliterating the very site of the 
 village, and leaving only a black lava field." 
 
 But this was the Lord's "strange work." To 
 multitudes he was the merciful God. The case 
 of 
 
 THE HIGH PRIEST AND PRIESTESS OF PELE 
 
 is of peculiar interest. He was a man of ma- 
 jestic presence, six feet five inches in height, 
 and his sister, co-ordinate with him in power, 
 was nearly as tall. As great high priest of the 
 volcano thirty miles away, his business was to 
 keep the dreadful Pele appeased. He lived 
 upon the shore, but went up often with sacri- 
 fices to the fiery home of their deity. If a
 
 FOUR MEMORABLE YEARS AT HILO 67 
 
 human victim was needed, he only had to 
 look, and point, and the poor native was im- 
 mediately strangled. He was not only the em- 
 bodiment of heathen piety, but of heathen 
 crimes. So fierce and tyrannical was his temper 
 that no native dared tread on his shadow. 
 Robbery was his pastime. More than once he 
 had struck a man dead for his food and gar- 
 ment the whole of it not worth fifty cents. 
 At last he crept into one of the meetings, and 
 the truth laid hold of him. He came again 
 and again, and would sit on the ground by the 
 preacher, weeping and confessing his crimes. 
 "I have been deceived," he said. "I have 
 lived in darkness and did not know the true 
 God. I worshiped what was no God. I re- 
 nounce it all. The true God has come. He 
 speaks. I bow down to him. I want to be 
 his child." His sister came soon after, and 
 they stayed months to be taught. The change 
 in them was most wonderful, they became 
 quiet and docile, and after due probation were 
 received to the church. They were then about 
 seventy years old, and a few years afterward 
 they died in peace, witnessing to the mar- 
 velous grace of God. 
 
 THE SWORD OF THE LORD AND OF GIDEON. 
 
 In the year 1838 the waves of salvation
 
 68 ESHCOL 
 
 rolled deep and broad over the whole field, 
 and the converts were numbered by thousands. 
 To us who seldom see above 100 accessions 
 to a church from a revival, this appears almost 
 incredible. And how such a work could have 
 been managed and made to stand in perma- 
 nent results seems a mystery. There were 
 but two missionaries, a lay preacher, and their 
 wives. The extremes of the parish were a hun- 
 dred miles apart. Portions of it were reached 
 only at the peril, almost, of life and limb. It is 
 true that thousands came in to the central sta- 
 tion from the far-off villages, and stayed many 
 months. But this could not last. By what 
 aids and means were such results wrought and 
 secured in permanency? There was a marvelous 
 outpouring of the Spirit. This was first and 
 highest. The battle cry was "The sword of the 
 Lord." But it was also "The sword of Gid- 
 eon." The human means used were adapted to 
 produce the results. Mr. Coan was greatly 
 assisted by his associates. Mr. Lyman was a 
 true yoke-fellow alternating with him, in ad- 
 dition to his school labor, in preaching at the 
 protracted meetings. The missionaries' wives, 
 surrounded by the brood of their own little 
 children, held daily meetings with the women, 
 the audiences sometimes numbering thousands.
 
 FOUR MEMORABLE YEARS AT HILO 09 
 
 But to the method, energy and zeal of Mr. 
 Coan the chief place must be given. 
 
 ITINERATING. 
 
 As we turn over his letters, written at that 
 time, the wisdom to plan and the strength to 
 execute, which were given him of the Lord, 
 seem marvelous. Often on his trips he preached 
 twenty or thirty sermons a week, and this was 
 but part of the labor. "On these tours," he 
 says, "I usually spend from two to five weeks 
 visiting all the church members in their re- 
 spective villages, calling all their names, hold- 
 ing personal interviews with them, inquiring 
 into their states, their hearts, prayers, and 
 manner of living; counseling, reproving and 
 encouraging, as the case may require; and 
 often 'breaking bread' from place to place." 
 The physical labor of these tours was not 
 small. The northern part of his parish was 
 crossed by sixty-three ravines we see his meth- 
 od by the exact count of them he has recorded 
 from twenty to a thousand feet in depth. 
 "In many of them the banks are perpendicular, 
 and can only be ascended by climbing with 
 the utmost care, or descended only by letting 
 one's self down from crag to crag by the 
 hands. In times of rain these precipices are
 
 ESHCOL 70 
 
 very slippery and dangerous, and in many 
 places the traveler is obliged to wind his way 
 along the sides of a giddy steep, where one 
 step of four inches from the track would plunge 
 him to a fearful death below." And then the 
 rivers, leaping and foaming along the old fire 
 channels, "dashing down innumerable preci- 
 pices, and urging their noisy way to the ocean," 
 how shall they be crossed? "Some of them I 
 succeeded in fording, some I swam by the help 
 of a rope, to pervent me from being swept 
 away, and over some I was carried passively 
 on the broad shoulders of a native, while a 
 company of strong men locked hands and 
 stretched themselves across the stream, just 
 below me and just above a near cataract, to 
 save me from going over it, if my bearer should 
 fall." This experience would often be re- 
 peated three or four times a day. "My least 
 weekly number of sermons is six or seven, and 
 the greatest twenty-five or thirty, often travel- 
 ing in drenching rains, crossing rapid and dan- 
 gerous streams, climbing slippery and beetling 
 precipices, preaching in the open air, and some- 
 times in wind and rain, with every garment 
 saturated with water." 
 
 THE FAITHFUL PASTOR. 
 
 But it was only by an exact and steadily-
 
 FOUR MEMORABLE YEARS AT HILO 71 
 
 worked system that Mr. Coan could "over- 
 take" his parish of 15,000 souls. Not Dr. 
 Chalmers nor Pastor Harms knew their people- 
 better than he. When his church numbered 
 more than 5,000, he could say, "My knowledge 
 of the religious experiences and daily habits 
 of the individuals of my flock at the present 
 time is more minute and thorough than it was 
 when the church numbered only fifty or a 
 hundred members." "By drawing lines in my 
 parish; by dividing the people into sections 
 and classes; by attending to each class sep- 
 arately, systematically and at a given time, 
 and by a careful examination and a frequent 
 review of every individual in each respective 
 class; by keeping a note-book always in my 
 pocket to refresh my memory; by the help of 
 many faithful church members, and by various 
 other collateral helps, I am enabled, through 
 the grace of God, to gain ten-fold more knowl- 
 edge of the individuals of my flock, and of 
 candidates for church membership, than I once 
 thought it possible to obtain in such circum- 
 stances." 
 
 FEED MY LAMBS. 
 
 The children did not escape his care. From 
 his earliest ministry he had believed in child-
 
 72 ESHCOL 
 
 hood conversions. When in this country in 
 1870 now venerable with his seventy years 
 a woman in Baltimore said to him, "When I was 
 eight years old you took me in your lap and 
 talked to me of Christ. I was converted then." 
 This practical faith in the conversion of 
 children led him to give them special and con- 
 stant care. Beside Sabbath-school instruction 
 a regular weekly lecture was maintained for 
 them through the year. There was also nu- 
 merous occasional meetings for different classes 
 of children for those in church fellowship, 
 for baptized children and for the anxious. 
 During the protracted meetings there was usu- 
 ally a sermon each day for them at eight 
 o'clock in the morning. As the result of this 
 faithfulness there were in 1838 about 400 child- 
 ren, between the ages of five and fifteen years, 
 connected with his church. 
 
 SEEKING THE LOST. 
 
 It was a settled plan that there should be no 
 living person in all Puna or Hilo, who had 
 not had the claims of the gospel repeatedly 
 pressed upon him. There was no village so 
 remote, insignificant, or inaccessible, that it 
 did not receive frequent visits. If a native 
 family, through freak of temper or stress of
 
 FOUR MEMORABLE YEARS AT HILO 73 
 
 fortune, had hid itself away in some fastness 
 of the mountain, it was tracked out and plied 
 with the invitations of mercy. 
 
 NATIVE HELPERS. 
 
 To do this required the active co-operation 
 of the church. "Many of the more discreet, 
 prayerful and intelligent of the members were 
 stationed at important posts, with instructions 
 to hold conference and prayer-meetings, con- 
 duct Sabbath schools and watch over the peo- 
 ple. Some of these native helpers were men 
 full of faith and the Holy Ghost, and they 
 succeeded admirably." "Other active mem- 
 bers were selected and sent forth, two and 
 two, into every village and place of the peo- 
 ple. They went everywhere preaching the word. 
 They visited the villages, climbed the mount- 
 ains, traversed the forests, and explored the 
 glens in search of the wandering and the dy- 
 ing sons of Hawaii. On one occasion Mr. 
 Coan sent out about forty church members to 
 visit from house to house, and in all the 'high- 
 ways and hedges,' within five miles of the 
 station. They were instructed to pray in every 
 house, to look after all the sick, the wretched 
 and the friendless, to stir up the minds of 
 the converts, and to gather the children. Two
 
 74 ESHCOL 
 
 days were spent in this way. "Every cottage 
 was entered, every fastness of Satan scoured. 
 The immediate result was, that several back- 
 loads of tobacpo, awa and pipes were brought 
 in and burnt, and about 500 hitherto careless 
 and hardened ones were gathered into the 
 house of God to hear the words of life. The 
 Spirit of the Lord fell upon them, and it is 
 believed that many of them were born again." 
 Many of these natives were wonderfully 
 gifted in prayer. "They take God at his word," 
 says Mr. Coan, "and with a simple and child- 
 like faith, unspoiled by tradition or vain phi- 
 losophy, they go with boldness to the throne 
 of grace." "How often have I blushed, and 
 felt like hiding my face in the dust, when I 
 have witnessed their earnest wrestlings, and 
 have seen how like princes they have had power 
 with God and have prevailed." "With tears, 
 with soul-melting fervor, and with that earnest 
 importunity which takes no denial, they often 
 plead the promises, and receive what appear 
 to be the most direct and unequivocal answers 
 to their prayers." 
 
 AN INGATHERING. 
 
 The great harvest years were 1838 and 1839. 
 Seven or eight thousand natives had professed
 
 FOUR MEMORABLE YEARS AT HILO 75 
 
 conversion, but very few had thus far been 
 received to the church. The utmost care was 
 taken in selecting, examining, watching and 
 teaching the candidates. The ever-faithful 
 note book was constantly in hand. Those from 
 the distant villages came in and spent several 
 months at the station previous to their union 
 to the church. Day by day they were watched 
 over and instructed with unceasing labor. To- 
 gether with those on the ground, they were ex- 
 amined and re-examined personally many times, 
 sifted and re-sifted, with scrutiny and with 
 every effort to take forth the precious from the 
 vile. Many of them were converts of two 
 years' standing. A still larger class had been 
 on the list for more than one year, and a small- 
 er number for a less period. The accepted 
 ones stood propounded for several weeks, and 
 the church and the world, friends and enemies, 
 were called upon and solemnly charged to tes- 
 tify if they knew aught against any of the 
 candidates. 
 
 The communion seasons were held quar- 
 terly, and at these times the converts, thus 
 carefully sifted, were added to the church. 
 The first Sabbath of January, 1838, 104 were 
 received. Afterward, at different times, 502, 
 450, 786, 357, and on one occasion a much
 
 76 ESHCOL 
 
 larger number. The station report for the mis- 
 sion year ending June, 1839, gives the number 
 of accessions for that twelve months at 5,244. 
 A large number of these never came to the 
 central station. The sick, the aged and the 
 infirm were baptized and received into fellow- 
 ship at their own villages. Some believers 
 were thus accepted who could neither walk nor 
 be carried, and who lived far up in the mount- 
 ains, where the only water for baptism that 
 could be found were the few drops trickling 
 
 from the roof of caves. 
 
 4 
 
 A MEMORABLE COMMUNION. 
 
 The first Sabbath of July, 1838, was a mem- 
 orable one, not only in this church, but in 
 the history of Missions. It was the day of 
 the greatest accession. On that afternoon 1,705 
 men, women and children, who aforetime had 
 been heathen, were baptized, and took upon 
 them the vows of God; and about 2,400 com- 
 municants sat down together at the table of 
 their Lord. We look in upon that scene with 
 wonder and awe. The great crush of people 
 at the morning sermon has been dismissed, and 
 the house is cleared. Down through the mid- 
 dle, as is fitting, are seated first the original 
 members of the church, perhaps fifty in num-
 
 FOUR MEMORABLE YEARS AT HILO 77 
 
 her. The missionary then calls upon the head 
 of each village to bring forward his people. 
 With note-book in hand, he carefully selects 
 the converts who have been previously ac- 
 cepted. They have been for many weeks at the 
 station. No pains have been spared, no test 
 left unused with each individual, to ascertain 
 if he be truly a child of God. The multitude 
 of candidates is then seated upon the earth 
 floor, in close rows, with space enough between 
 for one to walk. There is prayer and singing, 
 and an explanation made many times before, 
 lest any shall trust in the external rite is given 
 of the baptism they are now to receive. Then, 
 with a basin of water in his hand, rapidly, rev- 
 erently he passes back and forth along the si- 
 lent rows, and every head receives the sealing 
 ordinance. When all have been baptized, he 
 advances to the front, and raising his hands 
 pronounces the hallowed words: "I baptize 
 you all in the name of the Father, the Son 
 and the Holy Ghost." "I never witnessed 
 such a scene before," he said, looking back 
 through the lapse of thirty years. "There was 
 a hush upon the vast crowd without, who 
 pressed about the doors and windows. The 
 candidates and the church were all in tears, 
 and the overshadowing presence of God was felt 
 in every heart."
 
 78 ESHCOL 
 
 Then followed the sacrament. And who are 
 these that take into their hands the emblems 
 of the Lord's death? Let him tell who broke 
 the bread and gave the cup. 
 
 "The old and decrepit, the lame, the blind, 
 the maimed, the withered, the paralytic, and 
 those afflicted with divers diseases and tor 
 ments; those with eyes, noses, lips and limbs 
 consumed with the fire of their own or their 
 parents' former lusts, with features distorted 
 and figures the most depraved and loathsome, 
 these come hobbling upon their staves, and 
 led or borne by their friends, and sit down at 
 the table of the Lord. Among this throng you 
 will see the hoary priest of idolatry, with 
 hands but recently, as it were, washed from 
 the blood of human victims, together with the 
 thief, the adulterer, the sodomite, the sorcerer, 
 the highway robber, the blood-stained murderer, 
 and the mother no, the monster whose hands 
 have reeked in the blood of her own children. 
 All these meet together before the cross of 
 Christ, with their enmity slain, and themselves 
 washed and sanctified, and justified in the 
 name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of 
 our God." Has Jesus come again? Is this 
 one of the crowds which he has gathered, 
 upon whom he has pronounced the words of
 
 FOUR MEMORABLE YEARS AT HILO 79 
 
 healing? Surely it is. In very deed he is 
 there. These are the lost whom the Son of 
 Man came to seek and to save. And the re- 
 joicing angels are there. They leave behind 
 the pomp of cathedrals, and fly with eager wing 
 to this lowly island tabernacle. With holy 
 wonder, with celestial delight, they hover over 
 the bowed heads of these weeping, redeemed 
 sinners. And heaven catches the joy. "The 
 bright seraphim in burning row," ring out 
 anew the praises of the Highest as they hear 
 recounted the marvelous triumphs of Almighty 
 grace. 
 
 DO THESE RESULTS ABIDE? 
 
 Tried by any proper standard, the results do 
 abide. There were reactions. But what revi- 
 val in America where the people garner into 
 themselves the growth, culture, moral stamina 
 of a thousand Christian years is not followed 
 by reaction? There were apostasies. But did 
 there not appear one in Christ's Twelve, and 
 many in the apostles' churches? On examin- 
 ing the matter with some care, we are con- 
 strained to say that the permanence of the re- 
 sults seems to us almost as marvelous as the 
 revival itself. During the five years ending 
 June, 1841, 7,557 persons were received to the 
 church at Hilo. This embraced about three-
 
 80 ESHCOL 
 
 fourths of the entire adult population of the 
 parish. The proportion of those under disci- 
 pline was about one in sixty a discipline 
 stricter than ours at home, and that among 
 mere babes in Christ. The greater part of 
 these were restored, and the finally excommu- 
 nicated were few. The accessions from that 
 day to this have been constant. "I never ad- 
 ministered the quarterly sacrament without 
 receiving from ten to twenty persons. No year 
 has the number gone below fifty. It did not 
 prove a great excitement to die out. When I 
 left, in April, 1870, I had received into the 
 church, and myself baptized, 11,960 persons, and 
 had also baptized about 4,000 infants." 
 
 Under this training the people bcame more 
 and more settled in faith and morals. An ir- 
 ruption of Catholic priests, backed up by 
 French cannon and brandy, drew away almost 
 none of them. There never was a grog shop 
 in the entire parish. It is probable that there 
 are to-day more people, in proportion, in 
 Illinois, who cannot read and write, than in 
 Hilo and Puna. Not in New Enlgand is the 
 Sabbath better observed; and the industries 
 of civilization have now largely taken the 
 place of the old savage indolence. 
 
 In 1867, the grand old church was divided
 
 FOUR. MEMORABLE YEARS AT HILO 81 
 
 into seven local, independent churches, six of 
 them with native pastors. Three of these are 
 on the lava fields of the south, and three among 
 the ravines of the north. The remaining one 
 is at Hilo, where, also, is an American church 
 for the foreign population. To accommodate 
 the widely scattered people, these churches 
 have built fifteen places of worship, holding 
 from 500 to 3,000. Five of them have bells, 
 and one building that at Hilo cost about 
 $14,000. This has been done mainly with their 
 own money and labor. 
 
 But this people have especially vindicated 
 their claim to a place among the churches of 
 the Lord by their 
 
 BENEFICENCE. 
 
 The Monthly Concert was held from the be- 
 ginning, and with it a contribution was always 
 taken. They first "gave their own selves to 
 the Lord," and then it was "according to that 
 a man hath," a fish, a fowl, a cocoanut, and, 
 later, money; but in it all, sacrifice and wor- 
 ship. Each month, on the first Sunday morn- 
 ing, a sermon was preached on some department 
 or interest of Christ's kingdom in the broad 
 world. They never so much as heard that mis- 
 erable sentence of a narrow faith, "So much
 
 82 ESHCOL 
 
 to do at home." Their lips never uttered the 
 miserly falsehood, "It takes another dollar to 
 send one to the heathen. " They were instructed 
 in all causes, and gave to all. More than $10,- 
 ooo have come to the United States from their 
 contributions; $200 went to a Chinese mission, 
 and $100 to Syria at the time of the massacre 
 and famine. The appeal of Father Chiniquy, 
 in Kankakee, Illinois, reached them ; and when 
 the letter which brought him $200 from these 
 poor Islanders was read, his whole congrega- 
 tion bowed down weeping. Their monthly col- 
 lections have averaged from the beginning 
 about $100, the highest reaching $265 and the 
 grand aggregate for all religious purposes 
 amounts to above $100,000. And they have 
 done more. They have given themselves. 
 Twelve of their number, wholly sustained by 
 the church that sent them, have gone out as 
 foreign missionaries, 2,000 miles to the dark 
 islands beyond. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 After an absence of more than thirty years, 
 Mr. Coan in 1870 visited this country. While 
 here he exercised his superabundant strength 
 in visiting twenty of our States and Territories, 
 making in all two hundred and thirty-nine
 
 FOUR. MEMORABLE YE/IRS AT HILO 83 
 
 missionary addresses. Upon his return the 
 evening of his days was spent as pastor of the 
 large church at Hilo, and in apostolic super- 
 vision of the other churches which had sprung 
 up under his care. 
 
 In the latter part of 1882, in the midst of a 
 special interest among his people, he was sud- 
 denly smitten with a paralytic shock. After 
 some weeks of utter helplessness, at the ripe 
 age of almost eighty-two years, he "passed out 
 of toil into rest." 
 
 We can think of no more beautifully-ordered 
 departure than his. It seemed eminently fit- 
 ting that he who labored with such restless en- 
 ergy should show that, at his Lord's bidding, 
 he could also suffer and wait. It was meet 
 and right that a life which had witnessed 
 such scenes of revival should have given its 
 last labors in ardent efforts for lost souls, and 
 that in the midst of the toils of a season of 
 refreshing from the Most High, the tense bow 
 should have broken. There was a divine and 
 delightful fitness that the spirit of the aged 
 warrior should ascend to its reward, the gra- 
 cious conflict still raging, from the very battle- 
 field where such amazing triumphs of infinite 
 love had been achieved.
 
 84 ESHCOL 
 
 The venerable Rev. Titus Coan departed this life at his 
 home in Hilo, Sandwich Islands, Dec. i, 1882. He was 
 born Feb. i, 1801, in the town of Killingworth, Conn., hav- 
 ing attained the age of nearly eighty-two years. Although 
 not having pursued a full course of preparation for the min- 
 istry, his success in evangelistic labors in connection with 
 the revivals that followed the preaching of his cousin, Rev. 
 Asahel Nettleton, and Rev. Charles G. Finney, led to his 
 licensure April, 17, 1833. A few months afterward he was 
 ordained, and on August, 16, 1833, under the direction of 
 the American Board, he sailed on a mission of exploration 
 to Patagonia. Returning after some strange adventures he 
 was married at Church ville, N. Y., on monthly concert 
 evening, Nov, 3, 1834, to Miss Fidelia Church, and on Dec. 
 5, embarked on the ship Hellespont for his untiring labors 
 of nearly half a century in the Sandwich Islands. Soon 
 after his return from a visit to this country in 1870, his be- 
 loved wife was called to her reward. A most happy second 
 marriage cheered his later years, and the loving wife that 
 ministered tenderly at his dying bed survives to mourn his 
 loss. A few months ago during a revival into which he 
 threw himself with unceasing ardor as of old, he was sud- 
 denly smitten down with a paralytic shock. For several 
 weeks he lay "helpless, with only love, joy. peace in his 
 soul, his beautiful patience and submission, completing the 
 lesson his life had given of obedience to his Lord." He re- 
 covered in part, so that the day before his death he was car- 
 ried through the streets "looking very bright and natural. 1 ' 
 Almost the entire village flocked out to greet him and all 
 were glad to have had that last look, The next day at noon 
 he was standing among the redeemed throng on high. 
 
 THE GREAT REVIVAL. 
 
 What is termed The Great Revival at the
 
 FOUR MEMORABLE YEARS AT HILO 85 
 
 Sandwich Islands may be said to have com- 
 menced in the year 1836 and to have extended 
 to 1842. The missionaries first sighted the 
 snowy summit of Mauna Kea, eighty miles 
 away, March 30, 1820. They found a people 
 in the utter moral and physical degradation 
 of savage life. It opens a rift into the dark- 
 ness of their condition to know that "the 
 thought of the chief" was the only law; that 
 marriage and the family constitution were al- 
 most unknown; and that at least two-thirds 
 of the infants perished by the hands of their 
 own parents. To their own unutterable cor- 
 ruption had been added the worst vices of civ- 
 ilization and their consequent diseases. 
 Through infanticide and other crimes three- 
 fourths of the women were childless, and the 
 population of the Islands was diminished each 
 year by several thousand. It was in this des- 
 perate condition of things that the remedial 
 forces of the gospel began their work. There 
 were favoring providences. Just before the 
 missionary arrived, partly from caprice, partly 
 from a desire for greater license, possibly also 
 from some dim sense of their futility, the tabu 
 had been broken and idolatry abolished. Doubt- 
 less behind it all was the hand of divine prov- 
 idence. The same divine hand gave the mis-
 
 86 ESHCOL 
 
 sionaries from the first a degree of acceptance 
 with the king and the high chiefs, and espec- 
 ially with some really noble women. And 
 where these led the way the people, accustomed 
 to the most abject servitude, easily followed. 
 It must be said to the infinite shame of our 
 civilization that the worst and most dangerous 
 opposition came from foreign ship-masters and 
 their dissolute and desperate crews. To this, 
 however, there were some marked and most 
 helpful exceptions. 
 
 We now turn forward the leaves of this his- 
 tory sixteen years. The signs have been so 
 hopeful that the evangelizing force is greatly 
 increased. Twenty-seven ordained missionaries 
 are on the ground, with sixty helpers, includ- 
 ing their wives. The language has been re- 
 duced to writing. The translation of the whole 
 Bible into the Hawaiian language is nearly 
 completed. The schools are crowded with 
 pupils, chiefly adults. But it is thought en- 
 couraging that the parents have learned to let 
 their children live, instead of putting them to 
 death. About one-fourth of the population 
 can read. More than a thousand Christian 
 marriages are solemnized in the year. A code 
 of laws forbidding certain of the grosser vices, 
 with a Bill of Rights, has been voluntarily
 
 FOUR MEMORABLE YEARS AT HILO 87 
 
 adopted. The seventeen congregations have 
 an average attendance of 14,500, or about 900 
 each. And in the fifteen churches are 1,049 
 members. And now the spring ot the years of 
 mighty refreshing comes on apace. The hearts 
 of multitudes in the home-land are wonderfully 
 drawn out in prayer. The spirit of grace and 
 of supplication is poured forth with unusual 
 power upon the missionaries. Protracted meet- 
 ings are held. Great throngs of from 2,000 to 
 6,000 flock to the thatch-covered places of wor- 
 ship, or lift up their cries for mercy and their 
 rude songs in the shade of tropic groves. The 
 missionaries, with a wisdom, zeal and power 
 which seem from above, preach guide, instruct 
 warn, entreat, rebuke. And the mightily con. 
 verting grace of God comes upon the people. 
 This continues several years. The converts, 
 that the reality of their experience may be 
 tested, are kept as candidates for from six 
 months to two years and then comes the in- 
 gathering. In 1839, 5,402 are received into the 
 churches; in 1840, 10,725; in 1841, 4,179; in 
 1842, 1,473; from the commencement of the 
 mission, 22,806. 
 
 Now we turn forward to 1870, the year the 
 American Board gave these churches over to 
 their own care, and what is the summing up?
 
 88 ESHCOL 
 
 58 independent, self-supporting churches, 
 44 of them in charge of a native ministry 
 with a membership of 14,850 about one-fourth 
 of the entire population. That year they gave 
 $30,000 to various Christian objects. Thirty 
 per cent of their ministers are foreign mis- 
 sionaries to the dark islands beyond. Twenty- 
 two per cent of their contributions are for the 
 foreign field; $1,500 was expended upon Chinese 
 emigrants. Their 120 church buildings are 
 valued at a quarter of a million of dollars. 
 Such is the result through the blessing of God 
 upon the faith and toil of forty ordained mis- 
 sionaries with their wives and consecrated lay- 
 helpers. The spirit of the whole movement is 
 beautifully symbolized by the speech of the 
 veteran native missionary Kanwealoha on the 
 i5th of June, 1870. In the presence of his 
 king, foreign diplomats, old missionaries, and 
 a great assembly, he held aloft the Hawaiian 
 Bible saying, "Not with powder and ball, and 
 swords and cannon, but with this living Word 
 of God, and with his spirit, do we go forth to 
 conquer the Islands for Christ."
 
 EVANGELISM IN THE PACIFIC. 
 
 When Balboa in 1513, first saw the Pacific 
 Ocean from a height on the Isthmus of Darien, 
 he probably did not dream that, far off in the 
 depths of its vast spaces, there was a multi- 
 tude of island groups, matchless in beauty and 
 populous in savage races of men. It is certain 
 that he had no thought that among these races, 
 in time, there would appear some of the most 
 surprising triumphs of grace, the Gospel has 
 anywhere won. 
 
 It was almost nine generations from that day 
 before the Gospel was carried to these dark 
 islanders. In 1796, the London Missionary 
 Society sent out the ship Duff with twenty- 
 nine missionaries to the Society and Friendly 
 Islands. The air was delicious, the scenery 
 entrancing, but man was vile, unutterably vile 
 There were twenty-two years of tearful sowing 
 before the first sheaf was gathered. This was 
 in 1819. Then the great harvest began. The 
 chiefs, following the king who was the first 
 baptized convert, burnt their idols. Wonderful 
 89
 
 90 ESHCOL 
 
 revivals followed, and in twenty years, Chris- 
 tianity became the only religion through a 
 space of three thousand miles. 
 
 A generation ago the word Fiji was a syno- 
 nym for the fiercest savagery conceivable. 
 Since then it has become a name filled in with 
 a most gracious meaning, the history of a mar- 
 velous transformation. This group embraces 
 more than a hundred islands with about 200 ,- 
 ooo people. The English Wesleyans ventured 
 to land missionaries here in 1835. The har- 
 vest among these fierce tribes came sooner. 
 In thirty years, one-half the people had the 
 Scriptures in their own language and could read 
 them. More than 90,000 attended church 
 regularly. There were 22,000 communicants; 
 6,000 in school and 600 native preachers. A 
 visitor might have seen aged chiefs, sitting 
 near the ovens where their cannibal feasts 
 aforetime had been prepared, and under the 
 shade of trees on which was notched the num- 
 ber of their wretched victims, with tearful eyes 
 and repentant hearts, slowly spelling out the 
 blessed words. "But I say unto you, Love your 
 enemies;" "Therefore all things whatsoever 
 ye would that men should do to you, do ye even 
 so unto them." 
 
 Far over toward Australia and the island of
 
 EVANGELISM IN THE PACIFIC 91 
 
 New Guinea, are the Solomon and Loyalty 
 groups. The Church Missionary Society of 
 England is working among these islands with 
 a grand success, and to them the names of 
 Selwyn, father and son, and that history of no- 
 ble sacrifice and apostolic labor connected with 
 the life and martyrdom of Bishop Patterson. 
 
 North of the equator, and about 2,100 miles 
 southwest from the Golden Gate, lie the Sand- 
 wich Islands. The story of the marvelous work 
 here is too well known to need repeating. 
 Whatever may be the future of the Hawaiian 
 race, it will always remain a gracious fact that, 
 under the labors of missionaries of the American 
 Board, from 60,000 to 70,000 of this once 
 heathen people have given evidence of changed 
 hearts, the greater part of them now "with the 
 nations of them that are saved," walking in the 
 light of God. 
 
 Just thirty-three years from the time the 
 first company of missionaries left Long Wharf, 
 Boston, for the Sandwich Islands, three Amer- 
 ican and two Hawaiian missionaries and their 
 wives embarked at Honolulu for Micronesia. 
 They bore from Kamahamaha III, the Christian 
 prince of a kingdom, made Christian in his 
 own generation a noble letter of commenda- 
 tion, to the Micronesian chiefs. It was the
 
 92 ESHCOL 
 
 same story here the natives, sullen, suspi- 
 cious, sometimes violent, naked, beastly, re- 
 pulsive in everything save that they were a 
 part of the lost whom Christ came to seek and 
 to save; the missionaries, in perils oft, by sea 
 and by land, sometimes in hunger, and in 
 heart-sickness, sometimes in failing health, 
 the^bodily frame shriveled, and the life-juices 
 sucked out by the fervid heat of the tropics, 
 yet patient, persevering, bearing all things, 
 hoping all things, gathering up the fugitive 
 words of languages that existed only in the 
 breath and memory of the men that uttered 
 them, pouring into this turbid stream the life- 
 giving power of the gospel, and at last, after 
 eight long years of toil, seeing the first native 
 soul hopefully born into the dear kingdom of 
 Christ. 
 
 "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy 
 cometh in the morning." In this case it was 
 the "joy of harvest." 
 
 It is not possible for any human philosophy 
 to account for the moral transformations, rapid 
 and total, that have taken place in some of 
 these islands. Whole companies of men and 
 women, sodden with every beastly abomina- 
 tion, in a few months' time changed into pure 
 and humble Christians, their persons clothed
 
 EVANGELISM IN THE PACIFIC 93 
 
 their homes made tidy, their hearts cleansed, 
 honoring the marriage bond, and looking back 
 upon their former thefts and revelings, adul- 
 teries and murders, only with shame and ut- 
 ter loathing; and then seeking, with a yearn- 
 ing and Christ-like love, to draw into the same 
 blessed fellowship, those of their kind who 
 still live in the old condemnation, this can 
 come only from the inworking and omnipotent 
 grace of God. And this outreaching of heart 
 does not circumscribe itself by the shores of 
 the one island in which they live. They never 
 plead the excuse, "There is so much to do at 
 home." The old hate led them across to other 
 islands in deadly warfare. Why should not the 
 new love take them to the same islands with 
 the Gospel of peace? And they go. Not less 
 than twenty of these newly transformed peo- 
 ple, carried by the Morning Star, are laboring in 
 evangelistic ways on islands distant from their 
 own, some of them with people speaking a 
 different language, so that it is as really for- 
 eign missionary work to them as ours in Tur- 
 key is to us. No less than nine islands in the 
 Caroline group, and nearly as many more in 
 the Gilbert and Marshall groups, within the 
 last decade have been evangelized in this wa)'. 
 Three training schools, two in Kusaie, and one
 
 94 ESHCOL 
 
 in Ponape, with more than seventy pupils, are 
 in operation with a view to raise up teach- 
 ers for a like work in the fast opening islands 
 beyond. If one needs an argument for the 
 divine presence in the world let him study the 
 work of God in Micronesia. It will be diffi- 
 cult for the toughest unbelief to stand against 
 the evidence furnished by the fifty churches 
 and the five thousand Christians in twenty 
 years gathered out of the pollutions of heathen- 
 ism in these far islands of the sea. 
 
 A WHALER AT KUSAIE. 
 
 Captain James Willis, of New Bedford, com- 
 mander of the whaler, Bartholomew Gonold, 
 in 1875 put into the harbor of Kusaie, in dis- 
 tress. A wide leak below the water's edge 
 made it necessary to beach the ship and "heel" 
 her over, in order to get at the place and repair 
 it. In earlier years, he would not have dared 
 to enter the harbor at all. No less than three 
 ships had been seized here by the natives, the 
 crews massacred, and the vessels burnt. But 
 the missionaries had been here. It had be- 
 come a Christian land. "If they had been my 
 own brothers," said the Captain, "they could 
 not have treated me more kindly." The chief 
 gave him the use of a large canoe-house. His
 
 EVANGELISM IN THE PACIFIC 95 
 
 people joined with the sailors in removing the 
 goods, which lay exposed for several days, 
 and then assisted in carrying them back, and 
 stowing them in the hold. "Not a shoe-string 
 was missing," said the grateful Captain, and 
 on his return, he told his employers that the 
 kindness of the natives had saved them $10,- 
 ooo. And this was done without the offer of 
 a cent of compensation. The owners declined 
 to make any return, regarding it, doubtless, 
 as a "streak of good luck." But the Captain, 
 out of pure shame, sent them back a box of 
 calicoes and cottons. Missions do pay, even 
 if those who receive the benefit are not always 
 the ones who support them. 
 
 WHAT A CHURCH MEANS. 
 
 A crew of sailors, who, to use their own 
 phrase, "did not take any stock in missions to 
 the Cannibals," by a somewhat rough expe- 
 rience, changed their minds. Cruising among 
 one of these Pacific groups, their vessel struck 
 a reef, and foundered. There was no alter- 
 native but to take to the boats and row ashore, 
 although, according to their information, it 
 was a choice between the sharks and the na- 
 tives. The part of the coast where they land- 
 ed happening to be uninhabited, they hid them-
 
 96 ESHCOL 
 
 selves in a hollow, until it became necessary 
 to eat, even at the risk of being eaten them- 
 selves. At length, one of the boldest ventured 
 to climb to the top of a hill, where he could 
 look over into the populous valley beyond. 
 All at once his fear-stricken companions saw 
 him spring to his feet and swing his hat, 
 shouting, "Come on, boys, I see a church!"
 
 THE STORY OF NIWE. 
 
 A conversation which Mr. Logan had with 
 an English lady at Auckland, two years' since, 
 on his circuitous route home from Micronesia, 
 recalls a remarkable story in the early stages 
 of mission work at the Society Islands. There 
 was an island to the westward apart from all 
 the other groups. It was a very Ishmael of 
 the seas. The inhabitants, numbering about 
 5,000, were so utterly fierce and intractable 
 that it was called, and is still known, on many 
 maps, as Savage Island. If by any stress of 
 accident or storm strangers landed on its 
 shores, they were immediately sacrificed for 
 inhuman feasts. But, notwithstanding this ill- 
 savored reputation, a number of the first So- 
 ciety Island converts, in the surprise of their 
 new life, determined to make an attempt to 
 introduce the Gospel. The result was fatal to 
 the whole company. About three years after- 
 ward, a native convert named Luke, sought 
 permission of the missionaries to make an- 
 other trial. They at last consented, feeling 
 97
 
 98 ESHCOL 
 
 that, perhaps, it was the call of God. He was 
 taken as near the island as the ship dare go, 
 and then, with as true a martyr spirit as an 
 early Christian ever showed in the amphithea- 
 ter, he deliberately bound his little bundle of 
 clothes and a Testament, on his head, and 
 plunging into the surf, swam ashore. He was 
 immediately seized and carried back into the 
 island for sacrifice, as his comrades had been 
 before. By signs and a few words common to 
 the two languages, . however, he induced them 
 to hear a story. It was the old, old story, the 
 death of Jesus on the cross. They were in- 
 terested, and spared him till the next day. 
 But now, having gained their ear, he told them 
 other stories of the blessed Christ. They 
 were soon won, and made him their teacher. 
 Two or three years later, the little missionary 
 ship ventured near these shores again. To the 
 astonishment and delight of all, they found 
 the whole island revolutionized. Heathenism 
 had been renounced and the entire people de- 
 sired to be taught the Christian way. A white 
 missionary was left among them, and in due 
 time it became thoroughly evangelized. That 
 happened more than fifty years ago. But now 
 comes the modern part of the story. It seems 
 about ten years since, this people of course
 
 THE STORY OF NIWE 90 
 
 it was a new generation had sent out two of 
 their number with their wives, in connection 
 with natives of other islands, as missionaries 
 to the savages on the north shore of New 
 Guinea. The English lady spoken of above, 
 told Mr. Logan that she was on this island 
 of Niwe, when sad tidings reached them. It 
 was at a public meeting. She said, "I never 
 saw such a scene." When it was announced 
 to them that while their missionaries to that 
 distant shore, with those from other islands 
 were gathered in one of their houses for con- 
 ference, they had been set upon by a hostile 
 chief and the whole company had been massa- 
 cred, the entire audience broke forth in outcries 
 and weeping. But with prayer, calmness 
 came. And then when the question was asked, 
 "Who will go to take the place of our mar- 
 tyred missionaries?" twenty rose to their feet 
 and thus offered themselves for this desperate 
 service. It was a spectacle simply sublime. 
 A suitable number were selected, and now a 
 prosperous mission is the happy result of their 
 hazardous labors.
 
 MISSIONS AND THE SKEPTICS. 
 
 Nothing more effectually clears up doubt 
 than to turn from speculation to fact. The his- 
 tory of Christianity gives a multitude of in- 
 stances of moral transformations, the marvel 
 of which finds no adequate solution in any sys- 
 tem of unbelief. Take a man born in a heathen 
 country. Add to the tenacity of habit, the 
 hunger of evil passions, the entrenchments of 
 selfishness, which are within; add to these the 
 mighty influences which ancestry, family, 
 education, caste, idolatrous worship, priest- 
 craft, country, social customs, weave about him 
 all making a hundred-armed power to hold 
 him to his native condition. See the whole 
 drift of such a man's life turned back in com- 
 plete and permanent reversal in a year, turned 
 by setting before him the simplest ideas of the 
 Christian faith ideas which everything within 
 and around him rises up in loathing and detes- 
 tation to oppose; and who that knows himself, 
 who that knows men, looking upon this can 
 resist the evidence that here is a divine inter- 
 100
 
 MISSIONS AMD THE SKEPTICS 101 
 
 position? In the eye of a true philosophy it 
 is stranger than miracle. Regeneration is the 
 paramount miracle. And when these changes 
 in individuals become so numerous that the 
 national life in a single generation is trans- 
 formed, the evidence ought to be reckoned 
 complete. 
 
 If we mistake not Madagascar gives such an 
 instance. 
 
 Here is an island in the Indian ocean, so 
 set off from the continents that it stands, in 
 some sort, a world by itself. The fever cli- 
 mate of its coasts, and the fierce valor of the 
 three or four millions of its people, have fenced 
 it off in an unusual degree from outside influ- 
 ence. Lying in this almost complete isolation, 
 it is eminently fitted as a theatre on which to 
 exhibit, with the least complication the proof 
 of which we speak. Education, mechanical arts, 
 trade and the like, have sent in through the 
 closed doors some impulse. But the craft, 
 vices and corruption of civilization have gone 
 in also with equal step. Very little of the 
 change wrought can be claimed for these. The 
 transformations have been so rapid, that they 
 cannot be said to have come about by any pro- 
 cess of social evolution slowly working through 
 successive ages. The new conditions, what-
 
 102 ESHCOL 
 
 ever they be are chiefly due, unquestionably, 
 to causes distinctly Christian. 
 
 Fifty years ago missionaries went among 
 this people. They found them not without 
 some of the arts, not without some virtues a 
 so-called semi-civilized race. But the govern- 
 ment was absolute and cruel. Fierce wars de- 
 populated whole districts. Slavery and the 
 slave trade prevailed. In the rude courts bri- 
 bery was almost universal. Criminals were 
 tortured to death with unheard-of barbarity. 
 Honesty was scarcely known. Children were 
 taught deception as an accomplishment. The 
 people, from highest to lowest, were great 
 thieves. Female chastity was of the least ac- 
 count, and children born on unlucky days were 
 murdered without compunction. The religious 
 tendency of the people seemed downward. 
 There is evidence that the gross idolatry 
 found when the missionaries arrived was a 
 corruption of a simple and comparatively spirit- 
 ual worship in earlier times. Their gods were 
 beings or things without rnercy, virtue or in- 
 telligence, and the priests were men, covetous 
 and cruel. 
 
 Upon a people so conditioned the forces of 
 Christianity were brought to bear. It was a 
 rough fight. To human eye only the infatua-
 
 MISSIONS /tND THE SKEPTICS 103 
 
 tion of folly would make the attempt. False 
 friends imperiled the movement. Disease, 
 ignorance, bigotry, persecutions, tortures, 
 treachery, fought against it. And yet, in less 
 than half a century we find a constitutional 
 government, Christian rulers, religious toler- 
 ation, a written language, multitudes in 
 schools, tasteful homes, a numerous native 
 ministry, large and costly churches, congrega- 
 tions of decorous worshipers by the hundreds, 
 and the whole people instinct and astir with 
 Christian ideas and aspirations. The move- 
 ment is still crude in the remote districts. 
 There .are many yet to be evangelized. But 
 the life-currents of the nation all set with an 
 irresistible drift toward the new religion. 
 
 It is not in our plan to trace the details of 
 this transformation. We touch them only as 
 they bear upon the argument. 
 
 i. The mission to this rude people was 
 born of no zeal of science or impulse of mere 
 humanity. The urgent power was those truths, 
 vital to the evangelical faith, which skeptics, 
 especially repudiate. These men are sinners. 
 They are under sentence of inevitable law. 
 Faith in the sacrifice which Christ made for 
 them on the cross can save them. The knowl- 
 edge of this comes through the inspired Word.
 
 104 ESHCOL 
 
 The power that opens the heart and makes 
 the Word effectual to produce faith, is God 
 present in the person of the Holy Ghost. The 
 missionaries believed this. And love for these 
 lost men, begotten by this beliel a love un- 
 heard-of in philosophy, scoffed at by science, 
 was that which sent them out to their peril- 
 ous work. 
 
 2. The means and the results are in utter 
 disparity, if the idea of divine helps is ex- 
 cluded. A few English artisans were there. 
 But they were Christians, and were sent to 
 teach, with their trades, religion as well. Ed- 
 ucation did something. But it is a noticeable 
 fact that much the larger number of converts 
 proportionately was among the unlearned, and 
 that these, then, became chief in the educa- 
 tional movement. The leaven hid in this mass 
 of heathenism was chiefly the Bible. The 
 ferment that followed was not even produced, 
 to any large degree, by the preaching of the 
 Word. The missionaries reduced the lan- 
 guage to writing, translated the Bible and a 
 few tracts into it, taught a few thousands of 
 the people to read, made about two hundred 
 converts, and then were excluded from the is- 
 land. But the truth could not be cast out 
 after them. The Bible and its progeny of new
 
 MISSIONS AND THE SKEPTICS 105 
 
 ideas worked on alone, and against all the 
 power of the government wielded to crush it, 
 wrought out the marvelous results. 
 
 3. The tenacity of life in the new work, 
 and its wonderful growth, cannot be accounted 
 for on natural principles. It was a little slip 
 brought from a foreign soil, that grew into 
 this grand tree. Under the most adverse con- 
 ditions it took root and continued to flourish. 
 The natural thing for it was to die. The su- 
 pernatural thing it did do was to lift toward 
 the heavens great branches, and crowd them 
 with leaves for the healing of the nation. 
 
 There is no story more thrilling in all history 
 than that of the martyr church of Madagascar. 
 Shut out from the knowledge and help of 
 Christendom for twenty-five years, the perse- 
 cutions of Nero were not more atrocious than 
 were those let loose upon this little flock of 
 native Christians. Many of the suspected ones 
 fled to the jungles or to inaccessible retreats 
 among the densely wooded hills. But the Queen 
 in her fury declared that the bowels of the 
 earth must be searched, and the rivers and 
 lakes dragged with nets to find them. More 
 than ten thousand persons suffered punishment, 
 many of whom were put to death with excru- 
 ciating tortures. Spies tracked them to the
 
 106 ESHCOL 
 
 mountain fastnesses. Treachery betrayed 
 whole companies to the executioner. Slavery, 
 imprisonment, chains, did their worst Cast 
 from precipices, burnt at the stake, stoned, 
 poisoned by the hundreds with the tangena 
 bowl, natural sense demands that they should 
 have given up their fanatical folly. This church 
 in the wilderness ought to have died. There is 
 no reason why a fragment of it should have 
 been found when Madagascar again opened its 
 doors to the world. And yet through all these 
 fires the hundreds grew to thousands. The 
 divine leaven spread into distant hamlets, 
 crept among the mountains, and at last reached 
 the royal palace. The bloody Queen died. 
 Gentler sovereigns followed, and one day the 
 now reigning Queen bowed her head in bap- 
 tism, bringing at once herself into the church, 
 and her kingdom into the rank of Christian 
 nations. 
 
 4. Natural law finds no adequate cause for 
 the changes wrought in individual lives. 
 
 It must be remembered that this people had 
 no traditions of a godly ancestry to stand be- 
 hind them. No histories of fidelity to a true 
 religious faith in the past inspired them. They 
 were heathen. All their surroundings were 
 heathen. They were born into heathen fam-
 
 MISSIONS AND THE SKEPTICS 107 
 
 ilies, and heathenish customs and corruptions 
 were woven into the very texture of their be- 
 ings as they grew. 
 
 To change such lives into Christian lives is 
 the greatest marvel of all. When, as we should 
 say, they became regenerate, the thief grew hon 
 est ; the hands of judges, foul with taking 
 bribes, forgot their cunning; men and women, 
 in whose minds the idea of chastity had to be 
 almost created, learned the meaning of do- 
 mestic faithfulness. The entrance of the Word 
 gave light, and even the aged converts sought 
 the schools. In the place of superstitious fears, 
 came comforting hopes. Bitterness and re- 
 venge, those most human passions, strangely 
 went out of their hearts, and a spirit of pity 
 and forgiveness came in. The homely virtues, 
 thrift, cleanliness, industry, grew apace. But 
 beyond these, and higher, their new faith 
 wrought in them wonderful zeal and tender- 
 ness for the conversion of their countrymen, 
 and a loving fidelity to each other, which 
 even philosophy would say was beautiful. And 
 then there was a patience, and a holy joy in 
 enduring the trials of persecution, a lifting up 
 of themselves above themselves so that they 
 could pray for their executioners and invoke 
 blessings upon the bloody-handed Queen, such
 
 108 ESHCOL 
 
 as seemed almost divine. It is incredible that 
 such a death of the old nature and such a 
 bringing in of a new life should come from 
 any other than a supernatural source. 
 
 Other meh have died for an idea. Indian 
 braves deride their tormentors, and stand de- 
 fiant to the last. The Girondists sang baccha- 
 nalian songs on the eve of their execution. 
 But outside of Christian lines, history has no 
 parallel to the scenes of these martyrdoms. 
 Many times were incidents like these repeated: 
 A company of eighteen are condemned, some 
 to be thrown from a precipice, and some to be 
 burned. Every device has been tried to make 
 them renounce their faith. Two words spro- 
 nounced would save them from the burning, de- 
 liver their families from slavery, and give them 
 back their homes and possessions. But no one 
 falters. No lips utter the rescuing words, "/ 
 recant." High-born women, gentle maidens, 
 noble-browed men who have borne offices of 
 state, humble slaves, timid servants are there, 
 all in one brotherhood of faith and suffering. 
 Bound to poles in a painful manner and borne 
 on the shoulders of fierce men, there are no 
 fanatic shouts, no putting on a desperate show 
 of bravery, as they pass along. They pray, 
 exhort the people and sign hymns of Jesus and
 
 MISSIONS AND THE SKEPTICS 109 
 
 heaven. There are no trembling voices. Those 
 that see them say their faces are as the faces 
 of angels. As they who are pushed with spears 
 from the precipice, drop through the air far 
 down to the jagged rocks below, the song of 
 their triumph over death rings back to the ears 
 of the amazed multitude above. Four are to 
 perish at the stake. The mangled bodies of 
 those who have been dashed on the rocks are 
 dragged to the spot to be burned in the same 
 fire. As the flames rise about them, they sing 
 the hymn, "There is a blessed land." "That 
 was the hymn," says the native chronicle, 
 "they sang after they were in the fire. Then 
 they prayed, saying, 'O Lord, receive our 
 spirits; for thy love to us has caused this to 
 come to us: and lay not this sin to their 
 charge.' Thus they prayed as long as they 
 had any life. Then they died, and gently was 
 the going forth of their life, and astonished 
 were all the people around that beheld the 
 burning of them there." Astonished! Philos- 
 ophy is astonished. It finds no place for such 
 a scene. Unbelief stands dumb before this 
 spectacle. If there be no infinite Father as a 
 living factor in the world's affairs; if Jesus 
 Christ be not able to enter men's hearts with 
 a supernatural grace; if there be no sanctify-
 
 110 ESHCOL 
 
 ing and uplifting Holy Ghost, there is no ex- 
 planation of this wondrous story. It must 
 stand forever amongst the unsolved mysteries.
 
 AN EVENING WITH AN OLD MIS- 
 SIONARY. 
 
 One day last week a man of humble appear- 
 ance, about seventy years of age, called at our 
 office, and was introduced by a stranger as the 
 Rev. H. H. Spaulding, of Oregon. We had 
 heard something of his labors as a missionary 
 among the Indians in that region, and were 
 glad to take the veteran by the hand. He was 
 on the way to his old home at the East, after 
 an absence of thirty-four years, and intended 
 to stay over but a single train in Chicago. The 
 few words we could then have together, led 
 us to press him to share our hospitalities for 
 the night, which he accepted. 
 
 "Dr. Whitman's wife and mine," said the mis- 
 sionary, as we drew up our chairs about the 
 study table, and opened our "Colton" to the 
 right map, "were the first white women that 
 ever crossed the Rocky Mountains. That saved 
 Oregon to the Union. It was God's plan to 
 give the wealth of the Pacific slope to the 
 United States, through the agency of mission- 
 Ill
 
 112 ESHCOL 
 
 aries. " We asked for an explanation. "The 
 Northwestern territory was then occupied by 
 the Hudson's Bay Company. Who should 
 finally possess it England or the United States 
 depended upon who could first settle it with 
 an immigration. The Hudson's Bay Company 
 desired to secure it for their half-breeds and 
 the Jesuits. They were slowly creeping down 
 from Selkirk settlement, here on the north," 
 pointing it out on the map, "and silently taking 
 possession with forts and trading posts. Neith- 
 er wagons nor women, they industriously said, 
 can ever pass the terrible rock barriers that 
 wall out Oregon from the United States. Trap 
 pers, traders, travelers, everybody echoed the 
 words, 'No white woman can cross the moun- 
 tains and live.' Seven different companies of 
 male emigrants from the East had been shrewd- 
 ly harried out of the country by their mach- 
 inations. But they couldn't do it with us," 
 said he, rising, excitedly. "When the mis- 
 sionaries, with their wives and a wagon, ap- 
 peared on the 'divide' one of them said: 
 'Here is somebody that you can't get rid of 
 so easy. These folks have come to stay.'"' 
 
 "But how came you to go?" we asked. And 
 then for four hours of the rarest interest we 
 listened to the wonderful story. It would take
 
 AN EVENING WITH AH OLD MISSIONARY 113 
 
 a volume to unfold it. We must press it into 
 the briefest possible space. 
 
 THE MACEDONIAN NEZ PERCES. 
 
 About their council fire, in solemn conclave 
 it was in the year 1832 the Flat Heads and 
 Nez Perces had determined to send four of 
 their number to "the Rising Sun" for "that 
 Book from Heaven." They had got word of 
 the Bible and a Savior in some way, from the 
 Iroquois. These four dusky wise men, one of 
 them a chief, who had thus dimly "seen His 
 star in the east," made their way to St. Louis. 
 And it is significant of the perils of this thous- 
 and miles' journey that only one of them sur- 
 vived to return. They fell into the hands of 
 Gen. Clark, who, with Lewis, had traveled ex- 
 tensively in the regions of the Columbia 
 river. He was a Romanist, and took them to 
 his church, and, to entertain them, to the 
 theater. How utterly he failed to meet 
 their wants is revealed in the sad words with 
 which they departed: "I came to you" and 
 the survivor repeated the words years after- 
 ward to Mr. Spaulding "with one eye partly 
 opened ; I go back with both eyes closed and 
 both arms broken. My people sent me to ob- 
 tain that Book from Heaven. You took me 
 where your women dance as we do not allow
 
 114 ESHCOL 
 
 ours to dance ; and the Book was not there. 
 You took me where I saw men worship God 
 with candles; and the Book was not there. I 
 am now to return without it, and my people 
 will die in darkness." And so they took their 
 leave. But this sad lament was overheard. 
 A young man wrote it to his friends in Pitts- 
 burg. They showed the account to Catlin, of 
 Indian portrait fame, who had just come from 
 the Rocky Mountains. "He said, It cannot be; 
 those Indians were in our company, and I heard 
 nothing of this. Wait till I write to Clark 
 before you publish it." He wrote. The re- 
 sponse was, "It is true, That was the sole 
 object of their visit to get the Bible." Then 
 Catlin said, "Give it to the world. " The Meth- 
 odists at once commissioned Rev. Mr. Lee to 
 go and find this tribe who had so strangely 
 broken out of their darkness toward the light. 
 Dr. Marcus Whitman, of the American Board, 
 who was too late for the overland caravan for 
 that summer, followed the next year. Lee 
 found the Nez Perces. But so fearful were the 
 ridges and the ravines of the path to them, 
 and so wild the country where they roamed, 
 that the gift of ten horses with which they 
 plead their cause could not keep him. He 
 pushed on to the tribes living near the coast,
 
 AN EVENING WITH AN OLD MISSIONARY 115 
 
 and sent for his wife and associates by the 
 way of Cape Horn. 
 
 WOMAN'S HEROISM. 
 
 It was with great joy the Nez Perces wel- 
 comed Whitman the next year. Having ex- 
 plored the situation, and taking with him two 
 boys, which the Indians had placed in his 
 hands as hostages, in some sort, for his re- 
 turn, he went back for his intended wife, and 
 to secure others for the work. But who would 
 go? Men could be found. But where was the 
 woman willing to brave the vague horrors of 
 that "howling wilderness?" His betrothed 
 consented. But an associate, and he a married 
 man, must be obtained. More than a score of 
 most devoted ones were applied to in vain. 
 Friends said, It is madness to make the at- 
 tempt. And we do not wonder; for that country 
 and the way between, in the popular impres- 
 sion, was a dark unknown, full of terrors. 
 
 "The Dead are there where rolls the Oregon," 
 
 wrote Bryant. The dead were there, and the 
 bones of not a few luckless emigrants strewed 
 the path to the mountains. 
 
 A year was spent in the search for associates, 
 and then light came from an unexpected quar-
 
 116 ESHCOL 
 
 ter. In the early spring of 1836, a sleigh, ex- 
 temporized from a wagon, was craunching 
 through the deep snows of western New York. 
 It contained Rev. Mr. and Mrs. Spaulding, 
 who were on their way, under commission of 
 the American Board, to the Osage Indians. 
 The wife had started from a bed of lingering 
 illness, and was then able to walk less than a 
 quarter of a mile. 
 
 . Dr. Whitman, having heard of the rare cour- 
 age of this woman, by permission of the 
 Board, started in pursuit. 
 
 "We want you for Oregon," was the hail 
 with which he overtook them. 
 
 "How long will the journey take." 
 
 "The summers of two years." 
 
 "What convoy shall we have?" 
 
 "The American Fur Company to the 'divide.'" 
 
 "What shall we have to live on?" 
 
 "Buffalo meat, till we can raise our own 
 grain." 
 
 "How shall we journey?" 
 
 "On horseback." 
 
 "How cross the rivers?" 
 
 "Swim them." 
 
 After this brief dialogue, and we give it 
 precisely in his own words, Mr. Spaulding 
 turned to his wife and said:
 
 AN EVENING WITH /IN OLD MISSIONARY 117 
 
 "My dear, my mind is made up. It is not 
 your duty to go; but we will leave it to you 
 after we have prayed. " 
 
 By this time they had reached a tavern in 
 the town of Howard, N. Y. Taking a private 
 room, they each prayed in turn, and then left 
 Mrs. Spaulding to herself. In about ten min- 
 utes she appeared with a beaming face, and 
 said, "I have made up my mind to go." 
 
 "But your health, my dear." 
 
 "I like the command just as it stands, 'Go 
 ye into all the world,' and no exception for 
 poor health." 
 
 'But the perils, in your weak condition 
 you don't begin to think how great they are." 
 
 "The dangers of the way and the weakness 
 of my body are His; duty is mine." 
 
 "But the Indians will take you prisoner. 
 They are frantic for such captives. You will 
 never see your friends again" and the strong 
 man broke down and began to cry. 
 
 Was it the wife that answered, or was it a 
 voice from the old time? 
 
 "What mean ye to weep and to break mine 
 heart? for I am ready, not to be bound only, 
 but also to die at Jerusalem, or in the Rocky 
 Mountains, for the name of the Lord Jesus." 
 
 "Then," said the veteran, with a charming
 
 118 ESHCOL 
 
 simplicity, "I had to come to it. I didn't know 
 anything." 
 
 "Well, you were crazy," we interposed, "to 
 think of such a journey and she so weak." 
 
 "We were, but God meant to have us go. 
 He wanted to have an emigration go across 
 the mountains, and this was the way he took 
 to start it." 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Spaulding continued their 
 journey, and Whitman, sending forward to his 
 bride to be ready, went back for his Indian 
 boys they were then about sixteen years old 
 and pressed on after them. There was a 
 hasty wedding by the way, and then the bridal 
 tour began. 
 
 But the strife of parting was not yet over. 
 At Pittsburg, Cincinnati, St. Louis all along 
 the way hands were stretched out to hold 
 them back. Catlin, at Pittsburg, assured them 
 they could not take women through. The hos- 
 tile Indians that hover about the convoy would 
 fight against any odds to capture them. One 
 woman had tried it, but the company was 
 massacred, and she was dragged away and 
 never heard of again. Mrs. Spaulding was es- 
 pecially beset with these tales of horror. "But," 
 said the husband, with an honest pride, "it 
 didn't move her a hair."
 
 4N EVENING 1V1TH AN OLD MISSIONARY 119 
 A SUNDAY ON SHORE. 
 
 An incident, by the way, should be noted 
 here. The party took boat at Pittsburgh. Sat- 
 urday night found them between Cairo and St. 
 Louis. Mrs. Spaulding, who seems to have 
 had a good share both of the courage and the 
 conscience of the company, insisted that they 
 should be put on shore to spend Sunday. The 
 captain and the passengers laughed at her 
 scruples. But she said, "Out on the plains 
 we shall be at the mercy of the Fur Company, 
 and must go on. Here we can stop." 
 
 "But no boat will ever call at such an out 
 of the way place as this to take you off." 
 
 "We'll take the chances of that. Put us on 
 shore." 
 
 The New England home missionary marked 
 that day in white which brought such a rare 
 accession to his little meeting in the school- 
 house. He said it was like an angel's visit. 
 Early Monday morning a great puffing was 
 heard below, and a grand steamer, better than 
 the one they had left, rounded to at their sig- 
 nal and took them on board. Sixty miles above 
 they overtook the other boat hopelessly strand- 
 ed on a sand bar! 
 
 At St. Louis the missionaries found the 
 American Fur Company fitting out their annual
 
 120 ESHCOL 
 
 expedition for the mountains. But as the two 
 wives were along, they could not have secured 
 .a place in the caravan had not Whitman been 
 in special favor by his services rendered the 
 year before. It seems that, on his previous 
 trip, a few days out from Council Bluffs, the 
 cholera had broken out, and the demoralized 
 men, dropping their packs, began to flee in a 
 perfect rout. But Dr. Whitman, who, added 
 to his great strength, had skill and tact, was 
 equal to the emergency. Throwing off his 
 coat, he sweated the patients over the boiling 
 camp kettles, administered powerful remedies, 
 and so stayed the pestilence and restored or- 
 der. The men were now as grateful as they 
 had been before cool and contemptuous; and 
 when an arrow's head had been extracted from 
 behind the festering spine of a comrade, and 
 his life saved, their admiration knew no 
 bounds. 
 
 Having secured the Company's pledge, they 
 pressed on by boat to Liberty Landing. Here 
 Spaulding purchased mules wild, he found 
 them fifteen or twenty horses, as many cows, 
 and two wagons, not forgetting a quart of seed 
 wheat. With this retinue he started for 
 Council Bluffs, while Whitman waited, with 
 the women and the goods, for the Company's
 
 AN EVENING WITH AN OLD MISSIONARY 121 
 
 boat. After some days that boat passed, 
 purposely, leaving them behind. Through 
 this act of bad faith, he was obliged to 
 send forward to Spaulding for horses, and to 
 overtake him as he could by land. This part 
 of the trip was peculiarly trying. Spaulding 
 especially, who, for his wife's safe, was not 
 yet altogether happy in going, seemed to be 
 the sport of a very ill fortune. But in the 
 review even he could see a comic side to his 
 mishaps. A mule kicked him. He was terribly 
 shaken by the ague. In crossing a ferry, an 
 unruly cow, which he had laid hold of, jumped 
 overboard, taking him along for ballast. A 
 tornado scattered his cattle, swept away his 
 tent, tore his blankets from him while the 
 ague turn was on, and left him to be drenched 
 by the rain, with the usual consequences to 
 one who takes calomel for his medicine. 
 
 It did not help the case any to learn, when 
 they were within twenty-five miles of Council 
 Bluffs, that the Fur Company's convoy had 
 started, and were already five and a half days 
 out on the plains. 
 
 ' 'Twas a poor chance," said the narrator, 
 "for us greenhorns. They were old trappers 
 with fresh horses, while our teams were badly 
 jaded. And I said I was terribly sick, you
 
 122 ESHCOL 
 
 know 'we can't overtake them; we shall have 
 to go back.' But my wife constantly affirmed, 
 'I have started for the Rocky Mountains, and 
 I expect to go there!'" 
 
 And now commenced a series of marked in- 
 terpositions. It was pure faith and no sight 
 at all to push on after that cavalcade. The 
 trappers evidently designed to keep ahead, 
 and so induce the missionaries to turn back. 
 But to secure the protection of the convoy 
 was indispensable, .and God took care of His 
 own. 
 
 "It was a desperate race," said the mission- 
 ary, kindling at the remembrance, "but we 
 won it. They had to halt and fill up ravines, 
 and make roads, preparing the way of the 
 Lord, you see. This detained them four days. 
 Just where He stopped them the year before 
 with the cholera, He stayed them again; not, 
 as at the Red Sea, by taking off the wheels, 
 but by setting the axles on fire. In their haste 
 to get away from us they had forgotten to take 
 sufficient wheel grease. To burn wood for 
 ashes, going ten miles out of their way to find 
 it, and to kill two oxen for the fat necessary 
 for this compound, took four days more. And 
 then, at Loup Fork, still four other days were 
 lost in finding the ford and drying their goods,
 
 /IN EVENING WITH AN OLD MISSIONARY 123 
 
 wet in crossing. Meanwhile we were pressing 
 on behind, and the Lord helped us. The day 
 before we reached Loup Fork we rode from 
 daylight it was late in May till two o'clock 
 at night. One horse broke down, and was 
 turned loose, and my wife fainted by the way. 
 A signal gun at the ford brought answer from 
 the other side, and we camped. The convoy 
 started early in the morning, but left a man 
 to show us across, and late that night we mis- 
 sionaries filed into their camp, and took the 
 place reserved for us, two messes west of the 
 captain's tent, and so we won the race by two 
 lengths !" 
 
 Once among them nothing could exceed the 
 kindness of the men. "The choicest buffalo 
 morsels were always kept for our ladies. But 
 sick or well we had to go on. We were 200 
 souls and 600 animals. Everything was in the 
 strictest military order, for hostile Indians con- 
 tinually hovered on our flanks. At night we 
 camped with the animals solid in the cen- 
 ter. The tents and wagons were disposed 
 around them ; and outside of all sentinels 
 marched their steady round. Each day two 
 hunters and two packers went out for buffalo. 
 Each night, save when we had lost the way, 
 they overtook us at the appointed camp with
 
 124 ESHCOL 
 
 four mule-loads of meat. This was our only 
 subsistence." 
 
 "Did they never fail to find game?" 
 
 "Yes, once or twice, and then we had to go 
 hungry. " 
 
 On the 6th of June we were at Fort Laramie. 
 Wife was growing weaker and weaker. 
 
 "You must stay here," said the captain; 
 "Mrs. Spualding will die for want of bread." 
 
 "No," said she, "I started to go over the 
 mountains in the name of my Savior, and I 
 must go on." 
 
 INDEPENDENCE DAY AT THE "DIVIDE." 
 
 July Fourth they entered the South Pass. 
 Mrs. Spaulding fainted that morning, and 
 thought she was about to die. As they laid 
 her upon the ground, she said, 
 
 "Don't put me on that horse again. Leave 
 me and save yourselves. Tell mother I am 
 glad I came." 
 
 But the caravan stopped on the "divide," 
 and sent back for her, and she was borne on. 
 She soon revived, and three hours afterward 
 they saw the waters trickling toward the Paci- 
 fic. And 'there, it was Independence Day, 
 six years before Fremont, following in the foot- 
 steps of these women, gained the name of The
 
 /IN EVENING WITH /IN OLD MISSIONARY 125 
 
 Path-Finder, they, alighting from their horses 
 and kneeling on the other half of the conti- 
 nent, with the Bible in one hand and the 
 American flag in the other, took possession of 
 it as the home of American mothers and of the 
 Church of Christ! 
 
 Just beyond was the great mountain rendez- 
 vous, the end of the convoy's route, a kind of 
 neutral ground, where multitudes of Indians 
 were gathered for trade. There were rough 
 mountaineers there, who had not seen a white 
 woman since they had left the homes of their 
 childhood. Some of them came to meet the 
 missionaries, and wept as they took their 
 wives by the hand. "From that day," said one 
 of them, "I was a better man." But best of 
 all, here met them a greeting party of the Nez 
 Perces. "They were the happiest men you 
 ever saw." Their women took possession of 
 Mrs. Si aulding, and the gladness they showed, 
 not less than the biscuit-root and the trout 
 with which they fed her, revived her spirit. 
 From that hour she began to mend ; and from 
 that hour her future and theirs were one. 
 
 Ten days of rest here, and the journey was 
 resumed. The remainder of the way, if shorter, 
 was no less perilous, and they had asked in 
 dismay, What shall we do for a convoy? But
 
 126 ESHCOL 
 
 God took care of them. He sent an English 
 trading company to the rendezvous that year, 
 an unusual thing, and with them they com- 
 pleted the trip. 
 
 It was the agth of November when they 
 reached the Columbia river. They had left 
 civilization the aist of May, a long journey, 
 but not a trip of two summers to which they 
 had made up their minds. 
 
 And now they were at home amid a nation 
 that had no homes; they had found a resting 
 place among restless wanderers. But faith 
 had become sight, the first battle had been 
 fought and won. White women had come safe- 
 ly over the mountains ; cattle and horses had 
 been kept secure from Indian raiders, a wagon 
 had been brought through, "the first wheel that 
 had ever pressed the sage:" Whitman had de- 
 monstrated to himself that an emigration could 
 cross from Missouri to Oregon; and when, six 
 years afterward, he led a company of a thousand 
 along the same track, he demonstrated it to the 
 world, and saved Oregon, and with it Califor- 
 nia, to the United States. 
 
 THE TRUE INDIAN POLICY. 
 
 The old missionary's story is not half told, 
 but we must cut it short. Whitman took the
 
 AN EVENING IV1TH /IN OLD MISSIONARY 127 
 
 Cayuses at Waiilatpu (Wyee lat-poo), near 
 Walawala ; Spaulding camped 120 miles farther 
 up the Snake river, among the Nez Perces. 
 He found a people without a hoe, or plow, or 
 hoof of cattle ; savages, who feasted when the 
 hunt was good, but starved through the long 
 winters. Eleven years afterward they were 
 settled in homes; their crops of grain had 
 reached from 20,000 to 30,000 bushels a year. 
 The cows which the missionaries brought had 
 multiplied, for the Indians, into numerous 
 herds; gardens and orchards were planted; 
 the sheep, which the English residents denied 
 them but which the Sandwich Islanders gave, 
 had grown to flocks. In the school which Mrs. 
 Spaulding taught, carrying a young child in 
 her arms, were 500 pupils. A church of a hun- 
 derd members had been gathered. The tongue 
 of the people, hitherto without a character, 
 had been reduced to writing A patriarchal 
 government, with a code of laws, had been 
 established; the Sabbath was observed. Upon 
 the first printing-press west of the mount- 
 ains, and that presented to the mission by the 
 native church at Honolulu, the type-setting, 
 press-work and binding done by the mission- 
 ary's own hand, were printed a few school 
 books, the native code of laws, a small collec-
 
 128 ESHCOL 
 
 tion of hymns, and the Gospel of Matthew. 
 
 And then came that tornado of rapine and 
 m .rder at Waiilatpu, evoked, there is abund- 
 ant evidence to believe, by the Jesuit Fathers. 
 Whitman, with fourteen others, was massacred. 
 The killing lasted through eight days, and, in 
 the midst of it, the Catholic priests baptized 
 Indian children whose hands were stained 
 with the victims' blood. 
 
 A young woman, already outraged in the 
 presence of her dying brother, who had gone 
 to the Fathers' house for safety, was thrust 
 out each night for twenty days to the hated 
 embrace of an Indian chief. He called it mak- 
 ing her his wife, but she plead that she might 
 be killed. Spaulding, visiting Whitman at 
 the time, fled for his life to his faithful Nez 
 Perces. Six days he was without food, feeling 
 his way, sore-footed, by night, and hiding when 
 the dawn appeared. There was a hasty gath- 
 ering of the household, a journey of 200 miles 
 to the settlements, in mid-winter, and the mis- 
 sion came to an end. Almost blind himself, 
 and broken in constitution, he watched, for 
 many months, by the bedside of his wife, dy- 
 ing from that exposure, watched till she 
 passed through the River to the Celestial 
 Mountains and the beyond.
 
 AH EVENING WITH AN OLD MISSIONARY 129 
 
 Upon the records of Congress, printed 
 through what intrigue and connivance let him 
 tell who can, stands a paper known as "Ex. 
 Doc., No. 38, 35th Congress, ist Session." It 
 claims to be it is a statement full of perjuries 
 and perversions a history of Protestantism in 
 Oregon, by the Rev. J. R. A. Brouillet, Vicar- 
 General of Walawala. " Farther on it calls 
 itself an "Account of the murder of Dr Whit- 
 man, and the ungrateful calumnies of H. H. 
 Spaulding, Protestant Missionary." The Nez 
 Perces mission grounds, abandoned, so say the 
 officials, by the American Board, are in litiga- 
 tion to-day for recovery. And the Jesuits are 
 thrusting themselves upon that very tribe re- 
 deemed from heathenism through the labors of 
 this same Protestant missionary. Who shall 
 now say we have a State without a church? 
 O ye priests and politicians, for this wrong, 
 unparalleled you shall yet stand condemned at 
 the bar of an outraged public sentiment, and, 
 after that, at the bar of God! "How long, O 
 Lord, how long!"
 
 A VISIT TO THE DAKOTAS. 
 
 The annual meeting of the Dakota Mission 
 was held at Yankton Agency, commencing 
 June 13. We esteem it a rare privilege to 
 have been present on that occasion and to have 
 seen with our own eyes the marvelous trans- 
 formations wrought by the gospel among this 
 people. Thirty-six hours by rail took us to 
 Yankton, the border town of civilization. 
 Twelve hours more in stage and open wagon 
 along the north bank of the Missouri the 
 Big Muddy, as the Indians rightly call it 
 carried us sixty miles into the edge of the vast 
 open prairie, and into the heart of the Yank- 
 ton Reservation. Here, scattered up and down 
 the river bottom for thirty miles, live the 
 Yanktons, one of the Dakota bands, about 
 2,000 in number. Thirty miles below, on the 
 opposite bank, in Nebraska, are the Santees. 
 Up the river for many hundreds of miles at 
 different points other Reservations are set off, 
 while several wilder bands still hunt the 
 buffalo on the wide plains that stretch west- 
 130
 
 A VISIT TO THE DAKOTAS 131 
 
 ward to the Black Hills. The Sissetons, an- 
 other family of this tribe, are located near Lake 
 Traverse, on the eastern boundary of Dakota 
 Territory. This is the field of the Dakota Mis- 
 sion. Its extremes are from 500 to 800 miles 
 apart. Forty years ago the Dakotas numbered 
 from 45,000 to 50,000. Those who can now be 
 reached readily by our missionaries are about 
 25,000. The chief bands laid hold of thus far 
 are the Sisseton, the Santee and the Yankton. 
 A new point has recently been taken at Fort 
 Sully among the Teetons. 
 
 It was from these places, lying apart in 
 their extremes at least 500 miles, that more 
 than a hundred Indians gathered to this an- 
 nual meeting. On Thursday afternoon the 
 hospitable doors of Rev. J. P. Williamson's 
 spacious log house opened just in time to give 
 us shelter from a fierce storm of wind and 
 rain. The next morning the Santees, fifty of 
 them, from the Pilgrim Church, some on foot, 
 some on ponyback, and a few in wagons, 
 straggled in, and pitched their camp in Indian 
 fashion, on the open space near the mission 
 house. About noon the Sissetons appeared, a 
 dilapitated crowd of more than forty, weary 
 and footsore with their 300 miles tramp 
 through ten tedious days. Among them we
 
 132 ESHCOL 
 
 saw one white person, a woman, with her two 
 children, the youngest an infant, not a captive, 
 but a missionary's wife, traveling thus among 
 a people whom the gospel had made captives 
 themselves, chiefly through the labors of an 
 honored father and a mother of blessed mem- 
 ory. It intimates the courage and endurance 
 needed for such a trip to know that there were 
 almost no human habitations on the way, and 
 that swollen rivers were repeatedly crossed in 
 the wagon-box, stripped of its wheels and 
 made sea-worthy by canvas swathed under- 
 neath. 
 
 An hour afterward, from 200 miles in the 
 opposite dierction, the Fort Sully delegation 
 appeared. For Father Riggs, and the younger 
 son, famous as a hard rider, this journey was 
 no great affair. But the tenderly-reared young 
 wife how she could endure the five days of 
 wagon and tent life is among the mysteries. 
 
 That this was no crowd of Indian revelers 
 (come to a sun-dance, as it might have been 
 of yore) was soon manifest. The first morning 
 after their arrival a strange, chanting voice, 
 like that of a herald, mingled with our day- 
 break dreams. Had we been among the Mus- 
 sulmans we should have thought it the muez- 
 zin's cry. Of course, all was Indian to us, but
 
 A YISIT TO THE DAKOTAS 133 
 
 we learned afterward that it was indeed a call 
 to prayer, with this English rendering: 
 
 "Morning is coming! Morning is coming! 
 
 Wake up! wake up! Come to sing! come to pray! 
 
 In a few minutes, for it does not take an 
 Indian long to dress, the low cadence of many 
 voices joining in one of our own familiar tunes 
 rose sweetly on the air telling us that the day 
 of their glad solemnities had begun. This was 
 entirely their own notion, and was repeated 
 each of the four days we were together. 
 
 On this same morning another sharp con- 
 trast of the old and the new appeared. By in- 
 vitation of the elder Williamson, we took a 
 walk among the teepees of the natives who 
 live on the ground. Passing, with due regard 
 for Dakota etiquette, those which contained 
 only women, we came to one which we might 
 properly enter. The inmates were evidently 
 of the heathen party. A man, apparently fifty, 
 sat upon a skin, entirely nude save the inevit- 
 able blanket, which he occasionally drew up 
 about his waist. A lad of sixteen, in the same 
 state, lounged in an obscure corner. The 
 mother, who, we learned, occasionally attended 
 meeting, wore a drabbled dress, doubtless her 
 only garment. Two or three others were pres- 
 ent in different stages of undress, and all, lazy,
 
 134 ESHCOL 
 
 stolid, dirty. As we looked into these impas- 
 sive faces we could understand the saying of 
 one of the missionaries, that when you first 
 speak to an audience of wild Indians you 
 might as well preach to the back of their 
 heads, so far as any responsive expression is 
 concerned. And yet, now and then, the dull 
 glow of a latent ferocity would light up the 
 eye, like that of a beast of prey looking for 
 his next meal. Alas! for the noble red man! 
 In spite of what the poets say, we found him 
 a filthy, stupid savage. All this we have time 
 to see while Mr. Williamson talks to them in 
 the unknown tongue. But now the little church 
 bell calls us to the mission chapel. It is al- 
 ready filled the men on one side, the women 
 on the other. The audience numbers perhaps 
 two hundred. 
 
 All classes and ages are there. All are de- 
 cently dressed. Were it not for the dark faces 
 you would not distinguish them from an ordi- 
 nary country congregation. The hymn has al- 
 ready been given out, and each, with book in 
 hand, has found the place. The melodeon sets 
 the tune, and then, standing, they sing. It is 
 no weak-lunged performance we can assure 
 you. Not altogether harmonious, perhaps, but 
 vastly sweeter than a war-whoop, we fancy;
 
 A VISIT TO THE DAKOTAS 135 
 
 certainly hearty, sincere, and, we have no 
 doubt, an acceptable offering of praise. A low- 
 voiced prayer, by a native pastor, uttered with 
 reverent unction, follows. Another singing 
 and then the sermon. One of the Renvilles is 
 the preacher. We do not know what it is all 
 about. But the ready utterance, the mellifluent 
 flow of words, the unaffected earnestness of the 
 speaker, and the fixed attention of the audi- 
 ence, mark it as altogether a success. While 
 he speaks to the people, we study their faces. 
 They are certainly a great improvement upon 
 those we saw in the teepee. But not one nor 
 two generations of Christian life will work off 
 the stupid, inexpressive look that ages of 
 heathenism have graven into them. There is 
 a steady gain, however. Just as in a dissolv- 
 ing view there comes slowly out on the canvas 
 glimpses of a fair landscape, mingling strangely 
 with the dim outlines of the disappearing old 
 ruin, so there is struggling through these stony 
 faces an expression of the new creation with- 
 in, the converted soul striving to light up and 
 inform the hard features and displace the ruin 
 of the old savage life. But the poor women! 
 Their case is even worse. They start from a 
 lower plane. Some of these are young, some 
 are mothers with their infants, many are well
 
 136 ESHCOL 
 
 treated wives, not a few take part with pro- 
 priety in the women's meetings, and ^et you 
 look in vain among them all for one happy 
 face. They wear a beaten and abused look, 
 as if blows and cruelty had been their daily 
 lot, as if they lived, even, only by sufferance. 
 This is the settled look of their faces when in 
 repose. But speak to them; let the missionary 
 tell them you are their friend; and their eyes 
 light up with a gentle gladness, showing that a 
 true womanly soul only slumbers in them. 
 This came out beautifully at a later point in 
 the meeting. A motion was about to be put, 
 when some one insisted that on that question, 
 the women should express their minds. This 
 was cordially assented to, and they were re- 
 quested to stand with the men in a rising vote. 
 The girls, of course, giggled, but the women 
 modestly rose in their places, and it was worth 
 a trip all the way from Chicago to see the 
 look of innocent pride into which their sad 
 faces were for once surprised. 
 
 But sermon is done. There is another loud- 
 voiced hymn, and then the meeting of days is 
 declared duly opened. It is to be a compos- 
 ite, a session of Presbytery, for they happen to 
 have taken that form, and a Conference of 
 churches. A leading candidate for moderator
 
 A YISIT TO THE DAKOTAS 137 
 
 is Ehnamani, a Santee pastor. How far the 
 fact that he is a great hunter and a famous 
 paddleman, affects the vote, we cannot say. 
 This may have had more weight: his father 
 was a great conjuror and war prophet. Before 
 he died he said to his son: 
 
 "The white man is coming into the country, 
 and your children may learn to read. But 
 promise me that you will never leave the re- 
 ligion of your ancestors." 
 
 He promised. And he says now that had the 
 Minnesota outbreak not come, in which his 
 gods were worsted by the white man's God, he 
 would have kept true to his pledge. As it is, 
 he now preaches the faith which once he de- 
 stroyed, and they make him moderator. 
 
 We will not follow the meeting through the 
 days. There are resolutions, and motions to 
 amend, and all that, just like white folks, and 
 plenty of speech-making. Now a telling hit 
 sends a ripple of laughter through the room; 
 and now the moistened eyes and trembling 
 lip tell that some deep vein of feeling has been 
 touched. Grave questions are under discus- 
 sion: Pastoral support, opening out into gen- 
 eral benevolence Pastoral Visitation, its neces- 
 sity, methods, difficulties, and also as a work 
 pertaining to elders, deacons, and to the whole
 
 138 ESHCOL 
 
 membership; Primary Education Shall it be 
 in the vernacular or in English? a most spir- 
 ited debate resulting in this: "Resolved, That 
 so long as the children speak the Dakota at 
 home, education should be begun in the Da- 
 kota." Then the Jape Oaye, the Word Carrier, 
 for they have their newspaper, and // has its 
 financial troubles, comes up. All rally to its 
 support. But the hundred-dollar deficit for 
 last year, that, we suspect comes out of the 
 missionaries' meagre salary. All along certain 
 more strictly ecclesiastical matters are mingled 
 in. James Red Wing is brought forward to 
 be approbated as a preacher at Fort Sully. 
 An application is considered for forming a new 
 church on the Sisseton Reserve. The church 
 at White Banks asks aid for a church build- 
 ing, and a Yankton elder is examined and re- 
 ceived as a candidate for the ministry. The 
 Indians, in large numbers, share freely in all 
 these deliberations. Everything is decorous 
 and dignified, sometimes evidently interesting, 
 we the while burning to know what they are 
 saying, and getting the general drift only 
 through a friendly whisper in the ear. While 
 they are discussing we will make a few notes. 
 About one-third of these before us were im- 
 prisoned for the massacre of 1862, although,
 
 A VISIT TO THE DAKOTAS 139 
 
 probably, none of them took active part in 
 it. The larger portion of them were made free 
 men of the Lord in that great prison revival 
 at Mankato, as a result of which 200 joined the 
 church in one day. They were also of that 
 number who, when being transferred by 
 steamer to Davenport, "passed St. Paul in 
 chains, indeed, but singing the fifty-first 
 Psalm, to the tune of the Old Hundred." 
 Seven of these men are regularly ordained min- 
 isters, pastors of as many churches; two others 
 are licentiate preachers. Quite a number are 
 teachers, deacons, elders, or delegates of the 
 nine churcnes belonging to the mission, and 
 they report a goodly fellowship of 775 Dakota 
 members, 79 of whom have come into the fold 
 since the last meeting. 
 
 Two or three of these men are of some his- 
 toric note. John B. Renville, who sits at the 
 scribe's desk, was the main one in inaugurating 
 the counter revolution in the hostilities of 
 1862. Yonder is Peter Big Fire, who, by his 
 address, turned the war party from the trail of 
 the fleeing missionaries. And there is Grey 
 Cloud, for five years in the United States army 
 a sergeant of scouts; and Chaskaden, the Elder 
 Brewster of the prison church; and Lewis 
 Mazawakinganna, formerly chaplain among the
 
 140 ESHCOL 
 
 fort scouts, now pastor of Mayasan Church, 
 and Hokshidanminiamani, once a conjurer, 
 now, no longer raising spirits in the teepee, 
 but humbly seeking to be taught of the Divine 
 Spirit, and all these ah, our eyes fill with 
 tears, as we think that but for the blessed gos- 
 pel they would still be worshipers of devils. 
 
 There was to have been a sun-dance by the 
 heathen party, a few miles away, during this 
 gathering, got up, we suppose, on the prin- 
 ciple that the world's people start a dancing 
 school when a protracted meeting begins. It 
 did not come on account of the rain. But if 
 it had, one might have seen repeated there, 
 perhaps, what took place a year ago a man, 
 pinching up the flesh and clipping it out with 
 his knife, every four inches on each side from 
 the ankle bone to the arm pit, and dying in 
 ten days from loss of blood; scores of others, 
 as an act of worship, looking with open eye 
 for many minutes into the blazing sun, some 
 swinging on hooks, others but enough! O 
 my soul, come not thou into the secret of their 
 abominations! And such were some of these, 
 but they are washed, but they are sanctified, 
 but they are justified in the name of the Lord 
 Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God. 
 
 The meeting is adjourned and the brethren
 
 A VISIT TO THE DAKOTAS 141 
 
 are coming forward to greet us. We never 
 grasped hands with a heartier good will. But 
 somehow our sense of humor will not be alto- 
 gether quiet as, one after another, we are in- 
 troduced to Elder Big Fire, Rev. Mr. All-good, 
 Deacon Boy-that-walks-on-the-water, Pastor 
 Little-Iron-Thunder, Elder Grey-Cloud, and 
 Rev. Mr. Stone-that-paints-itself-red. But 
 they are grand men, and their names are quite 
 as euphonious as some English ones we could 
 pick out. 
 
 While supper is preparing, we will look a 
 moment at a phase of tent-life. A sudden 
 gust of wind has blown over two of the large 
 teepees. And now they are to be set up again. 
 One is occupied by the men, the other by the 
 women. [Jnder the old regime the women do 
 all this kind of work. But now the men are 
 willing to try their hand at it, at least upon 
 their own tent. It is new work, however, and 
 while they are making futile attempts at tying 
 together the ends of the first three poles, the 
 mothers and wives have theirs already up and 
 nearly covered. At length a broad-chested wo- 
 man steps over among them, strips off their 
 ill-tied strings, repacks the ends of the poles, 
 and with two or three turns binds them fast, 
 and all with a kind of nervous contempt as if
 
 142 ESHCOL 
 
 she were saying she probably is: "O you stu- 
 pid fellows!" The after work does not seem 
 to be much more successful and they stand 
 around in a helpless sort of way while the 
 young women are evidently bantering them 
 with good-natured jests, much as a bevy of 
 white girls would do in seeing a man vainly 
 trying to stitch on a missing button, each new 
 bungling mistake drawing the fire of the fair 
 enemy in a fresh explosion of laughter. How 
 the thing comes out we do not stay to see, but 
 we suspect that the practiced hands of the 
 good women finally come to the rescue. 
 
 Sunday is the chief day of interest, and yet 
 there is less to report about that. In the morn- 
 ing at nine o'clock, Rev. A. L. Riggs con- 
 ducts a model Bible class, with remarks on 
 the art of questioning. At the usual hour of 
 service the church is crowded, and Rev. Sol- 
 omon Tunkansaiciye preaches, we doubt not, 
 a most excellent sermon. Immediately follow- 
 ing is the sacrament of the Lord's Supper with 
 the fathers of the mission, Revs. Dr. Riggs 
 and Williamson officiating, a tender and sol- 
 emn scene, impressive even to us who under- 
 stand no single word of the service, for grave 
 Indian deacons reverently pass the elements; 
 and many receive them which but for a knowl-
 
 A YISIT TO THE DAKOTAS 143 
 
 edge of this dear sacrifice might have reck 
 oned it their chief glory that their hands were 
 stained with human blood. 
 
 Just as we close, in strange contrast with 
 the spirit of the hour, two young Indian braves 
 go by the windows. They are trickedout with 
 all manner of savage frippery. Ribbons stream 
 in the wind, strings of discordant sleigh bells 
 grace their horses' necks and herald their ap- 
 proach. Each carries a drawn sword which 
 flashes in the sunlight, and a plentiful use of 
 red ocher and eagles' feathers, completes the 
 picture. As they ride by on their scrawny 
 little ponies the effect is indescribably absurd. 
 But they think it very fine, and like their 
 cousins, the white fops, have simply come to 
 show themselves. 
 
 In the afternoon, is an English service, and 
 then one wholly conducted by the natives them- 
 selves. No evening meetings are held, as 
 these people that rise with the birds are not 
 far behind them in going to their rest. On 
 Monday the business is finished, and the fare- 
 wells are said. And on Tuesday morning the 
 various delegations start for their distant 
 homes. 
 
 We have no space to speak of the meeting 
 of the mission proper. It was held at Mr.
 
 144 ESHCOL 
 
 Williamson's house during the evenings. 
 Nearly all its members were present a de- 
 lightful re-union it was to them and us and 
 many questions of serious interest were amply 
 discussed. We dare not trust our pen to write 
 about these noble men and women as we would. 
 The results of their labors abundantly testify 
 for them, and their record is on high. May 
 they receive an hundred fold for their work of 
 faith, and labor of love, and patience of hope 
 in our Lord Jesus Christ.
 
 THE GENESIS OF A WINDMILL. 
 
 There was a somewhat desperate state of 
 affairs in the humble missionary home of the 
 Wheelers at Odanah in the early spring of 
 1866. The Indians had gone to the sugar 
 bush. There was no help to be had on any 
 hand. Four of the eight children were down 
 with the measles. The father, worn with 
 overwork, and already enfeebled by the disease 
 that finally ended his life, had fallen from a 
 ladder and broken his left wrist. That morn- 
 ing the eldest son, Leonard, dismissed with a 
 benediction, and not without tears, had started 
 in the deep snow, with a team, for St. Paul, 
 two hundred miles away. The post doctor had 
 scarcely left the house, where he had spent 
 hours in setting the fractured wrist, when the 
 son was brought back, suffering great agony 
 from a broken leg, caused by a falling tree. 
 What the mother thought and felt and did in 
 this testing time is not recorded. But doubt- 
 less the faith and courage which still gives her 
 strength to recount the scene and enjoy the 
 145
 
 146 ESHCOL 
 
 memories of her missionary life, begun more 
 than fifty years ago, did not fail her then. 
 
 The next day, when the father had recovered 
 from the dead faint of the bone-setting, the 
 unconquered will asserted itself, and he said : 
 " Now's my time for the windmill!" This was 
 the revival of an idea, born out of the exigen- 
 cies of missionary service, but which had slept 
 for more than twenty years. The doctor hu- 
 mored the fancy, as he thought it to be, saying 
 to the mother that it would come to nothing, 
 but it would occupy his mind and perhaps save 
 a precious life. A board was laid across the 
 arms of the chair in front of him, and with the 
 left wrist in a sling he always counted it a 
 special mercy that it was that one that was 
 broken he drafted for the first time the plan 
 of a now famous windmill. 
 
 But who are these people, and for what pur- 
 pose have they come into the wilds of this 
 Lake Superior region? 
 
 In the spring of 1841, a young man, born in 
 the same year as was the American Board, 
 1810, a graduate of Middlebury and of An- 
 dover, and furnished with the further outfit of 
 a medical course at Pittsfield, takes to wife 
 an Ipswich student from her home in Lowell, 
 Mass., and sets out on his bridal trip for Che-
 
 THE GENESIS OF A WINDMILL 147 
 
 quamegon Bay, far toward the west end of 
 Lake Superior. He is commissioned by the 
 Board to follow the Indians, retreating before 
 the wave of white settlements, and scattering 
 through all the Upper Lake region from the 
 post of Mackinac. He is to join Rev. Sher- 
 man Hall, who twelve years before has estab- 
 lished a mission at La Pointe, on the Madeline, 
 one of the Apostles' Islands, opposite and about 
 three miles away from the present Bayfield. 
 
 To some of Mrs. Wheeler's friends it seemed 
 a foolish and fanatical thing for her to go out 
 thus into the wilderness. "There is romance," 
 they said, "in sailing away to Ceylon or Syria, 
 but to go to the dirty savages of Lake Supe- 
 rior, bah!" the ready answer was Father Good- 
 ell's oft quoted saying, "Satan's kingdom is a 
 dirty kindgom anywhere." 
 
 The route, by railroad, stage and steamboat 
 to Mackinac was an easy trip. But from that 
 point on the hardships began. Three days in 
 a sail-boat took them to the "Soo. " The 
 waves did not deal kindly with the young 
 bride. The first night's camp was on an island 
 of roses, but fainting with fright and sea sick- 
 ness she was borne to the shore in the arms of 
 a half-breed. Sault Ste. Marie was then only 
 a "carry," and all the sailing craft of Lake
 
 148 ESHCOL 
 
 Superior consisted of two small schooners. 
 After waiting three weeks for one of these, The 
 Algonquin, the missionaries embarked, having 
 for company two copper-hunters and a trader 
 with the inevitable barrel of whiskey. Nine 
 days brought them to the Apostles' Islands. 
 
 It is difficult for one who now visits Che- 
 quamegon Bay, its clear waters seamed across 
 with all manner of water craft; Ashland, 
 Washburn and Bayfield filling its air with the 
 many-voiced hum of their marvelously-growing 
 industries it is difficult to conceive of the ut- 
 ter remoteness of those who dwelt there in the 
 early days in the days when only the cry of 
 the loon and the lazy plash of the Indian's 
 paddle broke the stillness of its peaceful 
 shores. From the frontier settlements of Wis- 
 consin to Hudson's Bay and the Frozen Sea 
 of the North it was an unbroken wilderness. 
 It emphasizes this isolation to our thought to 
 know that once in three months of winter was 
 the mail-time; and that on one occasion the 
 curtain shut down during the quadrennial No- 
 vember election, and lifted again in the fol- 
 lowing spring only after the successful candi- 
 date had taken the presidential chair. And we 
 may well believe that no sight was ever more 
 welcome to wearily watching eyes than that
 
 THE GENESIS OF A WINDMILL 149 
 
 column of smoke, rising from a dim hill to 
 the far south, which told that the mail carrier, 
 coming over two hundred miles on snow- 
 shoes, was making there his last campfire be- 
 fore reaching them with news from the outside 
 world. 
 
 Mr. Wheeler anticipated by thirty years, 
 the now accepted idea that, to do successful 
 work among the Indians, they must be located 
 and be given farms in severally. The land on 
 the Pointe was a stiff clay, but twenty miles 
 on shore, a few miles up Bad River, was a 
 marvelously rich soil, easily worked. To this 
 point he steadily labored to move the Indians 
 and the mission. In four years he so far suc- 
 ceeded that he gathered here a church of 
 twenty members, mainly of those who had 
 floated from the Mackinac church, and a school 
 of seventy-five scholars, while Mrs. Wheeler, 
 although resisted by the Catholic Bishop, 
 gathered one of thirty or forty girls. The slen- 
 der educational outfit consisted of a small 
 spelling book and the gospel of Luke in 
 Chippewa, a language which Hall had begun to 
 reduce to writing only twelve years before. 
 Here the Indians were taught to build log 
 houses and to till the soil. But there was no 
 "power" to pump water or grind the corn and
 
 ESHCOL 
 
 wheat, and hence the conception of the wind- 
 mill. 
 
 The idea of it first came to him in the third 
 year of his work, in 1844. Following the In- 
 dians in and out among the islands of the Bay 
 with his pill box and Testament, he had abund- 
 ant opportunity to study how the wind, strik- 
 ing the sails, gave motion to the boat. Why 
 not make this same power pump his water and 
 grind his corn? With a jack-knife and a 
 shingle he worked out his idea in a rough 
 model, with which the government carpenter 
 was m.uch pleased. But the growing mission- 
 ary work and many cares of the agency left no 
 time to carry out the plan, and so it slept for 
 twenty years. These were years of exhausting 
 toil but of abounding joy in the work. One 
 winter, sleeping in the open air, with the ther- 
 mometer at 25 degrees below, he traveled two 
 hundred miles on snowshoes to head off some 
 rascality of the "Indian ring." Later he went 
 East and spent three weeks at Washington in 
 the interests of his beloved people. Six weeks 
 after his return, exhausted by his exposures, 
 he came down with a hemorrhage of the lungs, 
 but, though in great weakness and weariness, 
 he clave to his work six years longer, pour- 
 ing out, in a real sense, his life for the Indians.
 
 THE GENESIS OF A WIKDMILL 151 
 
 Once there came to him and his family a 
 great temptation. The devil led him into the 
 wilderness and showed him all the kingdoms 
 of pine and copper lands. He had peculiar 
 opportunities. No man knew as he did where 
 were the best soil and the richest minerals. 
 
 The pagan Indians believed the gods would 
 be angry if they showed the whites where the 
 copper was. But this man was their friend, 
 teacher, physician. The gods would be pleased 
 if they showed him. They often brought him 
 specimens of richest ore and offered to "lead 
 him to the spot from which it came. Friends 
 were ready to furnish money and entreated 
 him to "enter" lands and mines. An immense 
 fortune was let down to his very hand. He 
 only had to will to take it. But to all he con- 
 stantly said, "I did not come here for this. 
 Get thee behind me, Satan." And to his 
 wife he many times quoted i Tim. iv. 15: 
 "Meditate upon these things. Give thyself 
 wholly to them." But one night in Adam's 
 absence the tempter appeared to his Eve. The 
 teacher and the physician and wife, came and 
 stayed till n o'clock; urging her to persuade 
 her husband to go into the speculation. "Here 
 is your brood of eight children to be cared 
 for and educated." "Mr. Wheeler's health is
 
 152 ESHCOL 
 
 failing." "You have done your share for the 
 welfare of the Indians." For the moment she 
 was shaken. But in the calm hour when they 
 had gone, she opened the Word and her eye 
 fell first upon Ps. xxxvii. 3 : "Trust in the 
 Lord and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the 
 land, and verily thou shalt be fed." This set- 
 tled the matter at once and forever. 
 
 And now came the incidents detailed at the 
 opening of this sketch. Between the father and 
 the son there were a sound pair of feet and as 
 sound a pair of hands. Three days after the 
 double accident the doctor, drawing them on 
 an ox sled, landed them in a vacant room of 
 the schoolhouse. In two weeks thy had trans- 
 formed the drawing into a small wooden wheel 
 and the government blacksmith, much inter- 
 ested in the scheme, volunteered the iron 
 work. 
 
 There was a touch of gallantry in the finish- 
 ing of the job. The nuptials of the Wheel 
 and the Wind must be celebrated on the twen- 
 ty-fifth anniversary of his own marriage. And 
 so on April 26, 1866, in the afternoon, the un- 
 tried machine was perched on the top of a 
 high fence with a crank and the piston of a 
 pump attached, and after supper, the admir- 
 ing wife and children standing by, the cords
 
 THE GENEIS OF A WINDMILL 153 
 
 were cut and the wheel leaped merrily into the 
 embraces of the breeze. But the course of this 
 true love did not run smoothly. Three days 
 after a stiff and envious northeast wind blew 
 off the wheel, and in the tumble it was hope- 
 lessly broken into fragments. But out of this 
 very misfortune grew the most important part 
 of the invention. That the wheel should be 
 solid, and not with sail-vanes or moveable 
 slats, as mills before had been, was a new 
 step. But in a week or ten days from this 
 indomitable will and inventive brain came the 
 idea, most valuable of all, of an automatic, 
 self-regulating vane. This attachment with 
 almost human intelligence, should turn the 
 wheel, now face on, now quartering, and now 
 edge to the wind, according to its velocity, and 
 so without interference or watchfulness it would 
 itself safely keep up its own regular motion, 
 let the winds blow as they might. In two 
 months the self-regulating mill was up and 
 working well. 
 
 But the inventor-missionary was failing fast. 
 That autumn, surrendering his work, he moved 
 with his family to Beloit, Wis It was not 
 expected he would survive the winter. The 
 early spring of '67 found him too weak to talk 
 to a cousin, a wealthy banker, who was visit-
 
 154 ESHCOL 
 
 ing them. But Mrs. Wheeler told him of the 
 wind-mill. In reply he said: "I have a patent- 
 lawyer friend in Chicago. Send him a model 
 and he can tell; I will bear the expense." A 
 room of the Ridell house where he lived was 
 warmed and fitted up with a work bench, and 
 the invalid missionary, working twenty min- 
 utes or a half hour at a time, as his strength 
 would allow, in about two months completed 
 the model and sent it to Chicago. It was de- 
 cided that a new principle had been evolved 
 and a patent was easily secured. There was 
 not the remotest thought of this in the begin- 
 ning. The sole inspiring object was to get a 
 machine that would grind the corn and water 
 the gardens of the Indians, and so help to lead 
 them into settled Christian lives. 
 
 In the summer Mr. Wheeler's health revived 
 and, with it, his courage to build a full-sized 
 mill. But where could the money be found? 
 Fifteen years before a friend had given the 
 children $25 or $30. With this, under the 
 direction of the thrifty mother, a patch of land 
 was cleared and drained. The children dug 
 with a will, the Indians helped from gratitude, 
 and the mission oxen, under the severe con- 
 science of the father, were hired for pay. The 
 little plantation throve wonderfully, and in sev-
 
 THE GENESIS OF A WINDMILL 155 
 
 en years, as many hundreds of dollars were 
 laid by, for some future time of need ; $500 of 
 this afterward went into the education of the 
 children. The remaining $200 built the first 
 merchantable mill. In the fall Mr. Wheeler 
 took it to the State Fair at Madison. The 
 Lord graciously gave him favor among busi- 
 ness men. There were two or three rival mills 
 there. But he sold his to a man who took it 
 to Albany, N. Y., where it is said to be run- 
 ning yet. The same man bought the right of 
 a county for $150, and so the manufacturing 
 began. 
 
 It will be news to most of those who enjoy 
 the advantages of this invention that it was 
 born out of the stringent needs of missionary 
 service; that every step in its development was 
 taken with an earnest supplication for aid 
 from the Higher Wisdom, and that no mill, 
 during the life of the inventor, went out with- 
 out a prayer that it might prove to be an hon- 
 est and serviceable machine. 
 
 The missionary idea in it clung to his mind 
 to the last. At that time the hearts of Chris- 
 tians were wrung by news of drought and con- 
 sequent famine in India. It was his fond hope 
 that one day these mills would be scattered 
 all over that land, and, bringing up water
 
 156 ESHCOL 
 
 from the reservoirs below, should henceforth 
 save the miserable Hindoos from those har- 
 rowing scenes. 
 
 One morning he came down much impressed 
 with a vivid dream. In visions of the night 
 he saw one of his mills planted near Jacob's 
 Well in Palestine. And as the cool streams 
 poured themselves forth, he cried out, as did 
 the prophet of old: "Ho! everyone that thirst- 
 eth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath 
 no money, come buy . . . without money and 
 without price;" the old Arab Sheiks standing 
 by the while, stroking their white beards and 
 exclaiming, "Allah is great! Allah is great!" 
 
 Who shall say that there was not repeated 
 in a humble way, to his spiritual eyes, so soon 
 to open into the clear seeing of the other 
 world, Ezekiel's "Vision of the Holy Waters, " 
 a symbol of the river of salvation flowing to 
 all lands of the earth. 
 
 "And everything shall live whither the river 
 cometh."
 
 TALAMAS-MIC-O. 
 
 In rummaging through a dusty pigeon-hole 
 the other day, I came upon some rough notes 
 which must have been penciled at least twen- 
 ty-five years ago. They were undoubtedly taken 
 down from the lips of the person to whom 
 they refer, and I have no reason to suppose 
 that the narrative is not altogether reliable as 
 to truth. It was probably the intention at the 
 time that these notes should be written out as 
 the somewhat remarkable experience of an un- 
 tutored wild man of the woods. 
 
 When the interview took place, or how it 
 came about, has utterly vanished from my 
 memory. On the mental mirror there is a 
 dim reflection of the shadow of a middle-aged 
 man, clad in a semi-clerical dress, but with 
 straight black hair, high cheek bones and a 
 bronze complexion the features of an abor- 
 iginal Indian. But whether this is more im- 
 agination than memory I will not undertake 
 to say. I copy the notes so far as I am able 
 to decipher them, adding only such words as 
 157
 
 158 ESHCOL 
 
 are necessary to complete the evident sense. 
 
 This Indian must have been born somewhere 
 ir^the "twenties," for he was one of the boy 
 "braves" who was wont to help torture and 
 scalp the wounded whites who fell in the bat- 
 tles of the Seminole War in Florida. His 
 mother was a sister of the celebrated chief, 
 Osceola. There was a touch of nature which 
 makes all the world akin in the name she gave 
 her son. The heart-throb which inspired a 
 high-souled woman to indite the beautiful 
 lines, addressed to a noble boy, "Philip, my 
 king," beat also in the bosom of this squaw 
 mother, and as she looked upon her lusty 
 brown baby she called him Talamas-Mic-O, 
 the "King of the Forest." The young savage 
 was reared among the wild scenes of an In- 
 dian war, and, it would seem, learned its bar- 
 barous lessons well. 
 
 But I must pause here a moment to modify 
 these last words. 
 
 A custom of his people, spoken of in these 
 notes, seems to give a comment on Rom. i. 
 19, "That which may be known of God is man- 
 ifest in them; for God hath showed it unto 
 them." They believe in the Great Spirit. 
 Once a year before the corn and vegetables are 
 ripe, they come together and give thanks.
 
 7ALAMAS-MIC-O 159 
 
 Then they kindle a new fire as a symbol of 
 their purpose to begin a new life. Over this fire 
 they boil certain roots there are five or six 
 kinds knowji to the Indian doctors for their 
 qualities as a powerful emetic. It is called the 
 "Black Drink." All partake of it, and then 
 they start out afresh. t Enemies exchange gar- 
 ments and are reconciled And thus in thsir 
 rude way is there not in it some divine thought 
 of the need of regeneration? they attempt to 
 "make all things new." 
 
 And yet they remained Indians and commit- 
 ted great atrocities. But if there were inhuman 
 deeds, there were great wrongs. In the celes- 
 tial balances which weigh human blamableness 
 according to the light enjoyed, it may well be 
 doubted if the atrocity of the Indian is reck- 
 oned heavier than the rapacity and oppression 
 of the white man. The old story of shame and 
 dishonor repeated itself here. Unlike the 
 pliant North they refused to deliver up fugi- 
 tive slaves. Osceola's wife, who was the daugh- 
 ter of a fugitive slave woman, was claimed as 
 a slave by the owner of her mother, and as 
 such was carried off. The noble chief in his 
 anger, uttering hot words of threatening as 
 what man would not? was seized by United 
 States Agent Gen. Thompson and put in irons
 
 160 ESHCOL 
 
 for six days. Indignity added to outrage 
 stung Osceola to madness. For weeks and 
 months he lay in wait, and at last killed 
 Thompson and four others with him, and so 
 the pitiable war began. It was 7,000 Seminoles 
 scattered through the everglades of Florida 
 upon the one side and the whole force of the 
 United States Government on the other. The 
 war lasted seven years and cost $10,000,000 and 
 the lives of nearly 1,500 soldiers. Finally the 
 government called bloodhounds to its aid, and 
 to crown the infamy, by an act of treachery 
 under a flag of truce captured Osceola and im- 
 prisoned him in Fort Moultrie, where after six 
 years he died. Other causes operated to bring 
 on the war the lust of slaveholders for the 
 Indian's land, and the greed of "Ring" con- 
 tractors for army spoils. The government 
 plundered the Indians, and the Ring plund- 
 ered the government. A glimpse of this ras- 
 cality appear in these notes, where although the 
 army was camped in a forest country the com- 
 missar}' charged $40 a cord for wood! Doubt- 
 less the watch dogs of the United States 
 treasury innocently looked the other way 
 when these robber bills were paid. It was a 
 wretched and disgraceful piece of business from 
 beginning to end.
 
 TALAM/tS-MlC-O 161 
 
 But to return to the boy Talamas. In the 
 fifth year of the war Osceola sent out all who 
 were unable to escape the bloodhounds. Tal- 
 amas and some other Indian boys, pursued by 
 the ferocious brutes, crossed a ford of the 
 Withlacorchee, and, climbing into a tree where 
 the white moss concealed them, were unseen 
 witnesses of the bloody battle that followed. 
 About ten o'clock in the morning, hearing the 
 distant bay of the five hundred government 
 bloodhounds, Osceola ordered poison roots to 
 be bruised and cast into the streams, and the 
 boys could see the dogs, hot from the chase, 
 drink and then jump up and die. A fierce 
 battle came on in which the Indians held the 
 ground, and at the close the boys came down 
 and assisted in the barbarities that followed. 
 
 Soon after this, it seems, he was sent out of 
 the everglades and at length found his way to 
 the then Spanish town, St. Augustine. "One 
 day I saw a man" (here I copy the exact words 
 of the notes). "They were knifing some beeves. 
 He was sitting on a stump talking to something 
 in Spanish. I went up behind him. I heard 
 him say, 'Jesus Christ came into the world to 
 save sinners.' It struck me. I asked him to 
 say to me that again about Jesus Christ. He 
 said it again.
 
 1G2 ESHCOL 
 
 ' 'What is that? Who is Jesus?' 
 
 " 'He is the Son of God. 
 
 '"Who is God?' 
 
 "'He is your Great Spirit.' 
 
 "'Who are sinners?' 
 
 ''You Seminoles, fighting the government.' 
 
 "I was greatly distressed. The feelings fol- 
 owed me up horrible feelings. He told me I 
 was a sinner, and then I felt it. It grew 
 worse and went on for three weeks. It looked 
 to me as if I was the greatest sinner that ever 
 ran among the everglades. Seemed as if every 
 thing I had ever done came up. I had cut 
 boys with knives. I used to cut them all up. 
 I have scars all over my hands made in these 
 fights. I pitched a boy once and broke his 
 back. He always had a hump afterward. I had 
 forgotten these things, but now all came up, 
 especially at night. Nothing could please me. 
 I thought the Great Spirit was angry with me. 
 Then I thought that he sent his Son to save 
 me, and that was what broke my heart. It 
 was a great distress. I wanted to get rid of 
 these feelings. I thought I would get up a 
 'stamp dance' thought I could stamp those 
 feelings away. I raised a whoop. They could 
 hear it three miles away. All came, women 
 and- all. They came into a ring, and I raised
 
 TALAMAS-M1C-O 163 
 
 the song. I was a great hand in a stamp dance 
 was the leader of it. I stamped with all my 
 might. But I only stamped it in. I raised a 
 whoop and then stopped, and I went out, while 
 the others kept on. 
 
 "Then I felt worse than ever. I went down 
 into some bushes close by. The thought came 
 to me, Why are you so disturbed about Jesus, 
 about whom you know nothing? Take a knife 
 and cut your throat. This suited me. I took 
 up with it. I took out my knife and opened 
 the biggest blade. I don't know why I looked 
 up. But there I saw my aunt looking right 
 into my eyes. Well, says I, I will not kill 
 myself here. I don't want her hollering and 
 screaming around. Then I went to a better 
 place, a low marsh spot where there were 
 great oaks thought I would go behind them 
 and kill myself. Just then the thought came 
 powerfully, Is not the Great Spirit able to 
 take away the bad feelings? He is able. I 
 will ask him. I did ask him as the Indian 
 doctors ask for rain. I said, 'Great Spirit, pity 
 me. Take away the bad feelings. Keep me 
 from killing myself.' Just as soon as I asked, 
 it was all gone! Went from one extreme to 
 the other, from great anguish to great comfort. 
 I felt that the Great Spirit had answered me.
 
 164 ESHCOL 
 
 I shut my knife. I went to the Indians and 
 gave a whoop and hundreds came. I gave a 
 history of it. I was anxious to tell. It did me 
 good. I couldn't keep it in. I asked them 
 what it meant. They could not tell. They were 
 heathen. Then I went all around telling. I 
 felt as if I wanted to know more. I told it 
 round for a week. At last Abraham, an old 
 Negro, came and said, 
 
 "'A white man is hunting for you.' 
 
 " 'I won't go. I am afraid. I have seen 
 white men shoot down Indians.' 
 
 "But I had confidence in Abraham. 
 
 ''You go and find out what he wants. ' Soon 
 Abraham came with the white man and said, 
 
 ' 'That is the boy.' 
 
 Then the white man came and took my hand 
 and said Abraham interpreting "If you go 
 with me I will put you to school, and tell you 
 about the Book, and that will explain it all. 
 You may learn to read it.' I was a little 
 afraid, but thought I would go; thought I 
 should be killed in war and this couldn't be 
 worse. He took me in a boat to his vessel at 
 Key West. He was Captain Bemo of the 
 Shcnandoah, carrying provisions for the army. 
 We went to New Orleans and then to New 
 York. Captain Bemo was a good Christian.
 
 TALAMAS-MIC-O 165 
 
 We could not understand each other. I began 
 to learn English. I liked him and he liked 
 me." [Note. I suppose he must have taken 
 this Captain's name, as afterward he was 
 known as John Douglas Bemo.] 
 
 The remainder of the notes are brief and 
 fragmentary. With his friend, Capt. Bemo, 
 he joined one of the expeditions in search of 
 Sir John Franklin. "We found a ship, an Eng- 
 lish vessel, crowded up in the ice. It had been 
 there thirteen years. The sailors cried when 
 they saw it. We climbed in and found the 
 Captain sitting at a table with his hat and 
 overcoat on and a pen in his hand. The last 
 words he had written were, 'My wife froze last 
 night.' The sailors were sitting around frozen. 
 We were gone four years. Then we returned 
 to New York and to Philadelphia. I went to 
 Rev. Alston Douglas and staid in his family. 
 He was a Bethel preacher. A Mr. Elliot gave 
 me lessons. Then I went to Lafayette Col- 
 lege, Easton, Pa. I was here with Dr. Jedkins 
 three or four years, and gained a good English 
 education. " 
 
 At Princeton he took a theological course 
 studying Greek and Hebrew. The latter came 
 perfectly easy to him, as it was like his own 
 mother tongue, and this led him to believe
 
 166 ESHCOL 
 
 that his people were the remnants of the lost 
 Ten Tribes. In Philadelphia he began to 
 tell his experience to the sailors. "They had 
 me running about right smart till I found it 
 was injuring my studies. Then I stopped and 
 tended to my books. I had it in mind all 
 the while that as soon as I could read in that 
 Book, and understand it, I would go back to 
 my people and tell them how I was wrought 
 upon. I found out that the Bible explained 
 all I had felt." . 
 
 The notes here come to a somewhat abrupt 
 close, only intimating that he went to the In- 
 dian Territory to which the remnant of his 
 people had been removed, that he connected 
 himself with the Baptist denomination and be- 
 came a useful minister in the tribe to which he 
 belonged. He had probably come East on a 
 visit, when I seem to have met him, and it 
 was doubtless then that I took from his lips 
 the notes which I have here transcribed. 
 
 If I am not mistaken they are worth the 
 writing out, even at this late day, as an illus- 
 tration of the possible growth of the divine 
 life from the smallest seed, cast into the un- 
 likeliest soil; of the marvelous change, con- 
 trary to all natural expectation, sometimes 
 wrought by the Holy Spirit, and of the gra-
 
 TALAMAS-MIC-O 16? 
 
 cious working and illuminating power, with 
 almost no human agency reaching farther 
 than we may have thought of the "True Light 
 which lighteth every man that cometh into 
 the world.''
 
 TWO CATASTROPHES. 
 
 A few years ago, on the Muskingum, a coal 
 mine in which twenty men were working, 
 caved in. Sixteen of the miners, warned by 
 the crumbling of the shale, escaped. Upon 
 the remaining four, who were "drifting" in a 
 distant chamber, the mountain closed its in- 
 exorable jaws and shut them up, living, in the 
 rock-tomb hewed out by their own hands. It 
 is impossible to describe the excitement that 
 ensued. The news spread like fire on the 
 prairie. Telegraph wires in all directions trem- 
 bled each hour with tidings from the terrible 
 scene. The hundreds who flocked, the first 
 day, to the ill-starred mine, soon grew to 
 thousands, and boat loads of provisions floated 
 down the river to feed them. The imprisoned 
 men were thought to be still uninjured. Those 
 acquainted with the mine believed they could 
 be reached by an abandoned shaft now filled 
 with debris reached possibly before they 
 should starve. But two or three could work in 
 the narrow pass at a time, and this only at 
 168
 
 TWO CATASTROPHES 109 
 
 the risk of their own lives. But there was no 
 lack of willing hands. Slowly, toilfully, each 
 man concentrating the strength of a day into 
 his hour's work, they delved through the rocky 
 cerements of that living sepulcher, hoping yet 
 doubting if the unfortunate miners were still 
 alive. One full week came and went. Fri- 
 day of the second week still found them work- 
 ing under that terrible suspense. But at last, 
 far in, they hear the faint, muffled shouting of 
 the imprisoned men. Oh, what exciting joy! 
 They are still alive! They may yet be saved! 
 Like an electric flash the news spreads to the 
 crowds without and the air is rent with their 
 wild huzza. 
 
 But what words can tell the feelings of the 
 poor men themselves during these two weeks, 
 walled in a hundred yards from the light of 
 day! Could they stand before us how intent 
 would be every ear to catch the recital of their 
 story. Into what a breathless stillness would 
 their words penetrate, as they told of that first 
 stunning crash; of the wild horror that shot 
 through their souls when they knew that the 
 mountain had fallen in upon them; of that 
 frightful insanity of two of the number, rav- 
 ing of light and bread; of that groping about 
 the narrow passages of their prison in the hor-
 
 170 ESHCOL 
 
 rible darkness, unable to see each other's faces, 
 fearing every moment some new catastrophe, 
 the more alarming because unseen; of that te- 
 dious wearing out of the slow hours, which 
 dragged heavily, as if time's chariot wheels 
 were taken off; of the vain effort to mark the 
 passage of the days; of the fitful sleep and 
 dreams of home, with the waking each time to 
 new horrors; and then, at last, of the joy strug- 
 gling out of their despair, when the dull sound 
 of distant digging crept into their ears, and 
 of the hope that almost made light about 
 them when voices from the outer world spake 
 words to them, and in cheer upon cheer pierced 
 even to their awful solitude. And who can 
 tell what happiness was compressed into that 
 hour, when, carried fortn by strong, tender 
 arms, their eyes bandaged, lest the light should 
 strike them blind, they felt once more the 
 breath of heaven upon them. We do not won- 
 der that the crowd, suddenly unbent from the 
 tension of their excitement, well nigh went 
 wild in the delirium of their joy; that many 
 caught their neighbors to their arms and danced 
 like maniacs, and that some lifted up their 
 streaming eyes in jubilant thanksgiving to 
 God. 
 
 It was most honorable to our humanity that
 
 TWO CATASTROPHES 171 
 
 the peril of these men should have so stirred 
 the heart of a great commonwealth. But what 
 is the danger of a mortal life, to the jeopardy 
 of an immortal soul? If a thousand hands 
 gladly wrought to save four men from Death, 
 who would claim them again in a few years at 
 most, what shall be done for the twice four 
 hundred millions of our race in peril of the 
 second Death? It is a sad ruin that has fallen 
 upon them. Separated from God, shut away 
 from him who is the light of the world, they 
 grope about in vast caverns of superstition 
 and idolatry. They are spiritually blind. Mad- 
 ness is in their hearts while they live. There 
 is no hope in their death. 
 
 It does not diminish the exigency of the case, 
 it only adds piteousness to it, that these mil- 
 lions have no clear sense of need. The call to 
 us is all the more urgent that the gloom in 
 which they live is to them as light; that they 
 do not know that the darkness of their false 
 religions will lead ere long to the "outer dark- 
 ness. " 
 
 When our starving soldiers were let out from 
 Southern prisons, it is said that some of them 
 had nearly lost the sense of taste. Famine 
 had made them almost imbecile. Only the 
 most careful nursing could bring them back
 
 172 ESHCOL 
 
 to the conditions of a healthful life. But was 
 there not in this mute wretchedness an appeal 
 mightier than even the most piercing cry for 
 food could make? Was it not a depth of misery 
 lower than any pang of hunger could intimate? 
 Suppose a delegation of high officials from 
 China, sent by the Emperor himself, should 
 appear on our shores, and another like it from 
 Japan should join them on the way, and Rajahs 
 from Hindoostan, and dusky chiefs from un- 
 discovered tribes in Africa, and kings from 
 distant islands should come, all joining in a 
 piteous cry for deliverance from the dread 
 catastrophe of sin, how would all Christendom 
 be moved to meet them? Great would be the 
 company of the missionaries. Fleets of 
 steamers could not hold the multitudes who 
 would press forward to answer the call. But 
 is the ruin less appalling because no plead- 
 ing voices come across the seas? Does not the 
 blindness of mind, the spiritual stupor of these 
 millions shut up in the terrible prison-house of 
 false religions make an appeal more touching 
 than any words can frame? Oh that some power 
 would anoint the eyes of God's people to see 
 the dire ruin of these vast multitudes wandering 
 in the gloomy caverns of despair! Oh that they 
 might catch the spirit of the eager and ex-
 
 TIVO CATASTROPHES 173 
 
 pectant angels who hover above these sepul- 
 chers of the lost, burning to make the heavens 
 ring with hallelujahs at their rescue!
 
 IS IT A WASTE? 
 
 The mistaken idea that it is a bad economy 
 to send men and money abroad dies hard. 
 Many still say, "The church can do more with 
 its means at home." But is there any less 
 material for home work by reason of that which 
 is sent abroad? We think not. Many wise 
 pastors declare that the foreign draft only 
 opens new sources of supply for use here. 
 
 But, suppose it were a waste, we appeal to 
 Christ and the supper at Bethany. The Lord 
 did not deny that the three hundred pence 
 worth of spikenard, if sold, would do the poor 
 much good. But for all that he spake loving 
 words to Mary, and rebuked Judas and the 
 rest. And why should we have indignation 
 at a like outpouring for Christ now? Does 
 England write down in her book of losses the 
 men and treasure spent in the search for Sir 
 John Franklin? Does science need to demon- 
 strate the money value of deep sea dredgings 
 or of Arctic Exploring Expeditions? And 
 shall the church have none who, at peril and 
 174
 
 IS IT A WASTE? 175 
 
 expense, go after souls lost in the frozen seas 
 of sin? None to sound the depths of. human 
 misery in foreign parts? Has Christianity no 
 room for chivalry and heroism for Christ's 
 sake? Can she spare from her records the 
 names of that saintly host who have gone up, 
 some in chariots of fire, from missionary soil? 
 
 But we have a farther answer. 
 
 Who shall say what is waste, in a matter 
 concerning which the Lord has given com- 
 mand? Some times what appears to us profit- 
 less, in the divine economy proves a royal in- 
 vestment. When the early church proposed 
 missions to Saxony and the British Isles, 
 doubtless there were those who said it was 
 wasteful and visionary. Were there not multi- 
 tudes still in Italy and Greece who had not 
 received Christ? Why leave the shores of the 
 midland sea, the seat of mighty empires, the 
 center of the world's civilization, for distant 
 islands and storm-swept sea-coasts, the homes 
 of skin-clad sea-rovers? Why send men of 
 learning and culture into German forests, 
 made horrid by the shrieks of human victims 
 offered in sacrifice to sanguinary gods? Yet 
 these fierce Pagans were our ancestors. Out 
 of them have come England and America, 
 with more evangelizing power than in all the
 
 176 ESHCOL 
 
 world beside. We do not know what part in 
 the grand march of human events the nations, 
 now obscure, to whom we send missionaries, 
 are to take. That third of the race shut up in 
 China are not always to be walled off from the 
 rest of mankind in a stolid self-seclusion. The 
 two hundred millions of India, where, let us 
 never forget, science and the arts flourished 
 when we were savages may again come for- 
 ward to a rank with the leading empires. And 
 Africa, scattered, and peeled, the hunting 
 ground of stronger peoples, lo, these many 
 year may yet retake its lost place among the 
 kingdoms. It is enough, then, that He who 
 knows the end from the beginning says: "Go 
 ye into all the world." It is safe to obey, and 
 leave the matter of profit or loss to Him who 
 wastes nothing. 
 
 But there have been 
 
 PENTECOSTAL GAINS. 
 
 It may be doubted if the history of Chris- 
 tianity gives account, anywhere, of gains more 
 substantial or more wonderful than those con- 
 nected with modern missions. Our triumphing 
 Lord has often revealed his power among them, 
 doing great things for us whereof we are glad. 
 We have talked of waste, let us look at some 
 of the returns which have come from mission- 
 ary labor.
 
 75 IT A WASTE? 177 
 
 Dr. Judson's first Karen convert became a 
 preacher. Under his first sermon the heathen 
 Quala saw a new light, and cast away his idols. 
 He began to preach, and in less than three 
 years thirty churches grew under his hand, and 
 more than two thousand converts were bap- 
 tized. If the results from this one convert's 
 labors were all, did Judson pour out his pre- 
 cious life at the Savior's feet in vain? 
 
 When Tucker, of the Church Missionary 
 Society, died, after a mission of twenty years 
 among the Shanars, baptizing 3,500 Christian 
 converts, seeing them destroy with their own 
 hands fifty-four temples, and build sixty-four 
 houses of Christian worship, did anybody write 
 on his tombstone, "A Wasted Life?" 
 
 The toilers in India reckon 200,000 converts 
 as the smallest part of their gains. They see 
 the whole fabric of Hindooism honeycombed 
 with Christian ideas, and the entire forces of 
 Satan folding their tents in preparation to re- 
 tire from the field. Surely no one will say 
 that here are labors spend in vain. 
 
 The Baptist Missionary, Vinton, spent six 
 years among the Karens, and died. Forty 
 churches planted; a native ministry of a hun- 
 dred developed and 8,000 or 9,000 heathens 
 changed to Christian worshipers, was the rec- 
 ord of those brief years.
 
 178 ESHCOL 
 
 That little leaven cast in upon the island of 
 Madagascar the story is well known the mis- 
 sionaries banished; the little flock in the wil- 
 derness persecuted to the death for twenty- 
 five years by a Pagan queen ; hiding in caves, 
 hunted through jungles; burnt at the stake, 
 cast from precipices and yet the divine fer- 
 ment swelling among mountains, spreading 
 through the valleys, till a new queen -arose 
 and came under its power. That was a rare 
 day for this till then heathen kingdom, when 
 200,000 of its subjects poured out upon the 
 plain to witness the coronation at once of a 
 queen and of Christianity. Ranavalona having 
 humbly sought baptism at the hands of one of 
 the native pastors, passed through the vast 
 crowd with her retinue to a platform elevated 
 in the midst. Over the canopy where of old 
 on such days were wont to flaunt the scarlet 
 banners of the gods, was inscribed was it not 
 a rainbow on the retiring darkness of Paganism? 
 the song of the jubilant angels, "Glory to 
 God in the highest, and on earth peace, good- 
 will to men." Upon a table to the right the 
 royal diadem waited for the queenly head. To 
 the left, upon another, lay the open Bible. 
 And in the inauguration speech were these 
 memorable words a declaration of liberty of
 
 75 IT A WASTE! 179 
 
 conscience worthy to be written in gold "As 
 for the praying, it is not forbidden; it is 
 not commanded, for God made us, " It was but a 
 handtul of corn which was sown many years 
 before by the missionaries, but the fruit of it 
 now waved like Lebanon. Was that a waste? 
 
 What a costly outpouring was there when a 
 few English Wesleyans faced 200,000 Feejee 
 cannibals, and suffered the ship that brought 
 them to sail from sight and leave them behind. 
 The world looked on and scoffed. But when, 
 thirty years afterward, half the people a 100,- 
 ooo had the Bible in their own language; 
 when 663 Feejean Dreachers, that afore time 
 were savages, spoke the word to 90,000 Chris- 
 tian worshipers, and 22,000 converted ones sat 
 down to the table of the Lord, there was no 
 Judas found to call it waste. 
 
 Coan and Lyman, in five years, winning 
 from Satan to Christ 7.557 souls, numbering 
 in all 12,000 as their spiritual children, will 
 they go up from their parish at Hilo to find 
 written against their life work in God's book, 
 "To what purpose was this waste?" Or the 
 others of that goodly fellowship, when, in the 
 kingdom of light, a glorified company of 60,- 
 ooo redeemed islanders shall rise up to call 
 them blessed, will it be said that their lives 
 were wasted?
 
 180 ESHCOL 
 
 And when from thousands of churches scat- 
 tered through heathendom, nearly a million of 
 converted ones, now living, shall join the 
 vastly greater throng who have gone before, 
 each soul in God's balance to be weighed 
 against a world, will any be found to say 
 that the treasure spent in this grand harvest, 
 and the lives worn out, were ill-spent or 
 thrown away? 
 
 THE END.
 
 A SELECTION FROM 
 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY'S 
 
 CATALOGUE.
 
 PopnIarlssionaryBiograpMes 
 
 12rao, 160 pages. Fully illustrated. Cloth extra, 75 cents each. 
 
 From The Missionary 
 Herald. 
 
 " We commended this ser- 
 ies in our last issue, and a 
 further examination leads us 
 to renew our commendation, 
 and to urge the placing of 
 this series of missionary 
 books in all our Sabbath* 
 school libraries. 
 
 These books are handsome- 
 ly printed and bound and are 
 beautifully illustrated, and we 
 are confident that they will 
 prove attractive to all young 
 people," 
 
 " These are not pans of milk, but little pitchers of cream, compact and 
 condensed from bulkier volumes." Dr. A. T. Pierson. 
 
 SAMUEL CROWTHER, the Slave Soy who became 
 
 Bishop of the Niger. By JESSE PAGE, author of " Bishop 
 
 Patteson." 
 THOMAS t7. COMBER, Missionary Pioneer to the 
 
 Congo. By Rev. J. B. MYERS, Association Secretary BaptistMis- 
 
 sionary Society. 
 BISHOP PATTESON, the Martyr of Melanesia. By 
 
 JESSE PAGE. 
 GRIFFITH JOHN, Founder of the Hankow Mission, 
 
 Central China. By WM. KOBSON, of the London Missionary 
 
 Society. 
 
 ROBERT MORRISON, the Pioneer of Chinese Mis- 
 sions. By WM. J. TOWNSEND, Sec. Methodist New Connexion 
 
 Missionary Society. 
 ROBERT M OF FAT, the Missionary Hero of Kuruman, 
 
 By DAVID J. DEANE, author of " Martin Luther, the Reformer," etc. 
 WILLIAM CARET, the Shoemaker who became a Mis- 
 sionary. By. Rev. J. B. MYERS, Association Secretary Baptist 
 
 Missionary Society. 
 <f AMES CHALMERS, Missionary and Explorer of 
 
 liarotonga, and New Guinea. By WM. ROBSON, of the 
 
 London Missionary Society. 
 MISSIONARY LADIES IN FOREIGN LANDS. By 
 
 Mrs. E. R. PITMAN, author of " Heroines of the Missionary Fields, ' 
 
 etc. 
 
 JAMES CALVERT; or, From Dark to Dawn in Fiji. 
 JOHN WILLIAMS, the Martyr of Polynesia. By Rev. 
 
 JAMES J. ELUS. 
 
 HENRY MARTYN, His Life and Labors. By JESSB 
 PAG"% author of "Bishop Patterson," etc. 
 
 .NEW YORK. Fleming H. Revell Company, CHICAGO,
 
 WORKS BY DR. A. J. GORDON. 
 
 Dr. Gordon is a writer with whom to differ is better and more 
 suggestive than to agree with some others. He loves the truth, 
 he gives his readers much that is trueand deeply of theessence of 
 Christianty. THE INDEPENDENT. 
 
 The Holy Spirit in Missions, ismo., cloth, gilt 
 
 top $1.25 
 
 A new volume by this author is always welcomed. The 
 theme of this new work, as treated by Dr. Gordon, is sure to be 
 full of deepest interest. 
 
 Ecce Venit; Behold He Cometh. Paper, net, soc.; 
 cloth $1-25 
 
 It is impossible to read this book without being stimulated 
 by it and getting higher and fresher views of some aspects of 
 Christianity which are perhaps dwelt on less than they should 
 be. ' ' Independent. 
 
 In Christ; or, The Believer's Union With His Lord. 
 
 Seventh Edition. Paper, net, 350.; cloth fioo 
 
 "We do not remember since Thomas a Kempis a book so 
 thoroughly imbued with a great personal love to Christ. It is 
 evidently the happy result of hours of high communion with 
 Him." Boston Courier. 
 
 The Ministry of Healing; or, Miracles of Cure in 
 All Ages. Third Edition. Paper, net, soc. ; cloth $1.25 
 "An interesting and thoughtful work. Dr. Gordon mar- 
 shals together witnesses from all ages and all classes in favor of 
 his belief that cures may still be wrought through prayer." 
 British and foreign Evangelical Review. 
 
 The Two-Fold Life; or, Christ's Work for Us, and 
 
 Christ's Work in Us. Paper, net, soc. ; cloth.. $1.25 
 
 "Distinguished by exquisite purity of thought, by deep 
 
 spiritual insight, and by great strength of practical argument. 
 
 The work is one of great spiritual beauty and helpfulness." 
 
 Baptist Magazine. 
 
 Grace and Glory; Sermons for the Life That Now 
 Is and That Which Is to Come. Paper, net, soc. ; 
 
 cloth $i-5o 
 
 "Here we have power without sensationalism; calm thought, 
 living and earnest, expressed in forcible language; the doctrine 
 orthodox, evangelical, practical. We shall be surprised if these 
 discourses are not reprinted by an English house." C. H. 
 Spurgeon. 
 
 The First Thing in the World; or, The Primacy 
 
 of Faith. Vellum paper covers $ .20 
 
 Cheaper edition, popular vellum series 10 
 
 "There was a fear lest the prominence given the exceeding 
 beauty and umbrageousness of "Love" should overshadow the 
 sister grace of "Faith," but Dr. Gordon has rescued us from the 
 danger of forgetting that faith in Christ is the foundation of our 
 Christian life." Christian at Work. 
 
 CHICAGO. Fleming H. Revell Company,
 
 WORKS BY REV. F. B. MEYER. 
 
 "Few books of recent years are better adapted to instruct and 
 help Christians than those of this author. He is a man 'mighty 
 in the Scriptures,' satutated with Bible facts and truths and 
 possessed with a yearning desire to help others." -D. I,. MOODY. 
 
 OLD TESTAMENT HEROES. 
 
 "His subjects are treated in a broad and scholarly way, and 
 yet a reverent and religious spirit marks his whole work. 
 
 Sunday School Journal. 
 
 "We have learned with not a few others to take up with 
 eagerness whatever bears the name of this author." Standard. 
 
 Abraham ; or, the Obedience of Faith 1 1 . oo 
 
 Israel: A Prince with God i.oo 
 
 Joseph: Beloved Hated Exalted i.oo 
 
 floses. The Man of God i.oo 
 
 Elijah and the Secret of his Power.- i.oo 
 
 "No writer of the present day is imbued with the spirit of 
 the gospel more completetely than Mr. Meyer, and as Spurgeon 
 observed 'he is a great gain to the armies of evangelical truth.' 
 The expositions are in the form of brief discourses, bright in 
 tone, beautiful in rhetoric, simple in style, sound in doctrine, 
 practical in aim and endued with spiritual power." Lutheran. 
 
 THE EXPOSITORY SERIES. 
 Tried By Fire. Expositions of the First Epistle of 
 
 Peter |i.oo 
 
 The Life and Light of Men. Expositions from 
 
 the Gospel of John |i.oo 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE SERIES. 
 
 "I do not know of any writer whose works on 'The Life 
 More Abundant' I could more hear'.ily recommend than those 
 of Mr. Meyer." Rev. B. Fay Mills. 
 
 Christian Living | .50 
 
 "A small book, but mighty in power." Interior. 
 
 The Present Tenses of the Blessed Life $ .50 
 
 "A little book we warmly commend to all Christian people." 
 Frances E. Willard in The Union Signal. 
 
 The Shepherd Psalm $ .50 
 
 "Worth its weight in gold." Central Baptist. 
 
 The Future Tenses of the Blessed Life $ .50 
 
 ENVELOPE SERIES OF BOOKLETS. 
 
 Two packets, each containing twelve different book- 
 lets. Per dozen, aoc. ; per hundred $i-5o 
 
 CHOICE EXTRACTS from writings of F. B. Meyer, com- 
 piled by Rev. B. Fay Mills. 48 pages, 50. each; ssc. per do*. 
 
 CHICAGO. Fleming H. Revell Company.
 
 Books of Travel and Research 
 
 Ten Years' Digging in Egypt, 1881-1891, by W. 
 
 M. Flinders Petrie. With a map and 116 illustra- 
 tions. I2mo.', cloth $i-5o 
 
 "The book has a special interest in the confirmation and the 
 illustration it affords as to the high condition of civilization 
 existing in a land so intimately interwoven with Biblical history. 
 The narrative is pleasantly written, and the illustrations are not 
 only admirably executed, but greatly help us in realizing what 
 they represent." TV. Y, Observer. 
 
 "Mr. W. M. F. Petrie, the well-known Egyptologist, has pre- 
 pared a concise popularization of the results of his scholarly 
 labors its clear and compact pages are those of a trustworthy 
 authority the story told is really fascinating." S. S. Times. 
 
 The Ainu of Japan. The Religion, Superstitions, 
 and General History of the Hairy Aborigines of 
 Japan, by Rev. John Batchelor. With 80 illustra- 
 tions. 8vo., cloth $i-5<> 
 
 "The author has a subject seldom treated in our literature and 
 he communicates his rather exclusive information in fascinating- 
 and instructive fashion. His style is very vivid." Golden Rule. 
 "The Ainu are the aborigines of Japan, and now number 
 only some sixteen or seventeen thousand. This record of their 
 character and customs is effectively given, and the text is sup- 
 plemented by numerous engravings," N. IV. Christian Advo- 
 cate. 
 
 A Winter in Nonn China, by Rev. T. M. Morris. 
 With introduction by Rev. R. Glover, D. D., and a 
 
 map. lamo., cloth |i-5<> 
 
 "Contains much matter of general interest, and many 
 pleasant sketches of China and the Chinese. An intelligent, 
 recent and grandly encouraging report." The Independent. 
 
 The Story of Uganda, and the Victoria Nyanza 
 Mission. By S. G. Stock. With a map and illus- 
 trations. I2mo., cloth $1-25 
 
 "The Story of Mackay is given with fulness and power; 
 there are added also the stories of the martyr Bishop Hanning- 
 ton and his fateful journey, and of Bishops Parker and Tucker, 
 of the other mission, together with a sketch of these missions 
 under the brutal King Mwanga since Mackay's untimely 
 death." The Golden Rule. 
 
 The Fifth Gospel. The Land where Jesus Lived. 
 By Rev. J. M. P. Otts, LL. D. With 4 maps. lamo., 
 
 cloth $1-25 
 
 "Whatever other books one may have read on Palestine, he 
 will find new pleasure and instruction from the perusal of this 
 one." Central Presbyterian. 
 
 For list of "By-Paths of Bible Knowledge," see special 
 catalogue. 
 
 Complete list of nisslonary Books sent free on application. 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company. NEW TOBK.
 
 CHOICE GIFT BOOKS 
 
 The Earthly Footprints of Our Risen Lord, 
 
 Illumined. A continuous narrative of the Four 
 Gospels according to The Revised Version, with 
 introduction by Rev. John Hall, D. D. Illustrated 
 by 113 full-page half-tone re-productions. Small 
 
 4tp, cloth, net .$1.50 
 
 Gilt edge, with silk book mark, boxed, net. . . 2.00 
 Full morocco, flexible, gilt edges, round cor- 
 ners, boxed, net 3.75 
 
 Pictures reflecting the best in sacred art from Raphael to 
 the present day are scattered profusely through the book. 
 
 "To many the life of the Christ 'will be a new book in this 
 form. The very fact that this is not our usual method of reading 
 the Word will give it a new reality." Golden Rule. 
 
 A Gift of Love, and Loving Greetings for 365 Days, 
 
 by Rose Porter. Long i8mo. Parti-cloth $ i.oo 
 
 White cloth, silver top, in box 1.25 
 
 Decorated silk, silver top, in box 1.75 
 
 " 'A Gift of Love' is the work of a loving heart. It contains 
 a text of Scripture for every day of the year with the addition of 
 an appropriate thought in poetry or prose all bearing on the 
 theme of love. To use it day by day for a year thoughtfully and 
 prayerfully, must result in a rich growth in love on the part of 
 the user." IV. Y. Observer. 
 
 Prayers from the Poets, by Martha Harger. i6mo., 
 
 two colored cloth, gilt top Ji.oo 
 
 Leatherette, boxed 1.50 
 
 "This volume is admirable. The prayers are better suited to 
 some of our moods than formal Litanies, and are selected from 
 excellent sources. The book will be a dear treasure to many 
 hearts." The Churchman. 
 
 Poems by Frances Ridley Havergal. Author's 
 edition complete. The only unabridged authorized 
 edition published in America. i2mo., 880 pages, 
 
 cloth f 2.00 
 
 Beveled boards, full gilt 2.50 
 
 Half white vellum, gilt top, uncut edges 2.50 
 
 Nineteen Beautiful Years, By Frances E. Willard, 
 or, Sketches of a Girl's Life, with preface by John 
 G. Whittier. New and revised edition, I2mo., 
 
 cloth $ . 75 
 
 "A very sweet and tender record of an exceptionally beauti- 
 
 fullife."- John G. Whittier. 
 
 "The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life" may be had 
 
 In several presentation styles. Send for list. 
 
 CHICAGO Fleming H. Revell Company. NEW xou.
 
 Books of Illustration. 
 
 For Pulpit and Platform; for Preachers and Teachers. 
 
 Seed Corn for the Sower; or, Thoughts, Themes 
 and Illustrations, for Pulpit and Platform and for 
 Home Readings t by Rev. C. Perrin, Ph. D. I2mo., 
 
 cloth $i-5o 
 
 Although no less than two hundred authors have been drawn 
 upon to supply the material for this work, it is believed that the 
 great mass of illustrative matter will be found entirely new and 
 fresh embracing nearly 400 pages of original and carefully 
 selected illustrative excerpts covering a wide range of subjects. 
 "To teachers and all engaged in Bible instruction, it will 
 prove a volume of great help and usefulness and furnish ready 
 to their hand many a nail with which to fasten in a sure place 
 the truths they may desire to drive b n tne." The Christian at 
 Work. 
 
 Feathers for Arrows; or, Illustrations forPreachert 
 and Teachers, by Rev. Charles H. Spurgeon. 
 i2mo., cloth $1.00 
 
 "The work covers a wide range of subjects. The metaphor* 
 are always striking and frequently brilliant, while the truths 
 that they illustrate are such as have always formed the staple 
 of Mr. Spurgeon 's discourses. A choicer collection of illustra- 
 tions we do not know." The Freeman. 
 
 Spurgeon's Gems. Being Brilliant Passages from 
 
 his Discourses. i2mo., cloth $i oo 
 
 A series of earnest thoughts and graphic pictures, all of 
 them revealing the true greatness of the preacher's concep- 
 tions, his individuality and strength. Gems of great brilliancy, 
 which will make a permanent impression upon the mind of the 
 reader. 
 
 Gleanings Among the Sheaves, by Rev. C. H. 
 
 Spurgeon. Cloth, gilt top $ .75 
 
 "These extracts are quite Spurgeonic racy, rich and rare, 
 both as to style and matter; full of exquisite consolation, faith- 
 ful advice, clear analogies, poetic touches, and glorious old 
 gospel. We do not wonder that eight thousand copies were 
 sold on the day of publication and trust that eight times eighty 
 thousand will find their way to the religious pblic." Weekly 
 Review. 
 
 Scripture Itself the Illustrator: A manual of illus- 
 trations gathered from scriptural figures, phrases, 
 types, derivations, chronology, texts, etc., by Rev. 
 G. S. Bowes. lamo., cloth $1-25 
 
 Information and Illustrations for Preachers and 
 Teachers. Helps gathered from facts, figures, anec- 
 dotes and books, for sermons, lectures and ad- 
 dresses, by Rev. G. S. Bowes. I2mo., cloth.. $1.25 
 
 CHICAGO Fleming H. Revell Company.
 
 Los Angeles 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 Form L9-Seriea 4939
 
 A 001 243 096