.m-dcsf A -; >»'Wlf =i=£-""^ ^?i^ »^^^ c / r-' -• J'JUi L.iUia\j c/ -^^^^rsity of Rediands Librar, FIFTH EDITION. BOSTON: W. G. CORTHELL, PUBLISHER. 1893. COPYRIGHTED 1 89!, W. G. CORTHELI-, BOSTON. > ■b ,1 Jo t\)e Qeptral Baptist Ql^arel?, MINNEAPOLIS. Which called me to its pastorate in the avowed hope that it might be further incited To World-Wide Relationships, which loyally supported me in Manifold Aggressive Missionary Undertakings, and which at length unselfishly released me to make this tour of mission-tields and to enter upon an undivided service in the cause of Evangelizing the Whole Earth, these sketches, many of which were written for its comfort, are affectionately inscribed. 5 a'?8ki89 PREFACE. JW^/j^N May, 1890, the writer of these sketches was chosen Home Secretary «^^'^ of the American Baptist Missionary Union. Immediately thereafter, it f? " J^/^^ was provided that, before entering upon official service at home, he ^-^£fc- J^^oJ should be permitted to make a tour of the mission-fields, especially in /'ik^'^%^ Asia. This was to be in no sense a deputation for official examination \f^ or the exercise of authority in the missions; but simply an errand of friendly visitation, for the purpose of first-hand observation, inquiry and study respecting the nature, difficulties and promise of the work, the claims of which the waiter was expected widely to advocate. This tour was begun in August, 1S90, and completed in April, 1S91. The countries traversed in order were, Japan, China, Malaysia, Burma, Assam and Intlia, briefly touching Egypt, Palestine, Italy, France and England. About 200 of our own missionaries were visited. The stay in each countrv was necessarily short. Only certain representative stations in any of the countries could be reached. Some of the more important, including our old mission in Siam, were regretfully passed by altogether. These sketches were written mainly in the form of letters to the various home denominational papers, to family friends, and to the church of my late charge. These sketches were not intended to express judicial estimates on the relative importance of the various missions nor the quality of work done therein. They did not attempt to discuss theories of missions or mission policies. Their aim was rather to depict, in as graphic a wav as possible, some of the characteristic phenomena attending mission life and work in the various countries, with the hope that readers at home would thus be quickened to think of missions more as a reality. The fact that many of our most devoted and skilful workers are not so much as named in these pages, while others are prominently spoken of, is by no means to be construed as inclifterence to the work of any ; much less as unfriendly discrimination against, or disparagement of such work. The writer simply depicts fragments of the work as he saw them. As to other portions, he is silent simply because he did not see them, or had not time, in the haste of travel, to write of them. Others in the past have spoken, and in the future will speak, of these works and the workers as they so well deserve. 6 In Brightest Asia. What has been written was thrown off amid the hurry of travel, and in the heat of interest a^vakened on the spots. For the niost part, the sketches here appear substantially as they were originally written. They chiim to be only gHmpses of parts of the work. Nevertheless, thev are glimpses of fiiirly and widely repre- sentative parts. The writer has chosen to entitle these sketches '• In Brightest iVsia," not because there is not much in Asia 3'et to be seen of exceeding darkness, but because the traveller among the missions of the Orient, if indeed he has eyes to see, will find that the track along which gospel missionaries have passed and wrought, is an illuminated track. The lights on the otherwise dark scenes of heathenism are all the brighter from the contrast. Aloreover, this side of Asiatic life is conscientiously emphasized for the reason that, in the belief of the writer, there is usually but little profit to be drawn from dwelling long upon the dark side of anything. The chief incitements to evangelical work are derived from the positive hope of begetting the "new man," rather than from suppressing the ''old," — from brooding over men, in expectation of the second Adam to be formed in them, rather than from brooding about the ruined product of the first Adam. So it is believed that with all we are hearing in our dav, in mission literature and appeal, about " Darkest Africa," "Darkest England" and "Darkest India," — and they are not painted darker than they are, — it is time that the lights, also, on the deeply shadowed pictures should be newly pointed out. " \\ hatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report ; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." In Japan, China and India the times are at hand of which the prophet wrote : " The people which sat in darkness saw great light, and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death, light is sprung up." Boston, Jan. 10, 1892. ^OYi/y '^ ' /^ta^^-^x^. ':<% './-^--, j>- ■-4->'-, 1 ^— 1 ' ^>-J i CHAPTER I.- II.— III. To THE Field. — Severing Ties. — Denver. — Over Marshall Pass. — The Great American Desert. — The Sierras. — A San Francisco Welcome . From Occident to Orient. — Through the "Golden Gate.'" — Mid Pacific. — Nearing Japan ............ • In the Sunrise Kingdom. — Yokohama. — Tokio. — Treaty Revision. — Xikko. — Sendai. — Off for Kobe. — Kioto. — Lights and Shadows. — Slaimonoseki and Chofu. — Nagasaki ...... IV. — A Buddhist Doctrine of Justification by Faith V. — In the Chinese Empire. — Arrival at Shanghai. — Shanghai as a Base of Operations ......... VI. — The Eastern China Mission. — A Foot-Boat Trip. — A Ningpo Household. — Shaohing. — A Noted Tomb ......... VII. — Up the Yang-tse-Kiang. — Visit to Nanking. — Among Raw Celestials. — A Gifted Missionary. — River .Scenery. — Hankow and GritSth John . VIII. — Can the Chinese be Christianized? — An Aged Believer. — A Young Mandarin. — A Blind Christian Boy ........ IX. — The Western China Mission. — The Country and Modes of Travel. — Sz-Chuen and the Mission. — Messrs. Upcraft and Warner . X. — The Southern China Mission. — Hongkong. — Arrival at Swatow. — Inland on the Swatow Field. — Chao-chow-fu. — A Quaint Bridge. — The Hakkas, 14 ^9 40 43 52 59 67 70 75 8 In Brightest Asia. CHAPTER PAGE XI. — Canton and Macao. — Life in Boats. — Mission of the Soutliern Baptist Con- vention. — Macao. — Tlie Tomb of Alorrison ...... 87 XII. — Medical Mission Work in China. — The Claim Made for it. — How it Works. — The Present Status. — Results 91 XIII. — Equatorial Asia. — French China. — Singapore. — American Methodist Mission. — Mohammedanism. — Penang. — Under the Southern Cross. — Rangoon Sighted 96 XIV. — On Burman Soil. — Visit to Maulmein. — Amherst and Mrs. Judson's Grave. — Tlie Bassein Mission. — The Burman State Railway. — Mandalay. — Ava the Golden. — Judson Memorial Chapel. — Oung-pen-la. — A Karen Asso- ciation. — Our Shan Mission. — Pegu ........ 107 XV. — Three Veterans. — Rev. D. L. Brayton. — Mrs. Cephas Bennett. — Mrs. E. A. Stevens 134 XVI. — India. — Calcutta. — Europeanized India. — Serampore ..... 138 XVII. — Our Assam Mission. — The Garos. — The Plains People. — The Nagas. — A Meeting with the Brahmo Somaj . — From Calcutta to Bombay. — Bombay, 142 XVIIl. — On the Telugu Field. — The Deccan. — Work for Eurasians. — Conference at Nellore. — Ramapatam. — Ongole. — Interview with Brahmins. — OlT to Camp at Chendalur. — Baptizing Experiences. — The Cumbum Pentecost. — An Impending Crisis ........... J52 XIX. — In Bible Lands. — Arabian Sea. — Red Sea and Mount Sinai. — Alexandria.— Cairo. — Off for Jaffa. — The Ride to Jerusalem. — In the Holy City. — View from Olivet. — Bethany. — I]ethlehem. — Ramleh. — The True Crusade ^ 167 To the Field. CHAPTER I. To ti?(^ F'K^ld! CENTRAL CHURCH, MINNEAPOLIS. ABITUATED for twenty-one years to the pastoral relation, it was no easy thing to sever the bond. However, many lines of provi- dential circumstance, wide concurrence of the judgments of the brethren, many promptings of the Spirit within, and strong fellowships with the missionaries on the field united to indicate duty ; so that at the last there could be no good ground for hesitation to surrender the charge of even such a church as the Central of Minneapolis for the new relation into which the writer had been called. As for the church, for years it had been growing into Christ-like magnanimity. Why, then, should it not lend its pastor to the Lord, and to the cause it loved? Both work Tlie church has simply more heavily invested in and worker are still theirs in a larger sense the supreme undertaking — the evangelization of the whole earth. In pursuance, then, of the suggestion and provision made by certain large-minded triends, the writer of these sketches was despatched to the fields. 5eueriQ($ T'^S- On a midsummer evening in August, 1S90, in the new Social Rooms of the church above mentioned in Minneapolis, was held a farewell meeting witli the departing pastor and a member of the church who was to accompany him as far as Japan. A large assemblage of friends was gathered. Graceful tributes in verse, song and address indicated the tender affection and mutual interest which had characterized past relations. On the morning following, the farewells in the family circle were said, and the world-round tour was begun. Wednesday, August 13, found us en route for the Pacific coast, booked to sail liy tlie " City lO hi Bri'p/itest Asia. of Peking," August 23, for Yokohama, Japan. The purpose is, if the Lord will, to visit in turn our stations in Japan, China, Burma, Assam and India ; thence homeward via Bombay, Suez, Jerusalem, Beirut, Italy, France and England, in time for the next May anniversaries. Two gifted and earnest missionaries under appointment to Japan, viz., Miss Mead of Minne- sota and Miss Blunt of Kansas City, journey with us. They have been missionaries of the first water in the home-land. They are proving themselves such all along the way, — on train, in hotel and steamer, — ever reaching out in tender offices in behalf of their Lord; harbinger this of good and effective work in Sendai and Shimonoseki, Japan. Rev. H. B. Waterman volunteers his companionship, at individual expense. Besides these, Brother Ernest Gordon, son of Dr. A J. Gordon of Boston, is to join us at San Francisco. On our arrival at Denver, we found that by kind arrangement of Dr. Tupper and others, the whole Sabbath at the First Church had been set apart to us. The ladies held a large meeting in the afternoon, at which our two missionaries tenderly rehearsed their mission call and conviction. Dr. H. A. Tupper, secretary of the Foreign Board of the Southern Convention, providentially present, pathetically and eloquently responded on behalf of the meeting. The writer preached in the morning, and in the evening addressed a large mass meeting on "Missions," speaking of their spirit, their fellowships, their fascinations and their extension. A generous share was taken by the Denver brethren in the expense account of the secre- tary's tour. Ou(^r /T\arsl?all pajj. August 19. This has been a day of experi- ences altogether sitigenc'n's. Start- ing from Salida at 7 A.M., the first stretch of the journey was the ascent of the mountains — the real Rockies. Our train is divided into two sections, each section drawn by two engines, and we start on the ascent over Marshall Pass . I n goi ng about twenty miles, we rise 3,000 feet. At first we are under tlie clouds ; then we are in the midst of them; (iAROEX OF THE GODS. To the Field. ll at length we rise above them, and see them rolling away along the sides of the ranges opposite us. Our way is tortuous and serpentine, round and round the lesser heights, up grades so steep that it reminds us of a toboggan slide. We dash through repeated snow sheds, and then emerg* ing from the smoke and cinders, we rise into the purest and thinnest atmosphere. We grow' giddy at the sensations of the vast altitude ; and from our j^erch on lofty ledges, the eye scans the vast stretches of the Rocky ranges, rolling, tumbling and Alp-like, soaring still above and beyond into the illimitable ether. We are favored all day with a glorious sunshine which floods everything with its own radiance, and softens and makes tender what other- wise would be an endless and tumultuous array of awfulness. Marshall Pass is fairly Alpine, though to our surprise there is on none of the peaks at this time of the year much snow, though they rise to up- wards of 14,000 feet in height. At noon we reach the summit ; and midway be- tween two lofty horns or ^^^^ ouray. peaks, — Mt. Ouray and Mt. Snitfel, — our train comes to a halt; and we all rush out to take in the view Pacificward, which stretches away for 100 miles or so westward. 7176 Ci^at /^pr)eri(;aQ Desert. Leaving Gunnison, quite a flourishing town, ranges of hillocks on every side begin to show sandy, gravelly and indescribably barren. One would think it never rained here. It is a fit region to be traversed with camels. The sun is lurid over it all ; the soil, red and ochre yellow ; the formations of rocks and mountains, weird, bald and awful. Not even will the sage brush or cactus grow in much of this region. We are threading a great plain of desert through windings like a ram's horn. We pass for miles and miles between pillared cliffs and overhanging lianks of reddish, and at times, yellow sandstone, and greenish, cnnnbly shales, and both betimes shot through with a garnet-colored trap-rock or porphyritic limestone. Oh. so desolate and chaotic ! Now a sand storm comes down upon us like a simoom, enveloping our train completely. It 12 In Brightest Asia. sifts into our car, filling eyes, mouth and nostrils. The Sahara could not be a wilder waste. It would seem the devil's country. Good old Father Raymond used to say: "The devil was a squatter from the beginning ; he never owned an acre in God"s earth." I think he might have claimed this region, with none to dispute the claim. One thing has grown upon me all day ; viz., this : That the terms m which we often hear our big country described — and especially the statement that the populations which our great West is capable of sustaining will soon be myriads — are largely wild extravagance. Some say, for instance, that by the year 2000 we shall have 600,000,000 of people in the United States. The Great American Desert is still a stupendous fact, and will always be a vast chasm in the midst of the North American continent. 7~)Y)(^l?ai as a Bas(^ of OperatioQj. Pending my trip up the Yang Tse, I found opportunity to look into the many-sided work of other societies than our own. My first introduction, as I have intimated, was to the work of our Southern brethren. Stations have been established at Hangchow, Soo Chow and Ching Kiang, as well as at Shanghai. Dr. Yates was the pioneer of this mission, a North Carolina man ; and five of the families out of the six now working in the mission were recruited from North Carolina. Dr. Yates labored here for forty years, and left behind him a stable church of some seventy members, several well- trained native preachers, and the beginnings of work in the out-stations named. His contribu- tions to the literature of Chinese missions were considerable, and of a high quality. One of the notable trophies of Dr. Yates' work is a character known as Deacon Wang. This man was an early convert, and by many years of consistent living he has proved his genuine devotion to Christ. At the time of his com^ersion, he was a rice dealer. He was at once met with the question whether he should observe the Sabbath. This is one of the crucial questions In the Chinese Empire. 49 to a Chinaman, to whom all days of the week are alike equally profane. He came to the mission- ary for counsel. He, of course, could give him but one direction: "Close up your shop on Saturday night. Put upon your door, ' Rest day ; come to-morrow.' " Wang hesitated and struggled. He knew he would lose trade, for a time at least. He how- ever decided rightly. For a time, of course, his customers fell off. Some derided him, but he persevered, even though he lost much, and came into straits. Finally, however, the scales began to turn ; his strict honesty and consistency had gained him confidence with country dealers who came in along the canals, bringing boatloads of their rice for sale. In time these dealers, arriving Saturday night at market, were willing to wait over till Monday for the sake of dealing with Wang, because they knew his quotation of prices would be so fair and his honor was without challenge. This good name soon brought great prosperity, and Wang became rich. He at length retired from business with a competence. He has contributed largely to missions. A few years since he bought in the old city of Shanghai some land, and built thereon a com- modious chapel, all at his own expense ; and for years he has himself preached there week-days and Sundays to multitudes of his countrymen. He is now an old man. His large and imposing presence in the church last Sunday impressed me deeply before I knew who he w-as. In the afternoon I went to hear him in his own chapel. How his face beamed behind his great eye- glasses with tortoise-shell bows, as he both preached and sang the re- demption story ! The Chinaman can be Christianized, and become like- wise a chosen vessel to others. Wang is the demonstration. Next to the missions of our Southern brethren, I was desirous of seeing the headquarters of the China Inland Mission, also in Shang- hai. I had heard in America of the splendid new building, the gift of the friends, and in part of the mis- sionaries themselves, of this mis- sion. I was scarcely jjrepared to see so ample and fine accommodations, and such a beehive of varied activ- ities. The buildings stand on three sides of a large quadrangle. Along the front are several mission- houses, built in a row, some three stories in height. In the centre is a spacious hall for public meetings. Here, also, a prayer meeting is held weekly on Saturday nights. On one side of the quadrangle, facing inward, is a row of apartments, including parlors, dining-rooms, offices, mail- ing and shipping rooms, etc., with conveniences for the temporary living and lodgment of some forty missionaries in transit to and from their stations, or who may come in for periodic rest. On HEADQUARTERS CHINA 1\ 50 In Bris-htest Asia. ( +1,0 +«n-,nni-arv arcommodation of native workers who o thirrl '':^; '^ The whole establishment looks like business, I assure you. I received most cordial attention from Mr. Steven- son, the deputy superintend- ent in charge, and other mis- sionaries, and found I was there not wholly unknown, from my relations to Dr. ( niinness, and from my arti- cles in Regions Beyond. When you add to the facilities here reared two training-schools for all new arrivals, — one for men at Gan King, and one for women at \'ang Chow,— and also at Che- foo, in Northern China, a first- class boarding-school for their own children, also largely pat- STREET IN SHANGHAI. That God's blessing is signally upon it also, especially as a pioneering agency in opening up the interior places, is beyond a" doubt. For example, we Baptists have supposed we were doing a heroic thing in placing in Szchuen two missionaries ; the C. I. M. have in that same province forty-seven. True, some of their most excellent workers are inclining to come, after a season, into relation to our denominational ^ boards. This, too, is well, both for =- them and us. Still other societies have strong agencies in Shanghai, such as the Lon- don Missionary Society, with its veteran CHINESE CARRIAGE, In the CJiijiese Empire. 5^ representative, Mr. Aluirhead, pastor over a large flock, and, though having reached fourscore years, still evangelizing with ardor and power. Then there is the work of the American Congre- gationalists and the Presbyterians, with their great and influential press and their large schools and hospitals ; the college of the American Methodists, under Dr. Allen — the Jupiter Tonans as an advocate of high views of educational agencies to the higher classes if we are ever to convert China. The Church Missionary Society is here in force. A great cathedral adorns one of the finest squares in the English concession. The Seventh Day Adventists, with schools and a hos- pital, are scarcely behind any. The Bible societies, both British and American, are eminently aggressive and successful, selling through their numerous colporters hundreds of thousands of Bibles annually for hard Chinese cash. With all these varied agencies, Shanghai would seem verily a modern Antioch of strategic influence for the spread of the gospel through the " Middle Kingdom." May the Spirit of all power give the gospel wing! JUNK. INLAND SEA. 52 In Brisrhtest Asia. CHAPTER VI. h\)^ Ea$t(^r9 Ql?i9a (r\i$sio9. fK poot-Boat 5rip. Inland 60 Miles from NiNGPO, Oct. 24, 1890. IF you could now take me in in your vision, you would think I had reached heathendom indeed. I am trying to write sitting in the bottom of my boat, — a boat about sixteen feet long and four feet wide, covered with several sections of mats bent over bamboo bows, to protect from sun and weather. My baggage and bedding, and a few conveniences for our workers livino- up the river, fill a part of the boat. My bunk of comforters occupies the centre, on which I sit ; and at the stern, on a high seat, is my boatman, propelling with his feet the cylinder-shaped craft, tapering at each end. Tliere the fellow sits bolt upright ; and with both teet on the handle of the oar, so arranged that the feet will not slip off, he manages, by a deft use of his legs, accpired through much practice, to put the whole strength of his limbs, and body as well, on that oar. Then, in order that the boat may not swing around, he carries a paddle under his right arm, with which he steers the craft. Nor is this all of the ingenious man's accomplishments. When he desires to make time (for these PusJim.?iX\. cars of the Celestials rarely stop for re- freshments), having both hands free, he is able to sit there, and, with his bowl of rice and chopsticks, take his dinner, while with his feet he dili- gently pushes away as if turning a crank. My companion, Brother God- clard, has another craft of the same kind, except that his being a little larger, we call it the grand saloon, and at meal-times I draw up along- side, and by a careful movement — which, if not well managed, may up- set botli boats — I jump into his boat, and we take our meals together. He is an " old hand" at this kind of travel, and has the com- pletest outfit of dishes and ecjuipments of all sorts wath which to do it well. FOOT-BOAT. The Eastern China MissioJi. 53 We are off for Shaohing, loo miles inland, to visit Mr. and Airs. Jenkins, and also Brother Adams, who has come in from Kinhwa, 200 miles farther on, in order to meet us. It is a novel trip, I assure you, and full of interest. We are moving through a great plain of ten miles or so in width, through which canals run in a great net-work ; and away on each side stretch low ranges of barren mountains. Villages fill the region, and line the banks of these canals at WAYSIDE INN. intervals. Boats loaded with cotton, wood and bamboo, and journeying people, are coming and going. We are just now passing a heathen Buddhist temple, marked by the reddish paint which sparsely covers it, as well as by its size and quality — far superior to the poor, squalid and dreary-looking homes, if homes they can be called. This temple is only one of scores we are passing all day long. This morning about 7 o'clock, we drew up at the landing of a considerable town to rest our boatman a little, and while waiting walked out into the town and visited the little Presbyterian chapel. A poor sort of a chapel we should call it — not more expensive than a good wood- house at home, with nothing for the people to sit on but rude benches, like saw-horses, without backs ; and it was veiy small, seating perhaps thirty persons. The thing itself would have been contemptible as a building in my eyes, but for what I saw in three persons in connection with it. The first was a bright old man near the landing as we came off the boat, who showed us the way with evident pride, and who at once had recognized JMr. Goddard as the " Jesus-doctrine-man. " The next was an old woman, looking feeble and forlorn, wlio, in response to a subsequent inquiry of Mr. Goddard's as to the location of the chapel, at once, with an explosive exclamation, as if we had touched powder with a torch, nodded assent, clapped her hands upon her breast, and 54 In Brio-Jitest Asia. saying, — in Chinese, of course, — " I am a member of that church !" started off on a trot to show us the place. Arriving there, she rattled away at the doors and windows of the house of the native elder who is in charge, until she brought him out. We went in and sat down ; and shortly the elder, with a handsome face, in clean clothing and so bright an eye, came in, ordered the usual tea to be brought, and he and Mr. Goddard had a chat about the good work. If I had seen in China nothing but the scene of this morning, though I have seen vastly more and higher manifestations of transforming influence, I should say that this work is not in vain. Bear in mind that this place I have referred to is only one of the little out-stations of a score or two of churches in this immediate district. Mr. Goddard read for me the text which hung behind the pulpit, " For there is one God and one Mediator, Jesus Christ." If there were nothing but that there, it continually preaches what this great people need to know. /l J^ir?($po )^ou$el?old. You are wondering how about Miss Inveen, Miss Corbin and Miss Stewart, who are such important factors in the work there, and among whom your own dear Miss Parker is so soon to begin work. Well, there they are, as busy as bees, and as happy as possible, I judge, in the good work that appears to absorb them. I am witness to it, for yesterday I sat at their dinner table in the house which Dr. Lord (while consul) built at a cost of $5,000, and then at his death turned over, with other valuable property, to the Missionary Union. You may recall that Miss Corbin came from the church of which I was first pastor, in Rockford, 111. Miss Inveen I had met and heard speak in Minnesota. It did seem like a dream to find myself now really among them in China ! Of course we talked up all the dear Minnesota people and the churches we had sev- erally loved there ; and with a fine photograph of "Uncle Boston " and his family in a group hang- ing on the wall, smiling down on us so genially, it did seem as if we were all children again in our gladness. We could almost hear Uncle Boston say: " Now, boys and girls, if you'll keep still long enough, TU tell you a story." Well, it was a Minnesota day, in the course of which the Western China Mission and the coming reinforcements due by the next steamer, " The China," etc., all came in for glowing comment. It did seem a pity we couldn't have Miss Parker (so soon to arrive) with us, but I hope yet to greet her on her arrival at Shanghai. I have at least witnessed the home in which she is to live, the promising school of girls in which she will begin to teach, the women's school, the hospital, the boys' school, in all of which she will find deep interest, and I have seen the people living there within the hoary battlemented walls of a heathen city, which will move her heart to a compassion such as no scene she ever looked upon before has awakened. I am now visiting the outlying native churches and fields with which she will become helpfully familiar. May God brace her for what she is to meet, — a moral darkness and dearth that can be felt. 5l?aol?ir?($. October 28. Mr. Goddard and 1 are to-day on the return trip from .Sliaohing. We have had five days of it out on this route, and it will take to-day and to-night besides to Ijring us back to Ningpo. We The Eastern China Mission. 55 LEANING PAGODA AT NINGPO. 56 In Brightest Asia. stopped with Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins at Sliaohing. Tliey have been thirty years in this region, and thev are vigorous still, and working away with unabated zeal. Mr. J. has, besides his evangelistic work in several stations, a training-school for preachers, having seven students with him at pres- ent. Mr. Adams and his eleven-year-old son, Arthur, came in from Kinhwa, and we all had a great visit together. Mr. Adams was one of Dr. Guinness' first students, was several years with the C. I. M. in Bhamo, Burma, and also with that mission in China for one year. He joined our mission about eight years ago, and has proved one of our very best workers, having built up good strong stations all about him. On Sunday afternoon, he, Mr. Goddard and I started out through the city to visit two or three of the native preaching-places — little, cheaply fitted up sheds of affairs, with a clay floor, and a few rude seats like saw-horses. We needed no church bell or other attractions than our sensa- tional selves. For attracting a crowd in a real wild Chinese town or city, nothing can surpass a procession of three foreigners. We had a train equal to that of small boys which streams after one of Buftalo Bill's Wild West shows, only our crowd was made up of men, women and boys ; and with exclamations of all sorts they were commenting on our ridiculousness of hats, shoes, coats, neckties, etc. As we reached chapel after chapel, — even though, as in one case, the meet- ing had not begun, or as in another, though the meeting" had closed and the doors also, — we had but to simph' open them, walk in, turn around and begin. Our audience was there ; we brought it with us ; several of them. Several times, likewise, the audience changed while the meeting went on. They came and went without reference to pauses in the programme. We really came to the latter meeting to see the service and hear one of the students preach ; but as he had finished, and we had our crowd, likewise two preachers of our own who knew Chinese as well as English, I set them at it, — first Goddard and then Adams. I could only silently pray, and I never felt more like it in my life, as these two earnest and tactful Ijrethren poured the truth into them. Many gave good attention. One big earnest fellow interrupted, saying, " What you say is true enough, but we are unable to do the thing you require." This gave Brother Goddard a new opportunity to nail his audience to a fresh attention by explaining what grace enables the sinner to do. Brother Adams got hold of the children especially, a dozen of whom stood up before him, and took his simply illustrated points as keenly as qwq of " Uncle Boston's " meetings would, and with as much roguish twinkle in the eyes. These len-minute sermonettes, composed on the spot, being ended, Brother Adams got out a bundle of tracts, which were taken like hot- cakes, and w'e went on our way, never to meet those souls again till the judgment, but thankful for even this slight contact with them. But oh, they are so wretched in their moral disease and swinishness ; and they love it, for aught I can see, just as tenaciously as the civilized millionnaire at home loves his environment. Going up and down these rivers and canals, lined on both sides with numberless villages, surrounded by the yellow rice-fields, villages in which the bronzed, blue-calico clothed (rather ragged than clothed), hatless distortions and monstrosities of humanity swarm, I have seen much to move the heart. Rooted in their ages of inherited bias, vice and animalism, filled with a mass of superstition which religiously forbids change even of the most worthless or injurious things about them (like, e. g., the removal of an old rotting boat hulk from a canal channel), or even to l^ie East 67-71 Chit? a ^/issiofi. 57 rescue a companion from drowning, lest they should otTend their Fung Shway, or spirit of good luck, and thus awaken his ill will and bring on dire calamities, how shall they ever be rescued from such a state ? Surely only the power of a super- natural gospel can reach them. And yet most potential beginnings are made, and we can- not doubt that the long nightmare of ages is about to vanish. China is late in waking, but wake she must and will. f\ [Voted 5o/T\b. While at Shao- hing we made d pilgrimage to the tomb of Yii the Great, with whom authentic Chinese history begins. He lived 2200 years B. C. Noah's period was 2800 B. C. This is the oldest historic tomb on earth I There is an image representative of the old fellow — Sinim's emperor — and also of several of his cour- tiers about him, and an old temple of remarkably tine architectural features on the spot. We didn't see any of his bones, nor get any locks of his hair, nor a tooth ; but we are sure that this sanctuary marks the burial-place of a monarch older even than Rameses of Egypt — older than Abraham. Lea\ing the tomb, we ascended also a famous mountain which overlooks the spot, — one of myriad peaks of the mountain range Iving away to the southwest. It was a tough climb, right up 1,500 feet to a crag of frightfully small proportions which caps the summit, and on which stands a Buddhist temple, called the Temple of the Holy Incense Pot. But what a view rewarded our climb ! On the southwest a mountain range of great variety of form, with numberless cosey coves and terraced slopes, ripe with harvests nestling in the long narrow defiles. Away to the east the Hang Chow Bay, an arm of the sea, say twenty miles distant, makes into the land. IE (,REAT — GREAT-GRAXDSOX OF XUAH. 58 In BriirJitcst Asia. over which a hazy mist is floating. A vast plain stretches out on all sides northward as far as the eye can reach, fairly golden with waving rice harvests. Through and through this mighty plain run canals in an intricate net-work, the lines of which, glancing silvern in the sunlight, cannot be counted for number. They out-Holland Holland. There are literally no roads except the paths on the canal banks. All traffic is conveyed by boats only. Never a wagon is seen, nor a horse ; occasionallv a buftalo or a bullock hauls a load. Trees stud the plain, and sometimes adorn the canal banks. These now are dressed in autumn tints ; only instead of our maple, the brilliant foliao^e is that of the tallow tree. From the berries of this tree the natives actually obtain a vege- table tallow from which they make their candles. The trees not standing on the canals usually mark tombs, and of these the whole district possesses a multitude. The mountain-sides are embossed with hillocks and mounds wherein for 4,000 years these descendants of the great Yii have been laid in common dust with their still mortal though vaunted monarch. Still keeping in mind our landscape, we see rising sheer out of the great flat plain in occasional districts a great isolated mountain form, bold and precipitous, like those about Edinburgh, giving a touch of majesty to all. Scattered throughout the whole scene, and to be numbered only by the hundreds, are cities, towns and villages wherein dwell actually an aggregate of mil- lions of human souls. The walls of the houses are white ; the tiled roofs are uniformly black. In every city and town your eye takes in, you can discern the always conspicuous red or yel- low walls of a building which is sure to be a temple or ancestral hall, in which the idolatry of the place stalks ghastly and grim as death itself. The dust of ages and the filth of birds fill all the shrines ; the mould of damp is rotting the very fibre of the wooden images or corroding those of brass ; the squeaks of bats by the thousand are heard among the cornices and in the interstices of the elaborate framing of the richly decorated but rotting rafters ; and death and doom are in and through and on the whole satanic fabric. Here on this mount, as on another Mount Carmel, for us four mis- sionaries of the cross, with this vast panorama before us, was a place for prayer. Never again on that spot should we four thus meet. We felt the challenge rising to us from the plain, vocal with the woes of heathenism, and reiterated from the priests of Baal who, in the temple on the summit hard by us, hoodwink the deluded myriads that annually flock to this high place. Shall Baal thus forever triumph? It cannot, must not be. So there we uncover, and two of our num- ber, appealing once more to the Lord God of Elijah, plead that God may speedily among our score or more of flocklets in the East China Mission — from Ningpo to Kinhwa — answer by fire, and prove that He is God. It was a high hour in our lives on that October day. With heaven to witness, with bending angels listening near, with the whole mountain filled, we doubt not, with the chariots and horsemen of the true God, our prayer at least was registered in behalf of the souls dwelling in that vast and beautiful Shaohing plain. It was something to have looked upon them from that mount, and to at least have wejit over them for Jesus' sake. May God give the tongues of fire to preach to tliem, and win them to Jesus' love, and that right speedily ! up th.e Tang-tsc-Kiaiig. 5g CHAPTP:R VII. dp tl?e Yai^^-tse-KiaQ^. Uijit to IMar^KiQcS. November 7. P the Yang-tse River a day and a night's sail by steamer, on the left bank, stands the historic old city of Nanking. It was the capital of the Chinese empire, under the Ming dynasty from 1368 to 1644; and in some sense it is the southern capital still, a viceroy over three provinces having his official seat there. From our schoolboy days we had contracted a sentimental interest in the city of the famous Porcelain Tower, now, alas ! completely effaced by the ravages incident to the Taiping War. The history of this war being also fresh in mind, from a recent reading of the life of Gen- eral Chinese Gordon and his connection therewith, had deepened our desire to see the place. We were therefore not slow to accept the invitation of two missionary friends whom we met in Shanghai, to go with them on their return to Nanking, the city of their labors. We arrived at 4 o'clock in the morning; and while waiting for daylight, when we could engage small boats for transporting us up a canal five miles to the city gates, we had an experi- ence of being huddled together with about 300 noisy, turbulent Chinese, on board the great landing-hulk. For two hours we were in this babel, with nothing to do but to take in the scenes, listen to the hubbub over the distributions of baggage as it was put ashore, and absorb the smells. I had been led to think that because the Chinaman is constitutionally and from training a con- servative, he was therefore a stolid and immobile sort of creature — a sphinx, in fact, who may sit and smile and smile, but who never breaks the silence if he can help it. But ah ! miserable delusion ! These Chinese in their native air, with nothing in the world to do but to walk off the plank of a steamer and to wait, each sitting on his luggage or taking a nap on the floor of the hulk, wrapped in his blanket, for two slow, drawling hours, were howling like dervishes, without a moment of let-up. For excitement and a generally rattled condition, they exceeded a Don- nybrook fair or a stack of Kilkenny cats. If a fellow sang out an idea of any sort, a dozen voices would repeat it. Others would re-echo these. Any unlooked-for incident was the signal for a fresh outbreak. In an accident we are told the Chinaman loses his head sooner than a Frenchman. The Chinaman may be a conservative ; but it is settled for us that in his native haunts he is never reserved, when there is half a chance to go off the handle. At daybreak we are off up the canal, amid a perfect swarm of oared boats of every sort. These boats are as a rule unpainted ; and when new and glistening with oil or varnish, finishing 6o l^'i Brightest Asia. the handsome grained woods, Junks though they are, they are by no means so rude or lumbering as we had preconceived them to be. Now and then a steam tug plies up or down the stream. Yonder is one coming, doubtless of English build, but native manned, and drawing behind it a train of three or four new yellow junks, from which the most brilliant red bunting is flying on all sides. From one mast-head floats the Dragon banner of the empire. Tliis boat bears some army official. The walls of the city now begin to appear, running in a long dark mass ; now along the canal, then over a rocky promontory, and anon up over the hills into the fa.-away distance. These walls astonish us by their massiveness and height. The average height cannot be less than forty feet. They often rise to seventy-five and loo feet. Including the filling of earth, they are forty feet in thickness. The outer shell is castellated. These walls enclose an area of not less than twentv-five miles around. In fact, the Nanking wall is the largest single enclosure in the world. The first Ming monarch, Hung-Woo, who laid out and fortified this seat of empire, wrought a colossal thing. This wall, though having stood for 500 years, looks as if it were good for 2,500 vears more, being in perfect repair. Of course it encloses more area than that required for the mere city itself. It embraces much of the open country adjacent, including rich agricultural lands, lakes, orchards, lofty hills and moors, on which pheasants and even the wild deer are often shot. This open country is very desolate and silent to an American eye. There is a sepulchral lone- someness about its aspect and impress upon you. There is a sense of past generations departed since these hoary walls that lie on the horizon line yonder were builded. Indeed, the hillocks and mounds thrown up in such multitudes on all the slopes and across the plains force upon you afresh the reflection that China is one vast sepulchre, in which human beings of forty centuries lie entombed. Jerusalem itself could not impress one more with the sense of ancientness and generations gone forever. There are within the present walls the traces of two old cities within the modern city. One is known as " the Tartar City" ; and the other is what was once known in Ming times as " the Forbidden or Imperial City."' Both of these are now reduced to a waste, with occasional old bridges, beautiful in design, or the part of an old palace or royal road remaining. The moats which skirted the division walls are filled up ; and wliat were once rushing brooks running sparkling, clear, from the hills, are now dry ravines, witli occasional slimy pools, sadly ^v) firmy u/itl? BaQpers. As we were jDassing through these dismantled remains of imperial pretensions of the past, we met a regiment of soldiers in single file, eacli with the traditional long, bannered lance, just entering the walls by the North Gate. They had been out to escort their oflicials to the temple of the Dragon King, beyond the Ming Tombs, that they might there pray for rain. It gave new reality to that Scripture phrase, "an army with banners" ; but apart from the array of glaring red flags, I was amused at tlie pusillanimity of the force, with about as much discipline and form as a tribe of wild Comanche Indians, and as superstitious. up the Yaiig-tse-Kiang. 6i Since the Ming times, next to no progress has been made by tlie Chinese of Nanking. We were tlireading our way through ruins, due to war and its sad havocs, notably those of the Tai- ping Rebellion. It was in this city that the Tien Wang, or " Heavenly King," had his throne. Here the rebellion, after a two years' siege, collapsed, when the city was sacked and in a large part destroyed, even its beautiful and far-famed Porcelain Tower, and its people outchered wholesale, without mercy. Tf?e /Tf)'9 CHAPTER X. Xl?(? 5oiJtl?er9 (^17193 (HissioQ. J^OQ(^Koi7<5. November ib. WE are entering Hongkong Harbor. The high hills are on every side, in a vast mountainous amphitheatre. Stately chalk-white European buildings rise on all the slopes, some of them alabastrian in beauty. The smoke of numerous shops and manufactories shadows some of the slopes, but for the most part there is a sort of a New Jerusalem-like whiteness and beauty about the whole place. Would it were so morally! Hongkong is an English colony. What there is of Chinatown is obscured or by no means prominent. A noble English cathedral rests on one shoulder of the mountain ; and on the very summits, reached by cable railways, are great hotels, villas and country seats, baronial in splendor and spaciousness. European merchants and army and customs officials do not come out here to live in huts or in native fashion. Great steamships are running in and out of the harbor as we enter. Twenty-seven of them are in sight, several of them going to Japan, some to Australia, some arriving from Singapore, England, etc. This is the third largest port of transit in the luorld I First London, then Liverpool, then Hong- kong. We now approach the landing, and sampans swarm around, eager to take us ashore. /^rrlual at Su/atovu. November 20. The sail from Hong- kong to Swatow was of only a day and a night. The seas, however, ran high, and our tub of a steamer danced about like a cork, and we found the distance quite sufficient for our gastric powers. HONGKONG HARROR. 76 In BrioJitest Asia. The city of Swatow itself has few attractions. It lies on a low, flat point of ground, but it is evidently a port of considerable commercial importance. A very rich agricultural country, inside a mountain range, lies north and west of it. On this great fertile Tie Chiu district, I should think never afflicted with famine, our mission lies. The English Presbyterians share the field with us. They have extensive com- pounds adjacent to the city proper ; and by means of schools, a great hospital and a very aggressive evangelism also, they are pressing things vigorously. We have a mis- sion chapel in the city, but our compound lies across the bay a mile or two distant, on high, rocky ter- races, most picturesquely situated. For beauty it exceeds any mission we have seen in Japan or China. For this, thanks to the diligence, pains- taking care and taste of Dr. Ash- more. When he purchased the tract many years ago for the Mis- sionary Union, at the nominal sum of $500, it was little more than a pile of verdureless, decomposing granite, and as unattractive as possible. But by dint of continuous planting of trees and shrubs, by cutting the way for paths and terrace plats for buildings of half a dozen sorts, this Judean-like wilderness has been transformed into a very garden of the Lord, fit emblem of the spiritual transformations also being carried on under the leadership of a gardener skilled in moral, as in natural, culture. It was our privilege to see many of these " trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord's hand," coming on to maturity and beauty in and about that enclosure. We have here four good houses for missionary families, besides a hospital, boys' and girls' schools, a training-school for preachers, and a chapel. There is much to gladden one. Then better than all, there are thirty stations out in the great plains back from Swatow, up the rivers and canals, some of which we are to visit. More than 1,100 members have been enrolled. Brother Foster and Ur. Ashmore met us at the little landing on the compound as our sampan from the steamer touched, and we were shown up the hill to the mission-house, where a dozen or so of our workers soon met us. Brethren Campbell and Norvell had come in from the Hakka district to see us. The Scotts and Carlins are also tabernacled here. Misses Scott, Campbell and Dunwiddie, who left America since I did, we found here two weeks ahead of us. We made an interesting round of the compound to the various schools, — the evangelists' training-school, the Bible-women's school, the hospital and chapel. At all these places we were DR. ASHMORE S HOLSK. 7 he Southern China Mission. 77 met with hearty and poHte greetings from the native Christians, all indicating that they had been anticipating our arrival. On later occasions we were called out for addresses to them, and their responses were tender and touching. The following is a sample, spoken to us before Dr. Ash- more's sermon on Sunday morning by the pastor, Po-san : — "We thank you for coming so far to see us. Forty years ago, no such sight as you now see, .sWAloW l'i;i,Ai. IlLK.s AM) .s 1 L 1 jCN l.s. in this full house of men, women and children, worshipping the true God, was possible. The people then had no Bible ; they were devil worshippers ; they despised women and children. We thank the Christians in America for sending us the missionaries of forty years ago and since, to give us the Bible and all attendant blessings. As you journey on in your course from land to land, please to bespeak for us the prayers of Christians in all countries." While this was spoken, the men rose and stood. Afterwards one of the Bible-women made a similar address of welcome, all the women saving their •• .Amen." In Brio'htest Asia. Ir^laod 09 tt? as evangelists, and cross the rice-fields for a half-mile, ferry- " ing a canal by a boat, managed by a leper. ' ' We approach a town snugly ensconced under a lot of grand spreading banyan trees, which would appear to be one or two hundred years old. We thread our way through a narrow "^^- •^^^i-'^i'^i^ii- street, followed by a crowd of inquisitives, inexpressibly filthy and vile in person and speech, and enter an open space. There taking our stand. Dr. Ashmore starts off one evangelist, and at a httle distance another. A hundred people have surrounded us. First and neare^st in the inner circle IS a lot of small boys ; then larger boys ; then those taller still ; then stalwart men : and 8o In Bricrhtest Asia. hovering on the outside of the circle a number of women. To stand in the centre of a crowd hke that, having every eye gazing into yours as if to bore you through with inquiry, to think that it is the only time you will ever thus face that crowd, and they destitute of hope for this life or the next, and be unable to speak — ah, my brother in America ! complacent over the state of the heathen while you luxuriate in all Christian privileges, put yourself there, and you'll not be indifferent. I accepted the bench a man brought me, and in a moment more the youthful native evangelist began. At once he reminds them of the true God who reigns above, who gives the rains and — --^^^^^^-£g;- :j BAXVAN TREE. fruitful seasons from heaven, etc. A moment more, and a little bullet-eyed man, the least intelli- gent-looking one of the crowd, breaks out: " You say there is a heaven. Of course there is a heaven and a God in it; else how should we get anything to eat ?" The heathen are not the ignorant creatures we take them to be. The first sermon was about three minutes long. Then Dr. Ashmore began, and for five minutes more he gave them an apostolic broadside. Eloquent always, he is peculiarly himself with a heathen audience before him. As he made point after point on God, sin, judgment, pardon through Christ, heaven and hell, there was riveted attention. It was a study to watch their faces. Several kept nodding assent, as point after point was made. It was perfectly evident that they recognized as true the great salient points made. The Southern China Mission. 8i It was also, alas! just as evident that most of them took it just as sinners do at home. They said: " It is true, but the trouble is in my business, as opium-selling or idol-making. I can't afford to submit to the truth." " When they knew God, they glori- fied him not as God." As we departed, said the doctor to me : "A few years ago in a village like this, we would have been hooted out of town under showers of gravel stones ; but now, note the respectful attention." Coming back to the boat, many followed us. All were respectful; and as we came along the bank to our boat, passing three or four rude gunboats of General Ah-Pung lying near, one of the soldiers asked Dr. Ashmore, "Venerable teacher, have you had your rice ? " That is better than the epithet "foreign devil," with which in the past the mission- aries used to be saluted. Still, you must not imagine that there is much in such a locality as this but the rankest heathenism, squalor, ignorance, poverty and misery. Heathenism is something awful, especially in China. There is light in the gloom, however. While I am writing (it is 8 o'clock in the evening), out on the deck of our boat, our good cook, a deacon of the Swatow church, is holding forth in the moonlight to a few natives about him, preaching the gospel to them with the intensest feeling. Brother Foster tells me he is expatiating on "The Character of the True, the Highest, the Holiest God." " Our work is to call men to the way of righteousness, the way of peace, the way of heaven. This way is narrow. The way of the opium-eater is broad, so men don't like this," etc. Now he is straightening out the Fung Shway superstition in good style. Now he is urging the blessedness of the Sabbath. Now he gives a parable. The essentials of the way of salvation are now being urged. Now the verse of a hymn rises on the evening air. And so the dear good man goes on. He has just added : " The merits of Christ are beyond compare. It's no use to worship your ancestors," etc. May the Spirit send the truth home to his little audience ! All day long the man has kept this up. OUR CARRIAGE. of /r\orrisor>. Macao Harbor, 6 p.m. Well, we have put in a few hours in doing this quaint old Portuguese town (colonized by the Portuguese over 300 years ago), and are off by another steamer for Hongkong to-night. We here found the L's, just out from Minneapolis. Mrs. L. was in our late institute a pupil of mine. How little I anticipated such a meeting in China, on the day when this sister first called on me, desiring to enter my training class, to better prepare for her intended work. This is the third of my own pupils I am meeting on the mission-fields — one in Japan, one in China, and I trust one in Assam. They were delighted to see us, and they went with us to visit Morrison's grave, and the garden in memoriam of Camoens, the poet, who here wrote the " Lusiad." W^e also called on the McCloys, missionaries of the Southern Board. Dr. Morrison, his wife Mary, and his son J. R. all sleep in plain stone sarcophagi in one corner of a very prettily kept cemetery. It was an impressive thing to stand there for a few moments. What Carey was to India, Morrison was to China. It is eighty- two years since he landed in China. He translated the Scriptures and compiled a Chinese diction- ary, and for twenty-seven years pioneered everything good for China. He won perhaps a dozen converts, yet in the main he died without the sight for which his lofty spirit yearned. We trod rev- erently the ground about that tomb in the southeast corner of the walled cemetery. We plucked a leaf from the tree which droops over the square stone sarcophagus whicli contains the dust of one of the greatest of earth's victors, and breathed a deeper prayer for China's millions. The city is very picturesquely situated on hills, and many are the buildings which present a strik- ing semi-European appearance. There is a fine old ruin of a cathedral long since burned. The place is largely Catholic, of course, there being some 7,000 Portuguese living here. The blight on the place, however, is in the fact that it is the great gambling-place of the whole region, — the Baden-Baden of China, — people coming to it from Hongkong and elsewhere, both men and women, Europeans as well as natives, and spending Sundays gambling with desperation. Medical Mission Work in China. CHAPTER XII. /r\edieal fT)issi09 U/orl^ irj ^l^iQa. 5l?(? Qlaim /T\ade for It. IS this a properly distinctive undertaking for Christian missions to engage in? Should we so highly regard the body and the treatment of its maladies? Can a mission force atford to become a hospital staff" ? Will it not be so cumbered and harassed by unfortunates of every description as to practically preclude the exercise of the higher spiritual functions? Is it not a confession of failure for Christianity to turn from humanity in its virility and vigor, and address itself so prominently to the invalided? Should we not aim to meet the heathen in their strength, and conquer them on the high places of the field? Since coming to China, queries like these have forced themselves upon us. It is claimed by some that the real nature of Christianity renders works of mercy like these of fundamental importance for their own sake ; and, again, that it is an arrangement in the economy of grace that those who will attend to these primal wants and woes of men in Christ-like fashion, are sure to be honored by the Saviour of men in finding the way thus opened for a speedier and surer reception of the gospel. It must be confessed that our Lord thus wrought in His earthly ministry. He desired mercy rather than sacrifice, and He always won sacri- fice to His service in quarters where conviction was produced of the reality and depth of His mercy. When that chief of prophets, John the Baptist, amid his dire sorrows and persecutions, fell into a momentary fit of doubt, and sent to Jesus for reassurance of faith, Jesus replied : "Go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and heard ; how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached." NESTORIAN TABLET. 92 In BricrJitest Asia, Jesus indeed wrought these merciful signs by miracle ; but Christianity in ihe world is a standing miracle, and the healing art of modern science is one of the miracles of Christianity. The evangelical results already achieved in some successful missions have been reached through a large regard to the physical woes as well as to the spiritual needs of the people. These means have proved availing to awaken appreciation of the temper of missions, and to enable the natives to discriminate between their real friends and their enemies among foreigners. Mer- ciful healing ministries may then be regarded, and, in fact, are regarded, not of the nature of a lure, but of an authentication of something unselfish and divine. A prominent missionary put the whole thing in a nutshell when he said to us : " Hospital ministrations are a safe form of showing kindness to the Chinaman." The Chinaman in his native state is nothing if not avaricious. The novice, therefore, on coming as a missionary to China, needs to be put on his guard from the moment he reaches San Francisco to take the steamer, that any intended kindness to John in the way of moneyed gratuity is misdirected, and sure to awaken his self-interest rather than gratitude. Yet certainly he who would benefit people with the gospel must first establish a friendly relation, and especially among the heathen, where many well-war- ranted and deep-seated suspicions against foreigners have been planted. In the view of many who have tried it, the Christian hospital is one of the least objectionable methods that can be employed in China. J^ou; It U/orl^5. When a man has become an in-patient in a hospital (not a mere hanger-on of a dispensary), where probably he must lie in bed for several days or weeks, and while under treatment must observe unselfish, unpaid-for skilful attention from the Christian surgeon or nurse, he will begin to study about it. It is then his heart will melt and open. For the first time since he was born, he will realize what benevolence is. This sense is fundamental to any apprehension of the gospel. It is also index of a radical change in the man's estimate of the missionary as a representative of the gospel. The Christ-like has dawned on the heathen. Still further, when the patient shall have recovered and returned to his home, he will carry the report and spirit of the place where he has found healing. Again, as in Christ's time, the mercy shown becomes the authentication of a heavenly mission. Dr. Gillison of Hankow told us that he had often been thrilled with delight to observe the awakening of appreciation, and so of a man's moral sense, as if by miracle, as the result of some slight attention bestowed on a patient. It might be from only the tucking in of a man's foot exposed to a draught of air. He further testified that as the result of two operations for cataract on the eyes of two sisters from one household, a village was opened to the gospel, nearly a whole clan was converted, and a promising church organized. Connected with all the hospitals are gospel halls, in which services are daily held, which patients in waiting must attend before they have access to the consulting-rooms. Evangelists and Bible-women here render service in the wards for men and women respectively. On all the walls are hung handsome and striking texts of Scripture to greet the eye, and burn their way into the memories of the sufferers, who observe them for weeks together. Medical Mission Work in China. 93 T^?*? Pf"i Soil. 119 were introduced to me, such as Yah-ba and Myah-sa, doing valuable work in the schools. Then there was Da-Buh, the well-to-do and devoted deacon who is so eager an evangelist to the Karen people that he sends out, from time to time, at his own expense, evangelizing expeditions to distant tribes, as in Northern Siam, with the gospel tidings. Another special feature of the work at Bassein which impressed us was the industrial enter- prise in the form of a large lumber mill, on the bank of the river, which the Karens have purchased and are successfully operating. There were gang saws at work cutting teak timber; " Diston girls' school. saws" from Philadelphia; " Rogers' planers " were in operation; sash and doors were making. All of this was entirely carried on by the Karens. There was a Karen superintendent, a Karen book-keeper, and a Karen in charge of the engine ; and down at the landing another Karen engineer and a pilot, to manage Brother Nichols' steam launch as he goes up and down the rivers touring among the jungle churches. The Karens have also an artificial ice-making establishment ; they have their own rice mills ; they have an extensive printing-establishment ; they make their own hymn books, etc. Self- support has reached a high state of development in the Bassein Mission, as all the world knows 1)1 Bricrhtest Asia. through Mr. Carpenter's writings. Missions like this are anything but a failure. The Missionary Union, moreover, is most fortunate in the present able management of the Bassein work under Messrs. Nichols and Cronkhite. They have been thus fortunate on this field from the beginning. Here, surely, if anywhere on Asiatic mission-fields, is a miracle of missionary success. On the return to Rangoon, we had a bare glimpse of Maubin by lamplight and at midnight ; of the external features of the admirable work for Pwo Karens at Maubin, under the conduct of Mr. and Mrs. Bushell, assisted by Miss Putnam.. The captain detained the steamer for an hour in the night watches, to allow us this brief call. At Waukema, also en route, the steamer lay to for an hour, while we visited the mission-house lately vacated by the devoted Jamesons. Here we saw the Sunday school in session, and met several capable native workers. When the children were asked if they would like to send greetings to the American children on the other side of the world, they were silent ; but when asked if they " knew Teacher Jameson," and would like to send their love to him, they all promptly sprang to their feet. Alas ! that so often in stations like this, when the worn-out missionary is compelled to go home to recruit, there is no one prepared to take his place, and so for years the work languishes or devouring wolves come in and spoil the flock. Jf^e Burmar^ ^tste I^ailway. When Judson visited Ava from Rangoon, in 1824, he was six tedious weeks in making the up-river voyage of 350 miles by native boat. We made the trip, taking the Burman State Railway, in twenty-two hours. The Burma of to-day, as a well-regulated British province, is anything but the Burma of 1824. You board the train at Ran- goon, and roll out of a modern sta- tion having all the appearance and convenience of a western railway centre ; and from thence, on to Mandalay, you pass through numerous station towns attended with all the bustle and business that characterize a trunk line in the western states of 1'1.()W1N(, K1C1'>FIELI)S. Oil Bnrnian Soil. America. Many new and flourishing towns, like Yemethen and Pyinmana, are springing vip, which give promise of new enterprises, and involve the shifting of population from old centres, precisely as a railway line in Dakota or Kansas reconstructs the life of a piece of American territory. Modern enterprise is by no means confined to the Occident. The Orient is pulsating also with the world-thrill of human and divine action. Hurman plains, mountains and jungles, as really as American pampas, are being populated by restless peoples who, from China, India and other over- peopled regions, seek the virgin tracts which, in Burma, are being reclaimed from wild beasts and wilder jungle wastes. The Burman railway, for the whole 350 miles, runs through a compara- tively level region. In the southern part you pass through a vast stretch of rice-fields, that in appearance are much like the old-time stubble-fields of Illinois when it was a wheat-grow- ing state. In the northern part, the lands are less fertile, often alkaline, resembling Nebraska plains, e.\cept that occasional palms and groves of scrubby timber spring up through the dry and sunburned landscape. Away to the eastward, paralleling the line of railway, a lofty range of evergreen mountains stretches the whole distance. To the westward, may be seen lower undulating slopes and elevations, beyond which flows the turbid Irrawaddy. During the last seventy-five miles of the journey nearing Mandalay, we approach close to the eastern hills. We meet with more abundant water supply and with increased beauty of hill scenery. We discern also, alas! as in all heathen countries, the multiplied emblems of idolatry. Pagodas crown all the hilltops, frequently the very hillocks and even isolated rocks, sometimes a score in a group. In some cases a hundred or so are clustered picturesquely within a diameter of a mile. We are reminded bv these thronging emblems that we are nearing the very seat of Buddhism in Burma for nearly 900 years, as well as the historic seat of Burma's idolatrous royalty, established successively bv various proud monarchs at Amarapoora, thenat Ava, LIFE ()l T OF DFATH. 123 III Ih-ightcst Asia. and final!}- at Mandalay, where Thibaw recently surrendered almost without a show of resistance. These three cities (only the ruins of the two former remaining to be seen) are all situated within a diameter of about ten miles. As our train rolls on, we find ourselves moving through extensive ruins of the environs of Amarapoora. Now we dash through the remains of an ancient wall made of bricks, some thirty feet in thickness and twenty feet in height. Ruins of temples, monuments and monasteries are strewn on every hand. There stands a Buddha cleft clean down the back by the stroke of time ; and the lofty zayat, which has long sheltered it, looks as if the next train that thundered past would topple it over. " O shade of Ah rah-han (the first Buddhist apostle of Burma) ! weep over thy falling fanes ! retire from the scenes of thy past greatness ! But thou smilest at my feeble voice. Linger there thy little remaining day. A voice mightier than mine, a still small voice, will ere long sweep away every vestige of thy dominion. The churches of Jesus will soon supplant these idolatrous monuments, and the chanting of the devotees of Buddha will die away before the Christian hymn of praise." Thus exclaimed Judson, as in 1824 he sur- veyed the 999 pagodas of Pagan, not far from this same region. Thus we say to-day, with the multiplied tokens of God's breath of indignation scattering to the plains the dust of these crumb- ling piles. /r\ar)dalay. Arrived at the station in Mandalay, Brethren Kelly and Sutherland met us, and we were soon resting on the broad veranda of Brother Kelly's mission-house. Dr. Packer of Meiktila had joined us on the way; and some eight or ten other missionaries from the vicinity, including two ladies from Maulmein, on a visit, soon gathered, and in the evening we had a conference, clos- I\1,\\1)AI-AV ing with much fervent prayer for God's special blessing on this new, yet old, centre of work in Upper Burma. There are five bases of operation for work among Burmans in and near Man- dalay : Mr. Kelly's mission compound, including a girls' school ; the Judson Memorial Church compound, including the fine now brick church ; a teak school building and a new brick school building just rising ; the new mission-house, within the walls of the city proper, occupied by Mrs. Hancock : the day school building, in a thronged quarter of the citv, and the fine compound occu- pied by Mr. and Mrs. Sutherland, at Sagaing, sixteen miles down the river. O n B II r VI a n So il. 1^3 Mandalay, with its population of 200,000, is strategically the most important centre, if we seek Burman conversion in the whole empire. Judson knew it from the beginning. An awful chasm had to be crossed to reach it, — broader than even he knew, — but we have reached it at last, thanks to God's providence, painful and slow though it has been, and right ably is it being occupied, as respects the character of the devoted men and women now in possession. /^ua, tl?e CjoldeQ. The morning of our second day in this region we devoted to a trip down the river by steamer to Sagaing and old Ava, "the golden." Sagaing is now the principal town, the resi- dence of a deputy commissioner, and an important railway station on a new line. It is beautiful for situation, occupying a dense grove of tamarind trees, and surrounded by lofty promontories, crowned with pagodas and kyoungs of myriad numbers and forms — the creations of past dynasties, which would fain pile up merit through these artistic accumulations of whitewashed bricks, with gilded h'tees tinkling with bells by the thousand. What was once Ava lies directly opposite Sagaing. The Irrawaddy is here three fourths of a mile wide. A dismantled wall skirts the bluff above the river-bed for miles. When Mandalay was built, the capital of the former monarch was destroyed; and so the city which Judson saw formally occupied with so much pageantry and circumstance that he declared it " far surpassed anything he had ever seen or imagined," is now, and long has been, not only wholly a ruin, but the very grounds on which the city stood have become a jungle of tangled tropical shrubbery and vines. A few squatter villages are sprinkled through the place. There are ruins of a few monasteries and pagodas ; while of the splendid new palace of Judson's time, only the tall, square-built bell tower remains, and that is leaning to a speedy fall. It is picturesquely covered with vines. The belfry, whence the Judsons heard strike the dismal hours of their long-drawn agony, is now the home of bats and lizards. The place is death-struck, and one cannot resist the impression that the woe of God overtook the place ; while, as a sturdy old Burman said, at SAGAING. 124 In Brightest Asia. our farewell meeting in Rangoon, " The region near where Judson suffered, has been made an honorable place to Judson's renown, by the erection of the Memorial Chapel." A worthy Burman pastor, who knew the site of the old " Death Prison," was our guide to the BELL TOWKR OF AVA. spot. It was nearly two miles from where the Judsons lived, about a quarter of a mile from the palace tower. There is only a heap of rubbish, amid which we found a little white marble elephant, symbol of departed royalty, to mark the spot. Two stately trees overshadow it. On Burman Soil. 125 Beneath their shade, our party gathered, sang "Jesus shall reign where'er the sun," and then Dr. Packer led us in prayer for a new baptism of power on all workers for Burma. The native pastor followed in a pathetic petition for the same blessing. We refreshed ourselves from our lunch baskets, chatted with the poor straggling natives, who curiously hung about us, climbed the cnmibling steps to a great shrine which once overlooked the prison, but which now is rotten with age and neglect, and came away in good mood for the reception given us by the native church, at the Memorial Chapel compound, in the afternoon and evening. SITE OF THE DE.VTH PRISON. JudjOQ /T\emorial C^fpapel. Delightful as all these meetings with the Karen and Burman Christians have been, none came nearer to our hearts than this one. First, we were served to tea; then we were introduced to a score or so of veteran pastors and teachers, including one old, blind deacon, a disciple of Kincaid. 126 In Briirhtest Asia. Then came a detachment of eighty uniformed Karen policemen, all Christians, in the employ of the o-overnment. There is a battalion of these, 400 strong. Then the hand-shaking began. We adjourned from the schoolroom to the chapel, and after Scripture, hymns and prayer, we addressed them. Brother Kelly interpreted. It must have been with rare skill and with a full heart ; it surely was magnetic upon both speaker and audience. The episode of the morning had brought to us almost the companionship and spiritual presences of the mighty sufferers of Ava and Oung-pen-la. We began with allusions to the high interest of the locality, then passed on |in)S«)X .MKMoKlAl. t lURCll. to the power of the cross principle, and the need of it in all our work. The Spirit honored it. It was evident to all, as we sat there in the twilight, — to the Karens who sat tearful on the right, to the Burmans whose flashing eyes responded on the left, to the dear missionaries who yearned and sympathized in front, — that God was near. It was suggested that we close with a prayer and consecration meeting in front of the pulpit. Scores, both of Karens and Burmans, pressed for- ward. For a half-hour prayer flowed, all of us on bended knees, especially that new power might be poured on all for Burman evangelization. It was a melting time. It was good to be there. One Karen youth pressed forward at the close to say, with moistened eyes, that he " meant to be On Burman Soil. 27 faithful unto death." Several Bur- man young women testified to marked blessing received. God give it permanence and power, that we may begin to see among Burmans what we have long seen among Karens! Ou9(^-pe9-la. DEDICATION DAY AT ME.MOKIAL CHLKCH. The next morning, a party of a dozen of us, including several of the Burmans whose hearts had been so warmed the evening before, drove to Oung-pen-la, distant from Man- dalay four miles. The present place is a squalid little village of perhaps thirty houses. The site of the old prison is a vacant lot, hard by a little kyoung and another decaying pagoda. The paddy bins, the quaint old ox carts with plank wheels and wooden axles, precisely like those Mrs. Judson describes as used by her in the rides to and from Amarapoora across the dry, hot plam, were there to be seen. We recalled the pathetic scenes and experiences which her graphic pen describes. We thanked God that those sufferings long ago were ended, and for their awakening effect on the American church, and for the pros- pect Brother Kelly says there is, that on this very mission ground a Baptist Christian chapel may soon be built. Again, under the shade of the neighboring trees, we gathered for a little prayer and praise meeting, some engaging in English and some in Burman, the groups of village children and others lingering near with wondering eyes. For them also we prayed, and for their descend- ants to latest time, that they might know Him for whose sake the early sufferers on this spot lived and ^^^^^^ died. SITE tn- 1'KIM)X I'EX, oLNt.-l-EN-LA. 128 In BrioJitest Asia. It was a most favoring providence that timed the meeting of one of our Karen associations 50 as to exactly correspond with the week we had to devote to Central Burma. Dr. Bunker of Toungoo was on the lookout ; and one morning, just as we were despairing of such a coinci- dence, he overtook us ten minutes prior to sailing for Maulmein, and persuasively out- lined to us his anticipations in our behalf These, in brief, were that we should go out with him and a half-dozen other missionaries two days' journey from Toungoo, east- ward, over two ranges of moun- tains, and attend the annual associa- tional gathering of about sixty or more of the B'ghai Karen churches. It would involve some hard climbing over mountain bridle-paths, with some camping out amid the wilds of the jungle, with some exposures. But what were these compared with an oppor- tunity to see the Burman jungle in all its wild variety, to observe the Karen in his primitive villages and mountain haunts, with five days of intercourse with the missionary brethren and sisters on the veritable field, face to face with the conditions under which jungle work is carried on, and face to face, also, with a blessed sphere of influence, which none who have not witnessed it can ever reali/x'. Here was an opportunity to go along and sample the thing for ourselves. We resolved tliat to put in one week, out of three in Ikirma, in the jungle itself, was the wisest economy of time, whatever mere stations with comparative comforts and interests should appear neglected. On Monday morning, after the Sabbath spent at Toungoo, in pleasant converse with the Crosses, Johnsons, Cochranes, Kirkpatricks, Dr. Cusliing and others, we started: four mission- SllAX MISSION-HOUSE, lOUNGOO. On Biirnian Soil. 129 aries, two American visitors, several boys, two cooks, fourteen coolies, four ponies, and two elephants bearing our camping outfit, provisions, etc. For a couple of hours we threaded our way along a dusty path through the high reeds and tiger-grass which abound upon the \vide stretch of the river bottom-lands. Later we found ourselves astray in a by-path which wan- dered into a dense government preserve of teak forest, the most valued wood of Burma. We recovered our bearings, and rose to the foothills of the first range of mountains. Now forest trees began to appear, of large diameter, rising sheer without a branch for 100 feet, and then spreading into a broad, rich canopy top. What roots they have ! shooting out in -reat fan-shaped buttresses, starting often from twenty feet above the ground, bracing the tree^'s on every side. These are oil trees, and there are many banyans with such net-works of branches running downward as well as upward. Then note the vines, twisted, gnarled, knotted and often binding together a dozen trees, as if throttling a squad of them to the death. The thornv- barked rattan depends on every side ; clumps of bamboo, in scores of species, stand thick about us and palms many and picturesque. The curious nest of the weaver bird tempts us aside, in a vain attempt to reach ^•w--fp^-^— ■ — :- — = ^ the coveted prize. The still- ness is as solemn as the tropi- cal m o n a r c h s are majestic. Anon we come upon moun- tain brooks, babbling and musical as a Vermont trout stream. Often the jungle is so tangled that we are compelled to make our way up the bed of a stream ; then our ponies, clamber- ing up the rocky banks, tug for hours up a rug- ged bridle-path to some great height, whereon we find a lookout over a wide landscape of wondrous loveliness Towards the end of the first day, while we are resting for a little by a singing, cool brook A JUNGLE PROCESSION. I30 In BriQ'htest Asia, we hear the " tunk-a-tunk '' of an elephant bell, and a few minutes later, issuing from the copse that overhangs a dry ravine, a great " Jumbo " appears, packed and girded, with a Karen on his neck, a group of half a dozen others following. This company proves to be one of our village pastors, with several other delegates, on their way, likewise to the association. There in the wilderness the introductions with the hand-shakings began, and for four days they went on with scarcely any cessation. The Karens we found to be great hand-shakers. This new company now became our guides to the village, two hours farther on, where we were to encamp for the night. On they led us, through tangled ways, around shoulders of the cliffs, down through ravines, across rice-fields, under overhanging bamboo groves, till at length, just at dusk, we arrived ai the entrance to a village, situated in a most secluded retreat. It seems we had been expected. What preparations they had ' made for us ! By what system of telegraphy I know not, but I somehow, from the moment Dr. Bunker sent out the word that we were to come, the whole jungle, through a wide district, dotted by half a hundred villages, became j.ware of it, and Karendom was at our service and on the watch towers for our humble coming. At this village of c ur i ight halt, apparently men had been at work for days preparing for our arrival and comfort. They had constructed booths and booths ; two large ones, with floors well elevated p.bove ground, with roofs, and walls at the sides, and even steps, with a hand-rail for safe ascent. On the floors of vhese booths, all of split and woven bamboo, everything constructed without nails, we were to pitch our tents and spread our beds. A cooking-booth was also prepared, and a neat and ingenious woven bamboo table. Wood had been gath- ered for our fires, and water brought in bamboo buckets for our- selves and our beasts. Without a match or a flint, the Karens lighted our fires ; all with that magical bamboo. They Drought fowls for our meal, and, with a round of hand-shaking that betokened fellowship of the genuine sort, they bade us welcome to their best. A couple of hours afterwards they joined us around the camphre at our evening worship. It was solemn and touching, there in the moonlight, our fires brightly blazing, the elephants and ponies browsing among the herbage near by, to witness the kneeling company, listen to the voices of prayer, now in English and now in Karen, and to hear from all the Karens the " Amen" at the close. As our c-vening song floated above the trees, we thought of far-distant friends in America, whose loving prayers have followed us even to these wilds. WEAVER birds' NEST. "Though sundered far, by faith we meet Around one comiiion merey-seat." 0)i Biirman Soil, At daybreak of the second day, we had broken camp, and were again on the march, up and ever up the mountain slopes, with occasional crossings of the mountain streams, and with more numerous meetings with the highland villages. In each of these settlements there was a chapel, by far the best building in the place. There were the worn Karen Bible and hymn book on the bamboo desk. Each evening in all these Christian villages where there is a teacher, as is usu- ally the case, it is the custom for the teacher to gather the whole community for evening Scripture reading, explanation, singing and worship. In one of these evening services which we attended on our return, we counted sixty-five present. They were poor, so poor in appearance! not unlike the Indians of the American border ; but they heard a clear exposition of precious divine truth. They knew and sang, " Thus far the Lord hath led me on," and in prayer all were on their faces before God. In communities like these, to be found by the score, is the place, by the way, to observe the fruits and value of the school work, often narrowly criticised, which goes on in places like Maulmein and Bassein. Without teachers trained in just such schools, there could be no such influences kept perpetually working in numerous far-out jungle villages in Burma. The hiissionaries at the best can be only field marshals over the churches, direct- ing these native coun- try teachers trained by the school, and set to work out the details in behalf of native populations. About 5 o'clock in the afternoon of the second day, as we came around on a sort of high, curved water shed of the range of hills we had for hours been ascending, we entered a piece of cleared ground, amid which was a nati\e ceme- tery. There were monuments of bamboo and boards raised to a few of the believers who had passed away, with touching allusion in the inscriptions to their blessed exchange of worlds. We were on the con- fines of the settlement wherein the associational meeting was to be held. Casting our eyes now across the deep valley to the right, we saw, lying on a bold promontory a mile away, like an islet KAREN JUNGLE VILLAGE. 1^2 In Brightest Asia. amid a sea of valle^^s, with a lofty range filling the deep background twenty miles beyond, the village which was waiting to receive us. A moment more, and a company of brethren came to escort us in. Arrived at the place, what interest we felt in each scene ! There was Brother Crumb, over from another moun- tain district, in which he had been touring for two months among the Paku Karens, come to meet us. Three sisters had also come in from their jungle travels to join in the meeting; viz., IMiss Simons, Miss Ambrose and Miss Anderson, the latter from our own dear Minnesota. Here again we found the natives had fairly built a small town of booths and houses for all sorts of uses for our comfort. What a tabernacle they had prepared for the meetings! It reminded us of the old days of the mammoth Moody tabernacles, except — well, it didn't cost $30,000. It was only bamboo and thatch. There was a carpet of bamboo, on which the 1,058 delegates from fifty-six villages and churches sat. There was a high pulpit and an elevation for the digni- taries, a table for the scribes, and a place for the half-dozen or more choirs, from as many different districts, that so charmingly sang. Here again appear the fruits of your lower Burma schools. Rills of numberless good things permeate these wild and half-barbarous jungles like streams from Paradise, and are starting in this wide wilderness the beginnings of the new Eden. Through two evening sessions and a whole clay we sat and drank in the proceedings. An able Karen presided. In his prayer, which concluded the associational gathering, he addressed the Lord as follows, respecting my visit : " And now, Lord, we have seen the great Secretary of the great Missionary Union ! and we see that he is neither a giant nor an animal nor a griffin, but only a man like ourselves. So we shall have to continue trusting Thee for all our needs just as we have been doing heretofore." A pretty sensible disciple that, we all concluded. The giving was an astonishment to us, considering the universal poverty of these hill peoples. They have no industries as yet in these remote parts. There is a crying need for industrial teachers. It is surprising and startUng to see, after all, how little has been accomplished when these peoples who, when they do accept the gospel, come in by whole villages, are simply evangelized. They have accepted Christ, the Bible, the hymn book, the missionary and the village teacher, but for a long time they remain still in ignorance, in tilth, in much real social degradation. They need to be inducted into the elements of a Christian civilization as well. At the afternoon service the representative of the Missionary Union was received by the association. Their enthusiasm and gratitude were touching ; their appreciation of what was said to them, gratifying. It was especially interesting to see the influence over them of their mission- aries, whom they revere almost as gods. What bishoprics are here! The Missionary Union is especially fortunate in that for more than twenty years — years in which the whole mission, centering at Toungoo, was at one time threatened with wholesale disaster — there have been in charge such men as the now venerable Dr. Cross among the Pakus and Dr. Bunker among the B'ghais. Lost ground has been steadily recovered and rapid gains made, despite a form of ritual- istic proselytism which the missionaries have had to contend against, that is as cruel as it is shameless and unprincipled. On the morning of the third day we broke camp. Dr. Bunker, Brother CrumI) and the lady missionaries, attended by several of the experienced school girls, pushing out into regions On Biir/iian Soil. 133 beyond, for their annual visitation of the churches, while we returned to Toungoo. "It takes pluck to do that,'" remarked a new missionary of our company just out trom home, as he saw Miss Simons mount her packed elephant next morning and leave us, accompanied by her Karen assistants and the coolies, for a plunge into deeper jungles for two months more of visitation among the churches before the rains begin. Such work as this all these brave young women are doing. O ye luxury-loving daughters in America, could ye endure a test like this to prove your love to Christ and immortal souls? And yet believe me, these devoted workers ask not for your commiseration. They prefer these toils, even with all their exposures, to any prizes which this world can offer. They simply ask for your prayers and co-operation. Among the red-letter days of a lifetime, we have entered high up on the calendar the days spent in the B"ghai Karen district contiguous to Toungoo. Our '^Y)3T) /T\issio9. In connection with our visit to Toungoo, we came into touch with our Shan Mission — first, through the companionship of Dr. J. N. Gushing, our senior missionary to the Shans, and the able translator of their Scriptures ; secondly, through our visit to the old Shan mission-house at Touno-oo, where we saw somewhat of the work as it is carried on among a limited number of these people who frequent such stations as Toungoo and Mandalay ; and thirdly, through the meeting with Drs. Kirkpatrick and Griggs, who had, by forced marches from Thibaw, managed to reach Toungoo for an interview before we left. Mr. W. W. Cochrane, also designated to work among the Shans at Bhamo, was temporarily located at Toungoo. Dr. Gushing has high hopes for these interesting people, and earnestly pleads for young men to occupy commanding points in their territory, such as Mone. We heard also from the lips of Dr. Kirkpatrick encourag- ing accounts of the favor he had found from the authorities and people at Thibaw, where new mission-houses are building. Dr. Kirkpatrick placed in our hands an interesting souvenir in the way of a fine wild peacock's tail, given him by a Shan, who, while on his way to present it to a Buddhist priest, fell in with a copy of the Gospel of John, distributed by our workers, and con- cluded that he would make no more gifts to the priests. He became convinced, after sitting up most of the night to read the new book, that it was true. He accordingly brought the peacock's tail to our missionary, instead of to the priest. pei^u. At Pegu, on the arrival of the train, I was met at 3 o'clock a.m. by Miss Payne, taken in her pony pliaeton, and driven away to the mission compound, a mile and a half distant. In the morn- ing I was shown her dove cote of a mission-house, the tidy Burman chapel, her enterprising reading-room, just at the end of the bridge, on the main thoroughfare of the city, and introduced to some of the most intelligent Christian Burmans I had the pleasure of meeting anywhere. Her thrifty school pleased me greatly. This sister is the sole missionary in charge at this station. According to the testimony of the deputy commissioner of Pegu, whom I met later in the day " She is a captain of every good work in the town." 134 -^'^ Brightest Asia. CHAPTER XV. Sl^ree Ueterai^s. Rangoon, December 27. AAIOXG the peculiar satisfactions which came to me in my visit to Burma, were the meet- ings with veterans who have been upon the field over fifty years. These persons were Rev. D. L. Bravton, Mrs. Cephas Bennett and Mrs. Dr. E. A. Stevens. They were all contemporaries with Judson during the latter period of his life, were intimately associated with him, and partook deeply of his spirit. I^eu. D. I^. BraytoQ. M}' interview with Father Brayton on the trip to Maulmein, before referred to, during two full days, gave me the most favorable opportunity to gather some of his more striking reminis- cences. The Braytons sailed from Boston October 28, 1837, on the bark "Rosabella," a vessel of 300 tons. Five months afterwards they arrived at Amherst. The Stevenses and Stillsons sailed at the same time. Brother Haswell met them on arrival. Soon after, Osgood and Judson came to meet them. "Judson had piercing eyes, and was a man capable of severity. The ship on which we came brought the paper for the first edition of his Burman Bible." Referring to the frequent allusions made in letters from home to the trials of a missionary's life, Mr. Brayton said : — "Tell them to talk not of trials; talk of privileges. Think of what it is to see the dark countenance of a heathen light up — a joy the world knows nothing about. Don't mention sacr- fices ; they are not worth talking about. . . . Judson never said a word about sufferings unless drawn out, and then he would check and rebuke himself. ... I was associated with Judson for thirteen years." Dr. Brayton's account of his jungle tours, accompanied by his devoted wife, and the eager- ness with which the poor people would cluster about their boat or zayat to hear them explain the good news contained in the "White Book," was most touching. Sometimes a poor old woman would come and inquire "If there was anything in the White Book to cure the sorrows of the heart." He mentioned one man whose wife and family opposed his becoming a Christian. They had prepared a feast to cheer up the husband and fiither from the melancholy brought on by his con- viction. At length, because he would not eat of tiie feast, his family forsook him, saying, "You'll not see our faces again." " Very well," said he, "I must eat rice for myself." He was baptized, and proved true. Villages sent invitations to the missionaries to come and exj^Iain Three Veterans. 135 iMRS. BE.NNETT. to them the book, and i^repared lodgings for them. They went, and great salvation was wrought. " For thirty-five years," said the veteran, " our life was filled up with such experiences."' Still, the eagerness for the work and joy in it are unabated. The fire of a war horse is in him still, rising daily at 4 o'clock in the morning to toil upon his revision of the Pwo Karen Bible. /T\r5. BeQQett. It was my pleasure to spend a forenoon in the home of Mrs. Bennett. Although in her eighty-third year, this sister is yet so vigorous that she daily performs much mission work. Her house is constantly frequented by the Burman women and girls, and by native preachers and mis- sionaries, consulting her on all sorts of matters. Her mental vigor is such that she is able to impart most valued counsel. Her native wards are numerous ; they look to " Mamma Bennett" as to no one else.* On Christmas Day she was able to go into the town and attend a Christmas- tree exercise for the children in a Eurasian school, enter- ing into it with the zest of a woman in middle life. In the course of our conversations, I noted down the following items from her fund of reminiscences : — "We were appointed missionaries of the Union in 1828. We left the capes of the Delaware in the brig 'Mary,' for Calcutta, the 8th of September, 1830. . . . My husband was the eldest son of Rev. Alfred Bennett of Homer, N.Y. He was a printer; formerly publisher of the Baptist Register, since developed by Dr. Edward Bright into the Examiner. We first landed in Burma at Amherst. Judson had taken up his residence at Maulmein ; he was living with the Wades. The Boardmans had gone to Tavoy. In going from Amherst to Maulmein, we were rowed the whole distance of twenty-five miles in an open boat. We arrived at 8 o'clock in the evening. Judson was a rather dignified character, and did not come to the landing to meet us, but sent a Eurasian to conduct us to his house, who also carried the baby. Arriving at the compound, we found the missionary living in a bamboo house, witli a bamboo floor, standing high up on bamboo posts. We were made quite welcome. We had brought out the presses with us for the printing of the Burman Bible. A month after our arrival, Dr. Judson, who was then in his first widowhood, came and boarded with us for three years. This, of course, brought us into very close contact with him. He was reserved, very methodical in his work, precise in his attire, and particular about his wardrobe. He was very fond of early morning walks, often rising unseasonably early and going over the hilltops, where he was exposed to the danger of being seized by tigers ; but he was perfectly fearless, and hard to change from his course. The native church now numbered about thirtv members of This mother in Israel has since passed away. i-^G In Brightest Asia. Burmans and Taligns, who had removed to Maulmein from Rangoon and Dalla, to get away from persecution. These disciples were gathered by Judson at the mission-house every evening for prayer and instruction. These were times of great rejoicing in those otherwise dark days. Some of the native Christians developed strongly. Such were Ko Shwey-ba and Ma Doke. Then we began to live. Judson was then at work upon his translation of the Bible. On one occasion he got me to count the verses from Isaiah to Malachi, that he might know how many verses to translate per day in order to finish his work by a given time. He was very domestic in his feelings, and particularly fond of children. He would sit on the floor and play with them, caress their dolls, and sing lullabies to them. Friends counselled him to remarry, but he would not hear a word to it, so long as his Bible was unfinished. This done, he went away to Tavoy without saying a word to any of the missionaries, and married Mrs. Boardman, making a confidant only of Mr. Blundell, the British commissioner; brought his bride back to Maulmein, and for a time they both boarded with me." The time soon came when Mrs. Bennett's two children were to be sent home. The mother sat in her room weeping at the separation, when a letter from Dr. Judson, full of tenderness and sympathy, was put into her hand. This ripe worker, after sixty-two years of service on Burman soil, was alive with fresh suggestions as to present-day needs. She had much to say concerning the character of seminary training of our native preachers. She pleaded that our management should not continue to place so great responsibility upon single women at the head of the largest schools, but that we should place a man and his wife in such positions. She seemed to have clear apprehensions of the work going on, especially in the Burman department. She would not have less work done for the Karens, but far more for the Burmans. She spoke on all these themes with the force and fervor of a prophetess. /T\r5. Sti^ue^s. The last of the trio who have labored above fifty years on Burman soil is Mrs. Dr. Stevens. Her home is with her son-in-law. Rev. D. A. W. Smith, D. D., at Insein, the pretty suburb of Rangoon. At this place, eight miles north of Rangoon on the railway, where our seminary is located, on what Dr. Smith loves to call " our Newton Hill," I was privileged to spend two or three evenings with Mrs. Stevens, and from her lips to hear many incidents of the primitive days in Burma, many of them spent as were Mrs. Bennett's, associated with the Judsons in Maulmein and Rangoon. It was this dear sister to whose maternal care Edward Judson, as an infant, was entrusted when he was left motherless, and to whose care and nursing, under God, the pres- ervation of his life was due. Very graphic were the touches given in description of the unique character of Dr. Judson — his fondness for children ; his domestic tastes; his fine sense of pro- priety ; his dauntless courage and faith. The account given of the parting scenes between Mrs. Emily C. Judson and her prostrated husband, when he was obliged to leave her for his final v'oyage, was very tender. Like Mrs. Bennett, Mrs. Stevens also retains the most glowing interest in the present-day work in Burma, and pleaded for its expansion with a motherly eloquence. Her TJiree Vetera?zs. 137 transparent and spirituelle old age is something truly beautiful to look upon. Happy those who can look upon it while, like an after-glow of sunset, it lingers to warm and bless. Dr. Cross of Toungoo has made a record of service in Burma almost as long as fifty years, and still bears abundant fruit in age. He came to the field in 1845 • but we have not yet met him. and cannot speak of personal interview. FACULTY OF THEOLOGICAL SEMI\.A.RV. IXsl.lN To meet with these honored servants of God, — the few who remain of the first generation of our workers in Burma, — and to hear from their lips experiences shared with Judson, was as if the Burman apostle himself had come back to earth for a little to remind us of the realities of his tune. I count it a blessing unspeakable that my visit to Burma was, in God's providence, so t.-iied that I could, ere they depart, catch somewhat of the spirit of these living links between *'xe founders of the work and the present generation. Ere long the last one will have departed \3« In BriQ-Jitcst Asia. CHAPTER XVI. Ir^dia. C^al(;utta. THE approach to Calcutta is a matter of dramatic interest. For many miles we pass up the Hoogly River, one of the many mouths of the Ganges. The cliannel is narrow, and requires skilful piloting. Many a steamer has been lost on the quicksands, that are ever shifting, and which ever stand ready to engulf any vessel which is unfortunate enough to strike them. Once aground, a vessel is certain to be swallowed up. It is a common ll-W (_)F CALLL ITA. thing to see hulks and masts projecting from the surface of the water, in the process of being completely submerged. At intervals all along the banks, we see throngs of Hindus bathing in the sacred waters. They seem to have great camps, with multitudes of booths erected for the reception of the pil- I??dia. '39 grims. Many novel exhibitions and amusements are being carried on in connection witli their superstitious festivities. Clad in pure white, they look like armies of ghosts, especially in the twilight. Nearing the great metropolis of India, we begin to see the palaces of native princes, as well as of retired East Indian merchants, government officers, etc. Upon the picturesque palm-lined banks, as we steam up the river to our landing near old Fort William, we are impressed with the vast amount of shipping. The. steamers lying at the wharves four or five abreast, with all sorts of craft for miles filling the stream, — as we have seen them at other great Eastern ports, as Yokohama, Shanghai, Hongkong, Singapore and Rangoon, — now impress us afresh that the shipping of the world is to be seen in the Eastern Hemisphere. Here all nations, except the United States, are largely represented. The morning our vessel rode into the harbor at Hono-- kong, we counted twent3--seven steamships of vast tonnage, representing half a score of nations. There were steamers of the French line, North German Lloyd line, half a dozen British lines, Italian. Scandinavian and Austrian lines, and one floating the United States flag. Arrivino- at Calcutta, we see similar fleets. Europear>iz(^d Ipdia. In the days that followed our arrival, while visiting the splendid suburbs at Barrackpore, fifteen miles above the city, and others, filled with villas of the most costly character, studding large velvety green swards, ensconced beneath great spreading banyans, — places in which the European elite of this part of India have their residences, where traders and merchant princes and queens of fashion are serving Mammon to the full, — we felt sure that the church had arrived tardily on the spot to follow up with the gospel the manifold forms of Western influence of another kind. The truth is that India, as well as other great parts of the East, has become immensely Europeanized. If you take a train from Calcutta and pass southwestward through Benares, Allahabad and Agra to Bombay, along the great railway over one of the great trunk lines, now extending for 18,000 miles through various parts of the vast DAKJEELIXG, I.\ THE lU.MALAVAS. 140 /;/ Brio-Jitest Asia. peninsula, passing through stations of the most solid and stately character, ever\' mile of this- railway parallelled by telegraph lines, with the best of service, you will be amazed at the progress which civilization is making in this great heathen land. These stations are manned by " babus," as they are called, — educated natives, some of them Eurasians. They manipulate the telegraph instruments, they keep the books, sell the tickets, man the capital restaurants, often -^ 2s^" " ----,._ conduct the trains, etc. There are _^:;"^-^ ^^^^fc^l- eSV^^ i- -. 5,000,000 of these English-speaking T^^ "? 1:" if 1 ,"-. i =4^, natives in India to-day. Bombay has = ; ^ 5?\-^ji:V ^"X^ ^' one of the most elaborate and costly t ^. r"\ ^.^^gE^JC, ^ ^^" ggj -^ railway stations in the world. Look- f'^SJ^f>^ /j^^^^ : -:S^rtf-T ing at these marks of Occidental enterprise which have filled the East, the traveller will be forced to say that whether or not missionaries go to follow up these strides of civilization with their divine work, all the rest of the world has made up its mind in some representative way to go East. Why should even a young lady missionary, to say nothing of men, with the Bible in her heart, who has left friends and home to go abroad, carrying the possibilities of moral renovation to great peoples, be thought a fanatic, when, upon the decks of the same steamer, say of the Pen- insular and Oriental Line which she may board from London to Bombay, she will find a hundred of the most elegant ladies of English fashionable circles, promenading those decks, rustling with silks and glittering with jewels, upon the arms of army officers and merchant princes, who seem to find it no special privation, even for worldly purposes, to make their abodes in the tropics ? Our time in Calcutta was too limited for any detailed inquiries into particular features of local mission work. We visited the old Lai Bazaar Chapel, where Carey preached and Judson was baptized. We met Dr. I'entecost, and Rev. William Haslam of England, who are in the midst of special services, attended with some signs of the Lord's blessing. There seemed to l)e con- siderable stirring up on the part of European Christians, and there was evidently converting power attending the meetings held for considerable companies of Bengali young men. Many Brahmins were attracted to the meetings. SERAMPORE COLLEGE. India. 141 HOL'SE IX WlllCii CAKL:V IJIEL). 5erampor(^. It was an interesting morning which we were permitted to spend in visiting this early fountain head of missionary intiuence and power in India. We took in the old missionary college, a superb and vast edifice, containing a fine library and numerous relics suggestive of the great triumvirate who founded the institution. The original intention respecting this college was never carried out, owing to the large attention given by government to education in general, and perhaps because the Lord's blessing did not so signally attend movements largely educational. Our English brethren are still carrying on work here and training a few preachers, although the principal school work now conducted in the immense building is of a primary character. At the side of the college is still standing the house in which Carey spent his last years. We were shown to the room in which he died. Beautiful gardens lie in the rear of the group of buildings. Passing out through the campus in front of the college building, we stood upon the historic landing ghauts on the Ganges. Up these steps Carey, Marshman and Ward passed. Boardman, Ann Hasseltine Judson and Harriet Newell also trod these sacred stones : hundreds of missionary workers have here landed, receiving welcome from those who, under God's hand, made it possible to undertake great things for God, first in India, and from thence planting themselves in regions beyond. Up the stream a few yards, we walked under the shade of a line of immense mahogany trees which were planted by Carey's own hands. We passed the building which was originally the printing-house. We went to the cemetery, a little north of the town in a retired spot, which contains an acre of ground enclosed by a good brick wall, and found the tombs of Carey, Marshman and Ward. The tomb for Carey is a plain cenotaph, built many years ago, bearing inscriptions for himself and his wife. On one surface is inscribed "William Carey, born 17th of August, 1761, died 9th of June, 1834," and also the stanza, "A wretched, poor and helpless worm, On Thy kind arms I fall; Be Thou my strength and righteousness, My Saviour and my all." The tombs for Marshman and Ward are also imposing impressive, though of difterent form. and TOMll OF CAKKV 142 In Br/jr/itest Asia. CHAPTER XVII. OiJr Pssam /T)i$5io9. January 22. ASSAM used to be, even from Calcutta, a far-distant province. When Me55rs. Cutter and Brown, our first missionaries, went to Sadiya, the journey up tlie Bralimapootra without steam consumed five long months. Taking the mail route from Calcutta, mostly by rail, via Dhubri, and thence by steamer up the great river, we reached Gauhati in less than three days. Of course this was far short of Sadiya, which is 350 miles farther; but it was sufficient to take us into the midst of our Assam field, and was a convenient piace of rendezvous for several of our missionaries to come in to meet us. We find Assam by no means inaccessible nor out of the way in this day, even if it once was. It is a great and rich province of the Indian empire, picturesque and beautiful to the eye, espe- cially in its upper portions, and through its twofold channels of approach, viz., the railway and the daily steamship service, within easier reach from the seaboard than Upper Burma. Three great districts of the Assam field were impressed strongly upon us from this visit; viz., the Garo district, the great plains on both sides of the river for hundreds of miles, and the Naga Hills region, various subdivisions of the numerous and accessible people of Assam. Sl?(? Cjai'OS. These interesting people might be called the Karens of Assam. They occupy a large moun- tainous district in the hills south of the Brahmapootra River, and number not less than 130,000. They are a wild people, are not Hinduized, nor strictly speaking idolaters. Like the Karens, they are rather demon propitiators. They sacrifice to these spirits, sometimes even human lives, to avert dreadful calamities. So wild are these people in their mountain villages, that when our missionaries first visit them, they flee the town from fear, and hide in the forests. When won and drawn out by the gentle suasions of love, and taught, they prove manly, frank, and vigorous in all noble C]ualities, and far more reliable and trust- worthy than the more civilized and long- perverted Hindu of the cities and plains. Our two missionaries. Mason and Phil- lips, who have been laboring among these people for some fifteen years from their mountain centre in Tura, established by MAIL CARKIKR IN ASSAM. ;_^ Our Assam Missio)i. 143 them in the very depths of the jungle, have wrought with rare si5 people. From Agia we all went together to Gauhati for a conference. Several additional missiona- ries from the various stations in the upper country met us here. The Moore Brothers, together with Miss Laura Amy, a former cherished parishioner of mine in Minneapolis, just out from home, bringing to me letters and mementos of the dear ones in the family nest, journeyed from Nowgong, eighty miles, in an ox cart, to meet us. Mr. and Mrs. Clark, also from an old charge of mine in Indianapolis, came down from Molung. Mr. and Mrs. Burdette cordially entertained us all in the mission-houses formerly occupied by the Bronsons and Barkers. Mrs. Bronson also went out to Assam from the church of my first charge at Rockford, 111. On the Goalpara hillside a couple of days before, we had visited the spot where sleeps, in the English cemetery. Miss Marie Bron- son, whom I once knew in Chicago. Two days after, while passing down the river, we met a Mrs. Harrison from Shillong, an English lady, in whose arms Miss Bronson, battling with cholera, had died in 1875, o^i board a river steamer. How near to our hearts the personnel oi the Assam Mission, past and present, brings us ! It seems like part of our own parish, and such it is. If on the day that we rode up from the landing to the Burdette mission-house, there had been no old and dear friends waiting on the veranda to greet us, as there were, the cordial welcome of the native church, expressed in the decorated roadway of the mission, hung with banners of welcome, with flowers and even lamps for an evening illumination, would have made us feel instantly " at home." Much work was bestowed by the early missionaries in Assam, as Bronson, Barker, Tolman, Scott and others, upon the plains people, who dwell upon both banks of the river along the whole district from Dhubri to Sibsagor. Here dwell the Assamese proper. They are semi-Hinduized, and less susceptible to the gospel than the hills people. The apparent fruits of the valley have been rather disappointing on the whole. Much, however, must be attributed to the frequent failure in health of the laborers, or their death, and to the lamentable lack of men to take the places of the fallen. There has not been preserved such a continuity of work as to bring to large XOWGUNG MISSION-HOUSE. 146 III Bj-ightest Asia. fruition the labors bestowed. As a consequence, it is not strange that native churches, often left for years together without proper oversight and instruction, should wane and ahnost die out. While the husbandmen have slept, the enemy has sown tares, and there have been sad defections in such churches as those at Gauhati and Nowgong, where we once had strong bases of operation. The later missionaries have had trying and painful duties in disciplining the wayward and purg- ing out the leaven of evil. These same brethren, however, have had encouragements in their work, particularly as they have worked outward in surrounding villages. Among these millions of people who throng the lowlands, there are no representatives of the gospel except ourselves ; and there can be no question but a real and continuous and forceful occupancy of the river towns and adjacent districts would in the end prove very fruitful. We cannot without great infidelity abandon the work undertaken. Besides, if we should give up the plains, we cut away our base of supplies for the highly promising work of the hills, and invite Romanists and ritualists to come and build on the old foundations we have painfully laid. Our interview with Air. and Mrs. Clark, who came down from Alolung to meet us, opened up to us the various peoples of the Naga race, and the fine promise which these people, bordering on the northwest of Burma, atTord to gospel effort. Among these hill peoples, doubtless also allied to the Karens, we count four great tribes of Nagas, the Mishmis and Singphos, all allied to the Kachins. These peoples are all accessible, and they have repeatedly sent delegations to our missionaries requesting teachers. If the Union were able to send several new families to enter in among these hopeful, hungering people, there can be no doubt that a work, in every element the counterpart of our Burman work among the Karens, could soon be developed. We are entering in among the Kachins, assisted by the Karens from Bhamo. Could we now also begin work from these adjacent tril)es behind the Kachins, working back from the ISrahmapootra on the one side, and from the Irrawaddy on the other, we might fairly join the work in Assam and Burma, thus strengthening both. ^ /ne//iest Asia. the valuable mission property lately offered to our board by the English Baptists. The general feeling is that this action will prove a wise thing for them, and in every way advantageous to our work, especially in the matter of raising up from among the East Indians or Eurasians, workers and assistants for our missionaries. What I have observed on all hands in India has impressed me with the immense importance of utilizing this Eurasian element among the Indian people for our own sakes, if we would mani- fold our local hold on communities, and for their sakes also, and for the sake of the native populations whose language they speak, and to whom they are our best interpreters. These Eurasians are readily Christianized. They are permanently identified with Indian life and well-being, fully acclimated, and habituated to life among Asiatics. They are a valuable go-between, as touching both Eastern and Western nations. Besides, more than likely, this is providentially their divine mission. Bishop Thoburn is giving primary and chief attention to these people as an ultimate means of reaching the heathen. The Methodists are both evangelizing and educating the Eurasians. C^oi7fer(^Qe(? at jv/ellore. From Wadi we proceeded directly to Nellore, where it was arranged that a con- ference of all the coast missionaries should assemble. Nearly all were present, a score or more, and for two days we had delightful intercourse. Veterans in the work, — as Clough, Downie and Boggs, — returned work- JULIA. ers, — as Drake, Manley and Thomssen,— several sisters, and new recruits, — as Hadley, Heinrichs and others, — were there. Records of past achievements and anticipations for the future were dwelt upon. Great concern filled the minds of all as to how existing and prospective vacancies are to be filled. Brethren fainting from long strain, and compelled soon to go home for rccui,".;ration, with the added pain of leaving their stations to vacancy or to eager proselyters, constrained our deep- est sympathy. On the Tel HOT II Field. L-)D The native church which assembled to greet us, and hear our message, filled us with great interest. Preachers, students and Bible-women, trophies of Christ's gospel, won our hearts. Characters like old Lydia, and Julia, — that modern prophetess, — and her husband, Kanakiah, filled us with thankful wonder. The industrial school, under Dr. Downie's fostering care, com- manded our admiration. The seasons of united prayer we had together, were perhaps the most blest hours of all. I^amapatam. From Nellore we proceeded, in company with Dr. and Mrs. Boggs and Miss Dr. Cummings, to Ramapatam. That was a unique ride, in a veritable j?^«//-;;/(Z« car. In Dr. Downie's rocka- way wagon we were wheeled by eight coolies over the forty-five miles in about ten hours. We changed coolies every ten miles. Our stay at Ramapatam was brief but pleasing. We found the seminary a real beehive of activity. A choicer, sweeter-spirited man than Dr. Boggs we could not have at the head of that BROWNSON SEM1XAE?V, RAMAP.-VT.AM. school. Now, after being long overworked, he is happily reinforced by his son. The native teachers impressed us as choice men. We looked with .satisfaction into the kind of teaching, biblical and other, that is being done. We addressed the 125 students assembled in the chapel of Brownson Hall on " Truth Experienced the Preacher's Power." It was all through an inter- ir6 In Brightest Asia. preter, of course ; but never had we more eager hearing nor more sympathetic response. Evi- dently these men " know " God and " the things which are freely given unto us of God." The after-speeches of the teachers " Daniel," "John " and " Samuel " gave us added assurance of soundness, both of head and heart, as well as their real apprehension of the message we brought to them. O^c^ole. Another ride, partly by night in our coolie carriage, and we drew up in the early morning before the mission-house of Dr. Clough, at Ongole. The missionary met us at the door with a lantern, and ushered us to our chamber for a little rest. )>.(.l»l.l<, Hldll bLIH(l)l„ In the morning we were soon ready for the round of the half-dozen or more schools of which the mission is so justly proud. The various " palam " or hamlet primaries; the intermediates; the wondrously engaging caste-girls' schools, filled with the petite bejewelled little ladies from high-rank families of the town ; and above all the high school — to our surprise quite a college — were visited one bv one. On the Telugu Field. 157 We were not, however, prepared for such recep- tions as we had; for wreaths of marigold to be hung about our necks by the children ; for spray baths of rose water showered over us ; and for other earnests of Indian welcome. The kindergarten work, the lovely plays of the caste girls, would have delighted Froebel himself. At the high school, with its enthusiastic head master and its 200 boys, a prepared address was read and presented to us. When we began to respond, and turned about for our interpreter, we were told that we would be understood quite well in English. This was a wonder. We proceeded for twenty minutes, and point after point was responded to with cheers. This gave us a new token, not only that the Anglo-Saxon tongue is conquering all other tongues, but also that the East Indian student is as fully alive as his Western brothers. These boys and hosts of others, including Brahmin gentlemen of the town, petition that this school be made a college. Can we prevent it ? Dare we turn these inquisitiv youths of India over to non-Christian schools ? Here is a question for the wisdom of the and may the Most High help us I CLOUGH. e, alert wisest. iQteruleu/ vuitJ^ Bra}7/nii75. During our visit to Ongole, we were one evening interviewed by a company of about a dozen Hindu gentlemen of the town, including several Brahmins and others of high-caste distinction. Some of these men were high officials of government, one of them being a district munsitf, or judge, another a sub-registrar, etc. Their object in obtaining the interview was threefold; viz., to express their welcome to an official of the American Baptist Mis- sionary Union ; to commend to him, in the strongest terms, the work wrought by our devoted missionaries in their land, and to petition that the \-aluable educational work instituted by our mission be further prosecuted, and that especially the high school at Ongole be raised to the status of a second-grade college. A movement had been instituted in the town, on the part of certain of the straitest sect of the Hindus, to maintain a sort of rival school, conducted on Hindu principles and at private expense. In the meeting above referred to, this whole matter was discussed in the presence of Dr. Clough and other missionaries. All united in the strongest commendation of our mission school work. The MR. RUNGANADA:\1 I'lLLAl 15S In Brightest Asia. strictest Hindus even, in the event of maintaining their own school in the town, avowed the desire that it should be a feeder to our high school, especially if it should be made a college.* One of these gentlemen, Mr. Runganadam Filial, was opposed to the Hindu school altogether, and in terms of great boldness and rare eloquence pleaded for concentration on the mission high school. In the course of his argument, he urged that the work of the mission school, under the control of the missionaries, is the only force which goes to the root of the evils which inhere in Hinduized society. " Leave the work of education entirely in the hands of Dr. Clough, who has done so much for a town like Ongole, and who has thrown his heart and soul together for educat- ing our children and for our well being." The address, delivered in excellent English, came with such hot fervency, with such bold energy, in the very face of his Brahmin brethren, and with such surprise withal, that I afterwards requested the gentleman to write out his address for me. This he did, and sent it by the hand of Dr. Clough, remarking in the note which accompanied the speech, " There is some readable matter here which our American brethren must see." I^eli($iou5 D(^<5er7eratior7 \V) Ir^dia. Referring to the address of one of his Brahmin friends, which had preceded his, in which claim was made that the ancient Aryan ancestors of the Brahmins worshipped also one true God as the missionaries do, Mr. Runganadam proceeded to trace the historical degeneration of the Indian peoples from the early Aryan times, period by period through the Vedic period, the Puranic, through the periods when Kapila and Buddha, with their agnostic theories arose, through the period when the worship of idols, fetichism, and the caste system came in. His summation ran thus : — "In the first age, the Hindu mind recognized God and the equality of men ; in the second, it doubted God, and introduced the caste system ; in the third, it denied the government of God, and admitted the equality of men ; in the fourth, it firmly established idol-worship and caste dis- tinctions. Thus stage by stage, the great fundamental doctrines of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man were stamped out from our minds. The pernicious caste system sur- rounds us on all sides from the day of our birth to the day of our death. It has bound our hand and foot together. We are under its yoke, and are now the willing slaves of this monster tyrant and intolerant taskmaster. It has sown the seeds of disunion and discord among us, made all honest manual labor contemptible in our sight, shut out all internal and external commerce, brought on physical degeneracy, and destroyed the germs of individuality and independence of character." " It has first enslaved us by the most abject spiritual tyranny, and then prepared us to take the yoke of foreign slavery. It has made the various classes of people to look upon each other with contempt. They appear more as enemies than as friends in their social relations. "The condition of women among us is wretched in the extreme. y\n infant girl is married at ten, and at twelve or thirteen often becomes a mother — most revolting, indeed, to the sense * This Hindu school has since been abandoned. On the Teliigu Field. ^59 of a rational being — and the cliild motlier often Ijecomes a grandmotlier at tlie age of tliirtv. Children born of such parents are extremely weak and puny creatures, often crawling on all fours, and soon find an early grave. If they live, they prove effeminate, feeble in body and mind. If an infant girl loses her husband, she becomes a widow, and is doomed to be a moving grave throughout her whole existence, because our cruel customs cannot allow her to re-marry." iQdiai) I^efor/T\5 putile. " We are considering reforms. Some think that reform must proceed from within, while others hold that it must come from without. But show me one instance where we ourselves, unaided by the missionaries, have produced such changes as I plead for, in the amelioration of the condition of the masses, who are the backbone of the country. The Indian reformer merely, struggles hard and in vain. He has not yet succeeded in his attempts to any appreciable degree. He is, rather, baffled on all sides. I do not think I would wound the feeling of my friends here (Brahmins) if I say we cannot, unaided, accomplish the results needed. We may honestly endeavor, but the very structure of our social fabric does not permit us to succeed. The work must be placed in the hands of more earnest and able men than ourselves. We have not the force of character nor the moral courage to do what is needed for the common good, for the improvement of a common society. Times, however, are changing, and we see the signs of life reviving. We must, therefore, try to acquire those virtues which we are said to lack, and to free ourselves from the faults with which we are justly charged. These lessons we must still learn, I think, from our English and American brethren ; and till we learn them we must put our children under their care and management." " For these reasons, I think there is no necessity for another high school to rival the mission school, and the work may be handed over to Dr. Clough, who will continue to do as he does now, impart both secular and spiritual education to our children with all parental care, and teach them also a sense of duty and strength for duty." S(?5timor7y to /I\issioQari(^s. " Who are these missionaries, and what have they already done for us.^ When as a people, as the result of the deteriorating process I described a few moments ago, we were fast sinking beneath the weight of ignorance and of the priestly and IMoham- medan tyranny, England came to the rescue, like a godsend to give her helping hand. The Englishman, indeed, came here at dr. lyman jewett. first as a mere merchant. He made money, and went back to his native country to enrich it. He came again as often as he liked, finally fought for our countrv, and won it. i6o In Brio-htest Asia. " But in the case of a missionary who came in the walce of his brother merchant, what do we find? Did he come to make money, hoard it up, and take it back to the land of his birth, like the merchant? Had he any permanent interest in the land of his sojourn? He had neither the one nor the other. He was separated from his kith and kin, and sailed from the land of freedom to the land of slaves. He had neither relative nor friend in this strange land, except his Bible in his pocket. He planted a small church in a foreign land, preached the gospel to an alien nation, and was subject to the laws of Oriental government. He worked under many disadvantages, identified himself with strange people, and never saw his lovely home or the sweet faces of his f.m-iily or friends left behind. He often got the tropical fever without any- TELUGU MISSIONARIES. body to attend upon him. He was weary and tired ; had at times nothing to eat, and did not know where to lay his head in the evening after a hard day of labor. He became the friend of the poor, and the poor received him kindly. He was often beaten, stoned, annoyed or insulted in the course of his work, but he meekly bore all these hardships because he knew that ' the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.' " Why did he tlius toil in a tropical clime, and die at last in a strange land ' unwept, unhon- ored, and unsung' ? Reasons for such self-sacrifice are not far to seek. Was it not for the sake of humanity? for the sake of truth? He saw face to face the deplorable condition of the people without a God and without a common society, and he therefore made himself a self-sacrifice to the righteous cause.*' 0)i the Telugn Field. l6l " Instances of such missionary devotion are not wanting in our country. Turn and see where Schwartz, Flaxman, Carey and St. Francis Xavier, and a host of others lie buried. They were the pioneers of our new civilization, before government schools and colleges were opened. It is this small band of devout missionaries that have implanted the fair tree of freedom in our soil, nourished it, fostered it with all tender care, and brought it to its present condition. It is not yet in full bearing. It is they that have diffused education, and made the gentle stream of Western civilization and culture flow at our very doors." 51?e UpliftiQc^ of Outcasts. " The missionary has already done much, and the remarkable thing is that his best achieve- ments have been wrought among that class of people whom we have been taught most to despise. These are the pariahs of society. — either agriculturists or agricultural laborers, — the low-caste man in India, physically strong, but morally coward, because so long subject to social and spirit- ual tyranny and degeneracy. "It is from this low-caste people that the present Christian population of Ongole is mainly recruited. It musters strong here ; it is increasing by rapid strides, and it is likely to submerge beneath it the other classes at no distant day, if these Christian masses are only educated. The Christians are now taught to read and write, though this had been denied to them before, and to learn the sense of duty and a strength for duty. Their posterity is also increasing proportionately as they themselves are on the increase. "In connection with this movement, we may now see in the same mission school and in the same class-room the boys of the low caste and the no caste sitting side by side on the same bench with the caste Hindu boys. They touch each other, and exchange views, thoughts and senti- ments with each other, and there grows up a mutual respect. Is not this a great change, and does it not promise a bright future for our sons? Is not this an honest and successful endeavor to bring together various broken-up societies, and agglutinate them into one homogeneous mass? " To complete this success, we must unite with the kind missionary who stands as a medium between the higher and lower classes of people. Moreover, the sort of education afforded by the mission school, especially if they shall go on to exalt its grade, will render more skilful the mis- sion's catechists and preachers, enable them better to understand the nobler truths in the Bible, and to meet the arguments of the educated Hindus who yet resist." At the close of the evening on which the above address, with several others, was given, these same Brahmin gentlemen invited me to preach to them on the following evening (Sunday). This I did, and was listened to with an attention and enthusiasm that surprised me. Moreover, these very gentlemen sat serenely amid low-caste peoples and others of the town who came in to give me audience, as if they had no thought of caste scruples. On the Monday morning before I left, two of these same Brahmins came to see me privately, showing evidence of real conviction for sin. Not only did they permit me to pray for them, but they each prayed for themselves in the name of Jesus Christ. 162 In Brightest Asia. [Later, when Dr. Clough came to leave India to come to America, these high-caste gentlemen of Ongole gathered to a farewell meeting given in his honor ; and among other things said by them in their addresses was this, spoken by Mr. Dhara Markundayula Sastry (a Brahmin and private banker) : "According to the Shastras, I should not have stirred out of my house to-day, as there was a ceremony to be performed by me this day ; but whatever the Shastras may require, they could not prevent my being present to do honor to Dr. Clough, who has done so much for our people and country." On this occasion a prepared address, engrossed on parchment, was read to the missionary, and afterwards was sent to him in this country, encased in an elegant silver casket.] RAPTISTERV AT ONGOLE. The Sabbath at Ongole was a high day. The chapel was thronged at 9 o'clock in the morn- ing with 666 Sunday-school scholars. Eighteen hundred texts of Scripture were recited. It was as orderly as Deacon Chipman's old school at Tremont Temple, or as Brother Jacobs' in Chicago. At 1 1 o'clock Dr. Clough preached to the throngs which now filled all the outside verandas, as well as the chapel. At 2 o'clock candidates presented themselves for bai)tism, and ninety-seven were received. These Brother W. and I baptized, just before sunset, in that historic pool under the tamarind tree in Dr. Clough's garden, wliere not less than 10,000 souls have been buried and raised again with their Lord. The " Lone Star" has become a galaxy. It was an e.xalted privi- lege to have a little part in this renowned and aijostolic work. On the Tcliign Field. 163 Off to ds. ■ lyr March 6. We came on thus far last night, thirty miles towards Jaffa, preparatory to sailing to-day ; so I finish from here, speaking only of the ride hither. Going up to Jerusalem a week ago, we rode the entire distance in the rain. Still, the road was interesting, although under such conditions. Returning we came under the full o-low of an afternoon sun ; and the beauty of even the barren hill tops, to say nothing of the green, crreen valleys, vocal with the murmur of mountain brooks, was exquisite. Leaving the Holy City from the Jaffa gate, on the high northwest side, we were 2,500 feet above the sea. Passing out on the magnificent mountain carriage road, now completed, we first see a much loftier mountain away northward, — Neby Samuel, where the prophet was entonibed. A little farther down, we come to Mephtoah — a village named in the Book of Joshua, markino- the border line between Judah and Benjamin. An hour more, and we pass Emmaus, lyinf ruined on the right-hand slope. A little later, and we enter the reputed vale of Elah, and cross the brook from which David took the stones with which to slay Goliath. The vale lies between two lofty mountains, on the sides of which, possibly, the two armies were encamped. Later, we pass the ancient house of Obed Edom, and in a few minutes more Kirjath Jearim, from whence the ark was taken to Jerusalem. Considerable Syrian villages, built of rich yellow well-hewn limestone, are on all these spots. Trains of camels entering or emerging from all these villages meet us on the road, loaded with olive oil, vegetables, charcoal and what not. Two hours more down, down, the steep, windino- and picturesque descent, increasingly beautiful with flowers, as we approach the broad plain of Sharon, and we spy southward, through an opening in the hills, the ancient fortified stronghold of the Maccabees. An hour more, and the town of John the Baptist's birth ^^?), now modernized, with French schools, etc., and ever beautiful, appears. Farther down, we get a peep into the valley of Ajalon ; and yonder, northward, between two mountain horns, we spy the pass of Beth-Horon, where Joshua took his stand in perhaps the most decisive battle in human history. Take that victory out, and there would have been no history of the Jews. Now we are upon the great plain, — one vast wheat-field ; and yet northward again those bald elevations, that seem loth to part with us, mark the camping-place of Richard Cceur de Lion, on his crusade to gain the Holy Sepulchre. Oh ! there is here a romance, nay, a divinity of charm, that holds you with a spell from the moment when, approaching from the sea, you sight the mount on which Jaffa lies, till you leave the land. A grand climax it has made of my delightful round, and confirms the conviction, strong in me before, that the work of giving the gospel, which was here incarnated, to all the nations, is the very lowest aim that a redeemed mortal should set before him. There is something grander than a crusade to regain the sepulchre even of our Lord; viz., a systematic effort to proclaim among all peoples the risen power of Him who emptied that sepulchre, both for himself and for those who in all lands believe on His name. This, this is the true crus.a.de! MISSIONARY BOOKS. FOR EVERY HOME AND S. S. LIBRARY. PAGODA SHADOWS; or, Studies from Life in China. By Adele INI. Fields of Svvatow, China. With introduction by Joseph Cook. 1 6 new ilhistratlons. Cloth, i3mo., on fine paper. Price, postpaid, i|)i.oo. In her presentation of Chinese character, Hfe and customs, Miss Fickle has struck out a new and successful path. From her intimate acquaintance with the Chinese, and especially by allow- ing the people so largely to speak for themselves, she has presented Chinese life in a vivid and impressive manner, which would not have otherwise been possible. OUR GOLD MINE. Sixth edition. By Mrs. Ada C. Chaplin. An illustrated story of our missions in India and Burma. Price, postpaid, $1.25. Many are inquiring how they may gain some reliable information, in a condensed form, con- cerning the early history of our mission work, its progress and results up to the present time. This book tells who our missionaries were and are, when they were sent out, the fields occupied, the obstacles overcome, and the results reached. To any who have not had an opportunity to inform themselves, this book is just what they need. MISSIONARY SKETCHES. By Dr. S. F. Smith, formerly editor of the Magazine; author of "America," etc. Brought vip to date l^y Rev. E. F. Merriam. Sixth edition. Price, postpaid, $1.25. It is invaluable to those who wish to prepare matter for the missionary concerts and the mission circles in our churches. There is no book that can fill the place of Dr. Smith's " Missionary Sketches." The name of the author is a sufficient guaranty for its historical accuracy. FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT. By Rev. J. E. Clougii of Ongole, India. Illustrated. Price, postpaid, $1.35. Though as intensely interesting and fascinating as a romance, this is a strictly true story, and contains descriptions of birth and wedding ceremonies, festivals to the gods, and many customs peculiar to the Telugus, never before published, thus fully supplying the want so often expressed for a more extended knowledge of this wonderful people. MY CHILD-LIFE IN BURMA. By Miss O. Jennie Bixby. Price, postpaid, 60 cents. W. G. CORTHELL, Mission I^ooms, Tremont Temple, BOSTON, MASS. THE HELPING HAND is published monthly by the Woman's Baptist Foreign Missionary Society, and furnishes every month the latest facts of interest — their work, and that of the Society of the West, at home and abroad. Single subscriptions per year, thirty-five cents, postage prepaid. In packages of four or more, to the address of otie person^ twenty-five cents each j^er year. The Helping Hand and The King's Messengers, to one address, forty cents. Send all subscriptions and money to W. G. Corthell, Missionary Rooms, Tremont Temple, Boston, Mass. THE KING'S MESSENGERS To Heathen Lands is published monthly by the Woman's Baptist Foreign Missionary Society. It is illustrated and designed especially for young people and Sunday schools. Terms : One copy for one year, twenty-five cents. Two to twenty-five copies, to the address of one person^ each, per year, fifteen cents ; twenty-five or more, twelve and a half cents each. vSend all siibscriptiotts and tnonev to W. G. Corthell, Mission Rooms, Tre- mont Temple, Boston, jSIass. THE BAPTIST MISSIONARY MAGAZINE, published exclusively in the interest of the American Baptist INIissionary Union, is the oldest Baptist periodical in America. It contains the latest intelligence from the foreign mission-fields, together with editorials, and articles discussing questions relating to the enterprise of missions. Terms (postage prepaid) : One dollar per annum. Ten copies and upwards, to one address, eighty cents per copy. The Magazine and Helping Hand, to one address, one dollar and fifteen cents ; Magazine, Helping Hand, and King's Messengers, to one address, one dollar and thirty cents. THE KINGDOM is published monthly by the Executive Committee, by order of the Board of Mana- gers of the American Baptist Missionary Union. Its aim is to give, in a condensed form, a summary of the missionary news of each month. Terms : Single copies, ten cents a year. Clubs of twenty and more, to the address of one person^ five cents a copy per annum. Address "The Kingdom," Missionary Rooms, Tremont Temple, Boston, Mass. The Baptist Missionary Magazine. The Only Organ of tlie American Baptist Missionary Union. NOTICE CAREFULLY THE SIX DEPARTMENTS. 1. EDITORIAL. — In this department will be found items of special importance relating to the work of the Missionary Union, brief comments on current events in missions, and also articles on matters of general missionary interest. 2. GENERAL ARTICLES. — These will be chiefly original, contributed largely by our mission- aries on the various fields, and by our ablest writers at home; but in order to give a wide survey of missionary principles and work, judicious selections will be made from other publications, on topics not fully covered by the contributions to the Macjazine. 3. MISSIONARY CORRESPONDENCE will contain letters from our missionaries on the various fields, giving such views of their work and experiences as will be interesting and important to those who stay at home to " hold the ropes." 4. MISSIONARY OUTLOOK consists of short selections upon import-ant points relating to missionary work everywhere, and the progress of Christianity throughout the world. 5. MISSIONARY NEWS gives, under appropriate geographical heads, the most important and freshest items of missionary intelligence from all missionary lands, gathered from a careful reading of a wide range of missionary periodicals. 6. DONATIONS. — In this department the donations and legacies to the Missionary Union are acknowledged in detail fur each month in the year. TERMS.— Single Subscriptions, $1.00 per year. Ten copies or upwards, or clubs ecjual to 5 per cent of the church membership, 80 cents each. Clubs equal to 10 per cent of the church membership, 70 cents each. Copies sent to each individual address if desired. TilR JULY NUMBER of the Magazine contains the Proceedings of the Annual Meetings and the Annual Report of the Union in full. All who are interested in our foreign missions, and want to keep informed in regard to t/iem, should take the Magazine. Rev. J. N. Murdock, D. D., \ p^^^^^^ Rev. E. F. Merkiam, \ Address BAPTIST MISSIONARY MAGAZINE, TREMONT TEMPLE, BOSTON. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY This book is DUE on the last date stamped below Form L-!> 2-.i;i-lli,Ml(2)»l) UWiVEKi^ii 1 oim LOS ANGELES T.mRARV 507 Mabie - Mlli — iri brightest 1893 ^ia. 3 1158 01049 DS 507 Mlli 1893 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBR; ^, %. %).''; AA 001 125 34J <4y^ ¥/^ '% ^^^