Part 12

There was an amusing circumstance connected with an eclipse of the moon while we were there. Since the conversion of Nān Inta, I had taken pains to announce each eclipse as it was to occur. I did so in Prê the day before it was due. The eclipse took place early in the night, and I expected to hear the city resound with the noise of every gun and firecracker in the place. But everything was as quiet as a funeral. It seemed to be regarded as _our_ eclipse. The silence may have been intended to test our assertion that Rāhū would renounce his hold without the noise, or possibly they were unwilling to proclaim thus publicly the superior wisdom of the foreigner in predicting it. At any rate, they utterly ignored it, and let the monster have his will unmolested.

My associate had gained all that could have been expected from the tour; but an aching tooth was giving him great trouble, and we hurried on. We reached home on June 22d, just sixty-eight days out. We found neither family in very good health. The doctor’s toothache drove him to such desperation that he insisted on my trying—all unpractised as I was—to extract the offending eyetooth. It broke. There was then nothing to do but to make the trip to Bangkok for the nearest professional help. By the time he returned, it began to be evident that he could not hope to remain long in the field.

Between Bangkok, Pechaburī, and Chiengmai, I had been fifteen years in the field; and my wife had been in the country from girlhood without change. We had both endured it remarkably well, considering that we had had the strain of starting two new stations. Before the end of the year, however, my wife had reached the limit of her strength, and it became necessary to hurry her out of the country. So, on the 3d of January, 1873, she was carried in a chair to the boat, and we embarked for the United States.

XIV

THE FIRST FURLOUGH

The tour of the previous season had been so hasty and unsatisfactory, that I was very anxious, if possible, to duplicate the homeward stretch of it as far as Nān, then descend the Pitsanulōk Fork to the Mênam, and so follow my family to Bangkok. But would it be safe to leave my wife to make the river trip without me, when she was in such weak condition, and burdened with the care of four children, the youngest of whom was but two years old? I embarked and travelled with them as far as the landing for Lampūn—where we must separate, if I were to cross over to Nān—still uncertain as to what I ought to do. It was then Friday. We decided to stop there over Sunday, and see how matters looked on Monday morning. The quiet and rest of the boat were improving her condition somewhat; and her own bravery made up whatever was lacking there. I had secured a strong letter from the Prince, calling for the best of steersmen through the rapids, and for protection where the boat should stop for the night. So, with some anxiety, but with strong faith that the plan in itself so desirable would prosper, we separated—one party going by boat down the Mê Ping, and the other going afoot across country to Lampūn. For the present we leave the wife and children, to hear their report when we meet again.

My plan was to rely on getting elephants from point to point. Elephants are always very hard to get; so it seemed doubtful whether my confidence were faith or presumption. But I was remarkably favoured. At Lampūn there was not an elephant nearer than the forests, save two of the governor’s own. I had trusted to his friendship, and it did not fail me. I got off in fine style next morning on the governor’s two elephants, with a letter to all the governors on the route directing them to see that I was supplied with whatever I needed on the journey.

I felt strong in having with me, in the person of Nān Inta, so wise a teacher and such a living witness of the power of the Gospel. On our first visits it has usually seemed wise to spend much of the time in visiting and making known the Gospel privately to those of reputation, as we know one wise missionary did in old times. It is necessary to give the rulers a clear idea of the non-political nature of our work. In order to do this, we must show positively what our message is—not merely that we are religious teachers, but that, as such, we have a message different from all others, not antagonistic or hostile to them, but supplementing rather that which they offer.

In visiting among the princely families in the old city of Lakawn we met one most interesting case. It was that of an aged bedridden Princess high in rank, who received the Gospel with all readiness of mind. By nature, habit, and grace she had been very religious. She had in her day built temples and rest-houses, had feasted Buddhist monks, and had fasted times without number, in order to lay up a store of merit for the great future. She hoped sometimes that she had laid up a sufficient store; but the five and the eight commands were against her. She had killed animals; and the command is explicit, and condemns without a saviour. That the Creator of all had made these creatures for our use and benefit was a new idea. That of itself would remove much of the burden on her conscience. And as one after another of the great truths of revelation was opened up to her, particularly the doctrine of the incarnation and atonement of our divine-human Redeemer, it seemed as if the burden was lifted. Nān Inta was himself a living testimony that the Christian teaching can and does give instantaneous relief when simply believed. It is difficult to tell which was more touching, the sympathetic earnestness of the speaker, or the comfort it imparted to the hearer. The Princess begged us to come again and often. And neither of us found any other place so attractive.

After a week spent in Lakawn, we departed on our way to Nān. The next Sunday we spent in the forest. I look back with delightful memories to the occasional Sabbaths thus spent in the deep forest after a busy week with no rest and no privacy—a Sabbath in solitude, away from every noise, and even every song except the music of the wind and the song of birds! We always had service with our men; and then, under the shade of some cool spreading tree, or beside a flowing brook, one could be alone and yet not alone. No one more needs such retirement than a missionary, whose work is always a giving-out, with fewer external aids for resupply than others have.

The next Sunday we spent in Wieng Sā, the first of the numerous little outlying towns of Nān. On Monday we reached Nān itself, the limit of our tour in that direction. The country was well governed, the princes intelligent, and the common people friendly. But the special attraction that Nān had for me largely centred around one man, the Prince’s nephew, Chao Borirak—the one that rode astride the young elephant to see us safe to Prê on our earlier trip, with whom we used to talk religion about the camp-fires till the small hours of the morning. We left him then apparently on the border land of Christianity, with strong hope that he soon would be ready to profess publicly the faith which he was almost ready to confess to us. His rank and connection would make him of great assistance in opening a station in Nān, which, next to Chiengmai, was the most important province in the Lāo region. Again he offered us a warm welcome, giving up his time to visiting with us the rulers and the monasteries, in one of which his son had long been an abbot. It seemed as if Nān Inta’s experience would be all that was needed to settle his faith. At his request I asked and received permission from the Prince for him again to accompany us—with his young elephant foal and her mother—five days’ journey to Tā It, where I was to take boat. Our walks by day and our talks by night are never to be forgotten. But the convenient season to make a public profession never came. He lived in hope of seeing a station in Nān, but died not long before the station was established.

At Tā It no boat was to be had either for sale or for hire. But my face was turned toward home, and I would have gone on a raft. I had to do the next thing—to take a small dug-out which the Prince got for me, and go on to Utaradit, the next town below. There I was able to purchase a boat, which I afterwards sold in Bangkok for what it cost me. Nān Inta was the steersman, and my four men rowed. Our longest stop was at Pitsanulōk, where the Siamese mission now has a station. On reaching Bangkok I was delighted to find that my family had made their long trip down the other river in safety, though not without great anxiety, and some threatened danger. Our oldest daughter had been quite ill on the way. Once they came perilously near falling a prey to a band of robbers. It was only by a clever ruse of the captain that they escaped. As soon as he caught sight of the suspicious-looking group of men on a sand-bar ahead, he had the gong loudly sounded. That and the waving American flag evidently made them think that this was the leading boat of some prince’s flotilla. They incontinently fled into the forest. At the next stopping-place our boatmen learned that it was, indeed, a marauding band that had committed many depredations on passing boats. What a merciful preservation!

We spent a few weeks in Bangkok, resting and visiting in the home of my father-in-law, Dr. Bradley, of sainted memory. It proved to be the last time that we ever saw him. He lived only a few months after that.

In fifteen years the world had moved. Going round “the Cape,” even in a good clipper ship like the _David Brown_, had become too slow. We took, instead, the steamship _Patroclus_ from Singapore to London, via the Suez Canal. The Rev. Mr. Keyesberry, a missionary friend of Dr. Bradley’s, had been waiting to find an escort to England for two young sons and a daughter. We gladly undertook that service, and so had a flock of seven young folks to look after!

We were barely under way when our own children broke out with the measles. The disease, fortunately, proved to be of a mild type, and our new charges were not hard to manage. So, on the whole, we got along very well. In London we had unexpected trouble because the friend who was to meet Alice Keyesberry at the dock failed to appear, and, strangely enough, we had received no memorandum of her destination. It cost us two days’ search to discover her friends at the Walthamstow Mission School.

The boys I had promised to convoy as far as Edinburgh. So, leaving my family in London, I had the great pleasure of a visit to the beautiful Scotch capital. The day spent there was to me a memorable one. It was, however, a matter of great regret that, being so near the Highlands, I could not also visit the original home of my ancestors.

We arrived in New York on July 11th, 1873, after an absence of fifteen years. Under any circumstances fifteen years would work great changes. But that particular fifteen had included the Civil War. The changes in the South were heart-rending.

Though North Carolina was drawn late into the Confederacy, it is said that she furnished a larger number per capita of soldiers and had a larger number of casualties than any other state in the South. The havoc among my old schoolmates and pupils, and among my flock, was distressing. In many places, too, the sectional feeling was still bitter. The wisest of the people, however, were becoming fully reconciled to the results of the war. The largest slaveholder in my own section assured me that the freeing of his slaves had been a boon to him, and that he was clearing more from his old farm under free labour than he had done before with slaves.

Unfortunately in the churches the feeling was more bitter. My old associate, Dr. Mattoon, had accepted the presidency of Biddle Institute at Charlotte—now Biddle University (colored). For a time he was very coldly received except by such broad-minded men as his old Princeton classmate, and my friend, Dr. Charles Phillips. By virtue, however, of his noble Christian character and his conservative bearing, Dr. Mattoon overcame these prejudices, and lived to be welcomed in the largest churches in the state. I spent most of my furlough in North Carolina; and personally I received a welcome almost as warm as if I were a missionary of the Southern Board. Returned missionaries were not numerous then. It was not an uncommon thing for me to lecture in churches which had never before seen the face of a foreign missionary.

Soon after our arrival in the United States news came of the resignation of Dr. Vrooman; and my first duty was to find a successor. For myself, and even for my family, I could endure to return without one. But I could not face the distressing appeals from the sick whose ailments I was powerless to relieve. In my visits among friends in North Carolina I met a young medical graduate, Dr. M. A. Cheek, who received from warm friends of the mission flattering recommendations for the place. He himself was pleased with the opening, and would willingly accept it, if he could first take a graduate course in surgery. This was easily arranged, and he was ready to return with us the following summer.

The hardest thing to face was the parting with our children. But the bitterness of this pang was softened by the kindness of friends which opened the best of Christian homes and schools to receive them. We can never sufficiently express our gratitude for the kindness shown us in this matter by the late Mrs. E. N. Grant and Miss Mitchell of the Statesville Female College, and to Mrs. McNeill, the widow of my old pastor.

These two great questions settled, we left North Carolina in March, 1874—my wife with the two younger children, to visit friends and relatives in the North; and I, as I hoped, to visit the churches and the seminaries in search of recruits. But a cold contracted on the trip north ran into a dangerous attack of pleuro-pneumonia, followed by a slow recovery. Thus I missed my visits to the seminaries and the meeting of the General Assembly in St. Louis.

The return to the field was by way of San Francisco, and we reached Bangkok on August 27th, 1874. On November 14th a son was given us to take the place of the children left behind. In December began our river journey to Chiengmai. The river was low, and we were a month and a day from Bangkok to Rahêng. There we found four missionaries of the Nova Scotia Baptist Board seeking to establish a station among the Karens of Siam. But they found their villages too small and too widely scattered to justify the establishment of a station. So they were returning to Burma. On Saturday night we all dined together, and had a sociable hour. On Sunday evening we drew up our boats side by side, and had a prayer-meeting that we shall long remember. There was something delightful in thus meeting and enjoying Christian fellowship on a sand-bar, and then passing on to our respective fields of work. Some of these men afterwards went to India, and started the Telegu mission, which has had phenomenal success.

There were still the rapids and four more weeks of travel before we could reach our Lāo home. But the home-coming at last was delightful. Our faithful old coolie, Lung In, with his wife, met us in a small boat three days’ journey below Chiengmai, with fruit and fowls lest we should be in want. Then the tall figure of Nān Inta, with his face like a benediction!

It was February 7th, 1875, when at last we drew up alongside our own landing-place, and felt the warm handshake of old friends. Among the Lāo at last!—and no place that we had seen would we exchange for our Lāo home. For the first time since our arrival in 1867 we had a permanent house to enter!

XV

MÛANG KÊN AND CHIENG DĀO

Dr. Cheek’s arrival was a matter of great rejoicing. He was very young—only twenty-one, in fact, on the day he sailed from San Francisco. The trying drudgery that he and others of our early medical missionaries had to endure, is now in great measure obviated through the help of native assistants. The remainder of the year 1875 I devoted very largely to assisting in the medical work, interpreting, helping in operations, and caring for the souls of the numerous patients, without feeling the weight of responsibility for their physical condition, as I had done before. Dr. Cheek came out a single man; but, like others before him, he lost his heart on the way. Toward the end of that year he went down to Bangkok, and was married to Miss Sarah A. Bradley. He returned to Chiengmai just as Mr. Wilson was ready to start for the United States on his second furlough. The April communion was postponed a week that the newly-arrived and the departing missionaries might commune together before separating. It was Mrs. Wilson’s last communion with us.

In May, 1876, Nān Inta was ordained our first ruling elder. The story has often been told that before his ordination the Confession of Faith was given him to read carefully, since he would be asked whether he subscribed to its doctrines. When he had finished the reading, he remarked that he saw nothing peculiar in its teachings. It was very much like what he had read in Paul’s Epistles! In January Pā Kamun, the widow of Noi Sunya, was baptized. It was thus appropriately given to her to be the first woman received into the communion of the church. Two of her daughters, and Pā Peng, the wife of Nān Inta, soon followed. Lung In was elected the first deacon, but was too modest to be ordained to that office. Meanwhile he was becoming a most useful assistant in the hospital. Strange as it may seem, the office of hospital nurse is one of the most difficult to get a Lāo to fill. Lung In, however, was not above the most menial service for the sick. His real successor was not found until the present incumbent, Dr. Kêo, was trained. Dr. McKean’s testimony is that it would be scarcely more difficult to procure a good surgeon than to fill Kêo’s place as nurse and assistant among the hospital patients.

During the summer of 1876, in company with Nān Inta, I made a tour among the four nearest provinces to the north and west. The governor of Mûang Kên had long given promise of becoming a Christian, and now invited me to visit his people. On his frequent visits to Chiengmai on business, he always called on me, and no subject was so interesting to him as the subject of religion. Before the proclamation of toleration, while the common people were still afraid of making a public profession of Christianity, our most effective work was probably that with the higher class of officials, who stood in somewhat less fear of the known antagonism of the Chao Uparāt. They were, besides, a more interesting class than the common people, for they were better educated, were more accustomed in their daily duties to weigh arguments and decide on questions of evidence, and many of them had been trained in the religious order.

This governor of Mûang Kên had learned enough of the tenets of Christianity to become unsettled and dissatisfied with the prospects of salvation offered by a purely ethical religion. He saw the weakness of the foundation on which he had been taught to rely, and the difference between the authors of the two religions. So he stood on the border land between the two, at the very gate, wishing to enter in, but with many obstacles in his way, and strong opposing influences to overcome.

My first objective, then, on this tour was Mûang Kên. The governor had asked me to come and smooth the way for him by teaching his under-officials and his townsmen. Nān Inta was the living, concrete argument, and he put his whole heart into it. We had a few days of deeply interesting work. Few, however, saw the matter as the governor did. Most of them “would consider it.” Some would go further and say that they worshipped Jesus under the name of their promised Buddha Metraya, yet to come.

From Mûang Kên we went to Chieng Dāo, where we visited the great cave with its famous Buddhist shrine. Ever since Nān Inta became a Christian, he had been anxious to test the truth of some of the legends connected with the place—a thing he dared not do before. The cave is the abode of the great Lawa spirit, for fear of offending whom Prince Kāwilōrot was afraid to allow us to build to the north of the city bridge in Chiengmai. Chieng Dāo mountain, which rises above the cave, is seven thousand one hundred and sixty feet high—one of the highest peaks in all Siam, and visible from Chiengmai, some thirty-seven miles away. One of the sources of the Mê Ping River, twenty feet wide and knee-deep, flows bodily out from the cave. Since no animal is allowed to be killed in so sacred a place, the stream abounds in a great variety of beautiful fish waiting for the food which no visitor fails to give them. The scramble for it is as interesting to watch as the performance of the sea-lions at San Francisco.

The legend is that no one can cross the stream inside the cave and return alive; and that beyond the stream, under the crest of the mountain, there is an image of pure gold seven cubits high. One enters the cave at a little distance from the stream, and finds first a grand chamber which is a veritable temple, with arched dome, natural pulpit, and innumerable images of Buddha, large and small. This place is regarded as a most sacred shrine. Buddhist monks are always there performing their devotions. The chamber is so dark that they have to use tapers to see to read. The dim light and the long-drawn tones of the worshippers produce a very weird impression.

From the temple-chamber narrow passages lead off in different directions, till there is danger of losing one’s way in the labyrinth. I followed Nān Inta and his sons to the stream, which is reached at some distance farther on. Being neither tall nor a swimmer, I stopped and sauntered about in the various rooms, waiting for my companions to verify or to disprove the legend. Needless to say, both parts of it were proved myths. My companions did return alive, and no golden image was found. The cave is too damp to make it safe for one to remain long in those distant passages. Farther on the tapers burned but very dimly; and one would not choose to be left there in pitch darkness. We could understand very well how the legend arose of Yaks that devour those that intrude into their dark caverns. There is no doubt of the presence of a deadly gas much more to be feared than the spirit of the great Lawa king, which is believed to have taken up his abode there. We all experienced more or less of the symptoms premonitory of malarial attack, and before we got back to the town Nān Inta was shaking with a genuine chill. A heroic dose, however, of Warburg’s tincture with quinine soon set him to rights. In this case, then, as in many others, there is a foundation of truth at the bottom of the legend.

That night we had a great audience. It was generally known that we intended to explore the cave, and many, no doubt, came to see how we had fared. It was well that Nān Inta had so far recovered from his morning’s chill as to be ready to join in bearing testimony not only to the falsity of the legend, but also to the truth of the Gospel. It was a bright moonlight night, and the people listened till very late, while we sang hymns, preached the Gospel, and pointed them to the better way. The result was seen years after in the founding of a church there.