Pioneers and Founders / or, Recent Workers in the Mission field

by Charlotte M. Yonge

CHAPTER VI. THE JUDSON FAMILY.

We must turn to an important offshoot from the Serampore mission, which assumed extensive proportions and a character of its own, chiefly in consequence of American zeal. Here, be

it observed, was the first ground attempted by modern missions (not Roman Catholic) which belonged to an independent sovereign.

The great Burmese Empire, roughly speaking, occupies the Eastern India peninsula, being separated from that of Hindostan by the Brahmapootra river. The mountainous formation of the country, its indented coast, and numerous rivers render it fertile, and the hills contain many valuable metals and beautiful precious stones.

The inhabitants are of the Mongolian race, short, stout, active, and brown, with a good deal of ingenuity in arts and manufactures, but not equal to the Chinese, their neighbours. Their language is monosyllabic, their religion Buddhist, their government a despotic empire, and at the time the mission was entered upon they had had little intercourse with strangers, but their women were not secluded, were not wholly uneducated, and were treated with consideration.

Buddha is regarded as a manifestation of Vishnu—the Hindoos say, to delude his enemies; the Buddhists, to bring a new revelation. Gautama was the almost deified being who spread the knowledge of Buddhism, about 500 b.c. In different countries the religion has assumed different forms, but it is nearly co-extensive with the Mongolian race, and the general features are the rejection of the Vedas and of most of the Hindoo myths, faith in the divinity of Buddha, and hope that the individual personality will be entirely absorbed in his essence, the human being lost in the Deity. Five laws of virtue must be observed, ten kinds of sin avoided; and the Buddhist expects that transgressions will be punished by the transmigration of his soul into some inferior creature, whence he will rise by successive stages into another trial as a man, and gradually improving by the help of contemplation, and of a sublime state of annihilation of all self-consciousness, may become fit for his final absorption into the Godhead. There is an extensive priesthood, called Lamas, who live in a state of celibacy in dwellings not at all unlike monasteries; and, in effect, so much in their practices seems to parody the ceremonies of Christianity that the Portuguese thought them invented by the devil for the very purpose. However, there is no doubt that Buddhism inculcates a much purer morality than the religion of Brahma, and far higher aims. In Burmah, however, the idea of the

eternity of the Deity had evidently been lost, and Gautama had practically usurped the place that the higher Buddhists gave to Brahma. Indeed, though the true Buddhist system looks to the absorption in the Deity,—Nirvana, as it is called,—the popular notion, as received in Burmah and corrupted by less refined minds, made it into what was either absolute nonentity or could not be distinguished from it, so that the ordinary Burman’s best hope for the future was of nothing but annihilation.

There was originally a Burman Empire, but it had become broken up, and the territories of Ava, Pegu, and Siam were separated, though Ava claimed them all, and owned a semi-barbarous magnificent court, with many gradations of dignitaries, sending out Viceroys to the different provinces and towns.

When in 1807 strong opposition was made by Sir George Barlow’s government to the landing of the two Baptist missionaries, Robinson and Chater, the former obtained forbearance on account of his wife’s health, but the latter was obliged to embark; and, rather than return to England, he chose a vessel bound for Rangoon, a city at the mouth of the river Irrawaddy, the nearest Burmese harbour. His was to be a reconnoitring expedition to discover the condition of the Burmese Empire, the progress that Roman Catholic missions were making there, and the possibility of undertaking anything from the centre of Serampore. Another missionary, named Mardon, went with him. They were well received by the European merchants resident at Rangoon, and returned with an encouraging report. It was decided that the attempt should be made; and as Mr. Mardon did not feel equal to the undertaking, fifteen days were set apart as a time of private prayer for direction who should be chosen in his stead.

It was Felix Carey, then nearly twenty-two, who volunteered to go with Mr. Chater, of whom he was very fond. His father was unwilling to send him, not only on account of his youth, but because he was very valuable in the printers’ work, and had an unusual amount of acquaintance with Sanskrit and Bengalee, so that he could hardly be spared from the translations; but the majority of the council at Serampore were in favour of his going, and after a long delay, in consequence of the danger British trading vessels were incurring from French privateers

from the Isle of France, they set sail and arrived at Rangoon early in the year 1808.

There they built themselves a house, and obtained a good deal of favour from the gentleness and amiability of Mr. Chater, and from young Carey’s usefulness. He had regularly studied medicine for some years in the hospital at Calcutta, and his skill was soon in great request, especially for vaccination, which he was the first to introduce. His real turn was, however, for philology, and he was delighted to discover that the Pali, the sacred and learned language of Burmah, was really a variety of the Sanskrit, cut down into agreement with the Mongolian monosyllabic speech. He began, with the assistance of a pundit, to compile a grammar, and to make a rough beginning of a translation of the Scripture, a work indeed in which the Serampore people were apt to be almost too precipitate, not waiting for those refinements of knowledge which are needful in dealing with the shades of meaning of words of such intense importance and delicate significancy. But on their principles, they could do nothing without vernacular Bibles, and they had not that intense reverence and trained scholarly appreciation which made Martyn spend his life on the correctness of a single version, rather than send it forth with a flaw to give wrong impressions.

Neither does Felix Carey seem to have been a missionary in anything but that bent which is given by training and family impulse. He delighted in languages, but rather as an end than a means; and though he did what the guiding fathers at Serampore required of him, it was as a matter of course, not with his whole heart. In the meantime, the fact of Mr. Chater being a married man occasioned difficulties. Like their kinsmen the Chinese, the Burmese much objected to the residence of foreign females within their bounds; and when Mr. Chater obtained leave to bring his wife, she was so forlorn that he was obliged to seek for another station, and, receiving an invitation to Ceylon, left Felix alone, except for his marriage with a young woman of European extraction, but born in Burmah.

Soon after a dispute arose between the British and Burmese governments, and two English ships of war appeared off Rangoon. The native authorities wished the young missionary to act as interpreter, and on his refusal he was accused of being a spy, and was forced to take refuge on board one of the British

ships where he remained for two months before the differences were adjusted, and he was allowed to return on condition that he should not refuse his services as interpreter another time. In the October of 1812 he came home to Serampore to print his Burmese grammar and Gospel of St. Matthew, and not only did this, but carried a press back with him to Rangoon. A youth who was sent from the congregation at Calcutta to co-operate with him proved unfit for the work, and was advised to return to secular business; but in the meantime, the person who was, above all others, to be identified with the Burmese mission, had heard the call and was on his way.

This was Adoniram Judson, a native of New England, the eldest son of the minister of Malden, in Massachusetts, born in 1788, and bred up first at a school near home, and afterwards at Brown University. His acuteness and cleverness from infancy were great, especially in arithmetic and mathematics. During his studies, he met with a clever and brilliant friend who had imbibed the deistical teaching of the French Revolution, and infected him with it, and he came home at seventeen the winner of all the honours and prizes that the College afforded, but announcing himself to his parents as a decided infidel! The pastor treated him with stern displeasure, and argued hotly with him, but young Adoniram was the cleverer man, and felt his advantage. His mother’s tears and entreaties were less easy to answer, and the thought of them dwelt with him, do what he would, when he set out on a sort of tour through the surrounding States. On his journey, he stopped at a country inn, and was told, with much apology, that there was no choice but to give him a room next to that of a young man who was so ill that he could scarcely live till morning. In fact, Adoniram’s rest was broken by the groans of the dying man and the footsteps of the nurses, and there—close to the shadow of death—his infidelity, which had been but pride of intellect and fashion, began to quail, as the thought of the future haunted him. Morning came; all was still. He asked after his fellow-lodger, and heard that he was dead. He asked his name. It was no other than the very youth who had staggered his faith.

The shock changed his whole tone. He could not bear to continue his journey, but turned back to Plymouth, determined to prove to himself what was indeed truth; and, while deeply

studying the evidences of Christianity, he supported himself by keeping a school and writing educational books on grammar and arithmetic. His mind was soon thoroughly made up, as, indeed, his aberrations had been only on the surface, and he became very anxious to enter the Theological College at Andover, Massachusetts. This belonged to the most earnest of the Congregationalists, and evidence of personal conversion and piety was required from the candidates; but, in his case, the professors were satisfied, and he entered on his course of study, which included Hebrew. In the last year of his studies there he fell in with Claudius Buchanan’s “Star in the East,” and the perusal directed his whole soul to the desire of missionary labour. His mind was harassed night and day with the thought of longing to do something for the enlightenment of the millions in Asia; and, meeting with Symes’ “Burmese Empire,” his thoughts turned especially in that direction. It was a quiet steady purpose, though he was slow of communicating it; until, one evening at home, his father began throwing out hopes and hints of some great preferment, and his mother and sister smiled complacently, as if they were in the secret. Adoniram begged for an explanation, since it was possible their plans might not coincide, to which his father replied there was no fear, and told him that the minister of the biggest church in Boston wished for him as a colleague. “So near home,” said the delighted mother. He could not bear to answer her, but, when his sister chimed in, he turned to her, saying, “No, sister, I shall never live in Boston; I have much farther to go;” and then, steadily and calmly, but fervidly, he set forth the call that he felt to be upon him. How different a communication from that which he had made two years before! No doubt his family so felt it, for, though his mother and sister shed many tears, neither they nor his father offered a word of opposition.

Thenceforth his fate was determined, and he began to prepare himself. He was, in person, slightly made and delicate-looking, with an aquiline face, dark eyes, and chesnut hair; and though his constitution must have been immensely strong to have borne what he underwent, at this time he was thought delicate; and therefore, with his one purpose before him, he carefully studied physiology, and made himself a code of rules which he obeyed to the end of his life, in especial inhaling large

quantities of air, sponging the whole body with cold water, and taking daily exercise by walking. He was a man of great vivacity and acuteness, with the poetical spirit that accompanies strong enthusiasm, and with a fastidious delicacy and refinement in all personal matters, such as seemed rather to mark him as destined to be an accomplished scholar than to lead the rude life of a missionary; and Ann Hasseltine, the young lady on whom he had fixed his affections, was a very beautiful girl, of great cultivation and accomplishments, but they were alike in one other great respect,—namely, in dauntless self-devotion. He began to talk of his purpose to the like-minded among his college mates, and gradually gathered a few into a very small missionary association, into which none were admitted who had any duties that could forbid their going out to minister among the heathen.

At the same time, and partly through their means, a wider association was formed, which had its centre at Bradford, and which finally decided on sending Judson to England to endeavour to effect a union with the London Missionary Society, which had been formed in 1795, in imitation of Carey’s Baptist Society, to work in other directions by Nonconformists of other denominations.

The voyage in 1811, in the height of the continental war, was a very perilous one. On the way the vessel was taken by the French and carried into Bayonne, while the young American passenger was summarily thrown into the hold with the common sailors. He became very ill, but, when the French doctor visited him, he could hold no communication for want of a common language. Then it was that there came thoughts of home, and of the “biggest church in Boston,” and a misgiving swept over him, which he treated at once as a suggestion of the enemy, and betook himself to prayer. Then, in the grey twilight of the hold, he felt about for his Hebrew Bible; and to keep his mind fully absorbed, began mentally rendering the Hebrew into Latin. When the doctor came in, he took up the Bible, perceived that he had a scholar to deal with, began to talk Latin to him, and arranged his release from the hold.

But on landing at Bayonne, he was marched through the streets as a prisoner with the English crew. He began declaiming in his native language on the injustice of detaining an American, and obtained his purpose by attracting the attention

of an American gentleman in the street, who promised to do what he could for him, but advised him in the meantime to proceed quietly. The whole party were thrown into a dismal underground vault, and the stones covered with straw, which seemed to Judson so foul that he could not bear to sit down on it, and he walked up and down, though sick and giddy with the chill, close, noisome atmosphere. Before his walking powers were exhausted, his American friend was at the door, and saying, “Let me see whether I know any of these poor fellows,” took up the lamp, looked at them, said “No friend of mine,” and as he put down the lamp threw his own large cloak round Mr. Judson, and grasping his arm, led him out under it in the dark; while a fee, put into the hand, first of the turnkey and then of the porter, may have secured that the four legs under the cloak should pass unobserved. “Now run,” said the American, as soon as they were outside, and he rushed off to the wharf, closely followed by his young countryman, whom he placed on board a vessel from their own country for the night. Afterwards, Judson’s papers were laid before the authorities, and he was not only released, but allowed to travel through France to the northern coast, and, making friends with some of the Emperor’s suite on the way home from Spain, travelled to Paris in an Imperial carriage. Afterwards, he made his way to England, where he received a warm welcome from the London Missionary Society, by which he and the three friends he had left in America—Samuel Newell, Samuel Nott, and Gordon Hall—were accepted as missionaries; but on Judson’s return to America, he found that the Congregationalist Mission Board there was able to undertake their expenses, and accordingly they went out, salaried by their own country. All four were dedicated to the ministry at Salem on the 6th of February, 1812, and immediately prepared to sail for the East Indies.

Judson, with his wife, the beautiful dark-eyed Ann Hasseltine, and his friends Mr. and Mrs. Newell, also newly married, embarked in the Caravan; Hall, Nott, and another college mate, named Luther Rice, were in the Harmony. They were at once received at Serampore, on their landing, in the June of 1812, but Dr. Carey’s expectations of them were not high. Adoniram and Ann Judson were both delicate, slender, refined-looking people. “I have little hope from the Americans,” he wrote; “if they should stay in the East, American habits

are too luxurious for a preparation to live among savages.” He little knew what were the capabilities of Ann Judson, the first woman who worked effectively in the cause, the first who rose above the level of being the comfort of her husband in his domestic moments, and was an absolute and valuable influence.

The opposition to the arrival of missionaries was at its height, and this large batch so dismayed the Calcutta authorities that, declaring them British subjects come round by America, they required their instant re-embarkation. It was decided to go to the Isle of France, whence it was hoped to find a French ship to take them to the aid of Felix Carey, but the first vessel could only take the Newells, and the detention at Serampore drew the Judsons and Rice into the full influence of Marshman’s powerful and earnest mind. Aware that they would have to work with the Baptist mission, they had studied the tenets on the voyage, but found when they arrived, that the points of difference were subjects that the trio at Serampore did not choose to discuss, lest their work among the heathen should suffer by attention to personal controversy. However, their own thoughts and the influences of the place led them to desire baptism by immersion; and this being done, they considered it due to the Congregationalists, who had sent them out, to resign their claim on them for support, though this left them destitute. It was decided that Rice should go home and appeal for their support to the American Baptists, and in this he thoroughly succeeded, while the Judsons, after sailing for Mauritius, where they found poor Mrs. Newell recently dead, made their way back to Madras, and there found a vessel bound for Rangoon. It was a crazy old craft, with a Malay crew, no one but the captain able to speak a word of English. The voyage was full of disaster. A good European nurse, who had been engaged to go with Mrs. Judson, fell on the floor and died suddenly, even while the ship was getting under weigh, too late to supply her place. Mrs. Judson became dangerously ill, and the vessel was driven into a perilous strait between the Great and Little Andaman Islands, where the captain was not only out of his bearings, but believed that, if he were driven ashore, the whole ship’s company would be eaten by the cannibal islanders. The alarm, however, acted as a tonic, and Mrs. Judson began to recover.

They reached Rangoon in safety, but Judson writes: “We had never before seen a place where European influence had not contributed to smooth and soften the rough features of uncultivated nature. The prospect of Rangoon, as we approached, was quite disheartening. I went on shore, just at night, to take a view of the place and the mission-house, but so dark and cheerless and unpromising did all things appear, that the evening of that day, after my return to the ship, we have marked as the most gloomy and distressing that we ever passed.” The mission-house was not quite empty, though Felix Carey, who they had hoped would welcome them, was at Ava. When Mrs. Judson, still too weak to walk, was carried ashore, she was received by his wife, who could speak Burmese, and managed the household, providing daily dinners of fowls stewed with rice or with cucumber.

It was, however, a dismal place, near the spot where public executions took place, and where the dead were burnt outside the walls. And all around, among the beautiful vegetation and lovely forests on the banks of the broad Irrawaddy, rose the pagodas, graceful with the peculiar beauty of the far East, with gilded lacquer-work, umbrella-shaped roofs spiring upwards; huge idols with solemn contemplative faces within, and all around swarms of yellow-robed, fat, lazy lamas.

The new comers meantime applied themselves to the study of the language, after overcoming the disdain of their pundit at having to instruct a woman. He could not speak English, and had neither grammar nor dictionary, so that the difficulties were great; but the eager spirit of the students overcame all, and they ventured to remove into town and keep house themselves.

Mrs. Judson was taken to visit the wives of the Myowoon, or Viceroy of Rangoon, by a French lady who had been admitted before. On their first arrival the principal wife was not up, and the ladies waited, while the inferior wives examined all they wore, and tried on their gloves and bonnets; but when the great lady appeared, they all crouched together at a distance. She came in richly attired, and smoking a silver pipe, and sat down on a mat by Mrs. Judson, whom she viewed with much curiosity, asking if she were her husband’s first wife. The Myowoon came in looking wild and savage, and carrying a

huge spear in his hand; but he was very polite to Mrs. Judson, though he took very little notice of her husband.

In fact the government was violent and barbarous. There were perpetual murders and robberies, and these were punished by horrid executions, accompanied by torture; yet the Burmese regarded themselves as superior to all other nations, and were far from understanding how greatly they fell short even of the requirements of Buddhism.

Felix Carey, meantime, had been requested by the king to vaccinate the royal children; but he had to return to Calcutta to procure matter for the purpose. He then visited Rangoon on his way back, and prepared to carry up his family, property, and printing-press to Ava, with the hope of forming a fresh station there, under royal patronage; but after ten days’ voyage, the vessel was capsized by a sudden storm, and all who could not swim were drowned. Felix tried to rescue his little son of three years old, but, finding himself sinking, he let the child go, and saved himself alone.

Everything in the vessel was lost; but the king gave him compensation for the property, and took him into high favour, sending him shortly after, to conduct some negotiations with the British Government. He appeared at Calcutta with the title and gorgeous dress of a Burmese noble, and showed himself in the streets with a train of fifty followers. Old Dr. Carey was seriously grieved at his thus “sinking from a missionary to an ambassador;” and he was by no means successful in this new line; in fact his negotiations turned out so ill, that on his return to Rangoon he was obliged to fly the country. The excitement of his life had made missionary labour distasteful to him, and, after strange wanderings in the wild lands eastward of Bengal, he became prime minister and generalissimo to a barbarous prince; and in that capacity led an army against his old friends, the Burmese, sustained a defeat, and was forced to wander in the jungle. After three years of this strange life, he fell in by chance at Chittagong with Mr. Ward, and was by him persuaded to return to the printing and philology, for which alone, like his father, he really was well qualified. He lived at Serampore till 1822, and then was carried off by the same sickly season that had proved fatal to Krishnu-pal, who had been baptized with him, and to Bishop Middleton.

Meantime, Mr. and Mrs. Judson were working steadily on,

and were greatly cheered by the arrival of a much less barbarous viceroy, named Mya-day-men. They were invited, with all the Europeans, to a banquet at the new official’s house, and Mrs. Judson was entertained by the wife, who questioned her eagerly, and asked if she knew how to dance in the English way; but was satisfied on hearing that the wives of priests did not dance. As Buddhist priests are celibate, Mrs. Judson must have been rather a puzzle to the good lady; and all this time the real work of the mission had not commenced, for the preliminary operation of acquiring the language had not been completed, and Judson was warned not to attempt preaching till he was familiar with it, by Dr. Carey having told him that after some years in Bengal, when he imagined himself to be freely able to use the language, he had found from the remark of a young man, that he was really not in the least understood. Private arguments with the teachers was all that could be attempted, and in these there seems to have been some forgetfulness of St. Paul’s words, “Who art thou that judgest another? To his own master he standeth or falleth;” since there was a very free threatening that the souls of the pagans must be lost; to which the pundits replied with true Eastern calmness, “Our religion is good for us, yours for you.” During this time of perseverance and preparation, Mrs. Judson’s health became so much affected that she was forced to go to Madras. Heroine as she was, she would not consent to let her husband break up his work to accompany her; but the solitude of her absence fell on him most severely. She says, “He had no individual Christian with whom he could converse or unite in prayer during the six months of her absence;” but he worked on heartily, and she returned in perfect health.

In the spring of 1816, the death of their first-born child was a great shock to the father’s health, which was already disordered; and he continued in a declining state all through the summer. The Myowoon’s wife, whom Mrs. Judson conveniently calls the vice-reine, was very kind to them, and took them on elephant-back to visit her country-house. The way lay through the woods, between trees sometimes so thick that the elephants broke them down, at the mahout’s word, to make way. Thirty men in red caps, with spears and guns, formed the guard; then came the vice-reine’s elephant, with a gilded howdah, where the lady sat dressed in red

and white silk; then the Judsons’ animal, three or four more behind with grandees, and 300 or 400 attendants followed. At a beautiful garden, full of fruit trees, a feast was spread under a noble banyan, the vice-reine causing the cloth next to her to be allotted to her guests, whom she tended affectionately, gathering and paring fruit, cutting flowers and weaving them for them, and, unlike the Hindoos, freely eating what they handed her. This hospitable and amiable lady had just begun to ask Mrs. Judson the difference between the Christians’ God and Gautama, when she was obliged to return to Ava.

For several months Mr. Judson’s illness increased; but exercise on horseback did much to relieve him, and the comfort and encouragement of the arrival of a brother missionary, Mr. Hough, with his family, did more. He weathered the attack without leaving his post, and in 1817 made his first real step. A press had come out with Mr. Hough, and with it two little tracts, summarizing the chief truths of Christianity, were printed and distributed at Rangoon.

Shortly after, a respectable-looking Burmese, attended by a servant, walked into Mr. Judson’s house, and sat down. Presently he inquired, “How long a time will it take me to learn the religion of Jesus?”

Mr. Judson answered, that where God gave light and wisdom, it was soon learnt; but without, a whole lifetime would not teach a man. “But how,” he asked, “came the wish for this knowledge?”

“I have seen two little books.”

“And who is Jesus?” said the missionary.

“He is the Son of God, who, pitying human creatures, came into this world and suffered death in their stead.”

“Who is God?” continued Mr. Judson.

“He is a Being without beginning or end, who is not subject to old age or death, but always is.”

Mr. Judson showed him the two little books, which he recognized, but begged for more. He did not attend much to what Judson tried to teach him by word of mouth, but begged for book. The Gospel of St. Matthew was in hand, but could not be finished for three months; and when he was told this “Have you not a little of that book done, which you will graciously give me now?” he asked. “And I,” writes Judson, “beginning to think that God’s time was better than man’s,

folded and gave him the two first half-sheets, which contain the first five chapters of St. Matthew, on which he instantly rose, as if his business was done, and took leave.”

It was long before they saw him again; though many other persons began calling at the mission-house to inquire about what they called the new religion; but all were so much afraid of one another, that no one would ask any questions if a fellow-citizen were present. Mrs. Judson was also getting together from fifteen to twenty women every Sunday, whom she tried to instruct. One of them, like the Norseman of old, preferred casting in her lot with her forefathers to a heaven separated from them; and when Mrs. Judson told her they would reproach her with the rejection of the truth they had never known, and that she would regret her folly when it was too late, she answered, “If I do, I will cry out to you to be my intercessor.” Another combined prayers to our Lord and Gautama.

The vice-reine came back from Ava, and continued to be very kind to Mrs. Judson, made her explain her doctrine, caused the little catechism to be taught to her daughter, and accepted a copy of the Gospel of St. Matthew, which was at length completed. This being finished, Mr. Judson, after four years’ study of the language, believed himself able to undertake more public ministrations; but first went on a voyage to Chittagong, where he hoped to find, among the Christian converts of Burmese speech, one to assist him in communicating with the people.

Mrs. Judson remained with the Houghs, and had the pleasure of receiving the Burmese inquirer, whose long absence had been occasioned by his being appointed governor of some villages in Pegu. He said he was thinking and reading in order to become a believer. “But I cannot yet destroy my old mind, for, when I see a handsome patso, or a handsome gounboun, [130] I still desire it. Tell the great teacher, when he returns, that I wish to see him, though I am not a disciple of Christ.” She gave him the rest of St. Matthew, and a tract to each of his attendants, and he promised that, if the great teacher would come and see him, he would collect his villagers to hear the new doctrine preached. There was something very attractive, meek, and unassuming about the man’s whole appearance, and of him there was much hope; but, just about this

time great anxiety fell on the mission party. The kindly Myowoon and his wife were removed, and immediately after a summons was sent to Mr. Hough to appear at the court-house of the city, with the intimation, “that, if he did not tell the whole truth they would write it in his blood.” He was kept all Friday and Saturday answering, through an interpreter, foolish questions: who were his father and mother, how many suits of clothes he had, and the like; all which was formally written down. On the third day, Sunday, Mrs. Judson, resolving to ascertain whether this were really done by the command of the Myowoon, drew up a petition, which she carried herself. She was graciously received, and it presently appeared that an order had really been sent for the banishment of some Portuguese priests, and that the petty officials of the Court had taken advantage of it to harass Mr. Hough, in the hope of extracting a reward for his liberation.

At this time there was a terrible visitation of cholera, which the Burmese attributed to evil spirits, and accordingly attempted to drive away by force of noise. It was supposed that the evil spirits would take refuge in any house that was silent, and for three whole nights cannon were fired from the court-house, and every human creature used the utmost powers nature or art afforded for producing a din. The mission party were uninfected by the contagion, but it was a time of terrible anxiety, for nothing had been heard of Mr. Judson or his ship for months; there were reports of ill-feeling between the Burmese and British Governments, no arrivals of English at Rangoon, and no intelligence. Mrs. Judson’s female classes had fallen off ever since Mr. Hough’s summons, and the state of things was such, that the Houghs decided on removing to Bengal. Mrs. Judson, with her little girl, most reluctantly decided to accompany them, but, just as the vessel in which they sailed had gone down the river, she was ascertained not to be seaworthy; and, during this delay, Mrs. Judson’s fears of her husband’s finding her gone, if he ever returned to Rangoon, so increased, that she went back with her child to the house, and, brave woman as she was, took up her abode there with the native servants, trusting herself wholly to the protection of her God. She was rewarded by her husband’s arrival, after an absence of nine months, caused by the captain of his ship having broken his engagement, and carried him on

to Madras, where he had been detained all this time for want of a vessel to return in. The Houghs also came back, and two young men from America soon after came out, full of zeal and activity, but both fell ill very shortly afterwards, and the younger died, but his fellow, Mr. Colman, became a valuable assistant.

This era, the spring of 1819, was the first great step in the Burmese mission. Funds had been raised by the Baptist Society in America, which were applied to the erection of a zayat or public room, with walls of bamboo and a thatched roof. It had two rooms, one for a school for the women, another for the men, who gladly learnt to read and write from Mrs. Judson and a Burmese teacher. Here, too, Mr. Judson openly held prayers and preaching on Sunday, and these attracted many, some of whom would come in the week for private discussion.

The first real convert was a man of thirty-five, named Moung Nau, poor, but of excellent character, and so intelligent, that he became a useful assistant after his baptism, on the 27th of June, 1819. Others were inquiring, among whom the most interesting was Moung Shwaygnong, a schoolmaster or tutor by profession, at a village a little way from Rangoon, and already a philosopher, “half deist, half sceptic, the first of the sort I have seen among the Burmans” (our quotations are from Mr. Judson’s journal), who, however, worshipped at the pagodas, and conformed to national observances. The second time he came the conversation seemed to have made “no impression on his proud sceptical heart, yet he promised to pray to the eternal God, through the Saviour.” It appeared that, about eight years previously, it had come before him that there is indeed One Eternal God, and that this thought had been working in him ever since. A copy of Mr. Judson’s tract which fell in his way chimed in with this primary belief, and next came the question of the Scripture revelation, which he argued over with much metaphysical power and acuteness, being a very powerful reasoner, and well trained in the literature of his own country. Meantime three simpler minds—Moung Thaahlah, Moung Byaay, and Moung Ing—had been thoroughly convinced, and, though aware that they would expose themselves to considerable danger, resolved to become Christians.

The Viceroy had remarked the zayat, and notice was taken

that men were there led “to forsake the religion of the country.” The alarm cleared the zayat of all the audience, and emptied Mrs. Judson’s class of women, but Thaahlah [133] and Byaay sent in a letter, entreating to be admitted to baptism, and Ing would have followed their example, but that his trade as a fisherman carried him off to sea. They begged not to be baptized openly, as Nau had been, in a piece of water near the town and presided over by an image of Gautama; and Mr. Judson yielded so far, that he conducted the preliminary devotions in the zayat, and baptized them in the same pool two hours after dark. Shwaygnong had in the meantime taken alarm at being interrogated by the Government, had apologized, and apparently fallen away; but he could not keep aloof, and soon came back again. After a good deal of fencing and putting forth metaphysical cavils, he allowed that it was all for the sake of experiment, and declared that he really believed both in God and in the Atonement.

“Said I,” writes Mr. Judson, “knowing his deistical weakness, do you believe all that is contained in the book of St. Matthew which I gave you? In particular, do you believe that the Son of God died on a cross?”

“Ah!” he replied, “you have caught me now. I believe that He suffered death, but I cannot admit that He suffered the shameful death of the cross.”

“Therefore,” said I, “you are not a disciple of Christ. A true disciple inquires not whether a fact is agreeable to his own reason, but whether it is in the Book. His pride has yielded to Divine testimony. Teacher, your pride is unbroken. Break down your pride, and yield to the Word of God.”

He stopped and thought. “As you utter these words,” said he, “I see my error. I have been trusting in my own reason, not in the Word of God.”

Some interruption now occurred. When we were again alone, he said, “This day is different from all the days on which I have visited you. I see my error in trusting to my own reason, and I now believe the Crucifixion of Christ, because it is contained in the Scripture.”

The profession of Christianity had become more perilous since the Judsons’ arrival in Burmah. The old Emperor had

died in 1819, and had been succeeded by his grandson, who was far more zealous for Buddhism than he had been, and who had appointed a viceroy at Rangoon, very minute in exacting observances—so much so, as to put forth an edict forbidding any person with hat, shoes, umbrella, or horse, to pass through the grounds belonging to the great pagoda, Shwaay Dagon, which extended half a mile from the building, and were crossed by all the chief roads. At the same time, he was new gilding the pagoda, a specially sacred one, as containing some bits of hair of Gautama.

It was plain that the mission had little chance of succeeding, unless some sanction could be obtained from royalty; and Mr. Judson therefore determined to go to Ava and petition the Emperor to grant him permission to teach at Rangoon. So he obtained a pass from the Viceroy “to go up to the golden feet, and lift up our eyes to the golden face,” and hired a boat to take him and Mr. Colman, with ten oarsmen, a headman, a steersman, a washerman, and two cooks, of whom Moung Nau was one. They had invited Shwaygnong to accompany them, but he refused, though he appeared waving his hand to them on the bank as they pushed off from the land. They took with them, as the most appropriate present, a Bible, bound in six volumes, in gold leaf, intending to ask permission to translate it.

They arrived at Ava on the 28th of January, 1820, and beheld the gilded roofs of the pagodas and palace. Two English residents welcomed them, and Mya-day-men, the Viceroy who had been their friend at Rangoon, undertook to present them to the Emperor.

They were taken to the palace, and were explaining their wishes to the Prime Minister, Moung Zah, when it was announced that “the golden foot was about to advance,” and he had to hasten to attend the Emperor. The dome whither the missionaries followed him was dazzling with splendour, very lofty, and supported on pillars entirely covered with gold, and forming long avenues, through one of which the Emperor advanced alone, with the proud gait and majesty of an Eastern monarch, with a gold-sheathed sword in his hand. Every one prostrated his forehead in the dust except the two Americans, who merely knelt with folded hands. He paused before them, and demanded who they were.

“The teachers, great king,” replied Mr. Judson.

“What? You speak Burmese—the priests that I heard of last night? When did you arrive? Are you like the Portuguese priests? Are you married?” and so on, he asked; then placing himself on a high seat, with his hand on the hilt of his sword, he listened to the petition read aloud by Moung Zah. He then held out his hand for it; Moung Zah crawled forward and gave it; the Emperor read it through to himself, and held out his hand for the little tract which was handed to him in like manner. The hearts of the missionaries throbbed with hope and prayer; but, after reading the two first sentences, the Emperor threw it from him, and when the gift was presented would not notice it. The answer communicated through Moung Zah was: “In regard to the objects of your petition, his Majesty gives no order. In regard to your sacred books, his Majesty has no use for them; take them away.” Something was said of Colman’s skill in medicine; upon which the Emperor desired that both should be taken to the Portuguese priest, who acted as his physician, to ascertain whether they could be useful in that line, and then lay down on his cushions to listen to music.

They were taken two miles to the residence of the Portuguese, who of course perceived that they brought no wonderful secret of medicine, and then returned to their boat. They afterwards saw Moung Zah in private, and heard that the Burmese laws tolerated foreign religions, but that there was no security for natives who embraced them, and that it was an unpardonable offence even to propose it. The English collector went to the Emperor, but could obtain nothing from him but permission for them to return to Rangoon, where they might find some of their countrymen to teach. There was no actual prohibition against teaching Burmese subjects, but there was no security that the converts would not be persecuted; and the collector told them that fifteen years previously a Burmese teacher who had been converted by the Portuguese, and had even visited Rome, was denounced on his return by his nephew and commanded to recant. On his refusal, he was tortured with the iron mall—hammered, namely, from his feet upwards till he was all one livid wound as far as his breast, pronouncing the name of Christ at every blow. Some persons at last told the Emperor that he was a mere madman, on which he was spared, and the Portuguese contrived to send him away to

Bengal, where he died. The nephew was high in the favour of the present Sovereign, who was besides far more attached than his grandfather had ever been to the Buddhist doctrine. Only four Portuguese clergy were in the country, and they confined themselves to ministrations to the descendants of the converts of the old Jesuit mission, instead of attempting to extend their Church. Nothing was to be done but to return to Rangoon, and for this a passport was necessary, the obtaining of which cost thirty dollars in presents. Mr. Judson was advised also to procure a royal order for personal protection, otherwise, when it became known that the royal patronage had been refused, he might be molested by ill-disposed persons; but finding that this would be exceedingly costly, he preferred “trusting in the Lord to keep us and our poor disciples.”

It was encouraging that at Pyece, a place on the banks of the Irrawaddy, the missionaries met Shwaygnong, who had come thither to visit a sick friend, and came on board eagerly to know the result of their journey. They told him all, even of the good confession beneath the iron mall, and he seemed less affected and intimidated than they expected, though he had nearly made up his mind to cast in his lot with them. “If I die, I shall die in a good cause,” he said. “I know it is the cause of truth.” And then he repeated his actual faith: “I believe in the Eternal God, in His Son Jesus Christ, in the Atonement which Christ has made, and in the writings of the Apostles as the true and one Word of God.” He also said he had never, since their last conversation, lifted up his folded hands before a pagoda, though on the day of worship, to avoid persecution, he would walk up one side of the building and down the other. To this Mr. Judson replied, “You may be a disciple of Christ in heart, but you are not a full disciple. You have not faith and resolution enough to keep all the commands of Christ, particularly that which commands you to be baptized though in the face of persecution and death. Consider the words of Jesus—‘He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.’”

He listened in profound silence, and with the manner with which he always received what he considered deeply; but there was still a long struggle to come, and many fluctuations, and the simpler minds were the stay and comfort of the missionaries, when on their return to Rangoon they considered

what steps to take. Their first proposal was to move to a district between Bengal and Arracan, where were several Christian natives now destitute of a pastor, and where the language was very like Burmese, though the place was beyond the power of the Emperor, and to take their three baptized converts with them. Nau and Thaahlah were ready to follow them everywhere, but Byaay was married, and no Burmese woman was allowed to leave the country. He, with several others who were on the point of conversion, entreated the missionaries not to leave them, and Thaahlah made a remarkable speech. “Be it remembered,” he said, “that this work is not yours or ours, but the work of God. If He give light, the religion will spread.”

It was decided, according to the earnest wish of these poor people, that they should not be deserted till there were enough of them to form a congregation and have a teacher from among themselves set over them, and this—as the sect to which the Judsons belonged has no form of setting apart for the ministry—was all that they regarded as requisite. The Arracan converts were not, however, to be neglected, and Mr. Colman therefore was to go to Chittagong, and there establish a station, which might receive those from Rangoon in case it should become needful to leave the place. He was doing well there, when he died from an attack of fever.

The Judsons remained, and held their worship in the zayat on Sunday with the doors closed and only the initiated present; but it seemed as if the fear of losing their teachers quickened the zeal of the Christian converts in bringing their friends to inquire. Shwaygnong had long been unconsciously preparing the way by his philosophical instructions, going so much deeper than the popular Buddhism, and he brought several of his pupils, both male and female, telling them that “he had found the true wisdom;” but he still hung back. [137] Mr. Judson suspected him of wanting a companion of his own rank to keep him in countenance, and doubted whether it were fear of the world or pride of heart that kept him back; but he seems to have had a genuine battle with his own sceptical spirit, and the acceptance of such ordinances as the Baptists required was a difficulty to him. Four or five later converts were baptized before him, and at last he kept away from the mission for so

long that Mr. Judson thought they had lost him; but when he reappeared it turned out that he had been ill with fever, and had had much sickness in his family, and had meantime fought out his mental conflict, and made up his mind to the full acceptance of Christianity at all risks.

He came again with five disciples, one of them a woman of fifty-one years old, named Mah-menlay, with her husband, all formally requesting baptism; but Mr. Judson was not sufficiently satisfied of the earnestness of any to receive them at once, excepting Shwaygnong himself, whom Mr. Judson kept till evening; and then, after reading the history of St. Philip’s baptism of the Ethiopian, and praying, led him down to the water in the woods and baptized him, like others, in the pool, by the light of the stars in the tropical night. That same night Mah-menlay came back, entreating so earnestly for baptism, that she, too, was led down to the water and baptized. “Now,” she said, “I have taken the oath of allegiance to Jesus Christ, and I have nothing to do but to commit myself, soul and body, to the hands of my Lord, assured that He will never suffer me to fall away.”

This was the last thing before the Judsons embarked for Serampore, a journey necessitated by a severe attack of liver complaint, from which Mrs. Judson had long been suffering and their little girl had also died.

To these devoted people a visit to Calcutta was a change for the sake of health! On their return, after half a year’s absence, the first thing they heard was that their kind friend Mya-day-men had come as Myowoon to Rangoon, and they were met on the wharf by all their disciples, led by Shwaygnong, in a state of rapture. They found that such as had lived in the yard of the mission had been subjected to a petty official persecution, which had made them fly to the woods; but that the good Mya-day-men had refused to hear an accusation brought against Moung Shwaygnong by the lamas and officials of the village, who had him before the tribunal, accusing him of trying “to turn the priest’s rice-pot bottom upwards.”

“What matters it,” said the Myowoon; “let the priests turn it back again.”

This was enough to ensure the safety of the Christians during his viceroyalty, though at first he paid little attention to Mr. Judson, being absorbed in grief for the death of his favourite

daughter, one of the wives of the Emperor. She does not seem to have been the child of the amiable Vice-reine, or, as her title had now become, Woon-gyee-gaadaw, who had been promoted to the right of riding in a wau, a vehicle carried by forty or fifty men, but who had not forgotten Mrs. Judson, and received her affectionately.

There were now twenty-five disciples. Ing likewise joined them having returned from his voyage, and was shortly after baptized. Mah-menlay opened a school for little girls, and Shwaygnong was regularly engaged by Mr. Judson to revise his translation of the Epistle to the Ephesians and the first part of the Book of Acts, before they were printed. Another remarkable man came to study the subject, Moung Long, a philosopher of the most metaphysical kind, whose domestic conversations with his wife were reported to be of this description.—The wife would tell him, “The rice is ready.”

“Rice! what is rice? Is it matter or spirit? Is it an idea or a nonentity?”

If she answered, “It is matter,” he would reply, “And what is matter? Are you sure there is such a thing in existence, or are you merely subject to a delusion of the senses?”

Mr. Judson was struck with the expression of this man’s one eye, which had “as great a quantity of being as half-a-dozen common eyes.” After the first exposition of the Christian doctrine, the philosopher began with extreme suavity and politeness: “Your lordship says that in the beginning God created one man and one woman. I do not understand (I beg your lordship’s pardon) what a man is, and why he is called a man.”

Mr. Judson does not record his own line of argument, only that the Buddhist sceptic was foiled, and Shwaygnong, who had often argued with him, was delighted to see his old adversary posed. He came again and again, and so did his wife, the ablest woman whom Mrs. Judson had met, asking questions on the possibility of sin finding entrance to a pure mind, and they were soon promising catechumens; but in the midst of all this hopefulness, a season of cholera and fever set in, both the Judsons were taken ill at the same time, and could not even help one another, and the effect on Ann’s health was such that, as the only means of saving her life, she was sent off at once to England, while her husband remained at his post quite alone, for Colman had died a martyr to the climate.

She was warmly welcomed by the Missionary Societies in London and Edinburgh, and thence returned to America, where her mother and sisters were still living to hail her return. Her narratives, backed by her natural sweetness, eloquence and beauty, had a great effect in stirring up the mission spirit among both her countrymen and countrywomen, and there was no lack of recruits willing to return with her and share her toil.

The account of Colman’s devotion and death had had an especial effect upon a young girl named Sarah Hall, of Salem, Massachusetts, one of those natures that seem peculiarly gifted with poetic enthusiasm, yet able to stand the brunt of the severest test of practice. She was the daughter of one of those old-fashioned New England families, where a considerable amount of prosperity and a good deal of mental culture is compatible with much personal homely exertion. As the eldest of thirteen, Sarah had to work hard, but all the time she kept a prim little journal, recording, at an age when one is surprised to see her able to write at all, that her mother is too busy to let her go to school, and she must improve herself at home; and this she really did, for her notes, as she grew older, speak of studying Butler’s Analogy, Paley’s Evidences, logic, geometry, and Latin. Her library of poetry is said to have consisted only of Thomson’s Castle of Indolence, and Macpherson’s Ossian; but hymns must have filled her ear with the ring of rhyme, for she was continually versifying, sometimes passages of Scripture, sometimes Ossian, long before she was halfway through her teens. Very foolish, sing-song, emotional specimens they are, but notable as showing the bent of nature that forms itself into heroism. Her family were Baptists, and she was sixteen when the sense of religion came on her so strongly as to lead her to seek baptism. Remarkably enough, the thought of the ignorance of the heathen, and the desire to teach them, began to haunt her from that time, and is recorded in the last page of her childish journal, dated a month later than her baptism.

In fact, her zeal seems to have been pretty strong towards the persons around her. While staying at a friend’s house, she found a pack of cards left by a young man on the table, and wrote on it the text beginning, “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth,” &c. Hearing that the owner was

very curious to know the perpetrator, she wrote down this verse for him:

“And wouldst thou know what friend sincere
Reminds thee of thy day of doom?
Repress the wish, yet thou mayst hear
She shed for thee a pitying tear,
For thine are paths of gloom.”

She also says that she had been for six weeks engaged, with the assistance of a gentleman, in working out proofs of the immortality of the soul, apart from those in Scripture. She had prayer-meetings for her young friends in her own room, and distributed tracts in the town, while still acting at home, as her mother’s right hand, among her little brothers and sisters.

But her vocation she felt to be for missionary life. At one time she thought of joining a mission to the Red Indians, and her verses were full of the subject. Her ode on Colman’s death expressed the feeling of her soul in the verse:

“The spirit of love from on high
The hearts of the righteous hath fired;
Lo! they come, and with transport they cry,
‘We will go where our brother expired,
And labour and die.’”

The words fall sadly short of the feeling,—a very real one, but the ode not only satisfied Sarah’s critics and obtained circulation, but it fired the heart of George Dana Boardman, a young student at Waterville College, intended for the Baptist ministry; and he never rested till he had found out the authoress, met her, and asked her to be his partner in “labouring and dying,” as Colman had done before them.

There was no illusion in her mind; she knew her task would be full of toil and suffering; but her feeling was the desire to devote her whole self to the work of the Redeemer, who had done so much for her. Mr. and Mrs. Hall were at first reluctant, but after a time heartily consented, and she was introduced to Mrs. Judson as a future companion in her toils. With very questionable taste, some of her friends insisted on her reading her own elegy on Colman, aloud, before a whole circle of friends that they might see Mrs. Judson listen to it. Blushes and refusals were of no avail; she was dragged out, and the paper thrust into her hand; she began, faltering, but as she proceeded

the strong purpose of her soul inspired her, and she ended with firmness and enthusiasm—but was so overpowered that, without daring to look up and see that Mrs. Judson’s eyes were overflowing, she crept away to hide in a corner the burning tears on her own cheeks. Twenty years after she spoke of it as one of the most painful moments of her life.

At first it had been proposed that Mr. Boardman and Sarah should accompany Mrs. Judson on her return, but it was thought better that he should spend a little more time on his studies, and Ann Judson therefore sailed in 1823, with Mr. and Mrs. Wade as her companions.

In the meantime Judson himself had been going on with his work at Rangoon, among many troubles.

Another accusation was drawn up by the lamas against Shwaygnong, and the Viceroy, on reading it, pronounced him worthy of death; but before he could be arrested, he took boat, came down to the mission-house with his family, obtained a supply of tracts and portions of Scripture, and then secretly fled up the river to a town named Shway-doung, where he began to argue and distribute the tracts. So little regular communication was there between different places in Burmah, that this could be done with comparative safety; but the accusation and his flight created so much alarm at Rangoon, that Mr. Judson had to shut up the zayat, and only assemble his converts in the mission-house. They suffered another loss in Moung Thaahlah, their second convert, who died of cholera, after nineteen hours’ illness. He had seven months before married a young Christian woman, this being the first Burmese Christian wedding; and as he was a youth of much promise and good education, he was a serious loss to the mission. All this time Mr. Judson was alone, until the arrival of Jonathan Price, who had wisely qualified himself to act as a physician, and no sooner did a report of his skill reach Ava, than the King sent for him; and as he had no time to learn the language, Judson went with him as interpreter. Dr. Price says, “The King is a man of small stature, very straight, steps with a natural air of superiority, but has not the least appearance of it in conversation. He wears a red, finely-striped silk cloth from his waist to his knees, and a blue-and-white handkerchief on his head. He has apparently the good of his people as well as the glory of his kingdom at heart, and is encouraging foreign merchants, and especially

artisans to settle in his capital. A watchmaker at this moment could obtain any favour he should please to ask.”

As soon as the missionaries arrived, he sent for them and received them in an open court, where they were seated on a bamboo floor about ten feet from his chair. He took no notice of Judson, except as an interpreter, but interrogated Price as to his skill in surgery, sent for his medicines, looked at them and at his instrument, and was greatly amused with his galvanic battery; he then dismissed them with orders to choose a spot on which a house should be built for them, and to look up the diseased to try Price’s skill upon.

Moung Zah, the former minister, recognized Judson kindly, and after a time the King took notice of him: “You in black, what are you, a medical man too?”

“Not a medical man, but a teacher of religion, your Majesty.”

After a few questions about his religion the King proceeded to ask whether any Burmese had embraced it.

“Not here,” diplomatically said Judson.

“Are there any in Rangoon?”

“There are a few.”

“Are they foreigners?”

Mr. Judson says he trembled for the consequences of an answer, but the truth must be spoken at all risks, and he replied, “Some foreigners and some Burmese.”

The King showed no displeasure, but asked questions on religion, geography, and astronomy, as though his temper was quite changed. His brother, a fine young man of twenty-eight, who suffered from paralysis, became a patient of Dr. Price, and had much conversation with Judson, showing great eagerness for instruction. He assured the missionaries that under the present reign there was no danger to the native Christians, and after a successful operation for cataract, performed by Dr. Price, the missionaries were so much in favour that while Price remained at Ava and there married a native lady, Judson was desired only to go back to Rangoon to meet his wife on her return, and bring her to reside at Ava.

Their good and tolerant friend, the Viceroy, was dead, and his successor was a severe and unjust man, so that the people had fled in numbers from the place, and few Christians remained except at Moung Shwaygnong’s village. There was thus the less

to leave, when in December 1823 Mrs. Judson safely arrived, and two fresh missionaries with her, to whom the flock at Rangoon could be left. There is a most happy letter written on the voyage up the Irrawaddy to Ava, when it seemed as though all the troubles and difficulties of four years had been smoothed away. The mission had been kindly welcomed at Ava, and established in the promised house, when the first of the English wars with Burmah broke out, on grounds on which it is needless to enter. It is enough to say that after many mutual offences, Sir Archibald Campbell, with a fleet and army, entered Rangoon, and occupied it without resistance, the Viceroy being absent at the time.

The Court of Ava were exceedingly amazed at the insolence of the foreigners. An army supposed to be irresistible was sent off, dancing and singing, in boats down the river, and all the fear was lest the alarm should drive away the white strangers with the “cock-feather chief” before there was time to catch any for slaves. A lady sent a commission for four to manage the affairs of her household, as she heard they were trustworthy; a courtier, for six to row his boat.

The capture of Rangoon was supposed by national pride to be wholly owing to the treachery of spies, and three English merchants were fixed upon as those spies and put under arrest. The King was advised likewise to secure the persons of the missionaries, but he answered, “They are quiet men; let them alone.” Unfortunately, however, a receipt for some money paid to Adoniram Judson was found among the papers of one of the merchants, and this to the Burmese mind was proof of his complicity in the plot. Suddenly, an official, accompanied by a dozen men, one of whom had his face marked with spots, to denote his being an executioner, made his appearance demanding Mr. Judson. “You are called by the King,” said the official, and at the same moment the executioner produced a cord, threw Mr. Judson on the floor, and tied his arms behind his back. His wife vainly offered money to have his arms unbound, and he was led away, the faithful Ing following at a distance to see what was done with him, while Mrs. Judson retired to her room and poured out her soul “to Him who for our sakes was bound and led away to execution,” and great was her comfort even in that moment. She was immediately after summoned to be examined by a magistrate in the verandah, and

after hastily destroying all journals and papers, went out to meet him. He took down her name and age, those of four little Burmese girls she had charge of, and of two Bengal servants; pronounced them all slaves to the King, and set a guard over them. Mrs. Judson fastened herself and her children into the inner room, while the guards threatened her savagely if she would not show herself, and even put her servants’ feet in the stocks till she had obtained their release by promises of money.

Moung Ing had ascertained that his master was in prison; and when, after the most dreadful night she had ever spent, she sent him again in the morning, with a piece of silver to obtain admittance, he brought word that both Judson and Price, with the three English merchants, were in the death-prison, each wearing three pairs of iron fetters and fastened to a long pole. Mrs. Judson immediately sent to the governor of the city with an entreaty to be allowed to visit him with a present. This procured her a favourable reception, and he promised to make the condition of the prisoners more comfortable, but told her that she must consult his head writer as to the means. This man, a brutal-looking fellow, extorted from her a huge bribe, and then promised to release the two teachers from the pole, and to put them into another building where she might send them food daily, and pillows and mats to sleep on. She obtained an order for an interview with her husband, whose looks were so wretched and ghastly that she lost no time in fulfilling these exorbitant demands.

Her hope was in a petition to the Queen, but being under arrest herself, she could not go to the Queen in person, and had to approach her through her sister-in-law—a proud, haughty dame, who received her in the most cold, discouraging manner, but who undertook to present the petition. She then went to the prison again, but the head writer would not allow her to enter; and on her return home she found that all the property in the mission-house was to undergo a scrutiny; but this was humanely done, and was only inventoried, not seized—i.e. the King did not seize it, but the officials helped themselves to whatever took their fancy. The next day the Queen’s answer was obtained—“He is not to be executed; let him remain where he is.”

The poor lady’s heart fainted within her, but she thought of

the widow and the unjust judge, and persevered day after day in applying to every member of the royal family or of Government to entreat for her husband’s liberation. The King’s mother, sisters, and brother were all interested in his favour, but none of them ventured to apply direct to the King lest they should offend the favourite Queen. All failed, but the hopes that from time to time were excited, kept up the spirits of the sufferers. During the long weary months while the missionaries continued in fetters, i.e. chained by the feet to a bar of bamboo, Mrs. Judson was often not allowed to visit them for ten days at a time, and then only by walking to the prison after dark, two miles, unattended. She could, however, communicate with her husband by means of the provisions she sent him daily. At first she used to write on the dough of a flat cake, which she afterwards baked and concealed in a bowl of rice, while he answered by writing on a tile, where the inscription disappeared when dry but was visible when wet; but latterly they found it most convenient to write on a roll of paper hidden in the long nose of a coffee-pot, in which tea was sent to the prisoners.

Mrs. Judson delighted to send him little surprises, once a mince-pie, which Moung Ing carried with the utmost pride to his imprisoned master. Mrs. Judson found herself obliged to wear the native dress, though she was so much taller than the Burmese women that she could be hardly taken for one of them. It was a becoming dress; her hair was drawn into a knot on the forehead, with a cocoa-blossom, like a white plume, drooping from it; a saffron vest open in front to show a crimson tunic below; and a tight skirt of rich silk, sloping down behind, made her look to advantage, so that her husband liked to remember her as she stood at his prison door. She never was allowed to come further.

For twenty days she was absent, and then she came with a tiny, pale, wailing, blue-eyed baby on her breast. Poor Judson, clanking up to the door in his chains to welcome his little daughter, commemorated his feelings in some touching verses ending:—

“And when in future years
Thou know’st thy father’s tongue,
These lines will show thee how he felt,
How o’er his babe he sung.”

Every defeat by the European forces added to the perils of

captives. A favourite old general named Bundoolah had promised, when sent to command the army against Rangoon, that he would release all the white prisoners on his return as a conqueror; and when he was totally defeated, the wrath of the Burmese was so great that at this time the King himself seems to have scarcely acted at all. He was gentle, indolent and indifferent, more intelligent than those around him, scarcely a Buddhist in belief, and very kind-hearted: indeed Judson believed that it was his interposition alone that prevented the lives of the captives from being taken at once; but he was demoralized by self-indulgence, and allowed himself to be governed by his queen, the daughter of a superintendent of gaols; and through her, by her brother, who was cruel, rapacious and violent, and the chief author of all the sufferings inflicted on the prisoners. Among these were seven or eight British officers, and the King had commanded that a daily allowance of rice should be served to these, but scarcely half of it ever reached them; Mrs. Judson did her best to supply them as well as her husband, but their health gave way under their sufferings, and all died but one.

At the end of seven months, it was reported that the English army was advancing into the interior; and in the passionate alarm thus excited, the English captives were all loaded with five pairs of fetters and thrown into the common prison among Burman thieves and robbers,—a hundred in a room without a window, and that in the hottest season of the year. Mrs. Judson again besought the governor to relieve them from this horrible condition, by at least allowing them to sit outside the door, and he actually shed tears at her distress, but he told her that he had been commanded to put them all to death privately, and that he was doing his best for them by massing them with the rest. The Queen’s brother had really given this order, but the governor delayed the execution in case they should be required of him by the King, and they continued in this frightful state for a whole month, until Mr. Judson sickened with violent fever, and the governor permitted him to be removed into a little bamboo room, six feet long and four wide, where his wife was allowed to visit him and bring him food and medicine, she meantime living in a bamboo house in the governor’s compound, where the thermometer rose daily to 106°, but where she thought herself happy as she saw her husband begin to recover.

One day, however, when the governor had sent for her and was kindly conversing with her, a servant came in and whispered to him that the white strangers had suddenly been taken away, no one knew whither. The governor pretended to be taken by surprise, but there could be no doubt that he had occupied Mrs. Judson to hinder her from witnessing the removal; and it was not till the evening that she learnt that the prisoners had been taken to Umerapoonah, whither she proceeded with her three months old baby and one servant. There she found that the prisoners had been sent on two hours before to a sort of penal settlement called Oung-pen-lay, whither she followed, to find her husband in a lamentable state. He had been dragged out of his little room, allowed no clothing but his shirt and trowsers, a rope had been tied round his waist, and he had been literally driven ten miles in the hottest part of the day. His feet were so lacerated that he was absolutely falling, when a servant of one of the merchants tore a piece from his turban, and this wrapped round his feet enabled him to proceed, but he could not stand for six weeks after; indeed the scars remained for life. In this state he lay chained to Dr. Price. The intention was to sacrifice them both, in order to obtain success for an intended expedition; but before this could be done, a different woongye, or prime minister, came in, and their condition was somewhat improved, for they only wore one bamboo, through two slits in which their feet were forced, and they were allowed to crawl into the enclosure. Meantime, a poor lion, once a great favourite, which was thought to be connected with the lions on the English colours, was placed in a bamboo cage in sight of the prisoners, and there starved to death, in hopes of thus abating the force of the enemy. When its carcase was removed, Mr. Judson, at his own earnest entreaty, was allowed the reversion of its cage, and there, to his great joy, Moung Ing brought him his MS. translation of part of the Burmese Bible, which he had kept in his pillow at Ava till it was torn away by the jailors on his removal. The faithful Ing, thinking only to secure a relic of his master, had picked up the pillow and secured the treasure.

Solitude was the greatest boon to Judson, whose fastidious delicacy suffered greatly in the thronged prison, but his faithful Ann was suffering terribly. One of the little Burmese girls who lived with her had caught the small-pox, and was very ill: Mrs. Judson inoculated the other child and her own little

Maria, but Maria’s inoculation did not take effect, and she caught the disease, and had it very severely. Then Mrs. Judson herself fell ill of a fever, and remained for two months unable to visit her husband, both of them owing all their food to the exertions of their good Bengalee cook. Poor little Maria was nearly starved, no milk was to be had, and the only food she obtained was when the jailers were bribed to let her father carry her round the village to beg a little nourishment from the nursing mothers. Her moans at night rent the heart of her sick mother, and it is scarcely possible to imagine how either survived. By this time, the English troops were so far advancing that the King was reduced to negotiate, and, being in need of an interpreter, he sent an order for Mr. Judson’s release; but as his wife was not named in it, she had great difficulty in effecting her departure, and half-way through the journey a guard came down and carried him off to Ava without her. Arriving next day, she found him in prison, but under orders to embark in a little boat and go at once to the camp at Maloun. She hastened to prepare all that was needful for his comfort, but all was stolen except a mattress, pillow, and one blanket. The boat had no awning, and was so crowded that there was no room to lie down for the three days and three nights of alternate scorching heat and heavy dew; there was no food but a bag of refuse-rice, and the banks on either side of the Irrawaddy were bordered with glittering white sand, which in sunlight emitted a metallic glare intolerable to the eyes, and heat like a burning furnace. The fever returned upon Judson, and, when he reached Maloun, he was almost helpless; but he found himself lodged in a small bamboo hut in the middle of the white sand, where he could not admit air by rolling up the matting without letting in the distressing glare, and where the heat reflected from the sand was like a furnace. He could not stir when the officers came to summon him to the presence of the Burmese general, and they thought it stubbornness, and threatened him; then they brought him papers and commanded him to translate them, while he writhed in torture and only longed that the fever in his brain would deprive him of his senses. This it must have done, for he had only a confused impression of feet around him, and of fancying that he was going to be burnt alive, until he found himself on a bed in a somewhat cooler room. As he lay there, papers were

continually brought him to explain and translate, and he found that the greatest difficulty was in making the Burmese understand that a State paper could mean what it said, or that truth and honesty were possible. Sometimes, as he tried to explain the commonest principle: of good faith and fair dealing among Christian nations, his auditors would exclaim, “That is noble,” “That is as it should be;” but then they would shake their heads and say, “The teacher dreams; he has a heavenly spirit, and so he thinks himself in the land of the dwellers in heaven.”

He remained here six weeks, suffering much at night from cold, for his only covering was a small rug and his well-worn blanket. Then, on the advance of the English, he was sent back to Ava, but was marched straight to the court-house without being suffered to halt for a moment at his own abode, to discover whether his wife was there. He was placed in a shed, guarded all day, and left without food, till Moung Ing found him out in the evening, and replied to his questions, that the Mamma Judson and the child were well; yet there was something about his manner that was unsatisfactory, and Judson, thinking it over, became terribly uneasy, and in the morning, being sent for by the governor of the jail, obtained permission to go to his own house.

At the door he saw a fat, half-naked Burmese woman with a child in her arms, so dark with dirt that it never occurred to him that it could be his own; and entering, he found, lying across the foot of the bed, his wife, ghastly white and emaciated, her hair all cut away, and her whole appearance that of a corpse. She woke as he knelt down by her in despair! She had been ill all this time with a horrible spotted fever. The day she had fallen ill, the Burmese woman had offered to take charge of little Maria, and the Bengalee cook had attended on her. Dr. Price was released from prison and had cut off her hair, bled, and blistered her, but she could hardly move when the tidings came of her husband being in the town, and she had sent Moung Ing to him. The husband and wife were at last together again, and Dr. Price was sent to conduct the treaty at the English camp.

As soon as Sir Archibald Campbell heard of the sufferings of the Judsons, he demanded them as well as the English subjects; but the King was aware that they were not English,

and would not let them go. This attempt at a treaty failed; but its failure, and the alarm consequent upon a report of the advance of the English, led to Mr. Judson’s being sent off, almost by force, with two officials, to promise a ransom if Ava were spared. Sir Archibald Campbell undertook that the city should not be attacked, provided his terms were complied with before he reached it; and among these was the stipulation that not only English subjects, but all foreigners should have free choice whether to go or to stay. Some of the officials tried to persuade Mr. Judson to stay, declaring that he would become a great man, but he could not refuse the freedom offered him after such cruel sufferings, and he was wont to declare that the joy of finding himself floating down the Irrawaddy in a boat with his wife and baby, made up for their twenty-one months of peril and misery.

They were received with courtesy, and indeed with gratitude, respect, and veneration at the English camp. The Englishmen who had been in captivity bore witness to the kindness with which Mrs. Judson had relieved their wants, as well as those of her husband: how she had brought them food, mended their clothes, obtained new ones, and, as they believed, by her arguments and appeals to the ignorant and barbarous Government, had not only saved their lives, but convinced the authorities of the necessity of accepting the British terms of peace.

These terms included the cession of a large portion of the Burmese territory; and this it was that decided the missionaries to leave Ava; for the state of exasperation and intolerance into which this brought the Court, made it vain to think of continuing to give instruction where they would be regarded with enmity and suspicion. Meantime, the officers in the English camp, who had not seen a lady for nearly two years, could not make enough of the graceful, gentle woman, so pale and fragile, yet such a dauntless heroine, and always ready to exert herself beyond her strength for every sufferer who came in her way.

There was a curious scene at a dinner given to the Burmese commissioners, in a magnificent tent, with all the military pomp the camp could furnish. When Sir Archibald appeared with Mrs. Judson on his arm, and seated her by his side, there was such a look of discomfiture on the faces of the guests, that he asked her if they were not old acquaintance who had treated her ill. “That fellow with the pointed beard,” he said,

“seems taken with an ague fit.” Then Mrs. Judson told how, when her husband lay in a burning fever with the five pairs of fetters, she had walked several miles with a petition to this man, had been kept waiting till the noontide sun was at its height, and not only was she refused, but as she departed her silk umbrella was torn out of her hand by his greediness; and when she begged at least to let her have a paper one to go home with, the officer only laughed at her, and told her that she was too thin to be in danger of a sunstroke! The English gentlemen could not restrain their countenances at least from expressing their indignation; and the Burmese, who thought she was asking for their heads, or to have them laid out in the sun with weights upon their chests, were yellow with fright, and trembled visibly. Mrs. Judson kindly turned to them with a smile, assuring them that they had nothing to fear, and, on repeating her words to Sir Archibald Campbell, he confirmed them to the frightened barbarians.

That visit to the English camp was one of the few spaces of comfort or repose in those busy lives. It concluded by the husband and wife being forwarded to their old home at Rangoon.

It was in the height of the war, when anxieties for the fate of Mr. and Mrs. Judson were at the utmost, that, on the 4th of July, 1825, George Boardman and Sarah Hall were married, and sailed for Calcutta, thinking it possible that they might find their predecessors martyred, and that they were coming “to step where their comrades stood.”

At Calcutta they found Mr. and Mrs. Wade, who had with great difficulty escaped, and soon after they heard of the rescue of the Judsons, and welcomed Dr. Price. Rangoon, in the meantime, had been occupied by the English, and then besieged by the Peguans; the mission-house was ruined, and the people dispersed, and Moung Shwaygnong had died of cholera, faithful to the last. The city was to be restored to the Burmese, and the King, though willing to employ Judson politically, refused toleration to his subjects; so that, as the provinces on the Martaban river were to be ceded to the English, it seemed wise to take advantage of the reputation which the Judsons had established to found a mission-station under their protection in the new town of Amherst, which Sir Archibald Campbell proposed to build on the banks of the Martaban river.

Hither was transported the old zayat of Rangoon; and Mount Ing, Moung Shwaba, and a few other of the flock accompanied their teachers, to form the nucleus of the mission. Sir Archibald Campbell had made a great point of Mr. Judson’s accompanying the English embassy that was to conclude the treaty at Ava; and he, hoping to obtain something for the Christian cause, complied, leaving that most brave and patient woman, his wife, with her little delicate girl, in a temporary house in Amherst, which, as yet, consisted only of barracks, officers’ houses, and fifty native huts by the riverside in the space of freshly-cleared jungle. There she set to work with energy that enfeebled health could not daunt, to prepare the way for the Wades and the Boardmans, to superintend a little school, of which Moung Ing was master, and to have a house built for her husband.

She had just moved into it, when she was attacked with remittent fever, and, though attended by an English army surgeon and nursed by a soldier’s wife, she sank under it, and died on the 24th of October, 1826. She was buried under a hopia, or, as her friends loved to call it, a hope tree; and the Wades, coming shortly after, took charge of poor little Maria, who lived to be embraced by her father, on his arrival after three months’ absence; but she continued to pine away, and only survived her mother six months.

Judson endured patiently, thought of his wife’s sufferings as gems in her crown, wrote cheerful letters, and toiled indefatigably, without breaking down, but he was never the same man again. Amherst was probably unhealthy, for several of the Rangoon converts died there, among them one of the little Burmese girls who had been with Mrs. Judson throughout her troubles. Those who died almost always spoke with joy of their hope of seeing Mamma Judson in heaven. “But first,” said one woman, “I shall fall down before the Saviour’s feet, and thank Him for sending us our teachers.”

It was shortly before little Maria’s death that Mr. and Mrs. Boardman arrived, bringing with them a daughter born at Calcutta. Moulmein, the town near at hand, was decided on as their station, and they removed to a mission-house on the border of the jungle, about a mile from the cantonments, with a beautiful range of hills behind them, and the river in front. Opposite lay the Burman province of Martaban, which had

been desolated during the war, and was now the haunt of terrible Malay pirates, who came and robbed in the town, and then fled securely to the opposite bank, where they could not be pursued. The English officers had entreated the Boardmans to reside within the cantonments, but they wished to be among the people, so as to learn the language more readily and become acquainted with them.

One night, Mrs. Boardman awoke and found the lamp gone out. She rose and re-lighted it. Every box and drawer lay overthrown and rifled, nothing left but what the thieves deemed not worth taking. She turned round to the mosquito curtain which concealed her husband; it was cut by two long gashes, the one close to his head, the other to his feet. There the robber-sentry must have kept watch, ready to destroy the sleepers if they had wakened for a moment! Nearly every valuable had been carried away, and not a trace of any was ever found. After this, Sir Archibald Campbell gave them a Sepoy guard; and, as population increased, the danger diminished. Indeed, Amherst proved an unsuccessful attempt, and was gradually abandoned in favour of Moulmein, which became the head-quarters both of Government and of the Mission.

The Boardmans were specially devoted to that, because of the work which regarded the Karens. These were a wandering race who occupied a strip of jungle, a hilly country to the south of Burmah, living chiefly by hunting and fishing, making canoes, and clothed in cotton cloth. They had very scanty ideas either of religion or civilization, but were not idolaters, and had a good many of what Judson calls the gentler virtues of savages, though their habits were lazy and dirty. They had been a good deal misused by the Burmese, but occasionally wandered into the cities; and there Judson had asked questions about them which had roused the interest of his Burman converts. During the war, one of these Burmese found a poor Karen, named Ko-Thah-byoo, in bondage for debt, paid the amount, made him his own servant, and, on the removal to Moulmein, brought him thither. He proved susceptible of instruction, and full of energy and zeal; and not only embraced Christianity heartily himself, but introduced it to his tribe, and assisted the missionaries in acquiring the language.

To be nearer to these people, the Boardmans removed to

Tavoy, where they had a Burmese congregation; and Mr. Boardman made an expedition among the Karens, who were, for the most part, by no means unwilling to listen, and with little tradition to pre-occupy their minds, as well as intelligence enough to receive new ideas. At one place, the people were found devoted to an object that was thought to have magic power, and which they kept with great veneration, wrapt up in many coverings. It proved to be an English Common Prayer Book, printed at Oxford, which had been left behind by a Mahometan traveller. On the whole, this has been a flourishing mission; the Karens were delighted to have their language reduced to writing, and the influence of their teachers began to raise them in the scale; but all was done under the terrible drawback of climate. Mrs. Boardman never was well from the time she landed at Moulmein, and her beautiful flower-covered house at Tavoy was the constant haunt of sickness, under which her elder child, Sarah, died, after showing all that precocity that white children often do in these fatal regions. A little boy named George had by this time been born, and shared with his mother the dangers of the Tavoy rebellion, an insurrection stirred up by a prince of the Burmese royal blood, in hopes of wresting the province from the English.

One night, a Burmese lad belonging to the school close to the Boardmans’ house, was awakened by steps; and, peeping through the braided bamboo walls of his hut, saw parties of men talking in an undertone about lost buffaloes. Some went into the town, others gathered about the gate, and, when their numbers began to thicken, a cloud of smoke was seen in the morning dawn, and yells from a thousand voices proclaimed, “Tavoy has risen!”

Boardman awoke and rushed out to the door, but a friendly voice told him that no harm was intended him. The revolt was against the English, and never was a movement more perilous. The commandant, Colonel Burney, was absent at Moulmein, the English officer next in command was ill of a fatal disease, the gunner was ill, and the whole defence of a long, straggling city was in the hands of a hundred Sepoys, commanded by a very young surgeon, assisted by Mrs. Burney, who had a babe of three weeks old. The chief of the fight was at the powder magazine, not very far from the Boardmans’ abode. It was attacked by two hundred men with clubs, knives, spears,

but happily with very few muskets, and defended by only six Sepoys, who showed great readiness and faithfulness. Just as their bullets seemed to be likely to endanger the frightened little family, a savage-looking troop of natives were seen consulting, with threatening gestures aimed at the mission-house, and Mr. Boardman, fully expecting to be massacred, made his wife and her baby hide in a little shed, crouching to escape the bullets; but this alarm passed off, and, at the end of an hour, the whole of the gates had been regained by the Sepoys, and the attack on the magazine repulsed. Mr. Boardman took this opportunity of carrying his family to the Government house, where they were warmly welcomed by Mrs. Burney; but it was impossible to continue the defence of so large an extent as the town occupied, and therefore the tiny garrison decided on retiring to a large wooden building on the wharf, whither the Sepoys conveyed three cannon and as much powder as they expected to want, throwing the rest down wells. This was not done without constant skirmishing, and was not completed till three o’clock, when the refugees were collected,—namely, a hundred Sepoys, with their wives and children, stripped of all their ornaments, which they had buried; some Hindoo and Burmese servants; a few Portuguese traders; a wily old Mussulman; Mrs. Boardman and Mrs. Burney, each with her baby; and seven Englishmen besides Mr. Boardman. Among them rode the ghastly figure of the sick officer, who had been taken from his bed, but who hoped to encourage his men by appearing on horseback; but his almost orange skin, wasted form, sunken eyes, and perfect helplessness, were to Mrs. Boardman even more terrible than the yells of the insurgents around and the shots of their scanty escort.

Three hundred persons were crowded together in the wooden shed, roofed over, and supported on posts above the water, with no partitions. The situation was miserable enough, but they trusted that the enemy, being only armed with spears, could not reach them. By and by, however, the report of a cannon dismayed them. The jingals, or small field-pieces, were brought up, but not till evening; and the inexperienced rebels took such bad aim that all the balls passed over the wharf into the sea, and the dense darkness put a stop to the attempt; but all night the trembling inmates were awakened by savage yells; and a Sepoy, detecting a spark of light through the chinks of the

floor, fired, and killed an enemy who had come beneath in a boat to set fire to the frail shelter!

In the morning the firing from the walls was renewed, but at long intervals, for there was a great scarcity of powder, though the unhappy besieged apprehended every moment that the right direction would be hit upon, and then that the balls would be among them. They could send nowhere for help, though there was a Chinese junk within their reach, for it could not put to sea under the fire of the rebels; and two more days, and two still more terrible nights, passed in what must have been almost a black hole. The fifth night was the worst of all, for the town was set on fire around, and by the light of the flames the enemy made a furious attack; but just in time to prevent the fire from attaining the frail wooden structure, a providential storm quenched it, and the muskets of the Sepoys again repulsed the enemy. By this time the provisions were all but exhausted, and there were few among even the defenders who were not seriously ill from the alternate burning sun and drenching rain. Death seemed hovering over the devoted wharf from every quarter; when at last, soon after sunrise on the fifth day, the young doctor quietly beckoned the Colonel’s wife to the door that opened upon the sea, and pointed to the horizon, where a little cloudy thread of smoke was rising.

It was the steamer bringing Colonel Burney back, in perfect ignorance of the peril of Tavoy and of his wife! But he understood all at a glance. The women and children were instantly transferred to the steamer, and she was sent back to Moulmein, but Colonel Burney and the few men who came with him landed, and restored courage and spirit to the besieged. Not only was a breastwork thrown up to protect the wharf, but the Colonel led a trusty little band of Sepoys to the wall where the cannon stood, recaptured them, and had absolutely regained Tavoy before the tidings of the insurrection had reached Moulmein. Mrs. Burney’s babe died soon after the steamer had brought the two mothers and their infants to their refuge; but little George Boardman did not suffer any ill effects from these dreadful days and nights, and was, in fact, the only child of his patents who outlived infancy. Another son, born a few months afterwards, soon ended a feeble existence, and Mrs. Boardman was ill for many months. Her husband, delicate from the first, never entirely recovered the sufferings at the wharf; yet in spite

of an affection of the lungs, he would often walk twenty miles a day through the Karen villages, teaching and preaching, and at night have no food but rice, and sleep on a mat on the floor of an open zayat.

The Moulmein station was a comparative rest, and the husband and wife removed thither to supply the place of Judson and of the Wades, who were making another attempt upon Burmah Proper; the Wades taking up their residence at Rangoon, and Judson going on to Prome, the ancient capital, where he preached in the zayats, distributed tracts, and argued with the teachers in his old fashion; but the Ava Government had become far more suspicious, and interfered as soon as he began to make anything like progress, requesting the English officer now in residence at the Court to remonstrate with him, and desire him not to proceed further than Rangoon. He was obliged to yield, and again to float down the river in his little boat, baffled, but patient and hopeful.

A great change had come upon the bright, enthusiastic, lively young man who had set out, with his beautiful Ann, to explore the unknown Eastern world. Suffering of body had not altered him so much as bereavement, and bereavement without rest in which to face and recover the shock. A strong ascetic spirit was growing on him. Already on his first return to Moulmein, after joining in the embassy, he had thought it right to cut short the ordinary intercourse of society, to which his residence in the camp had given rise, and had announced his intention in a letter to Sir Archibald Campbell. He was much regretted, for he was a particularly agreeable man; and it is evident, both from all testimony and from the lively tone of his letters, that he was full of good-natured sympathy, and, however sad at heart, was a cheerful and even merry companion.

But through these years, throughout constant care and unrelaxed activity of mind and body, his heart was aching for the wife he had no time to mourn; and the agony thus suppressed led to an utter loathing for all that he thought held him back from perfect likeness to the glorified Saint whom he loved. He took delight in the most spiritual mystical writings he could find,—à Kempis, Madame Guyon, Fénélon, and the like,—and endeavoured to fulfil the Gospel measure of holiness. He gave up his whole patrimony to the American Baptist Mission Board (now separate from England and Serampore), mortified to the very

utmost his fastidious delicacy by ministering to the most loathsome diseases; and to crush his love of honour, he burnt a letter of thanks for his services from the Governor-General of India, and other documents of the same kind. He fasted severely, and having by nature a peculiar horror of the decay and mouldering of death, he deemed it pride and self-love, and dug a grave beside which he would sit meditating on the appearance of the body after death. He had a bamboo hermitage on the borders of the jungle, where he would live on rice for weeks together—only holding converse with those who came to him for religious instruction; and once, when worn out with his work of translation, he went far into the depths of the wildest jungle, near a deserted pagoda, and there sat down to read, pray, and meditate. The next day, on returning to the spot, he found a seat of bamboo, and the branches woven together for a shelter. Judson never learnt whose work this was, but it was done by a loving disciple, who had overcome the fear of tigers to provide by night for his comfort, though the place was thought so dangerous that his safety, during the forty days that he haunted it, was viewed by the natives as a miracle. He spent several months in retirement. It was indeed four years after his bereavement, but it is plain that he was taking the needful rest and calm that his whole nature required after the shock that he had undergone, but which he had in a manner deferred until the numbers of workers were so increased that his constant labour could be dispensed with. He came forth from his retirement renovated in spirit, for the second period of his toils.

Meantime, the Boardmans had returned to Tavoy, where they were eagerly welcomed by their Karen flock, and found many candidates for baptism. Weak as he was, Mr. Boardman examined them. He was sometimes able to sit up in his chair and speak for himself, but oftener so weak that his wife sat on his couch and interpreted his feeble whispers; but he was so happy that tears of joy often filled his eyes. The actual baptism, performed by going down into the water like Philip with the Ethiopian, could hardly have been carried out by a man in his state; but Moung Ing, who had been admitted to the pastorate, touched at Moulmein, on a mission to Mergui, and undertook the baptisms. The Karens carried Mr. Boardman to the water in his cot, along a street filled with lamaseries, whence the yellow-clothed priests looked down in scorn, and the common

people hooted and reviled: “See! see your teacher, a living man borne as if he were already dead!” with still worse unfeeling taunts. The Christians, about fifty in number, reached the spot, a beautiful lake, nearly a mile in circumference, and bordered by green grass overshadowed by trees. There they all knelt down and prayed, and then Moung Ing baptized the nineteen new disciples, while the pastor lay pale and happy, and his wife watched him with her heart full of the last baptism, when it had been he who poured the water and spoke the words.

Mr. Boardman lived on into the year 1831, and welcomed a new arrival from America, Francis Mason and his wife, on the 23rd of January, and a week later set out to introduce the former to the Karens, a band of whom had come down to convey the party. Mr. Boardman was carried on his bed, his wife in a chair, and on the third day they reached a spot where the Karens, of their own accord, had erected a bamboo chapel beside a beautiful stream beneath a range of mountains. Nearly a hundred had assembled there, of whom half were candidates for baptism. They cooked, ate, and slept in the open air, but they had made a small shed for Mr. Mason, and another for the Boardmans, too small to stand upright in, and so ill-enclosed as to be exposed to sun by day and cold air by night.

The sufferer rapidly became worse, but he had an ardent desire to see this last baptism, and all the thirty-four women, who were sufficiently prepared, were baptized in his sight, though he was so spent as scarcely to be able to breathe without the fan and smelling-bottle. In the evening he contrived to speak a few words of exhortation to the disciples, and to give them each a tract or a portion of Scripture. The next morning the party set out on their return, but in the afternoon were overtaken by a great storm of thunder and lightning, with rain that drenched his mattress and pillows; and when they reached a house, they found it belonged to heathens, who would scarcely let the strange teacher lie in the verandah.

His cot was so wet that he was forced to lie on the bamboo floor, and the rain continued all night. A boat was expected at twelve the next day, and it was resolved to wait for this, while the Tavoyans looked grimly on, and refused even to sell a chicken to make broth for the sick man. By nine o’clock he was evidently dying, and the Karens rubbed his hands and feet as they grew cold. Almost immediately after being conveyed

to the boat, the last struggles came on, and in a few minutes he had passed away. He was buried at Tavoy, beside his little Sarah; all the Europeans in the town attending, as well as a grateful multitude of Burmese and Karens.

“The tree to which the frail creeper clung
Still lifts its stately head,
But he, on whom my spirit hung,
Is sleeping with the dead,”

wrote Sarah Boardman; and her first thought was of course to go home with her child, but the Masons had not learnt the languages, and had no experience, and, without her, there would be no schools, no possibility of instruction for the converts of either people until they could speak freely, and she therefore resolved not to desert her work. She was keeping school, attending to all comers, and interpreting from sunrise till ten o’clock at night, besides having the care of her little boy, and her schools were so good that, when the British Government established some, orders were given for conducting them on the same system.

She tried to learn Karen, but never had time, and it was the less needful that a little Burmese was known to some Karens, and thus she could always have an interpreter. She sometimes made mission tours to keep up the spirit of the Karens till Mr. Mason should be qualified to come among them. Her little George was carried by her attendants, and there is a note to Mrs. Mason, sent back from one of the stages of her journey, which shows what her travels must have been: “Perhaps you had better send the chair, as it is convenient to be carried over the streams when they are deep. You will laugh when I tell you that I have forded all the smaller ones.” But there is scarcely any record of these journeys of hers, she was too modest and shy to dwell on what only related to herself; and though she several times, with the help of her Burmese interpreter, led the devotions of two or three hundred Karens, it was always with a sense of reluctance, and only under necessity.

She had been a widow four years, when Adoniram Judson, who had returned from Rangoon, and was about to take charge of the station at Moulmein, made her his second wife, on the 10th of April, 1834. At the same time, an opportunity offered of sending little George back to America for education; but year after year filled the house at Moulmein with other little

ones,—careful comforts, in that fatal climate, which had begun to tell on the health of both the parents. Pain and sorrow went for little with this devoted pair. To be as holy as the Apostles though without their power, was the endeavour which Judson set before himself, and the work of such a man was one of spirit that drew all to hear and follow him. The Burmese converts were numbered by hundreds, and one of the missionaries in the Karen country could write: “I no longer date from a heathen land. Heathenism has fled from these banks; I eat the rice and fruits cultivated by Christian hands, look on the fields of Christians, see no dwellings but those of Christian families. I am seated in the midst of a Christian village, surrounded by a people that live as Christians, converse as Christians, act as Christians, and, to my eyes, look like Christians.”

All this, like every other popular conversion, involved many individual disappointments from persons not keeping up to the Christian standard, and from coolness setting in when the excitement of the change was over; and great attention had to be paid to rules, discipline, &c., as well as to providing books and schools. Judson himself had to work hard at the completion and correction of the Burmese Bible, to which he devoted himself, the more entirely because an affection of the throat and cough came on, and for some time prevented him from preaching. In 1839, he tried to alleviate it by a voyage to Calcutta, where he was received by both Bishop Wilson and by the Marshman family at Serampore; but, as he observes, “the glory of Serampore had departed,” and his stay there must have been full of sad associations. His work upon the Scriptures was finished in 1840, and he then began a complete Burmese dictionary, while his wife was translating the Pilgrim’s Progress; but both were completely shattered in health, and their children, four in number, had all been brought low by the hooping cough, and then by other complaints. A voyage to Calcutta was imperatively enjoined on all; but it was stormy and full of suffering, and soon after they arrived at Serampore their youngest child, little Henry, died. A still further voyage was thought advisable, and the whole family went as far as the Isle of France, where they recovered some measure of health, and their toil at Moulmein was resumed. Four more years passed, three more children were born, and then the strength

that had been for nineteen years so severely tried, gave way, and the doctors pronounced that Sarah Judson’s life could only be saved by a voyage to America. The three elder children were to go with her, but the three little ones were to remain, since their father only intended to go as far as the Isle of France, and then return to his labour. The last words she ever wrote were pencilled on a slip of paper, intended to be given to him to comfort him at their farewell:—

“We part on this green islet, love:
Thou for the Eastern main,
I for the setting sun, love;
Oh! when to meet again?

My heart is sad for thee, love,
For lone thy way will be;
And oft thy tears will fall, love,
For thy children and for me.

The music of thy daughter’s voice
Thou’lt miss for many a year,
And the merry shout of thine elder boys
Thou’lt list in vain to hear.

* * * * *

Yet my spirit clings to thine, love,
Thy soul remains with me,
And oft we’ll hold communion sweet
O’er the dark and distant sea.

And who can paint our mutual joy
When, all our wanderings o’er,
We both shall clasp our infants three
At home on Burmah’s shore?

But higher shall our raptures glow
On yon celestial plain,
When the loved and parted here below
Meet, ne’er to part again.

Then gird thine armour on, love,
Nor faint thou by the way
Till Boodh shall fall, and Burmah’s sons
Shall own Messiah’s sway.”

What a trumpet-note for a soldier to leave after nineteen years service “through peril, toil, and pain,” undaunted to the last! For by the time the ship left the Isle of France, she was fading so rapidly that her husband could not quit her, and sailed on with her to St. Helena. She was fast dying, but so composed about her children, that some one observed that she seemed to

have forgotten the three babes. “Can a mother forget?” was all her answer. She died on board the ship, at anchor in the bay of St. Helena, and was carried to the burial-ground, where all the colonial clergy in the island attended, and she was laid beside Mrs. Chater, the wife of that Serampore missionary whose expulsion had led to the first pioneering at Rangoon, and who had since worked in Ceylon. She was just forty-two, and died September 1st, 1845.

Her husband found her beautiful farewell; and, as he copied it out, he wrote after the last verse, “Gird thine armour on,” “And so, God willing, I will yet endeavour to do; and while her prostrate form finds repose on the rock of the ocean, and her sanctified spirit enjoys sweeter repose on the bosom of Jesus, let me continue to toil on all my appointed time, until my change too shall come.”

On the evening of the day of her burial, he sailed with the three children, and arrived at Boston on the 15th of October, 1845. He remained in his native country only nine months, and, if a universal welcome could have delighted him, he received it to the utmost. So little did he know of his own fame, that, returning after thirty years, he had been in pain to know where to procure a night’s lodging at Boston, whereas he found half the city ready to compete for the honour of receiving him, and every one wanted to meet him. Places of worship where he was to preach were thronged, and every public meeting where he was expected to speak was fully attended; but all this fervour of welcome was a distress to him, his affection of the throat made oratory painful and often impossible, and the mere going silently to an evening assembly so excited his nerves that he could not sleep for the whole night after. Any sort of display was misery to him; he could not bear to sit still and hear the usual laudation of his achievements; and, when distinguished and excellent men were introduced to him, he received them with chilling shyness and coldness, too humble to believe that it was for his goodness and greatness that they sought to know him, but fancying it was out of mere curiosity.

His whole desire was to get back to his work and escape from American notoriety, and, disregarding all representations that longer residence in the north might confirm his health, he intended to seize the first opportunity of returning to Moulmein. But a wife was almost a necessity both to himself and his

mission, and even now, at his mature age and broken health, he was able to win a woman of qualities almost if not quite equal to those of the Ann and Sarah who had gone before her.

Emily Chubbuck, born in 1817, was the daughter of parents of the Baptist persuasion, living in the State of New York. She was the fifth child of a large family in such poor circumstances that, when she was only eleven years old, she was sent to work at a woollen factory, where her recollections were only of “noise and filth, bleeding hands and aching feet, and a very sad heart;” but happily for her, the frost stopped the works during the winter months, and she was able to go to school; and, after two years, the family removed to a country farm. They were all very delicate, and her elder sisters were one after the other slowly dying of decline. This, with their “conversions” and baptisms, deepened Emily’s longing to give the tokens required by her sect for Christian membership, but they came slowly and tardily with her, and she quaintly told how one day she was addressed by one of the congregation whose prayers had been asked for her, “What! this little girl not converted yet? How do you suppose we can waste any more time in praying for you?” Her intelligence was very great, and in 1832, when her mother wanted her to become a milliner, she entreated to be allowed to engage herself as a school teacher. “I stood as tall as I could,” she says, when she went to offer herself, and she was accepted, although only fifteen. The system was that of “boarding round”—i.e. the young mistress had to live a week alternately at each house, and went from thence to her school, but she found this so uncomfortable that she ended by sleeping at home every night. She struggled on, teaching in various schools, doing needlework in after-hours, trying to improve herself, and always contending with great delicacy of health, which must have made it most trying to cope with what she calls in one of her letters “a little regiment of wild cats” for about seven years, when some of the friends she had made obtained of two sisters who kept a boarding school at Utica that she should be admitted there to pursue the higher branches of study for a year or two, and then to repay them by her services as a teacher.

The two ladies, Miss Urania and Miss Cynthia Sheldon, and their widowed sister, Mrs. Anable, proved Emily’s kindest friends, and made a thoroughly happy home for her. She was

very frail and nervous, but of great power of influence, and even while still only a pupil had this gift. Here she spent the rest of her maiden days, and here she supplied the failure of her labours in needlework by contributions to magazines, generally under the nom de plume of Fanny Forester. They were chiefly poems and short tales, and were popular enough to bring in a sum that was very important to the Chubbuck family. The day’s employment was very full, and she stole the time required from her rest. Late one night, Miss Sheldon seeing a light in the room looked in, and found her trembling in nervous agitation, holding her head with her hands and her manuscript before her; and when gently rebuked, and entreated to lie down at once, she exclaimed with a burst of tears, “Oh! Miss Urania, I must write; I must help my poor parents.”

Her brave and dutiful endeavours prospered so much that she was actually able to buy a house for them. It was during her stay at Utica that she was baptized, and several of her writings were expressly for the Baptist Sunday School Union; and though others were of a more secular cast, all were such as could only be composed by a religious woman. A little book of hers fell into the hands of Dr. Judson, and struck him so much that he said, “I should be glad to know her. A lady who writes so well ought to write better.” She was then at Philadelphia, and at the moment of his introduction to her was undergoing the process of vaccination. As soon as it was over he entered into conversation with her with some abruptness, demanding of her how she could employ her talents in writings so trifling and so little spiritual as those he had read.

Emily met the rebuke without offence, but defended herself by describing the necessity of her case, with her indigent parents depending upon her; so that her work must almost of necessity be popular and profitable, though, as a duty, she avoided all that could be of doubtful tendency.

The missionary was thoroughly softened, and not only acquitted her, but begged her to undertake the biography of his wife Sarah: and this threw them much together. He was fifty-seven, she twenty-eight, when he offered himself to her in the following letter, sent with a watch:—

“I hand you, dearest, a charmed watch. It always comes back to me, and brings its wearer with it. I gave it to Ann when a hemisphere divided us, and it brought her safely and

surely to my arms. I gave it to Sarah during her husband’s lifetime (not then aware of the secret), and the charm, though slow in its operation, was true at last.”

The charm worked. Emily Chubbuck was ready to follow Dr. Judson to the deadly climate of Burmah, to share his labours, and become a mother to the babies he had left there.

They were married on the 2nd of June, 1846, and five weeks later sailed for Burmah, leaving the three children at school.

Emily seems to have differed from Ann and Sarah, in that she had less actual missionary zeal than they. Sarah at least was a missionary in heart, and, as such, became a wife; but Emily was more the wife, working as her husband worked. She had much more literary power than either; her letters to her friends were full of vivid description, playful accounts of their adventures, and lively colouring even of misfortunes, pain, and sickness. She arrived at Moulmein in November. One little boy had died during Dr. Judson’s absence, but the other two were tenderly cared for by the new Mrs. Judson, who threw herself into all the work and interests of the mission with great animation. It proved, however, that both the Burman and Karen missions were well supplied with teachers; and Dr. Judson thought he should be more useful at Rangoon, where there had, since one attempt on the part of the Wades, been no resident missionary. He heard accounts of the Court which made him hope to recover a footing at Ava, and decided on again living at Rangoon; but he soon heard that there was less hope than ever at Ava. The king whom he had known was dead, and had been succeeded by a devoted Buddhist, whose brother and heir, “having been prevented from being a lama,” writes Dr. Judson, “poor man! does all that he can. He descends from his prince-regal seat, pounds and winnows the rice with his own hands, washes and boils it in his own cook-house, and then, on bended knees, presents it to the priests. This strong pulsation at the heart has thrown fresh blood through the once shrivelled system of the national superstition, and now every one vies with his neighbour in building pagodas and making offerings to the priests. What can one poor missionary effect, accompanied by his yet speechless wife, and followed by three men and one woman from Moulmein, and summoning to his aid the aged pastor of Rangoon and eight or ten surviving members of the church?”

The Vice-governor, or Raywoon, was a violent and cruel savage, whose house and court-yard rang with shrieks from the tortured, and the old remnant of Christians were sadly scattered. When they were collected to worship on Sunday, they durst not either come in or go out in company, and used to arrive with their garments tucked up to look like Coolies, or carrying fruit or parcels, while the Karens crept down from the hills in small parties. The Governor was friendly, but a weak man, whose authority the Raywoon openly set at defiance; and all sorts of petty annoyances were set in action against the teachers, while the probability that the converts would suffer actual persecution daily increased. Dr. Judson used to call the present difficulties the Splugen Pass, and illness, of course, added to their troubles.

The great Buddhist fast of the year had never before been imposed on strangers, but now the markets contained nothing but boiled rice, fruit, or decaying fish, and terrible illness was the consequence both with themselves and the children, until some boxes of biscuit arrived from Moulmein, and a Mahometan was bribed to supply fowls.

But the finances of the Society at home were at a low ebb, and it was thought needful to diminish the number of stations. The intolerance of the Burmese Government led to the decision that there was less benefit in maintaining that at Rangoon than those in the British provinces; and, as Dr. Judson had no private means, he was obliged to obey and return to Moulmein. Here he had a curious correspondence with the Prince of Siam, whose letter began in his own English: “Venerable sir, having received very often your far-famed qualities, honesty, faithfulness, righteousness, gracefulness, and very kindness to poor nation, &c., from reading the book of your ancient wife’s memoir and journal.” . . . The object of this letter was to ask for some of his Burmese translations, and, in return for them, his Royal Highness sent “a few artificial flowers, two passion flowers, one mognayet or surnamed flower, and three roses manufactured by most celebrated princess the daughter of the late second king or sub-king.”

The Dictionary continued to be Judson’s chief occupation, for his affection of the voice rendered him unable to take charge of a congregation. He continued to work at it till the November of 1849, when he caught a severe cold, which

brought on an attack of fever, and from that time he never entirely rallied.

One of the last pleasures of his life deserves to be mentioned. He had always had a strong feeling for the Jews, and had longed to work for their conversion, praying that he might at least do something towards it. After his last illness had begun, a letter was read to him by his wife, giving an account of a German Jew who had been led, by reading the history of his toils in Burmah in the Gospel cause, to study Christianity and believe. “Love,” he said presently, his eyes full of tears, “this frightens me. I do not know what to make of it.” “What?” “What you have just been reading. I never was deeply interested in any object; I never prayed sincerely and fervently for anything, but it came at some time—no matter how distant a day—somehow, in some shape, probably the last I should have devised, it came. And yet I have always had so little faith.”

After spending a month at Amherst in the vain hope of improvement, a sea-voyage was recommended; but his reluctance was great, for his wife was expecting a second child, and could not go with him. There are some lines of hers describing her night-watches, so exquisite and descriptive, that we must transcribe them:—

“Sleep, love, sleep!
The dusty day is done.
Lo! from afar the freshening breezes sweep
Wide over groves of balm,
Down from the towering palm,
In at the open casement cooling run;
And round thy lowly bed,
Thy bed of pain,
Bathing thy patient head,
Like grateful showers of rain
They come;
While the white curtains, waving to and fro,
Fan the sick air;
And pityingly the shadows come and go,
With gentle human care,
Compassionate and dumb.
The dusty day is done,
The night begun;
While prayerful watch I keep,
Sleep, love, sleep!
Is there no magic in the touch
Of fingers thou dost love so much?
Fain would they scatter poppies o’er thee now;
Or, with its mute caress,
The tremulous lip some soft nepenthe press
Upon thy weary lid and aching brow;
While prayerful watch I keep,
Sleep, love, sleep!

On the pagoda spire
The bells are swinging,
Their little golden circlet in a flutter
With tales the wooing winds have dared to utter,
Till all are ringing,
As if a choir
Of golden-nested birds in heaven were singing;
And with a lulling sound
The music floats around,
And drops like balm into the drowsy ear;
Commingling with the hum
Of the Sepoy’s distant drum,
And lazy beetle ever droning near.
Sounds these of deepest silence born,
Like night made visible by morn;
So silent that I sometimes start
To hear the throbbings of my heart,
And watch, with shivering sense of pain,
To see thy pale lids lift again.

The lizard, with his mouse-like eyes,
Peeps from the mortise in surprise
At such strange quiet after day’s hard din;
Then boldly ventures out,
And looks around,
And with his hollow feet
Treads his small evening beat,
Darting upon his prey
In such a tricksy, winsome sort of way,
His delicate marauding seems no sin.
And still the curtains swing,
But noiselessly;
The bells a melancholy murmur ring,
As tears were in the sky:
More heavily the shadows fall,
Like the black foldings of a pall,
Where juts the rough beam from the wall;
The candles flare
With fresher gusts of air;
The beetle’s drone
Turns to a dirge-like, solitary moan;
Night deepens, and I sit, in cheerless doubt, alone.”

In spite of all this tender care, Dr. Judson became so much worse that, as a last resource, a passage was taken for him and

another missionary, named Ramney, on board a French vessel bound for the Isle of Bourbon. The outset of the voyage was very rough, and this produced such an increase of illness, that his life closed on the 12th of April, 1850, only a fortnight after parting from his wife, though it was not for four months that she could be informed of his loss. During this time she had given birth to a dead babe, and had suffered fearfully from sorrow and suspense.

She had become valuable enough to the mission for there to be much anxiety to retain her, and at first she thought of remaining; but her health was too much broken, and in a few months she carried home her little girl and her two step-sons. She collected the family together, and spent her time in the care of them, and in contributing materials for the Life of her husband; but the hereditary disease of her family had already laid its grasp on her, and she died on the 1st of June, 1854, the last of a truly devoted group of workers, as remarkable for their cheerfulness as for their heroism.

CHAPTER VII. THE BISHOPRIC OF CALCUTTA: THOMAS MIDDLETON, REGINALD HEBER, DANIEL WILSON.

Perhaps dying in a cause is the surest way of leading to its success. Henry Martyn was sinking on his homeward journey, while in England the renewal of the Charter of the East India Company was leading to the renewal of those discussions on the promotion of religion in Hindostan which had been so entirely quashed twenty years before, in 1793. Claudius Buchanan had published his “Christian Researches,” the Life of Schwartz had become known, the labours of Marshman and Carey were reported, and the Legislature at length attended to the representations, made through Archbishop Manners Sutton, by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and consented to sanction the establishment of a branch of the Church, with a Bishop to govern it at Calcutta, and an Archdeacon there

and also at Madras and Bombay; the Bishop to have 5,000l. a year but no house, and each Archdeacon 2,000l. Such was all that the efforts of Wilberforce could wring from the East India Company for a diocese, in length twenty degrees, in breadth ten, and where the inconvenience of distances was infinitely increased by the difficulties and dangers of travelling.

One excuse for the insufficiency of this provision had more weight with the supporters of the Church than we can understand. England had for more than a thousand years been accustomed to connect temporal grandeur with the Episcopacy; a Bishop not in the House of Lords seemed an anomaly, and it was imagined that to create chief pastors without a considerable endowment would serve to bring them into contempt; whereas to many minds, that very wealth and station was an absolute stumbling-block. However, a beginning was made, and a year after Henry Martyn’s death, in 1814, the first of the Colonial Bishops of England was appointed, namely, Thomas Fanshaw Middleton, the son of a Derbyshire clergyman, who had been educated at Christ’s Hospital, and Pembroke College, Cambridge, and had since been known as an excellent Greek scholar, and an active clergyman in the diocese of Lincoln. Thence he removed to the rectory of St. Pancras, London, where he strove hard to accomplish the building of a new church, but could not succeed, such was the dead indifference of the period. He was also Archdeacon of Huntingdon, and one of a firmly compacted body of friends who were doing much in a resolute though quiet way for the awakening of the nation from its apathy towards religion. Joshua Watson, a merchant, might be regarded as the lay-manager and leader, as having more leisure, and more habit of business than the clergy, with and for whom he worked. This is no place for detailing their home labours, but it may be well to mention that to their exertions we owe the National Society for the education of the poor, and likewise that edition of the Holy Scriptures, with notes, which is commonly known as Mant’s Bible. They were the chief managers at that time of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge; and when, in 1813, a Danish missionary was sent out by that Society to take charge of the congregations left by Schwartz and his colleagues, it was Archdeacon Middleton who was selected to deliver a charge to him. It was a very powerful and impressive speech, and perhaps

occasioned Dr. Tomline, Bishop of Lincoln, to recommend the speaker to the Earl of Buckinghamshire for the bishopric created the next year.

The office would be, humanly speaking, most trying, laborious and perplexing, and neither Archdeacon Middleton’s age (forty-five) nor his habits inclined to enthusiasm. He shrank from it at first, then “suspected,” as he says, “that I had yielded to some unmanly considerations,” and decided that it was his duty to accept the charge as a call from his Master. He was consecrated in the chapel at Lambeth, by Archbishop Manners Sutton, with the Bishops of London, Lincoln, and Salisbury assisting. The sermon was preached by Dr. Rennell, Dean of Winchester, but was withheld from publication for the strange reason that there was so strong an aversion to the establishment of episcopacy in India, that it was thought better not to attract attention to the fact that had just been accomplished.

Bishop Middleton, his wife, and two of his Archdeacons (the third was already in India) sailed on the 8th of June, 1814, and they landed at Calcutta on the 28th of November. There was no public reception, for fear of alarming the natives, though, on the other hand, they were found to entertain a better opinion of the English on finding they respected their own religion. The difficulties of the Bishop’s arrival were increased by the absence of Lord Moira, the Governor-General, who was engaged in the Nepaulese war; and as no house had been provided for the Bishop, he had to be the guest of Mr. Seton, a member of the Council, till a house could be procured, at a high rent.

One of the first visitors was a Hindoo gentleman, who told him, “Sir William Jones was a great man and understood our books, but he attended only to our law. Your lordship will study our religion; your people mistake our religion; it is not in our books. The Brahminee religion and your lordship’s are the same; we mean the same thing.”

The man seems to have been one of those of whom there are now only too many in India, who have thrown off their old superstitions only to believe in nothing, save the existence of a Supreme Being, and who fancy that all other religions can be simplified into the like. This is the class that has, for the seventy years during which Christianity has been preached in earnest, been the alternate hope and anxiety of the missionary; intellectually renouncing their own paganism, but withheld by

the prejudices of their families from giving up the heathenish customs of caste; admiring divine morality, but not perceiving the inability of man to attain the standard; and refusing to accept the mysteries in the supernatural portion of Revelation. Such was probably Serfojee; such was the celebrated Brahmin Ram Mohun Roy, with whom Bishop Middleton had much discussion, and of whom he had at one time many hopes, a man of very remarkable powers of mind and clear practical intelligence. Roy’s endeavour at first was to purify the native forms of religion, and, recurring to the Vedas, to find a high philosophy in them; but he and the friends he gathered round him soon became convinced that these contained no system of reasonable theology, still less of morality, and they then constructed for themselves a theory culled from Christianity, but rejecting whatever did not approve itself to their intellect, in especial the holy mysteries regarding the nature of the Godhead and the Incarnation of our Lord. This teaching, called Brahmoism, from Brahma, the purest and highest of Hindoo divinities, is, under another form, the Neo-Platonism of the Greeks, or the Soofeeism of the Persians. There was even the germ of it in the grotesque medicine-man encountered by David Brainerd. It is the form of opposition which the spirit of evil always stirs up, wherever the natural character is elevated enough to appreciate the beauty of Christian morality. It only prevails where there are refined and cultivated men, afraid of all belief in the supernatural, as a humbling of their intellect to superstition; and just at present a form of it is very prevalent in India, owing to the amount of education which the natives receive, which uproots the old belief, but does not always implant the new. Whether it will become a stepping-stone to Christianity, or whether it has substance to become a separate sect, remains to be proved.

To return to Bishop Middleton. He knew when he left home that his work would be heavy, and that to set in order the things that were wanting must be his first undertaking; but no words could have conveyed the dead weight of care and toil that lay on him. The huge diocese was shamefully deficient in all that was needful for the keeping up of religious ordinances; the Company’s chaplains, few in number, were stationed at immense distances apart, and for the most part had no attempt at a proper church for their congregations. Verandahs or

dining-rooms were used on Sundays; and at Meerut, an edifice was actually built for the purpose of a riding-school in the week, and a place of worship on Sunday. Moreover, these chaplains were accustomed to look to the Governor-General as their only superior, and, living so far apart, each followed his own independent line of action, as if entirely unaccountable. Some, such as Mr. Corrie at Cawnpore, were admirable and earnest men; but Henry Martyn’s successor at Dinapore had let the place sink into a lamentable state, and there were several chaplains who greatly resented the being brought under authority. The brunt of the battle fell of course upon the first Bishop, and being a man as sensitive as he was firm, it tried him severely. His entreaty was constantly for more men; and in order to obtain a ministry beyond that which the East India Company would provide for, he occupied himself in procuring the foundation of Bishop’s College, close to Calcutta, a seminary where young men, both European and native, could receive a good theological and classical education, and be prepared for Holy Orders. The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge granted 5,000l. for the purpose, and private subscriptions came in, until on the 15th of December, 1820, the Bishop was enabled to lay the foundation-stone of an institution that has, now for half a century, admirably answered its purpose.

It has long been found that Christianity cannot take root without a native ministry, and Bishop Middleton was most anxious to ordain such catechists of Schwartz’s training as were ready; but he found great technical difficulties in the way, since the ordination form in the Prayer Book left no opening for persons who, not being British subjects, could not be expected to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy; and, moreover, it was not certain what language ought to be used with men not speaking English. The arrangement of these difficulties hindered him from ordaining Christian David, the godson and pupil of Schwartz, and a subject of Tanjore, on his visitation to the Presidency. This good man met him, together with the minister of Palamcotta, bringing a deputation about thirty in number. The minister was an exceedingly dark man, with a very interesting countenance. Addresses, interpreted by Christian, were made on either side, and the thirty sang a psalm of thanksgiving in Tamul. They were only a small deputation, for there were several Christian villages in Tinnevelly,

with churches built of unburnt brick, and roofed with palmyra leaves, where the English Liturgy was used, having been translated into Tamul by David.

At Tanjore, the Bishop was received in the most friendly manner by Serfojee, who came down from his throne to welcome him, and caused Mrs. Middleton to be conducted to visit the ladies of his zenana. He conducted the Bishop into his library, which contained books in various European languages; also on medicine and anatomy, this being his favourite study, to assist him in which he had an ivory skeleton. He returned the visit in great state, with six elephants, two of enormous size, going before him, and accompanied by his troops, with a wild, horrid dissonance of cannon and native music. Two thousand persons escorted the Rajah to the Bishop’s tent, where he conversed very sensibly on various subjects, especially English history, or as he called it, “the Generations of English Kings.” He was keeping up the good works he had established, under the encouragement of the British resident, Colonel Blackburne, and in this district the native Christians numbered about 500, who were under the direction of Schwartz’s companion, Pohlé.

On the Malabar coast Bishop Middleton had much intercourse with the Christians of St. Thomas, visited their churches, and held much conversation with their Bishop, convincing himself that the distinctive tenets of Nestorianism had died out among them, and arranging for their receiving assistance in books and teachers.

His visit to Ceylon followed, and was always regarded by him as a time of much gratification; the good Governor, Sir Robert Brownrigg, had done so much for the improvement of the people, and the missions were flourishing so well. Here Christian David became a catechist, and on the Bishop’s second visitation, in 1821, he ordained as deacon a man named Armour, whose history one longs to know more fully. He had come out to Ceylon originally as a private soldier, and finding a number of natives, probably the remnant of the Dutch Mission, whose profession of Christianity was only nominal, he had taken upon himself “almost the work of an evangelist,” never varying from the teaching and services of the English Church. He had taught himself to speak and preach fluently in Cingalese, and could use the Dutch and Portuguese languages freely. He had

even some knowledge of Latin and Greek, and was so staunch Churchman that he had resisted all invitations from the Baptists to join them. He had gone through frightful difficulties and dangers in the swamp and the jungle, and travelled thousands of miles; and when he came to the Bishop it was with deep humility, and the hope that he had not been presumptuous in taking on himself the charge of souls without sanction. It was his great desire to obtain this commission, and the Bishop, finding how sound in faith, pious, and excellent he was, admitted him to deacon’s orders before leaving Colombo.

Ceylon was erected into an archdeaconry and attached to the Bishopric of Calcutta, and shortly after the same arrangement was made respecting Australia—an archdeaconry a great deal larger than the continent of Europe! Thence Bishop Middleton received and attended to the petition of the Rev. Samuel Marsden, a devoted worker in the vineyard, of whom our next chapter will speak.

Distinct missionary labour was scarcely possible to a man overtasked like Bishop Middleton. The district that kept St. Paul in continual “journeyings often” would have been but a quarter of that which depended on him for “the care of all the churches,” and the long journeys by sea and land were by far the least harassing part of his life; for he had to fight the battles, sometimes of his Church, sometimes of the whole Christian cause, with unfair and prejudiced officials, and a malignant newspaper press, by which the bitterest attacks were circulated against him and his doings. And, “besides those things that were without,” there were the troubles of dealing with men used to do “that which was right in their own eyes,” and determined to oppose or neglect one whose powers could only thoroughly be defined by actual practice. To go into these conflicts would be wearisome and vain. They have lost their interest now; but it must be remembered that it is by manfully and firmly enduring vexations such as these, that systems are established which form the framework and foundation of more visible labours, which gain more praise for those who are allowed to carry them out.

The constant wearing effort, the daily vexation, the inability to gain support, the binding of his hands from free action by the machinery of State regulations only applicable to home

ecclesiastics, the continual making beginnings that never were allowed to progress—or, as he himself called it, the continual rolling of the stone of Sisyphus—could not but exhaust his powers, above all in such a climate; and that same sickly summer of 1822 which proved fatal to Felix Carey was his last. In July, one of his clergy, on whom he had been obliged to pass censure, instituted proceedings against him in the Supreme Court—a most improper and disloyal act, which much grieved and agitated him. He had to spend eight hours in writing in preparation for this painful matter, and afterwards went out in the carriage with his wife, but too early in the evening, for the slanting rays of the sun, not yet down, fell full on him, and their force is always especially dreaded at that damp and sickly season. He immediately said that the sun had struck him, and returned home; a most distressing fever, chiefly on the nerves, and accompanied by grievous restlessness and afterwards delirium, set in, and he died on the 8th of July, 1822, in his fifty-fourth year, absolutely worn out by toil and worry. But his career had established both the needfulness and the position of a Bishop, and his successor was appointed without the same opposition, still to a path perhaps only less thorny because briefer.

Of a Yorkshire family, where the eldest son was always bred up as the country gentleman, the younger ones usually prepared to hold the family livings, Reginald Heber was born on the 21st of April, 1783, at Malpas, in Cheshire, a rectory held by his father, who was the clerical second son, but soon after became head of the house by the death of his squire-brother. He was twice married, and had a son by his first wife, so that Reginald was born, as it were, to the prospect of taking Holy Orders; and this fact seems to have in a certain degree coloured his whole boyhood, and acted as a consecration, not saddening, but brightening his life.

A happy, eager, docile childhood seems to have been his; so obedient, that when an attack on the lungs necessitated the use of very painful remedies, the physician said that the chances of his recovery turned upon his being the most tractable of children; and with such a love and knowledge of the Bible that, when only five years old, his father could consult him like a little Concordance, and withal full of boyish mirth and daring. When sent to school at Neasdon, he was so excited by the story

of an African traveller overawing a wild bull by the calm defiance of the eye, as to attempt the like process upon one that he found grazing in a field, but without the like success; for he provoked so furious a charge that he was forced to escape ignominiously over a high paling, whence he descended into a muddy pond.

Neasdon was the place of education of his whole boyhood, among twelve other pupils. Mr. John Thornton, the schoolfellow friend and correspondent of his life, describes him as having been much beloved there. He had no scruple as to fighting rather than submitting to tyranny from a bigger boy, but his unfailing good nature and unselfishness generally prevented such collisions; he was full of fun, and excellent at games of all sorts; and though at one time evil talk was prevalent among the boys, his perfect purity of mind and power of creating innocent amusement destroyed the habit, without estranging the other lads from him. He took many of his stories from books not read by them, for he was an omnivorous reader, taking special delight in poetry, loving nothing better than a solitary walk with Spenser’s “Faërie Queen” in his hand, and often himself composing verses above the average for so young a boy.

He was always thoughtful, and there is a letter of his to his friend Thornton, written when only seventeen, which shows that he had begun to think over Church questions, was deeply sensible of the sacredness of the apostolical commission to the ministry, and of the evils of State interference. That same year, 1800, began his University education, at Brasenose College, Oxford. His course there was alike blameless in life and brilliant in scholarship; his talents and industry could not fail to secure him honours in the schools.

Another young man was at the very same time at Oxford, whose course had been steered thither with more difficulties than Reginald Heber’s. Daniel Wilson’s father was a wealthy silk manufacturer, at Spitalfields, where he was born in the year 1778. He was educated at a private school at Hackney, kept by a clergyman named Eyre, who must have had a good deal of discernment of character, for he said, “There is no milk and water in that boy. He will be either something very bad or very good.” One day, when he was in an obstinate and impracticable state of idleness, Mr. Eyre said, “Daniel, you are

not worth flogging, or I would flog you,” which so stung him that he never fell into similar disgrace again; nay, one morning when he had failed in his appointed task, he refused food saying, “No! If my head will not work, my body shall not eat.” He had considerable powers, and when his own theme on a given subject was finished, would find “sense” for all the dull boys—varying the matter but keeping to the point in all: but his education ceased at fourteen, when he was bound apprentice to his uncle, who followed the same trade as his father, and lived in Cheapside. He was a widower with seven children, one of whom in after years became Daniel’s wife. It was a strictly religious household, and whereas Daniel’s parents had been wont to attend church or meeting as suited them best, his uncle was a regular churchman, and took his whole family constantly with him, as decidedly as he kept up discipline in his warehouse, where the young men had so little liberty, that for weeks together they never had occasion to put on their hats except on Sunday.

Daniel was a thoughtless, irreverent lad, full of schoolboy restlessness when first he came; but though he was at first remarkable for his ill-behaviour in church, his attendance insensibly took effect upon him, as it brought his mind under the influence of the two chief powers for good then in London, John Newton and Richard Cecil. The vehement struggle for conversion and sense of individual salvation that their teaching deemed the beginning of grace took place, and he turned for aid to them and to his old schoolmaster, Mr. Eyre. It was from his hands in 1797, at the age of nineteen, that he received his first Communion, with so much emotion and such trembling, that he writes to his mother, “I have no doubt I appeared very foolish to those about me,” but he adds in another letter to a friend that it had been the happiest day of his life. “And to you I confess it,” he says, “(though it ought perhaps to be a cause for shame,) that I have felt great desire to go or do anything for the love of Jesus, and that I have even wished, if it were the Lord’s will, to go as a missionary to foreign lands.”

It is very remarkable that this thought should have occurred at such a moment to one who only became a missionary thirty-five years later, at a summons from without, not from within. The distinct mission impulse passed away, but a strong desire

remained to devote himself to the ministry of the Church. He tried to stifle it at first, lest it should be a form of conceit or pride; but it only grew upon him, and at last he spoke to Mr. Eyre, who promised to broach the subject to his parents.

His father was strongly averse to it, as an overthrow to all his plans, and Mr. Eyre, after hearing both sides, said that he should give no opinion for a year; it would not hurt Daniel to remain another year in the warehouse, to fulfil the term of his apprenticeship, and it would then be proper time to decide whether to press his father to change his mind. It was a very sore trial to the young man, who had many reasons for deeming this sheer waste of time, though he owned he had not lost much of his school learning, having always loved it so much as to read as much Latin as he could in his leisure hours. He submitted at first, but was uneasy under his submission, and asked counsel from all the clergymen he revered, who seem all to have advised him to be patient, but to have urged his father to yield, which he finally did before the year was out; so that Daniel Wilson was entered at St. Edmund’s Hall, Oxford, on the 1st of May, 1798. He struggled with the eagerness of one whose desire had grown by meeting with obstacles. In order to acquire a good Latin style, he translated all Cicero’s letters into English, and then back into Latin; and when he went up for his degree, he took, besides his Latin and Greek books, the whole Hebrew Bible, but was only examined in the Psalms. He gained a triumphant first-class, and the next year, 1803, he carried off the English prose essay prize. The theme was “Common Sense.” He had not in the least expected to gain the prize, and had not even mentioned the competition to his friends, so that their delight and surprise were equal. That same year, Reginald Heber was happy in the subject for Sir Roger Newdegate’s prize for English verse, namely, “Palestine,” which in this case had fallen to a poet too real to be crushed by the greatness of his subject.

Reginald Heber was used to society of high talent and cultivation. His elder brother, Richard, was an elegant scholar and antiquary, and was intimate with Mr. Marriott, of Rokeby; with Mr. Surtees, the beauty of whose forged ballads almost makes us forgive him for having palmed them off as genuine; and with Walter Scott, then chiefly known as “the compiler of the ‘Border Minstrelsy,’” but who a few years later immortalized his

friendship for Richard Heber by the sixth of his introductions to “Marmion,”—the best known, as it contains the description of the Christmas of the olden time. It concludes with the wish—

“Adieu, dear Heber, life and health!
And store of literary wealth.”

Just as Reginald was finishing his prize poem, Scott was on a tour through England, and breakfasted at Richard Heber’s rooms at Oxford, when on the way to lionize Blenheim. The young brother’s poem was brought forward and read aloud, and Scott’s opinion was anxiously looked for. It was thoroughly favourable, “but,” said Scott, “you have missed one striking circumstance in your account of the building of the Temple, that no tools were used in its erection.”

Before the party broke up the lines had been added:

“No workman’s steel, no ponderous axes rung;
Like some tall palm the noiseless fabric sprung;
Majestic silence—”

The prose essay on “Common Sense” was first recited from the rostrum in the Sheldonian theatre, and Wilson always remembered the hearty applause of the young man who sat waiting his turn. But the effect of the recitation of “Palestine” was entirely unrivalled on that as on any other occasion. Reginald Heber,—a graceful, fine-looking, rather pale young man of twenty,—with his younger brother Thomas beside him as prompter, stood in the rostrum, and commenced in a clear, beautiful, melancholy voice, with perfect declamation, which overcame all the stir and tumultuous restlessness of the audience by the power and sweetness of words and action:

“Reft of thy sons, amid thy foes forlorn,
Mourn, widow’d queen; forgotten Zion, mourn.
Is this thy place, sad city, this thy throne,
Where the wild desert rears its craggy stone;
While suns unblest their angry lustre fling,
And wayworn pilgrims seek the scanty spring?”

On flowed the harmonious lines, looking back to the call of the Chosen, the victory of Joshua, the glory of Solomon, the hidden glory of the Greater than Solomon, the crime of crimes, the destruction, the renewal by the Empress Helena, the Crusades, and after a tribute (excusable at the time of excitement) to Sir

Sidney Smith’s defence of Acre, gradually rising to a magnificent description of the heavenly Jerusalem.

“Ten thousand harps attune the mystic throng,
Ten thousand thousand saints the strain prolong.
‘Worthy the Lamb, omnipotent to save!
Who died, Who lives triumphant o’er the grave.”

The enthusiasm, the hush, the feeling, the acclamations have ever since been remembered at Oxford as unequalled. Heber’s parents were both present, and his mother, repairing at once in her joy to his rooms, found him kneeling by his bedside, laying the burthen of honour and success upon his God. His father, recently recovered from illness, was so overcome and shaken by the pressure of the throng and the thunder of applause as never entirely to recover the fatigue, and he died eight months later, early in 1804.

The two youths who were in juxtaposition at the rostrum were not to meet again. Daniel Wilson was ordained to the curacy of Chobham, under Mr. Cecil, an excellent master for impressing hard study on his curates. He writes: “What should a young minister do? His office says, ‘Go to your books, go to retirement, go to prayer.’ ‘No,’ says the enthusiast, ‘go to preach, go and be a witness.’”

“‘A witness of what?’

“‘He don’t know!’”

While Wilson worked under Cecil, Heber, who was still too young for the family living of Hodnet, in Shropshire, after taking his bachelor’s degree, obtaining a fellowship at All Souls College, and gaining the prize for the prose essay, accompanied John Thornton on a tour through northern and eastern Europe, the only portions then accessible to the traveller; and, returning in 1806, was welcomed at home by his brother’s tenants with a banquet, for which three sheep were slaughtered, and at which he appeared in the red coat of the volunteer regiment in which he had taken an eager share during former years.

It was his last appearance in a military character, for in 1807 he was ordained, and entered on his duties as Rector of Hodnet. Two years later he married Amelia Shipley, the daughter of the Dean of St. Asaph. Floating thus easily into preferment, without a shoal or rock in his course, fairly wealthy, and belonging to a well-esteemed county family, connected through his brother with the very élite of literary society, it seemed as

though, in the laxity of the early part of the century, Reginald Heber could hardly have helped falling into the indolence of learned ease, the peril of the well-beneficed clergy of his day, especially among those who had not accepted the peculiarities of the awakening school of the period.

But such was not the case. He was at once an earnest parish priest, working hard to win his people, not only to attend at church, but to become regular communicants, and to give up their prevalent evil courses. We find him in one letter mentioning the writing of an article on Pindar in the Quarterly Review, planning for a village-school on the Lancastrian principle, and endeavouring to improve the psalmody. “At least,” he says, “I have a better reason to plead for silence than the Cambridge man who, on being asked in what pursuit he was then engaged, replied that he was diligently employed in suffering his hair to grow.”

These “endeavours to improve the psalmody” were a forestalling of the victory over the version of Tate and Brady. The Olney Hymns, produced by Cowper, under the guidance of John Newton, had been introduced by Heber on his first arrival in the parish, but he felt the lack of something more thoroughly in accordance with the course of the Christian year, less personal and meditative, and more congregational. Therefore he produced by degrees a series of hymns, which he described as designed to be sung between the Nicene Creed and the Sermon, and to be connected in some degree with the Collects and Gospels for the day. Thus he was the real originator in England of the great system of appropriate hymnology, which has become almost universal, and many of his own are among the most beautiful voices of praise our Church possesses. We would instance Nos. 135 and 263 in “Hymns Ancient and Modern,”—that for the 21st Sunday after Trinity, a magnificent Christian battle-song; and that for Innocents’ Day, an imitation of the old Latin hymn “Salvete flores Martyrum.” They were put together, with others by Dean Milman and a few more, into a little volume, which Heber requested Dr. Howley, then Bishop of London, to lay before the Archbishop, that it might be recommended for use in churches, but the timidity of the time prevented this from being carried into effect.

A deep student of church history, his letters show him trying every practical question by the tests of ancient authority as well as instructive piety, and, on these principles, already deploring

the undue elevation of the pulpit and debasement of the Altar to which exclusive preference of preaching had led. Missions had, since the days of Carey’s first opening of the subject become so predominant a thought with the Nonconformist bodies, and were often conducted so irregularly, that there was certain dread and distrust of them among the sober-minded and orthodox; but Heber was one of the first English churchmen who perceived that to enlarge her borders and strengthen her stakes was the bounden duty of the living Church. He was a fervent admirer of Henry Martyn, whose biography was published soon after the news of his death reached England, and his feeling found vent in that hymn so familiar to us all—“From Greenland’s icy mountains.”

He was meantime rising in influence and station,—Canon of St. Asaph, Preacher at Lincoln’s Inn, Select Preacher before the University. He was beloved by all ranks: by the poor for his boundless charity and sympathy; and by his equals, not only for these qualities, but for his sunny temper, bright wit, and playfulness, which showed in his conversation, his letters, and in many a droll, elegant, and scholarly jeu d’esprit, thrown off by a mind that could do nothing without gracefulness. All this prosperity was alloyed only by such domestic sorrow as might be fitly termed gentle chastening. The death of his next brother, Thomas, who had acted as his curate, was a severe loss to him; and in the desire to make every affliction a stepping-stone in Christian progress, he began, from that date, a custom of composing a short collect-like prayer, veiled in Latin, on every marked occurrence in his life. The next occasion was, after several years of marriage, the birth of a little daughter, whom (in his own words) “he had the pleasure of seeing and caressing for six months,” ere she faded away, and died just before the Christmas of 1817. He never could speak of her without tears, and (his wife tells us) ever after added to his private prayers a petition to be worthy to rejoin his “sinless child.” His grief and his faith further found voice in the hymn, each verse of which begins with “Thou art gone to the grave, but we will not deplore thee,” and which finishes—

“Thou art gone to the grave, but we will not deplore thee,
Whose God was thy ransom, thy Guardian and Guide.
He gave thee, He took thee, and He will restore thee,
And death has no sting, for the Saviour has died.”

Such had been the training of Reginald Heber, through the pleasant paths of successful scholarship and literature, and of well-beneficed country pastorship; a life perilous to spirituality and earnestness, but which he kept full of the salt of piety, charity and unwearied activity as parish priest, and as one of the voices of the Church. Such had been his life up to 1822, when, on the tidings of the death of Dr. Middleton, Bishop of Calcutta, his friend Charles Williams Wynn, President of the Board of Commissioners for the affairs of India, offered him the appointment.

To a man of his present position, talents, and prospects at home, the preferment was not advantageous: the income, with the heavy attendant expenses, would very little increase his means; the promotion threw him out of the chances of the like at home; and the labour and toil of the half-constituted and enormous diocese, the needful struggles with English irreligion and native heathenism, and the perils of climate, offered a trying exchange for all that had made life delightful at Hodnet Rectory. A second little daughter too, whom he could not of course look to educating in India, rendered the decision more trying. But in his own peculiarly calm and simple way, he wrote: “I really should not think myself justified in declining a situation of so great usefulness, and for which, without vanity, I think myself not ill adapted, either from a love for the society and friendship of England, or from a hope, which may never be realized, of being some time or other in a situation of more importance at home.” At first, however, the fear for the child’s health induced him to decline, but only if anyone else equally suitable could be found; and finally he accepted it, with apparent coolness, veiling the deep spirit of zeal and enthusiasm that glowed within. It was not the ardent vehemence that enables some to follow their inward call, overcoming all obstacles, but it was calm obedience to a call from without. “After all,” he wrote, “I hope I am not enthusiastic in thinking that a clergyman is, like a soldier or a sailor, bound to go on any service, however remote or undesirable, where the course of his duty leads him, and my destiny (though there are some circumstances attending it which make my heart ache) has many, very many, advantages in an extended sphere of professional activity, in the indulgence of literary curiosity, and, what to me has many charms, the opportunity of seeing nature in some of its wildest and most majestic features.”

In the spring of 1823, he took leave of Hodnet, amid the tears of his parishioners; and on the 18th of May preached his last sermon in Lincoln’s Inn chapel, on the Atonement. On coming out, one of the most leading men among the Wesleyan Methodists could only express his feelings by exclaiming, “Thank God for that man! Thank God for that man!”

It is striking to find him in the full pressure of business, while preparing in London for his consecration and his voyage, making time for a letter to one of the Hodnet farmers, to warn him against habits of drunkenness, hoping that it would dwell with him “as a voice from the dead.” On the 1st of June, 1823, Reginald Heber was consecrated at Lambeth, and on the 10th sailed for India! He made several sketches along the southern coast, under one of which he wrote:—

“And we must have danger, and fever, and pain,
Ere we look on the white rocks of Albion again.”

A few days later, when passing the western coast of France on a Sunday, the sound of the bells suggested the following meditative verses:—

“Bounding along the obedient surges,
Cheerly on her onward way,
Her course the gallant vessel urges
Across thy stormy gulf, Biscay.
In the sun the bright waves glisten;
Rising slow with solemn swell,
Hark, hark, what sound unwonted? Listen—
Listen—’tis the Sabbath bell.

It tells of ties which duties sever,
Of hearts so fondly knit to thee,
Kind hands, kind looks, which, wanderer, never
Thy hand shall grasp, thine eye shall see.
It tells of home and all its pleasures,
Of scenes where memory loves to dwell,
And bids thee count thy heart’s best treasures
Far, far away, that Sabbath bell.

Listen again! Thy wounded spirit
Shall soar from earth and seek above
That kingdom which the blest inherit,
The mansions of eternal love.
Earth and her lowly cares forsaking,
Bemoaned too keenly, loved too well,
To faith and hope thy soul awaking,
Thou hear’st with joy that Sabbath bell.”

By the 28th of September, the vessel was in sight of the Temple of Jaghernauth, and on the 3rd of October was anchored close to the island of Saugor.

All through his voyage and residence in India, the Bishop kept a journal of the doings and scenes of each day, full of interesting sketches, both in pen and pencil. The beauty of the villages on the Hooghly, “the greenhouse-like smell and temperature of the atmosphere,” and the gentle countenances and manners of the natives, struck him greatly, as he says, “with a very solemn and earnest wish that I might in some degree, however small, be enabled to conduce to the spiritual advantage of creatures so goodly, so gentle, and now so misled and blinded. ‘Angili forent si essent Christiani.’”

On the 10th of October the Heber family entered their temporary abode in the Fort at Calcutta, and were received by two Sepoy sentries and a long train of servants in cotton dresses and turbans, one of them with a long silver stick, another with a mace. There, too, were assembled the neighbouring clergy—alas! far too few—and the next day the Bishop was installed in his cathedral.

Then began a life of very severe labour, for not only had the arrears of episcopal business after the interregnum to be made up, but the deficiency of clergy rendered the Sunday duties very heavy; and the Bishop took as full a share of them as any working parish priest; and even though he authorized the Church Missionary Society’s teachers to read prayers and to preach, the lack of sufficient ministrations was great. Bishop’s College had, however, been completed, and what Middleton had founded was opened by Heber, with the happiest effect, which has lasted to the present time.

The difficulties as to the form of ordination of such as were not British subjects had also been overcome, and Christian David was to be sent up from Ceylon in company with Mr. Armour, who was to receive Priest’s orders. The latter excellent man died just before he was to set off, and this delayed David until the next spring, when he came to Calcutta, was lodged in Bishop’s College, passed an excellent examination, and was ordained deacon on Holy Thursday, 1824, and priest on the ensuing Trinity Sunday. He is memorable as the first man of the dark-skinned races admitted by the Church of England to her ministry. An excellent and well-expressed letter

from him, on the difficulties respecting the distinctions of caste, is given in Bishop Heber’s Life. This, indeed, was one of the greatest troubles in dealing with converts. The Serampore missionaries had striven to destroy it, but Ziegenbalg, Schwartz, and their elder companions, regarded it as a distinction of society—not religious—and, though discouraging it, had not so opposed it as to insist on high and low castes mingling indiscriminately in church or at meals. The younger men who had since come out had been scandalized, and tried to make a change, which had led to much heartburning.

Next to his hymns, Bishop Heber is best known by the journal he kept of his visitation tour, not intended for publication but containing so much of vivid description of scenery and manners, that it forms a valuable picture of the condition of Hindostan as it then was.

His first stage, in barges along the Ganges, brought him to Dacca, where he was delayed by the illness and death of his much esteemed and beloved chaplain. He then went on to Bhaugulpore, where he was much interested in a wild tribe called the Puharries, who inhabit the Rajmahal hills, remnants of the aborigines of India. They carried bows and arrows, lived by the chase, and were viewed as great marauders; but they had a primitive faith, free from idolatry, hated falsehood, and, having no observance of caste and a great respect for Europeans, seemed promising objects for a mission; but unfortunately the climate of their mountains was so injurious to European life, that the clergyman, Mr. Thomas Christian, a scholar of Bishop’s College, whom the Bishop appointed to this mission, was only able to spend three months in the hills in the course of the year, while for the other nine he took the children under his instruction back with him to Bhaugulpore.

At Bankipore, the Bishop met Padre Giulio Cesare, still a remarkably handsome and intelligent-looking little man, and speaking warmly of Henry Martyn. Dinapore, that first station of Martyn’s, had since his time fallen into a very unsatisfactory state, owing to the carelessness of his successor, though it was newly come into better hands.

On the contrary, at Buxar, the Fort-adjutant, Captain Field, had so influenced all around, though without a chaplain, that, though the Bishop could not give the place a Sunday, his Saturday evening service in the verandah was thronged, the English

soldiers coming with Prayer-books and making the responses, besides numerous Hindoos, many of them the Christian wives and children of the soldiers. There was a boys’ school kept by a converted Mahometan, and one for girls by “Mrs. Simpson,” a native of Agra, converted by Mr. Corrie, and the widow of a sergeant. She, however, got no scholars but the half-caste daughters of the soldiers. A little boy of four years old, son to an English sergeant with a native wife, was baptized, and the Bishop was delighted with the reverent devotion of the spectators. Cureem Musseh, once a Sepoy havildar, had his sword and sash hung over the desk, where, in a clean white cotton dress and turban, he presided over his scholars, whom he had taught to read Hindostanee, and to say the Creed, Lord’s Prayer, and Commandments, with a short exposition of each. The school served them likewise to hold prayer-meetings in, and, on rare occasions, a clergyman visited them.

The Bishop’s entrance into the sacred city of Benares he describes to his wife thus: “I will endeavour to give you an account of the concert, vocal and instrumental, which saluted us as we entered the town:—

“First beggar.—Agha Sahib! Judge Sahib, Burra Sahib, give me some pice; I am a fakir; I am a priest; I am dying of hunger!

“Bearers trotting under the tonjon.—Ugh! ugh!—Ugh! ugh!

“Musicians.—Tingle, tangle; tingle, tangle; bray, bray, bray.

“Chuprassee, clearing the way with his sheathed sabre.—Silence! Room for the Lord Judge, the Lord Priest. Get out of the way! Quick! (Then gently patting and stroking the broad back of a Brahmin bull.) Oh, good man, move.

“Bull, scarcely moving.—Bu-u-uh.

“Second beggar, counting his beads, rolling his eyes, and moving his body backwards and forwards.—Ram, ram; ram, ram!”

Benares, said to be founded on the point of Siva’s trident, as the most sacred city of all Hindostan, swarmed with beggars, fakirs, sacred animals, and idols of every description; but close beside it was a church for consecration and thirty candidates for confirmation, of whom fourteen were natives. The next day the Bishop was taken to see a school founded by a rich Bengalee baboo, whom Mr. Corrie had almost persuaded to be

a Christian, but who had settled down into a sort of general admiration for the beauty of the Gospel, and a wish to improve his countrymen. He had made over the house where the school was kept to the Church Missionary Society, and the staff consisted of an English schoolmaster, a Persian moonshee, and two Hindostanee writing masters, the whole presided over by an English catechist, a candidate for Holy Orders. There were several class rooms, and a large, lofty hall, supported by pillars, where the Bishop examined the 140, who read Persian and English, answered questions in Hindostanee and English, and showed great proficiency in writing, arithmetic, and geography. No objection was made to their reading the New Testament.

Afterwards, when the Bishop looked into a little pagoda, richly carved, and containing an image of Siva, crowned with scarlet flowers, with lamps burning before him, and a painted bull in front, a little boy, one of the brightest scholars in the school, came forward, and showing his Brahminical string, told, in tolerable English, the histories of the deities with which the walls were painted. “This,” says the Bishop, “opened my eyes more fully to a danger which had before struck me as possible, that some of the boys brought up in our schools might grow up accomplished hypocrites, playing the part of Christian with us, and with their own people of zealous followers of Brahma, or else that they would settle down in a sort of compromise between the two creeds, allowing that Christianity was the best for us, but that idolatry was necessary and commendable in persons of their own nation.” This in fact seems to have been ever since the state of a large proportion of the educated Hindoos. May it be only a transition state!

The street preaching employed by the Serampore community had not been resorted to by the Church Missionary Society, and Bishop Heber decided that in the fanatic population, amid the crowds of bulls, beggars, and sacred apes, it was far wiser not to attempt it; but the missionaries were often sent for to private houses to converse with natives of rank, on their doctrine. One notable Hindoo, Amrut Row, who had at one time been Peishwa of the Mahrattas, who had retired to Benares, used on the feast of his patron god to give a portion of rice and a rupee to every Brahmin and blind or lame person who applied between sunrise and sunset. He had a large garden with four gates, three of which were set open for the three classes of

applicants; the fourth served himself and his servants. As each person received his dole, he was shown into the garden, and detained there to prevent his applying twice, but there he enjoyed plenty of shade, water, company, and idols! This day’s distribution often amounted to above 50,000 rupees, and his charities altogether were three times as great in the course of every year. He was a good kind man, religious to the best of his knowledge; and just before the Bishop’s visit, he had sent a message to Mr. Morris, the clergyman at Sealcote, to call on him in the middle of the next week as he wished to inquire further into Christianity. Alas! before the appointed day Amrut Row was dead, and his ashes were still smoking when the Bishop quitted Benares.

What had become of Henry Martyn’s church does not appear, for at Cawnpore he found none, but service was alternately performed in a bungalow and in the riding-school. He went as far north as Oude, and found at Chinear a much larger native congregation than he expected, though the women still retained so much of Eastern customs that they would not even raise their veils when receiving the Holy Communion. Almost all were the converts of the excellent Mr. Corrie, Henry Martyn’s friend.

Arriving at Surat, after a journey of ten months, he there embarked for Bombay, where his wife and eldest child came from Calcutta, by sea, to meet him, and thence, after a stay in Ceylon for some weeks, returned to Calcutta, where, in December, he ordained Abdul Messeh, the man who had been won by Henry Martyn’s garden preachings. It was a very remarkable ordination, for Father Abraham, the Armenian Suffragan from the Patriarch of Jerusalem, was present, in the black robes of his convent, and laid his hand on the heads of the candidates, and the service was in Hindostanee, whenever Abdul Messeh was individually concerned. Abdul Messeh was a most valuable worker among his countrymen, but he only survived about eighteen months.

In his last letter to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the Bishop records the reception into Bishop’s College of Mesrop David, the kinsman of the Armenian Bishop and already a deacon; also of two native youths from Ceylon, one Tamul and one Cingalese. This college, though a work which had none of the romance of adventure about it, afforded the

surest and most important means of thoroughly implanting the Gospel, and forming a native priesthood fit for the varying needs of the various people. Nor could such a task be committed to any but superior men. Only such as have abilities that would win them distinction in England, are fit to cope with the difficulties of dealing with intellects quite as argumentative as, and even more subtle than, those of the ordinary level of Englishmen.

Soon after writing this letter, Bishop Heber set forth on what was to prove his last visitation. On the voyage to Madras, he spent much time upon some invalid soldiers who were being sent home, and confirmed one of them on board. Also he devoted himself to comforting a poor lady whose baby died on the voyage, not only when with her in her cabin, but Archdeacon Robinson, his chaplain, could hear him weeping and praying for her when alone in his own.

At Madras, he was lodged in the house of Sir Thomas Munro, the governor, who had done much by the help of his excellent wife to promote all that was good. At Vepery, close at hand, the Bishop found, nearly finished, the first church built in the Gothic style in India. He was greatly delighted with it, and especially that the desk and pulpit had not been allowed to obstruct the view of the altar, which had more dignity than was usual in the churches of 1826. A monstrous pulpit in another little church at Poonamalee, a depôt for recruits, and an asylum for pensioners and soldiers’ children, he caused to be removed. He had a confirmation at this place, or rather two, for some unexpected candidates presented themselves, and he desired Archdeacon Robinson to examine them, so that they might be confirmed later in the day. Among them was an old pensioner, and a sickly-looking young woman with a little boy, whom the Archdeacon thought too young, and recommended her to keep back for another opportunity. She wept much, and the Bishop said, “Bring them both to me; who knows whether they may live to wish for it again?” The native Christians, poor people employed on the beach, remnants of the old Portuguese Missions, had built a church at their own expense, and, being unable to obtain regular ministrations from their own clergy, begged the Bishop to consecrate their building, and give them a clergyman, and this he hoped to do on his return.

Meantime, he went in his robes to present Lady Munro with

a vote of thanks from the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, for the good works in the schools of her husband’s government. “I have seldom witnessed a more interesting or affecting picture,” writes Archdeacon Robinson: “the beauty and gracefulness of Lady Munro, the grave and commanding figure of the Governor, the youthful appearance and simple dignity of the dear Bishop, the beloved of all beholders, presented a scene such as few can ever hope to witness.” “My lord,” said Sir Thomas, with the tears rolling down his cheeks, “it will be vain for me after this to preach humility to Lady Munro; she will be proud of this day to the latest hour she lives.”

“God bless you, Sir Thomas!” was all the Bishop could utter.

“And God bless you, my lord!” was the fervent answer.

Before eighteen months had passed the two good men who exchanged this blessing, had met in Paradise!

The Bishop went on from Madras, travelling by dâk, and encamping during the heat of the day. He soon came into the field of labour of the Danish Missions, and was disappointed to find how poor and forlorn the Christian converts about Cuddalore were, and the great want of employment for them. Things were better in the Tanjore territory, where the Bishop was much interested by a visit from the native pastor of one of the villages, a fine, venerable old man. When about to take leave, he lingered, and the Bishop was told that the Tamul Christians never quitted a minister without receiving his blessing. He was greatly touched. “I will bless them all, the good people,” he said, after blessing the pastor.

Arriving at Tanjore, the Bishop thus describes Serfojee:—“I have been passing the last four days in the society of a Hindoo Prince, the Rajah of Tanjore, who quotes Fourcroy, Lavoilier, Linnæus, and Buffon fluently; has formed a more accurate judgment of the poetical merits of Shakespeare than that so felicitously expressed by Lord Byron; and has actually emitted English poetry, very superior indeed to Rousseau’s epitaph on Shenstone; at the same time that he is much respected by the English officers in his neighbourhood, as a real good judge of a horse, and a cool, bold, and deadly shot at a tiger. The truth is, that he is an extraordinary man, who, having in early youth received such an education as old Schwartz, the celebrated

missionary, could give him, has ever since continued, in the midst of many disadvantages, to preserve his taste for, and extend his knowledge of, European literature: while he has never neglected the active exercises and frank, soldierly bearing which become the descendant of the old Mahratta conquerors; and by which only, in the present state of things, he has it in his power to gratify the prejudices of his people, and prolong his popularity among them. Had he lived in the days of Hyder, he would have been a formidable ally or enemy; for he is, by the testimony of all in his neighbourhood, frugal, bold, popular, and insinuating. At present, with less power than an English nobleman, he holds his head high, and appears contented; and the print of Buonaparte, which hangs in his library, is so neutralized by that of Lord Hastings in full costume, that it can do no harm to anybody. . . . To finish the portrait of Maha Raja Sarbojee, I should tell you that he is a strong-built and very handsome middle-aged man, with eyes and nose like a fine hawk, and very bushy grey mustachios, generally splendidly dressed, but with no effeminacy of ornament, and looking and talking more like a favourable specimen of a French general officer than any other object of comparison which occurs to me. His son, Raja Seroojee (so named after their great ancestor), is a pale, sickly-looking lad of seventeen, who also speaks English, but imperfectly, and on whose account his father lamented, with much apparent concern, the impossibility which he found of obtaining any tolerable instruction in Tanjore. I was moved at this, and offered to take him on my tour, and afterwards to Calcutta, where he might have apartments in my house, and be introduced into good English society; at the same time that I would superintend his studies, and procure for him the best masters which India affords. The father and son, in different ways,—the one catching at the idea with great eagerness, the other as if he were afraid to say all he wished,—seemed both well pleased with the proposal. Both, however, on consulting together, expressed a doubt of the mother’s concurrence; and, accordingly, next day I had a very civil message, through the Resident, that the Rannee had already lost two sons; that this survivor was a sickly boy; that she was sure he would not come back alive, and it would kill her to part with him; but that all the family joined in gratitude, &c. So poor Seroojee must chew betel and sit in the zenana, and pursue the other

amusements of the common race of Hindoo princes, till he is gathered to those heroic forms who, girded with long swords with hawks on their wrists, and garments like those of the king of spades (whose portrait-painter, as I guess, has been retained by this family), adorn the principal room in the palace.”

To the Bishop’s great indignation, he found that whereas while the Rajah had retained his dominions, Christians had been eligible to all the different offices of State, there was now an order from the Company’s Government against their admission to any employment. “Surely,” he says, “we are, in matters of religion, the most lukewarm and cowardly people on the face of the earth. I mean to make this and some other things I have seen a matter of formal representation to all the three Governments of India, and to the Board of Control.”

It is highly probable that this systematic dread of encouraging God’s service on the part of the Company assisted in keeping Serfojee a heathen, in spite of the many prayers offered up for him. Almost the last in Heber’s book of private devotions was for the Rajah; and he drew up one, to be translated into Tamul, for use in all the churches in his territory; this last not directly for his conversion, but for his temporal and spiritual welfare.

It is pleasant to know that the last Easter of Heber’s life was made joyful by ministering to Schwartz’s spiritual children. He preached in that church which Schwartz had raised, and where his monument stood. His text was, “I am He that liveth and was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore.” Many English-speaking natives went there, and others besides; and at the Holy Eucharist that followed there were thirty English and fifty-seven native communicants. The delight and admiration of the Bishop were speedily apparent. In the evening he attended a Tamul service, where the prayers were said by a Hindoo, the sermon preached by a Dane, and the blessing delivered by the Bishop in Tamul, to the surprise and pleasure of the congregation, which numbered no less than 1,300, all reverent, all making the responses, joining in the Easter hymn, and in the 100th Psalm. Never had the Bishop been happier! As he was taking off his robes, he exclaimed, “Gladly would I exchange years of common life for one such day as this!” Even at night he could not help coming back to Archdeacon Robinson’s room to rejoice, discuss, and finally pray over this blessed fruit of the toils of a holy man, who had been at rest

thirty-eight years, yet whose work still increased. The next day he confirmed a large number; and Kohloff, a contemporary missionary of Schwartz, preached in Tamul.

After this happy Easter, the Bishop continued his route to Trichinopoly, where he preached and confirmed on the Sunday, but complained of a slight headache, and allowed himself to be persuaded not to go to the native service in the evening, though he spent a good deal of time conversing with Mr. Robinson, who was unwell enough to be lying in bed.

On Monday, the 3rd of April, he went at daybreak to hold a Tamul confirmation at the poor little neglected native church; then looked at the schools, but found that the want of ventilation rendered them too oppressive for him to remain; and afterwards received and graciously answered an address from the poor Christians, praying him to send them a pastor, for they had been without one for two years. He came back, still in his robes, to Mr. Robinson’s bedroom, and, with great eagerness, talked over what he had seen and heard; speaking of the destitution of this poor church, and of the needfulness that a Bishop should receive regular reports of every station; also mentioning a Danish missionary whom he intended to appoint. He then went to his own room, and, according to Indian habit after exertion, went out in order to bathe. The bath was in a separate building. It was fifteen feet long, eight broad, and with stone steps descending into it to a depth of seven feet, and it was perfectly full of water. The servant sitting outside wondered at the length of time and unbroken silence, and at last looked in; but Reginald Heber had, by that time, long been lifeless in the cold bath!

He was only in his forty-fourth year; but medical opinion declared that there had been, unsuspected, the seeds of fatal disease, accelerated by climate, exertion, and excitement, and such as would probably have caused long helplessness and inaction, unless thus suddenly developed.

He was buried the next day at Trichinopoly church, where the mural tablet, with most touching and appropriate simplicity, bears no inscription in laudation, but merely the holy words, “Be ye also ready.”

Thus ended a life of inward and outward brightness, which comes like a stream of sunshine among the shadows through which most of the labourers had to struggle, either for want of

means of education, or from poverty or melancholy, and yet as true and as exhilarating a course as was ever one of theirs. May we not read his description in the verse:—

“And there are souls that seem to dwell
Above this earth—so rich a spell
Floats round their steps where’er they move,
Of hopes fulfilled, and mutual love:
Such, if on high their hopes are set,
Nor in the stream the source forget;
If, prompt to quit the bliss they know,
Following the Lamb where’er He go,
By purest pleasures unbeguiled
To idolize or wife or child,
Such wedded souls our God shall own
For faultless virgins round His throne.”

Mrs. Heber published soon after her return her husband’s journals, and these, bearing the impress of his graceful, scholarly hand, attracted many readers who care merely for information and amusement; and thus, by their mere mundane qualities, his writings did much to spread knowledge of, and therefore interest in, the field of labour in which he died. Large subscriptions came into the societies, and in a few years a church and three schools for the natives, with the pastor he had indicated, served as the best monument of that Low Sunday at Trichinopoly.

His successor was John Thomas James: the most memorable event in whose life was a halt at the Cape of Good Hope. This was the first time that colony had ever been visited by a Bishop, and there was no church, though a piece of land had been newly granted for one, which he consecrated before proceeding on his voyage. He arrived in 1828, but the climate of Calcutta struck him for death almost immediately. He was only able to perform one ordination, one confirmation, and one charge to the Calcutta clergy, then was forced to embark, and died at sea within a few months of his arrival.

During this time Daniel Wilson had been working under Mr. Cecil at Chobham, where he remained for three years, when a tutorship at St. Edmund’s Hall was offered to him, which enabled him to marry his cousin Ann, combining the small living of Warton with his tutorship. On the death of the Rev. Richard Cecil he took, by his especial wish, his proprietary chapel in Bloomsbury, and there continued till 1824 as one of

the most marked London clergy, keeping up the earnestness that Newton and Cecil had been noted for, with quite as much energy; and though without the same originality, there was a telling force about his sermons which made a young man exclaim the first time he heard him, “I will never hear Daniel Wilson again,” but something led him happily to infringe the resolution, and then it became, “I will always, if possible, hear Daniel Wilson.” Sentences of his were very memorable; for instance, “Nineteen-twentieths of sanctification consist in holy tempers,” and, besides exhibiting a pithy force of language, his sermons were prepared with infinite care and labour. When at St. John’s, where he had no parochial charge, he selected his text on Monday and carried it about with him, so to speak, all the week, chewing the cud of it as it were, looking it up in every authority, ancient or modern, within his reach, and conversing on the subject with any one whom he thought likely to give him a hint. The sermons were written in a large legible shorthand, only on one side of the paper, and on the opposite page were copied out extracts of translations from illustrative authors, often as many as eight to a single sermon, so that he had in fact a huge secretion of stores, which he could adapt according to the needs of his congregation, and he made notes of what he found fall flat and incomprehensible, or what he felt was stirring the souls of his audience; and this time was most profitably spent, not only for his immediate congregation, but in laying up a provision for the busier days of after-life, when the same amount of study was out of his power. And the benefit of such painstaking may be estimated by the words of a gentleman when introduced to a relative of his in after-years, “I am only one of very many who do not know and never spoke to Mr. Wilson, but to whom he has been a father in Christ. He never will know, and he never ought to know, the good that he has been the means of doing, for no man could bear it.”

Proprietary chapels have now nearly become extinct. They were an effect of the neglect of the heathenish eighteenth century, and one of the means of providing church room by private speculation; and thus they almost necessarily were liable to the abuses of popularity-hunting and of lack of care for individuals, especially the poor: but a man in thorough earnestness is sure to draw good even out of a defective system; and Daniel Wilson, sitting in his study which was connected with the chapel,

became the counsellor of hundreds who sought spiritual advice and assistance, chiefly of the upper and well-to-do classes, but he took care to avoid wasting time over these conferences, and when it came to mere talk would put people’s hats and umbrellas into their hands. There were also large Sunday-schools connected with his chapel, and taught by the members of his congregation, and these led to the first organization of a district visitors’ society, one of the earliest attempts of the slowly reviving English Church to show her laity how to minister to the poor under pastoral direction.

His father-in-law, Mr. William Wilson, had purchased the advowson of the living of Islington, and, when it became vacant in 1824, presented it to him, when he carried thither all his vigour and thoroughness. Church building was his first necessity, and he absolutely prevailed on his parish to rate themselves for the purpose, so that three churches were begun almost at once, and by the time his Life was written in 1860 the great suburb had multiplied its single church in thirty-six years into fifteen. At Islington the chief sorrows of his life befel him. He had had six children, of whom one died an infant and two more in early childhood. The second son, John, after a boyhood of great promise, fell into temptation at the University and led a wild and degrading course; ending by his retirement to the Continent, where he died in 1833, after a very painful illness, in which he had evinced great agony of mind, which softened at length into repentance and hope. The eldest son, Daniel, who attended him on his death-bed, had taken holy orders and succeeded to his father’s former living of Warton; and one daughter, Eliza, born in 1814, survived to cheer his home when his wife, after some years of invalidism, died in 1827. Zealous, resolute, and hardworking, he never allowed sorrow to interfere with his work, and was soon in the midst of his confirmation classes, and of a scheme for educating young tradespeople on a more thorough and religious system.

In the meantime he had always loved and urged the missionary cause, and had consulted with Bishop Turner before he went out. When the news of his decease was received (the fourth Bishop to die at his post within nine years), the appointment began to be looked on as a sentence of death, and it was declined in succession by several eminent clergymen. Daniel Wilson had anxiously watched for the answer in each case, and

was suggesting several persons to Mr. Charles Grant, when the thought struck him, “Here I am, send me.” A widower of fifty-four years old, of much strength, and with no young children, seemed to him the fit person to volunteer to fill the breach; and he wrote stating, that if no one else could be found for the post, he was willing to offer himself. The appointment was accordingly given to him, after an interval of nine months since the see had become vacant, and an infinity of toil and arrangements crowded on him. Islington was resigned to his son Daniel, and he was consecrated by Archbishop Howley on the 29th of April, 1832, “the day of my espousals to Christ my Saviour,” as he wrote in his journal; and on the ensuing 18th of June he sailed with his daughter for Calcutta. The ship touched at the Cape, which under the government of Sir Lowry Cole was by no means in the same hopeless state of neglect as when Martyn had visited it. Bishop Wilson there held an ordination and a confirmation, the first for himself as well as for South Africa, whose Episcopate was not founded till twenty-three years later.

He landed at Calcutta on the 5th of November, 1832, and took possession of the large unfurnished house that had at last been wrung out of Government. He found only just enough chairs and tables, placed there by the Archdeacon, to suffice for immediate use; and was answered, when he asked why his orders that the place should be completely fitted up had not been attended to, “I thought this would be enough to last for six months,”—this being the term for which a Bishop of Calcutta was thought likely to need earthly furniture. But Bishop Wilson was resolved to take reasonable precaution, and not to be daunted, or to act as if he were afraid. He furnished the place, and rented a pleasant country-house, called the Hive, at Tittaghur, where he spent a few days of every week; and, having been told that much danger was incurred by the exertion of visitation tours before the constitution had become accustomed to the climate, he resolved to wait for two years before making any long journey; and, in the meantime, he was able to collect a great amount of information, as well as attending to the regulation of matters at head-quarters. He kept up more formality and state than Bishop Heber had done; and, of course, as the one had been censured for his simplicity, so the other was found fault with for pomp and stiffness. But these

were minor points, chiefly belonging to the character of the two men, whose whole natures were in curious accordance with their prize performances at Oxford,—the one with all the warmth, fire, and animation of the poet of Palestine, sensitive to every impression, and making all serve to light his altar-flame; the other all common-sense, sincere, deep, and laborious, but with a narrower range of sympathies, and afraid of all that might distract attention from the one great subject. General literature had no charms for Wilson. He is believed never to have read one of Scott’s poems or novels; and the playful mirth that enlivened all Heber’s paths was not with him, though he had the equable cheerfulness of a faithful servant doing his Lord’s work. His daughter, soon after his arrival, married her cousin, Josiah Bateman, his chaplain (and biographer), and thus continued to be the mistress of her father’s house.

On the Whitsunday of 1833 the Bishop baptized one of those Hindoo gentlemen who are among the most satisfactory of Christian converts; they are free from the suspicion of interested motives which has always attached to the pariahs and low-caste people who hung about Serampore and its dependent stations, and, justly or unjustly, were accused of turning Christians when they had exhausted other resources of idleness and knavery. A curious instance of a thorough conversion happened the same year. A lad, educated like most other well-to-do Hindoos in the schools of the Church Missionary at Mirzampore, when about fifteen, became persuaded of the saving grace of Christianity, and determined to be baptized and openly forsake his idols. His parents persecuted him, and he fled to a friend, a Hindoo convert; but he was seized by his relations, and the case was referred to the Supreme Court, who decided that the father’s power over the son must not be interfered with; and the poor boy was dragged away, clinging to the barrister’s table, amid the shouts of the heathen and the tears of the Christians. The boy remained staunch, and three years later came again and received baptism; but his sufferings had injured his health, both of mind and body, and his promise of superior intelligence was blighted.

In 1834, the Bishop set off on his first long journey, which included Penang and Moulmein, where the Judsons had taken refuge after the Burmese war, and where he found, in the midst of half-cleared jungle and Buddhist temples full of

enormous idols, a school kept by an American master, so full of notions of equality, that, at the examination, he expected the Bishop to go to each class, not the class to the Bishop.

The Commissioner had built a church, the walls of teak slabs, and the pillars each a single teak-tree, and it was ready for consecration. After this and a confirmation, the Bishop went on his way to Ceylon, and then to the Madras Presidency, where he had already had a long correspondence with the pastors of the Christian congregations on the question of caste. Things had not prospered of late; and, to the dismay of the Bishop, he found that, in the course of the last year, 168 Christians had fallen back to heathenism, where, not having broken their caste, they could still be received and find a place. The truth was that, though caste might appear only a distinction of mere social rank, it was derived from a pagan superstition, and was a stronghold of heathenism. Schwartz was all his life trying to make it wear and die out, lest the violent renunciation should be too much for his converts’ faith. But his successors had allowed the feeling to retrograde; and Bishop Wilson found separate services, sides of the church allotted to the high and low castes, and the most unchristian distinctions made between them. He decided that toleration of the prejudice was only doing harm, and issued orders that henceforth catechumens preparing for baptism, confirmation, or communion, should be called on to renounce caste as a condition of admittance; and that, though the adult communicants should be gently dealt with, there should be no recognition of the distinction in the places in church, in the order of administering the Holy Communion, in marriages or processions, and that differences of food or dress, or marks on the forehead, should be discontinued. The clergy were in consternation, and made an appeal before they published the Bishop’s letter to their flocks; but they found his mind made up, and yielded. The lesser stations complied without much difficulty; but at Trichinopoly, Vepery, and Tanjore, there were many Soodras, the soldier-caste, professing to have come from Brahma’s shoulders, and second only to the Brahmins. They were desperately offended. At Trichinopoly, only seven Soodra families continued to attend the services, although the seceders behaved quietly, and offered no insults either to the clergy or the pariahs. At Vepery, on the

reading of the Bishop’s letter, the whole Soodra population walked out en masse, except one catechist, who joined them afterwards. They then drew up a paper, declaring that they would not yield, and would neither come to church nor send their children to school, unless they continued to be distinguished; and they set up a service of their own in a chapel lent them by a missionary belonging to the London Society. He was, however, reprimanded for this by the committee which employed him at Madras, and the chapel was withdrawn; upon which the Soodras remained without any public worship whatever for five months, when the catechists and schoolmasters came forward and acknowledged their pride and contumacy, the children dropped into the schools, and the grown-up people, one by one, returned to church, but in their own way.

At Tanjore, the contest was a much harder one. Serfojee had died in 1834, and the son whom Bishop Heber had vainly tried to obtain for education was one of the ordinary specimens of indolent, useless rajahs, enjoying ease and display under British protection; but the Mission had gone on thriving as to numbers, though scarcely as to earnestness or energy; and the Christians numbered 7,000, with 107 catechists and four native clergy, under the management of Mr. Kohloff, almost the last of Schwartz’s fellow-workers. The Bishop’s letter was read aloud by him, after the sermon, on the 10th of November, 1833. There was an immediate clamour of all the Soodras, who would not be hushed by being reminded that they were in church, and, while Mr. Kohloff was being assisted from the pulpit, gathered round his wife and insulted her.

Letters passed between the Soodras and the missionaries. There was no denial that the Bishop’s command was right in itself; but an immense variety of excuses were offered for not complying with it, and only one of the four priests consented,—Nyanapracasem, an old man of eighty, who may be remembered as one of Schwartz’s earliest converts, and of the four priests ordained by the Lutherans,—with three catechists, and ten of the general body; all the others remained in a state of secession. When the first death took place among them, Nyanapracasem, the one conforming priest, was appointed to read the funeral service; but he fell sick, and the only substitute available on the spot was a low-caste catechist, a very respectable man, but

whom the Soodras silenced with threats, employing one of their own people in his stead. Next time, they borrowed the Roman Catholic burial-ground, and services were carried on, on Sunday, by one of the dissentient priests, but marriages were celebrated in the heathen fashion, and there was evidently a strong disposition to form a schism, which the reckless, easy, self-willed conduct of the Soodras showed would be Christianity only in name. There had even been an appeal to the Governor-General, and the Bishop felt the whole tone of Christianity in India to be at stake.

It was in the height of this crisis that his journey to Madras was made in the track of Bishop Heber. Twice he preached at Vepery, and the Soodras attended; but he asked no questions, and let them place themselves as they chose, and take precedence, intending to fight out the question at Tanjore.

There, at seven o’clock in the morning of January 10, 1835, on the bank of the Cavery River, he was received by all the faithful Christians and school-children, headed by Kohloff and Nyanapracasem, These were the two remaining fellow-workers of Schwartz. Kohloff, now becoming aged, had his hair long and loose round his florid German face; he was still a true German, full of simple kindness, and his English had a good deal of accent. His Hindoo companion was a beautiful old man, with long snowy hair flowing over his long white robes, who took the Bishop’s hand between both of his, and blessed God for his coming, hoping that as Elijah brought back the stiff-necked Israelites, so the Bishop might turn the hearts of the Soodras.

Late that afternoon, a great party of these assembled to lay their complaints before the Bishop, bringing their two dissentient priests. One was of doubtful character, and was unnoticed; but to the other, John Pillay, the Bishop addressed himself, telling him to assure the other Christians that his heart was full of love, and that he would hear their grievances, and answer them another time, when less weary with his journey.

Several spoke, and the Bishop listened to their individual cases. They were anxious to come and hear his sermon, but would only do so if allowed to sit apart; and to this, as one great object was to obtain their attention, the Bishop consented, with a reservation that it was only for that once. The church was thronged, and after a Tamul service, the

Bishop preached, pausing after every sentence that a catechist might render his words into Tamul. The text was, “Walk in love, as Christ also loved us,” and the latter part of his discourse was on the lesson from the Good Samaritan, as to “who is my neighbour.” There was at the end a long pause of breathless silence, and then he called on everyone present to offer up the following prayer: “Lord, give me a broken heart to receive the love of Christ, and obey His commands.” The whole congregation repeated the words aloud in Tamul, and then he gave the blessing and dismissed them.

After this there were a great number of private conferences. People came and owned that they had been very unhappy; religion had died in their hearts, and they had had no peace; but their wives were the great objectors—they feared whether they should marry their daughters, &c. &c. The two priests especially saw the badness of their standing-ground, but they should lose respect, they said. No Pariah seems to have been in holy orders, but if a Pariah catechist visited a sick person, he was not allowed to come under the roof, and the patient was carried out into the verandah. And then came a rather stormy conference with about 150 Soodras, which occupied two days, since every sentence had to pass through an interpreter. The objections were various, but as a body the resistance continued, and it was only individuals that came over; some of these, however, did, and it was so clear from all that had passed that to permit the distinctions was but a truckling to heathenism, that the Bishop was more than ever resolved on firmness. Two of the priests had conformed, and the Christianity of those who would not do so was plainly not worth having.

There was some polite intercourse with Serfojee’s son, whose taste was visible in the alteration of a fine statue of his father by Flaxman, from which the white marble turban had been removed to substitute a coloured one, with black feathers and tassels. In him the family has become extinct, since he only left a daughter, and the adoption of a son, after the old Hindoo fashion, has not been permitted by Government.

Thence, Bishop Wilson proceeded towards Trichinopoly. He encamped, by the way, at a place called Muttooputty, a large station on the Coleroon river, where the way had been so prepared for him that there was a grand throng of native Christians, untroubled about caste, and he was obliged literally to lengthen

the cords and strengthen the stakes of the large tent used as a chapel. It was one of the memorable days of joy that come now and then to support the laborious spirit of the faithful servant. “One such day as we have just passed is worth years of common service.”

At Trichinopoly, with the deepest sense of reverence, he visited the scene of Heber’s death, ministered at the same altar, and preached from the same pulpit, after an interval of nine years.

Here, his mode of dealing with the caste-question was thus: When he came robed into the church, he saw groups of natives standing about, instead of placing themselves like the others of the congregation. He went up to two, led them to seats, and his chaplain following, did the same; the rest were seated in like manner without resistance.

When the Celebration took place, the Bishop had given directions as to the order of things. First, a Soodra catechist communicated, then two Pariah catechists, then an English gentleman, next a Pariah, then two Eurasians; and thus without distinction, 147 communicated. The barrier was broken down, and the nucleus of a church without caste was formed.

This presidency of Madras was immediately after formed into a separate see, and given to Daniel Corrie, the friend of Martyn, while Dr. Thomas Carr became Bishop of Bombay.

On Wilson’s return to Tanjore he found an increasing though still small number had conformed, and before he left the place there were hopes of larger numbers. On his way back to Calcutta, he visited the horrible pagoda of Juggernaut (properly Jaghanatha, Lord of the World), which was still the centre of worship and pilgrimage; and though the self-immolation of the pilgrims beneath the car had been prohibited, yet the Company’s Government still fancied themselves justified in receiving a toll from the visitors to this shrine of cruelty and all uncleanness, up to 1839, when the disgrace was done away by Lord Auckland.

In the year 1836 another journey was made, first to Bombay and then further into the interior, to many places, never visited by a bishop before, and with no chaplain or anything to keep up the sense of religion. At Aurungabad, the utter ignorance of the English officers was appalling. The old Colonel-commandant had not heard a sermon for twenty years,

and thought every sentence on the text, “Walk in love,” was a personal attack on himself. He refused to attend another service, or to bid the Bishop farewell! And when the Holy Communion was celebrated, nobody knew what the offertory meant, and scarcely any one was prepared to respond.

Yet in contrast to these English, a small band of Hindoos, four men, six women, and five children, presented themselves, asking permission to join in the service, and to have their children baptized. They had been once Roman Catholics, but an old Dutchwoman from Ceylon had taught them most of what they knew; and they had a Hindostanee prayer-book, whence they held a service every Sunday, but leaving out the Absolution and Benediction, which they rightly perceived to be priestly functions. Two of them were servants to an English officer, and they were all nearly related. They were perfectly respectable and trustworthy, and looked well dressed and intelligent. The Bishop tried to bring about an application from the Company to the Nizam, to defray the expenses of an occasional visit from a chaplain to the Christian officers and residents in his employ, but he was answered that “it would form a dangerous precedent.”

The next step was into the Bengal presidency, always with the same kind of adventures; quaint civilities of the presentation of flowery garlands bedecking the neck and arms, given by the native princes, with a sprinkling of rose-water, and sometimes an anointing with oil; and then an endeavour to stir into Christian life the neglected English military and civil officers stationed in their dominions.

One of these, a gentleman of good birth and repute, actually went on smoking and gurgling his hookah when the Bishop was beginning family prayers, apparently with no more perception that it was anything that concerned him than if he had seen a Mahometan turning to Mecca, or a Parsee saluting the rising sun. Indeed many of these Company’s servants had been sent out when fourteen or fifteen years old; and, if in a remote station, had been left without anything external whatever to remind them of Christianity.

This journey extended to the Himalayas, where the Bishop had four months’ repose at Simlah, then in its infancy as a resort for wearied East Indians; and on his descent from thence, his first halting-place was Kurnaul, where he found the

church in a state of efficiency, owing, in great part, to an officer whose conversion to a religious life had been very remarkable. Once, when in a large party, where gambling was going on to a reckless extent, he saw one of the players take out a hideous little black figure, supposed to represent the devil, to which he addressed himself with a mixture of entreaties and threats, involving such blasphemy that this officer, utterly horrified, withdrew from the company, spent the night in tears and prayers, and from that time became a religious man. There was also an active chaplain, a large church, and a bungalow, built by the soldiers of an English regiment, the centre part arranged for service, and the surrounding verandah partitioned into little cells, where the soldiers could retire for private prayer or reading. It was called St. John’s Chapel, and was in the hands of the chaplain. Here the Bishop remained for two Sundays, and ordained Anund Musseeh, who had been fifteen years a Christian, and had been known to Bishop Heber. The difficulty in his case was the rule not to ordain a person who had a heathen family, since he had not been able to convert his wife. His excellence outweighed the objection, and he was the first Brahmin who received holy orders from an English bishop; but in after-times the heathen influence at home told upon him; and this failure perhaps rendered Bishop Daniel Wilson somewhat over-cautious and backward in ordaining a native ministry.

The next stage was Delhi, where a very interesting interview awaited him. An officer of Anglo-Indian birth, James Skinner by name, who had raised and commanded a capital body of light horse, had twenty years before entered Delhi with a conquering army, and, gazing on the countless domes and minarets, vowed that if ever he should be able, he would build an English church to raise its cross among them. He had persevered, though the cost far exceeded the estimate, and though the failure of houses of business had greatly lessened his means; and now he came, a tall, stout, dark man of fifty-six, in a uniform of blue, silver, and steel, a helmet on his head and a red ribbon on his breast, to beg for consecration for his church. His sons were Christians, but his wife was a Mahometan, though, he said with tears, that “for thirty years a better wife no man ever had.”

The church was of Greek architecture, shaped as a Greek

cross, with porticoes with flights of steps at each extremity except the east, which formed the chancel, and at the intersection was a dome and cupola. It was paved with marble, and the whole effect was beautiful. After the consecration a confirmation followed, and the first to receive the apostolic rite were the noble old Colonel himself and his three sons. Twenty years later this fine building was filled with dying men, and shared in the horrors of the siege of Delhi; but it has now returned to its rightful use, and as a church of martyrs.

Indeed, all the places that the Bishop visited in this excursion have since been associated with the Mutiny. Cawnpore was not much more satisfactory than when Heber had visited it; an irreligious commandant and a dissipated regiment had done much harm; and an imprudent letter of one of the chaplains had led to a quarrel, in which the clergyman unfortunately put himself in the wrong. Happily, a new commanding officer and better conducted regiment had replaced the first, and the ill-feeling was so entirely removed that the Bishop wrote, “Never did I enter a station with such despondency, nor leave one with so much joy.” And thus he prepared Cawnpore for that which was in store for it!

His visit to Allahabad was chiefly memorable for his horror at the large resort of pilgrims to bathe in the Ganges, and at the tax by which a Christian government profited by their pagan superstition, with all its grossness and cruelty. He brought home a little ticket, with the number 76902 stamped on it, such as was issued to the pilgrims, and made a strong appeal to the Governor-General, as well as to persons in England. The next year both this tax and that on the pilgrims to Jaghernauth were suppressed. Here he heard of the death of Bishop Corrie, after having held the see of Madras only a year and a quarter, but having spent many years in India, and worked there for a whole lifetime, in which he had seen the very dawn of missionary efforts, and had watched the English Church spread from a few scattered chaplains to three bishoprics.

Lord Auckland and his sisters were more sincere friends of Christian efforts than any Governor-General had yet been, but these were trying times. Mr. Bateman, his daughter’s husband, fell ill, and his wife was obliged to return to England with him; the Bishop’s other chaplain died, and also some of his best friends. On going, a few years later, to consecrate

a church at Singapore, he visited Moulmein, and was introduced to Dr. Judson, with whom he was very much struck.

The great work connected with Daniel Wilson’s name, as that of Bishop’s College is with Middleton’s, is the building of the Cathedral of Calcutta. “What do you say, my four children,” he writes, “to your father’s attempting to build a cathedral to the name of the Lord his God in this heathen land?” It had been the desire of Bishop Middleton, but there had been too much to do during his nine years, and it was only now that at last the times were ripe. Subscriptions were opened, and the Bishop devoted a large amount of his income to the fund; plans were drawn up, land granted freely, and on the 9th of October, 1839, the first stone of St. Paul’s Cathedral was laid by the Bishop.

Just at this time there was a most remarkable move made towards Christianity. Krishnaghur, 130 miles from Calcutta, was the great centre of the worship of Krishna, one of the manifestations of Vishnu. Here two missionaries of the Church Missionary Society had been at work; and when the Bishop was there in 1837, he described them as having made “a little beginning,” by keeping schools and holding conferences with the people, but they had then no adult convert. A year after a message was brought by a native, entreating for further help. There were 1,200 seriously inquiring into the doctrine, with many candidates for baptism, and at many places around it was the same. In the year 1840, the Bishop set forth to visit the spot and the adjacent districts, where almost all the villages seemed to be actuated by the same impulse. The missionaries did their utmost to distinguish between mere fashion and hope of gain and a true faith; but after all their siftings, large numbers were ready for baptism, and the hope was so great that the Bishop was full of thankful ecstasy, and could hardly sleep from agitation, joy, and anxiety. One hundred and fifty converts were baptized at once, at a place called Anunda Bass. The examination was thus, the Bishop standing in the midst:—

“Are you sinners?”

“Yes, we are.”

“How do you hope to obtain forgiveness?”

“By the sacrifice of Christ.”

“What was that sacrifice?”

“We were sinners, and Christ died in our stead.”

“How is your heart to be changed?”

“By the Holy Ghost.”

“Will you renounce all idolatry, feasts, poojahs, and caste?”

“Yes, we renounce them all.”

“Will you renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil?”

“Yes.”

“Will you suffer for Christ’s sake?”

“Yes.”

“Will you forgive injuries?”

“Yes.”

These converts had been under preparation for more than a year, and seemed thoroughly convinced and fairly instructed. Therefore the baptismal service was read by Mr. Deerr; and when the vows were reached, the Bishop turned to the Christians around and asked if they would be witnesses and godparents to these candidates; and, with one voice, they shouted that they would. Each candidate was singly baptized, and then came up to the Bishop, by whom the words receiving him into the Ark of Christ’s Church were spoken. At Ranobunda there was another baptism of 250, and, in the whole district, full a thousand were admitted. It was not in over-confident joy. “Time will show,” said the Bishop, “who are wheat and who are tares.” It was impossible among so many that all should be perfect Christians, but it was a real foundation; the flame then lighted burns on steadily, and the Christian faith has a firm and strong hold in the district of Krishnaghur.

Anxieties of course crossed his work. The Church Missionary Society, after being used to control its clergy, was not properly ready to allow their canonical obedience to a Bishop; and the troubles that thus arose made him once speak of Heber as happy in being shielded by his early death from the class of vexations connected with societies. To his great grief, too, a lady who had worked for years at the education of girls and orphans at Calcutta seceded to the Plymouth Brethren, and was necessarily obliged to give up the charge. It was to him “as if a standard-bearer fainteth.” The Oxford controversy also vexed him a good deal. The school of Newton and Cecil, in which he had been brought up, was at the most distant point that the Church permitted from the

doctrines of the Tracts for the Times; and few men are able or willing candidly to judge or appreciate opinions that have grown up since their own budget was completed, especially after they have been for some time in the exercise of authority. Thus he set his mind very strongly against all the clergy holding those views who came to work in the diocese; and thereby impeded a good deal that might have worked heartily with him if he had only been able to believe it, and to understand that the maintenance of the voice of the Church is truly the maintenance of the voice of Christ.

In November 1844, when on a visitation at Umballah, he had his first serious illness, a fever, he being then in his sixty-sixth year and in the thirteenth of his residence in India. For about a week he was in great danger, but rallied, and was able to be removed by slow stages, though not without an attack of inflammation on the lungs before reaching Calcutta; and his constitution was altogether so much shaken that he was ordered home, without loss of time, to recruit his health.

He returned to England by the Overland route, and after a short respite recovered much of his strength, so as to be able to preach in many churches and appear at numerous meetings; and in a year’s time the vigorous old man was on his way back to his diocese, where he arrived in time to keep the Christmas of 1846, just two years after he had been stricken down by fever. In the October of the next year he consecrated his cathedral, towards which 20,000l. had been his own donation, half towards the building, half towards the endowment. His strength was not quite what it had been before, but he still had abundant energy, and new branches of the Church were springing up around him; not only the three dioceses that had branched from his own in India, but Ceylon had a Bishop of its own, Australia had five, and the Cape and New Zealand and the Isle of Hong Kong had each received a Bishop. The principle had come to be recognized that to send out isolated workers without a head to organize was a plan that could hardly be reasonably expected to succeed; and in the long run prosperity has certainly attended the contrary arrangement. Not to speak of the Divine authority, the action of a body under a recognized head and superior on the spot must be far readier of adaptation to circumstances than that of a number of equals, accountable only to some necessarily half-informed Society at home.

In his 73rd year, just after a visitation tour, it somewhat dismayed Bishop Wilson to find a letter from the Bishop of London sending him to consecrate the new church erected by Sir James Brooke, at Sarawak. Few careers have been more remarkable than that of the truly great man who subdued Malay piracy, and gained the confidence of the natives of Borneo; and when the effort of the fourteen weeks’ voyage had been made, the Bishop returned full of joy and hope, and not long after, together with the Bishops of Madras and Victoria, joined in consecrating the missionary Bishop of Labuan to the new field of work there opening. On the last journey of his life he also visited Rangoon, and there consecrated the church, finding the clergy hard at work and numerous converts.

During the year 1856 he had many attacks of illness, more or less severe; and in December, in going across the room in haste, he struck himself against a wooden screen, and was thrown down. His thigh was broken, and his age was such that great fears for his life were entertained, but he recovered, and was able to pray with, cheer, and comfort the many anxious hearts at Calcutta during the dreadful days of the Indian mutiny of 1857, when the churches he had consecrated were stained with the blood of the worshippers.

But there was no cause for despondency in the attitude of the converts. The districts where Christianity had been so widely diffused remained tranquil, and the Christians in the cities where the mutineers were raging did not apostatize; but, unless they could conceal themselves, suffered with the whites. There was a great day of fasting and humiliation appointed by him for the 24th of July, 1857.

That day Bishop Wilson preached his last sermon. The text was from Habakkuk i. 12. “Art Thou not from everlasting, O Lord my God, mine Holy One? we shall not die. O Lord, Thou hast ordained them for judgment; and, O mighty God, Thou hast established them for correction.” Calcutta was then trembling under the tidings of the horrors of Cawnpore, the death of Sir Henry Lawrence, and the siege of Lucknow; and no one knew what peril might be the next. Slaughter seemed at the very gates, when the old man stood forth to console and encourage, but yet to give warning strong and clear that these frightful catastrophes were in great measure the effect of our sins, our fostering of heathenism, our recognition of caste, and

were especially a judgment on the viciousness and irreligion that had been the curse of English life in India. It was in open Christianity alone that he beheld hope.

The day was observed by all the clergy, but the Governor-General for some reason declined to make it official, and, only when the worst of the danger was over, appointed the 4th of October as a fast-day. The Bishop arranged the services, but was too unwell to attend them. This was the beginning of his last illness; and though he held an ordination some weeks later, these latter weeks were all sinking, and increasing feebleness. A sea-voyage was twice attempted, but without success; and on the 1st of January, 1858, his trembling hand wrote, “All going on well, but I am dead almost.—D. C. Firm in hope.”

Daniel Calcutta, whom these initials indicated, wrote these words at half-past seven at night. By the same hour in the morning he had peacefully passed to his rest.

One more Bishop of Calcutta we have since mourned; though the shortness of his career was owing to accident, not disease or climate. But with Daniel Wilson the see of Calcutta became established as a metropolitan bishopric, and ceased to possess that character of gradual extension which rendered its first holders necessarily missionaries. True, it needs many subdivisions. Four Bishops are a scanty allowance for our vast Indian Empire, and the see of Calcutta has a boundary scarce limited to the north; but these are better days than when it included the Cape, Australia, and New Zealand. The Bishop has now more to do with the development of old missions than with the working of new ones; and there can be no doubt that though there has been much of disappointment, and the progress is very slow, yet progress there is. The older converts form more and more of a nucleus, and although there is a large class who hang about missions from interested motives, there are also multitudes of quiet and contented villagers whose simplicity and remoteness shield them from the notice of the travellers who sneer at Christianity and call mission reports couleur de rose, because they have been taken in by some cunning scamp against whom any missionary would have warned them.

The towns and the neighbourhood of troops are not favourable places for observing the effects of Christianity. The work of the schools in the great cities tells but very slowly. At present,

out of a hundred boys who go thither and receive the facts of Christianity intellectually, only the minority are practically affected by it; and of these, some lose all faith in their own system, but retain it outwardly in deference to their families, while others try to take Christian morality without Christian doctrine; and only one or two perhaps may be sincere and open believers. But even if only one is gained, is not that an exceeding gain? It took three hundred years of apostolic teaching to make the Roman Empire Christian. Why should we “faint, and say ’tis vain,” after one hundred in India?

CHAPTER VIII. SAMUEL MARSDEN, THE AUSTRALIAN CHAPLAIN AND FRIEND OF THE MAORI.

It has been mentioned that the island of Australia was considered as an archdeaconry of the see of Calcutta. This enormous island, first discovered in 1607 by Luis de Torres, and inhabited only by the very lowest race of savages, appeared to the Government of George III. a convenient spot for forming a penal settlement; and in 1787 the first convict ships carried out an instalment from the English jails to New South Wales, where the city of Sydney was founded by Governor Phillip.

As usual in those days, the provision made for the moral or religious training of this felon population was lamentably and even absurdly deficient; for it seemed to be considered, that so long as the criminals were safe out of England, it did not greatly matter to her what became of them. But the power of grace is sure to work sooner or later wherever the Christian name has been carried, and a holy man rose up, not only to fight hard with the mass of corruption in Australia, but to carry on the light to the more distant shores of the Southern Ocean.

This good man, Samuel Marsden, was the son of a small farmer at Farsley, near Calverley, in Yorkshire, and was educated at the free Grammar School at Hull by Dr. Joseph Milner, whose Church History used to be a standard book in the early part of this century. He began his career as a

tradesman at Leeds, but his school influences had given him higher aspirations; and a body termed the Elland Society, whose object was to educate young men of small means and suitable character for the ministry, and whose chief supporters were Wilberforce, Simeon, and Thornton, selected him as one of their scholars, and placed him at St. John’s College, Cambridge. He had not even taken his degree when, to his surprise, he was offered a chaplaincy in New South Wales! The post was no doubt a difficult one to fill,—for who would willingly undertake to be one of two clergymen sent to labour among an untamed multitude of criminals?—and Mr. Wilberforce was, no doubt, glad to suggest a young man so blameless and full of zeal, and of whom, from personal observation at Cambridge, Mr. Simeon had so high an opinion.

Samuel Marsden wished to decline it at first; but finding that no one else would come forward to undertake the charge, he accepted it; and in the spring of 1793 he was ordained, and married, being then nearly twenty-nine years of age. His wife, Elizabeth Tristan, was thoroughly worthy of him, and ruled his house admirably, never calling him back from any duty, but so managing that his open-handed charity never brought him into difficulties. They were obliged to take their passage in a convict ship, which was to sail from Hull. Marsden was engaged to preach in a church near the harbour, and was just about to enter the pulpit when the signal-gun was fired to summon the passengers on board. He took off his gown, gave his arm to his bride at her pew door, and walked to the beach, the whole congregation streaming out after them down to the boat, where the young clergyman stood for a few moments ere pushing off, to give his parting benedictions.

The ship went round to Portsmouth to receive her load of convicts; and while she was lying there, Marsden visited the Isle of Wight, and one Sunday preached in Brading Church. The effect of his sermon in touching the heart of one young woman was long remembered, in consequence of a memoir of her, entitled “The Dairyman’s Daughter,” which was drawn up after her death by the clergyman of her parish, the Rev. Legh Richmond.

It was as trying a voyage as Henry Martyn’s, except that even less was to be expected from his shipmates. The captain was unwilling to allow prayers to be read even on Sunday, saying he

had never known a religious sailor; and though, after a time, Mr. Marsden prevailed, he never felt himself making much impression for good. One of his books on the voyage was the Life of David Brainerd, that torch of missionaries, and who proved the example which served to stir Mr. Marsden to look beyond his own immediate field of labour, severe though that was, and unflinching as was his toil.

His arrival at Paramatta, his new home, was in the March of 1794, when the convict system had prevailed about seven years, and had been sufficient to form a population disgraceful to human nature. None of those endeavours to reclaim the prisoner which now prevail had then been attempted, and jails were schools and hotbeds of crime, whence the transported were sent forth to corrupt each other more and more on board ship; and then, though employed on Government works or assigned to free settlers as servants, so soon as they had worked out their time of servitude they were let loose to live after their own will.

Such as had any capacity for steady industry soon made their fortunes on the parcels of land allotted to them by Government, to which they added by purchase; and these persons, by the influence of wealth and property, rose into colonial rank and authority, though without any such real training in the sense of uprightness or morality as could fit them for the posts they occupied. The least tainted by crime were the Irish, who had been deported by wholesale after the rebellion, some without even a form of trial, but these were idle and prone to violence; while of the regular convicts there was a large proportion addicted to every brutality that vice could conceive, and their numbers were continually being recruited by fresh shiploads after the assizes at home. The only attempt at securing order and tolerable safety was by visiting every offence, even the slightest, of which a convict was accused in a court of justice, with the most unrelenting severity; and this, of course, had the effect of further brutalizing these felon people, making them reckless of the deeds they committed, and often driving them to become bush-rangers—outlawed wild men of the woods—a terror to the colony. A powerful military force was kept up to repress these wretched beings by physical force, but of moral training there was only what was afforded by the openings for industry in a new country, and religious teaching

was represented by—two chaplains, for convicts, soldiers, settlers, and all! No wonder that the senior soon broke down under the hopeless toil of such a position, and left the junior to struggle with it alone. And nobly he did struggle! Wilberforce had made a wise choice of a man in the prime of youth, whose bullet-headed portrait speaks of the most dogged determination, with nerves, health, and weight enough to contend for a whole lifetime with the horrible depravity around him—the only clergyman, and with three settlements far apart dependent on his ministry. And in the outset he was severely tried by domestic sorrows; for his eldest son, at two years old, was thrown out of his mother’s arms by a jolt to the carriage over the rough road, and killed on the spot; and a younger child, who was shortly after left at home from dread of a similar accident, was allowed by its attendant to stray into the kitchen, where it fell backwards into a pan of boiling water and was fatally scalded.

The father bore these calamities as one who had steadfast faith and resignation—“one who felt much and said little.” The demands on his time, indeed, left him no leisure for giving way to grief. Spiritual matters were not all that came upon him. In the utter lack of conscientious men to perform the functions of the magistracy, he was at once appointed to the bench; nor, indeed, was there the same feeling in England then as now against the combination of the clergyman and justice of the peace. The most exemplary parish priests viewed it as a duty to administer justice in their villages; and the first, and till quite recently the sole manual of prayers to be used with prisoners, was the production of one of these clerical magistrates. A Yorkshire farmer’s son could not be expected to know much about law, but good sense, uprightness, perception of justice, and intense determination, he had, as well as Christian humanity; and in these he was superior to any of his colleagues on the Paramatta bench, whom he was continually striving to raise to some comprehension of the commonest rules of justice, mercy, and decency; and in this, after a long course of years, he in some measure succeeded; but not till after his strong hand, impartial justice, and hatred of vice, had made him enemies among all parties; and it is only too probable that his secular authority, though always nobly wielded, impeded rather than otherwise his pastoral influence.

His farming education served him well when he received a grant of land, and of thirteen convicts to bring it into order. It was part of his payment, almost indispensable for procuring to his family the necessaries of life, and it gave him, besides, the means of imparting instruction in honest labour. His property became the model farm of New South Wales, and the profits afforded him the means of establishing the schools, benevolent institutions, and missions, for which there were few, if any purses to draw upon. He won himself respect on all sides, especially from the Governor of the colony, Captain King, a hasty, violent, but good-hearted man, with whom more than once he had misunderstandings, but such as were made up again. On one of these occasions, the chaplain’s advice was asked by the Governor, and promised on condition that he might speak as to a private individual. So, when they met, Mr. Marsden locked the door, and, in plain and forcible terms, gave Captain King a thoroughgoing remonstrance on the faults of Governor King, which was taken in perfect good part.

Nevertheless, the whole construction of Society was so atrocious, that nothing could effect any improvement but interference from higher authority. The Court of Judicature in New South Wales was the most shamelessly corrupt and abandoned in existence, and a rebellious spirit broke out which imperilled the military authority of the Governor. Mr. Marsden saw no hope, except in laying a full statement in person before the home Government; and therefore, at the end of fourteen years, when Governor King was about to return home, he resolved to go himself, and make a strong personal representation to Government. The two families sailed in the same ship, the Buffalo, which proved to be leaky; and, when a heavy gale was expected, it was proposed that the passengers should quit her, and take refuge in a stronger vessel; but Mrs. King was too unwell to be moved, and Mrs. Marsden would not leave her, so that the proposal was abandoned, and most providentially, for the ship that had been thought secure was lost in the night and never seen more!

The voyage was a slow one; and the first thing Mr. Marsden heard on arriving was, that the insurrection he had expected had actually broken out. This rendered Lord Castlereagh, then Colonial Secretary, the more anxious to obtain the advice of a sensible, clear-headed man like Samuel Marsden, and he was

encouraged to explain his views. First, he was anxious for whatever would tend to reform the convicts; and having observed that the most respectable of these were such as had married, or whose wives had come out to them, he begged that, for the future, the families of the married men might be sent out with them. This was refused; but his representation that the convicts ought to be instructed in trades was attended to, when he showed that, by this means, the whole expense of their clothing might be saved. He had discerned the wonderful capacities of Australia for sheep farming, and having brought home some wool, and found it much approved by the manufacturers, he thereupon ventured to petition the King for a couple of merino [221] sheep from the royal farm at Windsor, to improve the breed. The request was after “Farmer George’s” own heart; he gave five, and thus Mr. Marsden did the work of agricultural improvement of the Benedictines of old. He also obtained that three more clergymen and three schoolmasters should be sent out; and he strove hard for other institutions, chiefly for the reformation of the female convicts, which he could not at the time get carried out. He likewise conducted an immense correspondence on behalf of persons who had not found any other means of communicating with their homes; and, at the same time, he became personally acquainted with Wilberforce, and many others of the supporters of the cause of religion.

Above all, it was in this visit to England that Mr. Marsden laid the foundations of the missions to New Zealand, and prepared to become the apostle of the Maori race. These great islands of New Zealand had been discovered and named by Tasman in 1642, and first visited by Captain Cook in 1769. He found them inhabited by a brave, high-spirited, and quick-witted set of natives, with as large a proportion of the fine qualities sometimes found in a wild race as ever savages possessed, but their tribes continually at war, and the custom of cannibalism prevailing: he had been on friendly terms with them, and presented them with pigs, fowls, and potatoes—no small boon in a land where there was no quadruped bigger than a rat, and very few esculent vegetables. From this time, whalers

occasionally stopped to take in water, &c., and kept up a sort of intercourse with the Maori, sometimes amiable, and resulting in the natives taking voyages on board the vessels, but sometimes quarrelsome, and characterized by mutual outrages, when, if a white man were made prisoner, he was sure to be killed and eaten, to serve as a sort of triumphal and sacrificial banquet.

Nevertheless, it was plain that these Maories were of a much higher type of humanity than the Australian natives, whom Mr. Marsden had found so far entirely unteachable and untameable, but for whom he was trying to establish some plan of training and protection. Such a spirit of curiosity and enterprise possessed some of the New Zealand chieftains, that they would come on visits to Australia, and on these occasions Mr. Marsden always gave them a welcome at his parsonage at Paramatta. At one time there were thirty staying there, over whom he had great influence. Once, when he was absent from home, the nephew of one of the chiefs died, and his uncle immediately prepared to sacrifice a slave; nor could Mrs. Marsden prevent it, otherwise than by hiding the intended victim till her husband came home, who made the chief understand that it was not to be done, though the man continued to lament that his nephew was deprived of his proper attendant in the other world, and seemed afraid to return home, lest the father of the youth should reproach him with the omission.

Mr. Marsden made known all that he had been able to gather of the promising nature of the field of labour in New Zealand, and sought aid from the Church Missionary Society, since the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel was then unable to reach beyond the colonies. The almost universal indifference of the upper classes to missionary labour was terribly crippling in the matter of means; and perhaps the fact was that the underbred class of agents of the Societies stirred up by the example of Marshman and Carey, together with the vulgarly-sensational appeals against which Ward’s good taste so strongly protested, greatly tended to make them incredulous. It was not till the statements of scholars and gentlemen, like Henry Martyn and Bishop Heber, became generally known, that the work was looked on without sarcasm, provoked by vulgarity, even where there was great devotion.

No clergyman could be found to undertake the mission to New Zealand; but William Hall and John King, two laymen,

undertook to act as pioneers, with instructions to establish family worship, converse on religion with the natives, and instruct their children; trying, at the same time, to show the benefits of civilization, but to take care it was not confounded with Christianity.

These two good men, who were presently followed by Thomas Kendall, sailed in the same ship with Mr. Marsden, when, in August 1809, he paid his last farewell to his native land, and sailed in the Ann for New South Wales. Strange to say, this very ship contained a Maori, on his return home! He was a young chief named Duaterra, who had, in a spirit of adventure, embarked on board a whaler named the Argo, and worked as a sailor for six months, till the captain, having no further occasion for his services, put him ashore at Port Jackson, without payment or friends. However, he embarked in another whaler, and worked his way home, but soon was on board of a third English ship, the Santa Anna, in search of seal-skins, and having conceived a great desire to see the country whence these vessels came forth, and to know its chief, he engaged to come to England in it, the captain and sailors not scrupling to promise him an introduction to King George. When the Santa Anna reached England, the crew had grown tired of him, used him roughly and harshly, and tried to put him off his pertinacious recollection of the promise of seeing the king, by telling him that King George’s house could not be found; while he was worked beyond his strength, and scarcely ever suffered to go on shore. When, in fifteen days, the cargo was all discharged, the captain put him on board the Ann, to be taken back to Australia, and when he asked for his wages, to provide some clothing, told him that the owner of the ship would give him two muskets when he should reach Port Jackson.

The poor fellow was little likely to reach it, for lung disease, the great foe of the Maori, had set in; and he was in a pitiable condition when Mr. Marsden, by chance, remarked his brown face on the forecastle, and inquired into his history, which was confirmed by the master of the Ann, and was really only a specimen of a sailor’s vague promises, and incapacity to understand that a dark skin ought to be treated with the same justice as a white one. Duaterra was a man of much intelligence, and even under these most unfavourable circumstances had been greatly impressed with the civilization of England, and was so desirous of improvement that, on arriving at Port Jackson, Mr.

Marsden took him to his farm, where he applied eagerly to the learning of husbandry.

Duaterra was not the only Maori ill-treated by British sailors. Another chief having been used in like manner, or worse, on board the Boyd, bided his time till the ship was in the Bay of Islands, and then brought his tribe, armed with clubs and hatchets, to revenge his sufferings. They overpowered the crew, slaughtered and feasted upon them, burning the ship, and only retaining as captives two women and a boy. Nevertheless, Hall and King were ready to take the missionaries to this dangerous spot, but Mr. Marsden thought it best to give time for the passions thus excited to cool down.

Meantime Governor Macquarie had come out to take charge of New South Wales. He was a man of great determination and despotic will, and carried out many regulations that were of exceeding benefit to the colony, but he did not know the limits of his authority, dealt with the chaplains as with subordinate officials, and sometimes met with staunch opposition from the sturdy Yorkshireman, his senior chaplain, so that they were in a state of almost constant feud throughout his government, although at the end of his career he bore the strongest testimony to the merits of the only man who durst resist him. The old game of Ambrose and Theodosius, Hildebrand and Henry, Becket and Plantagenet, has to be played over and over again, wherever the State refuses to understand that spiritual matters lie beyond its grasp; and when Governor Macquarie prescribed the doctrines to be preached and the hymns to be used in the churches, and commanded the most unsuitable secular notices to be promulgated by the clergy, if Mr. Marsden had not resisted the Church would have been absolutely degraded. When convicts of wealth and station, but still leading most vicious lives, were raised to the magistrates’ bench, Mr. Marsden could not but refuse to associate or act with them, and even tendered his resignation of the magistracy, but Macquarie would not accept it. How uncompromising these sermons were is evidenced by an anecdote of a man, who, being stung to the quick, fancied that the words had been individually aimed at him, and determined to be revenged. Accordingly, as soon as he saw the chaplain riding near a piece of water he jumped in, and when Mr. Marsden at once sprung after him, did his utmost to drown his intended deliverer; but after a violent struggle the Yorkshire

muscles prevailed, and the man was dragged out, so startled by the shock that he confessed his intention, and, under the counsel he had so fiercely spurned at first, became truly penitent, and warmly attached to Mr. Marsden, whose service he ultimately entered.

The square short face and sturdy form of Samuel Marsden show the force, vigour, and determination of his nature, which told on beast as well as man. On the road between Sydney and Paramatta, he used to let the reins lie loose on the splash-board of his gig and read, saying that “the horse that could not keep itself up was not worth driving,” and though one of the pair he usually drove was unmanageable in other hands, nothing ever went amiss with it when it went out with its master. Such a spirit of determination produced an impress even on those who opposed him most, and many works were carried out in the teeth of the difficulties thrown in their way; such as the erection of schools, of a factory for the reception of the female convicts, and of a sort of model farm, where it was intended to collect, tame, and civilize the aborigines. This was at first planned between the governor and chaplain, but when it was ready Marsden was under Colonel Macquarie’s displeasure, and was therefore excluded from all share in the management, though the site was actually in his own parish of Paramatta. The experiment was a failure, probably not on this account, but from the restless character of the blacks, whose intellect was too small, and their wants too few, to feel any comfort a compensation for their freedom and wandering life. Mr. Marsden and the other chaplains repeatedly tried bringing up children,—some too young to retain any memory of their native habits, but they always relapsed into savage life on the first opportunity, and though here and there individuals may have better come up to the hopes of their devoted friends, yet as a race they seem too little above the animal to be susceptible of being raised.

Governor Macquarie was an iron-handed man, who could not brook opposition, or endure any scheme that did not originate with himself. So when Mr. Marsden laid before him a project for diminishing the appalling misery and vice in which the utter neglect of Government left the female convicts, he acknowledged the letter, but did not act upon it. After waiting eighteen months for him to take some measure, the chaplain sent a statement of the condition of these poor creatures to

the Colonial Office; it was laid before Parliament, and Lord Bathurst, the Colonial Secretary, sent a letter of inquiry to the Governor. Macquarie’s fury was intense on finding that the chaplain had dared to look above and beyond him; and he gave a willing encouragement to whatever resisted the attempts of Marsden at establishing some sense of religion and morality. After refusing to accept his resignation of his post as a magistrate, he dismissed him ignominiously, and all the underlings of Government knew that any attack from them would be regarded with favour. A vile and slanderous letter, full of infamous libels, not only against Samuel Marsden, as a man and a Christian priest, but against the missionaries, and signed “Philo-free,” appeared in the Sydney Herald, the Government paper, and was traced to Macquarie’s own secretary! The libel was such that Mr. Marsden felt it due to his cause to bring an action against the publisher, and in spite of the prejudice against him, after a trial of three days, he gained a complete victory and damages of £200; but the newspaper published such a false and scandalous report of the trial that he was obliged a second time to prosecute, and again obtained a verdict in his favour.

The officers of the 46th Regiment, on leaving the colony, presented him with a testimonial, and an address most gratifying, amid the general obloquy, and showing a feeling most honourable to themselves. Every one who cared for the cause of virtue at home, especially Wilberforce, Simeon, and Mrs. Fry, wrote encouraging letters to him; and Lord Bathurst, on receiving a despatch from Macquarie, full of charges against the chaplain as man, magistrate, and minister, sent out a commission of inquiry, which, coming with fresh eyes from England, was horrified at the abuses to which the Australian world was accustomed, found every word of Mr. Marsden’s perfectly justified, and at last extracted the following confession from Colonel Macquarie: “The Governor admits that Mr. Marsden’s manner to him has been constantly civil and accommodating, and that nothing in his manner could provoke the Governor’s warmth. The Governor admits his qualifications, his activity, and his unremitting vigilance as a magistrate, and in society his cheerful disposition and readiness to please.” The report of this commission resulted, among other more important consequences, in the unsolicited grant of £400 a year additional stipend to Mr.

Marsden, “in consideration of his long, laborious, and praiseworthy exertions in behalf of religion and morality.” This was only fitting compensation on the part of Government, for the accusation of avarice had brought to light how many schools and asylums, the proper work of the Government, had been built, and were being maintained, out of the proceeds of the farm which had prospered so excellently.

As long as Macquarie continued in office, Mr. Marsden was out of favour, but Sir Thomas Brisbane, who came out in 1821, was friendly with him, and knew his value, insisting on his returning to the bench of magistrates. He did all he could to avoid it, till the judges and almost every one in the colony so urged him to accept that he yielded; but in 1824 a case occurred in which a rich and insolent culprit was severely punished by the Paramatta bench, and contrived to raise such an outrageous storm that Sir Thomas Brisbane, who, if better disposed, was more timid than his predecessor, dismissed the whole five magistrates. The offender’s wish had been merely to overthrow Mr. Marsden, but this was found impossible. The whole fury of the colony again rose against this fearless man, and accusations absolutely absurd were trumped up. One was that he allowed his windmill to work on Sunday! The fact turned out to be, when investigated, that somebody had once seen the sails turning on a Sunday, some time before Mr. Marsden had purchased the land on which the mill stood. A real act of persecution affected him more seriously, as it was the ruin of another person in whom he was interested. There was an old regulation forbidding the hiring out of convicts who were assigned to residents as domestic servants, but this had been virtually repealed by another under Macquarie, permitting such hiring out on the owners complying with certain rules. These had been duly attended to by Mr. Marsden in the case of one James Ring, a plumber and glazier, who, as a reward for good conduct, was allowed to go out to work in Paramatta for his own profit. Being ill-used and beaten by another servant, he summoned the man before the bench of magistrates, but these, who had been put in when Mr. Marsden and his colleagues were dismissed, immediately committed Ring to jail for being at large. His master went to demand his release, showing that the rules had been observed, but the magistrates replied by levying a fine of two-and-sixpence for every day that Ring had been at work,

and as Marsden did not offer to pay, they sent a convict constable to his house to seize property to that amount, while poor Ring himself was sent to work in irons with the penal gang; though at that very moment one of the magistrates had a servant, a tailor, at work in Mr. Marsden’s house; and another person had two hired convicts of another of these justices employed at his home. In fact, it was the only sentence of the kind ever inflicted, yet Sir Thomas Brisbane was afraid to interfere; whereupon Mr. Marsden caused his case to be tried before the Supreme Court, and so completely proved it, that restitution of the illegal fine was commanded, though the spirit of persecution was still shown in the absurdly small sum of damages allotted to him. What was worse was that he could not procure the release of Ring, for while he was sending an appeal to England the unhappy man lost patience, ran away from the gang where he was working in irons on the roads, and escaped to New Zealand, but was never heard of more. Had he but borne with his misery a little longer he would have been restored to his kind master, for a commission came out which a second time resulted in the complete triumph of Mr. Marsden, and the entire discomfiture of his persecutors.

We have gone through the history of his home troubles before entering on the part that concerned his missionary labours. It is a painful picture, but the staunch firmness that never failed to “boldly rebuke vice,” is too essential a part of the picture to be passed over. The Apostle of New Zealand was the Baptist of the Herods of Australia. We return to the year 1816, when, after some months’ training in agriculture at Mr. Marsden’s farm, Duaterra had sailed for his home, but only again to suffer from the perfidy of the master of the ship. The ordinary English mind seemed incapable of perceiving that any faith need be kept with a dark-coloured man, and Duaterra was defrauded of his share of the oil procured from the whales he had helped to catch, carried past his own shores, only two miles from the pah where the master had engaged to land him, and turned adrift in the then uninhabited Norfolk Island, where a whaler picked him up almost starved, and brought him back to Australia. However, Mr. Marsden found another ship, which did fulfil its engagements, and Duaterra was at last set ashore in the Bay of Islands, close to the northern point of New Zealand, with a supply of wheat which Mr. Marsden had given him.

Two years had passed, and Mr. Marsden had been trying to procure from the Society at home a mission ship to carry teachers to the islands, visit them, and supply their wants there, but he had not as yet succeeded, and he therefore decided on purchasing a small one from Australia at his own expense. This was the Active, the first of the mission vessels that now bear the Cross in several quarters of the globe. In her Hall and King sailed, and Mr. Marsden would have accompanied them but for the express prohibition of Governor Macquarie, who, little as he loved his senior chaplain, did not choose to lose him on what he regarded as a scheme of almost fanatic folly. The two teachers were not to settle on shore, nor even to sleep there, but they were to visit Duaterra, reconnoitre the ground, and see whether it would be possible to settle there as they had at first proposed.

To their delight, Duaterra came eagerly to meet them, very anxious for their assistance with his corn. He had shown it to his tribe, telling them that hence came the bread and biscuit they had eaten in English ships, and great had been their disappointment when neither the ear nor the root of the wheat proved at all like these articles. However, he had been successful in his farmer operations, but was entirely puzzled by those of the miller, only knowing that the grain ought to be ground, and unable to contrive it, though he had borrowed a coffee-mill from a trading vessel. When the new comers produced a hand-mill he was delighted. His kindred, to whom he had been a laughing-stock for averring that biscuit had any connection with his new grass, crowded round incredulously to watch the mill, showed unbounded amazement as the white flour streamed forth, and when a cake was hastily made and baked in a frying-pan they leapt about shouting and dancing for joy. Duaterra, his uncle Hunghi, a very powerful chief, and five more, accepted an invitation to come and confer with Mr. Marsden, and the Active brought them back to New South Wales. They were very anxious for the benefits which they hoped to derive from intercourse with the whites, and readily undertook to secure Hall and King from all danger. Even Governor Macquarie was so far satisfied that he consented to let Mr. Marsden go out and arrange the new settlement, to which he presented two cows and a bull. These, with three horses, and some sheep and poultry, were embarked on board the Active, with a motley

collection of passengers, the eight Maories, the three missionaries with their wives and children, a sawyer, a smith, Mr. Marsden, and another gentleman named John Lydiard Nicholas, the master of the vessel, his wife, son, and crew, which included two Tahitians, and lastly a runaway convict who had secreted himself on board. Their arrival might have been rendered dangerous by the conduct of a whaling crew at Wangaroa, in the northern island of New Zealand, who, by way of retaliation for the massacre of the Boyd’s ship-company, had murdered a chief named Tippahee with all his family, without waiting to find out whether he had been concerned in the slaughter. Nevertheless, these brave men were ready to dare to the utmost, and the fame of Mr. Marsden, “the friend of the Maori,” had preceded him, and the Active was welcomed with presents of fish and visits from the natives.

They found that Tippahee’s people at Wangaroa had accused the tribe of the Bay of Islands of leading the English to murder their chief, that there was in consequence a deadly feud, and that several desperate battles had been fought. Marsden knew that if he came as the friend of Duaterra and his tribe alone, party spirit would entirely alienate the rest of the islanders, and he therefore determined at once to prove that he came not as the ally of one party, but as the friend of both. He therefore determined to prove to the Wangaroans his confidence in them by not only landing among them unarmed, but actually spending the night among them. His friend Mr. Nicholas accompanied him in this, one of the most intrepid actions ever performed, when it is remembered that this tribe consisted of the cannibals who had eaten his own countrymen, and had of late been freshly provoked. The two gentlemen supped in Hunghi’s hut on potatoes and fish, and then quietly walked over to the hostile camp, where they met with a friendly welcome. One of the natives who had sailed in an English vessel was able to interpret, and with his assistance Mr. Marsden explained the purpose of the missionaries, and the desirableness of peace. Maories appreciate being spoken to at length and with due respect, and they listened politely, making speeches in their own fashion in return, until towards eleven, when most had gone to rest. The two Englishmen wrapped themselves in their great coats and lay down, the interpreter bidding them lie near him. It was a clear night, countless stars shining above, the sea in front smooth, all around a forest of spears stuck upright in the

earth, and on the ground the multitude of human beings in their scanty loose garb of tapa cloth lying fast asleep, while the man who had come as an apostle to them spent the night in thought and prayer. Such a scene can never be forgotten!

In the morning the ship’s boat came to fetch him off, and he took the chiefs back with him to the ship to receive presents and be introduced to those who were to live among them. There was also a formal reconciliation with Duaterra and his tribe, and the wondering Maories took their travelled brother into high estimation when they really beheld the animals they had imagined to be mere creations of his fancy, and were specially amazed at the sight of Mr. Marsden mounted on horseback.

Duaterra, meantime, of his own accord, was making preparations for the first Sunday service held in New Zealand. It was likewise the Christmas Day of 1815, and Mr. Marsden felt it a most appropriate moment for his first proclamation of the good tidings of great joy among this most distant of the nations. Duaterra’s ideas of a church consisted in enclosing about half an acre of land with a fence, and erecting in the midst a reading-desk three feet, and a pulpit six feet high, both made out of canoes, covered with either black native cloth or some canvas he had brought from Port Jackson, and ranging near them some bottoms of old canoes, as seats for the English part of the congregation, and on the hill above he hoisted, of his own accord, the British flag.

On the Sunday morning Duaterra, his uncle, and Koro Koro, another chief who had been in Australia, all appeared in regimentals given them by Governor Macquarie, swords by their sides, and switches in their hands, and all their men drawn up behind them. When the English had entered, the chiefs arranged their tribes, and Mr. Marsden began by singing the Old Hundredth Psalm, the first note of praise to the Creator that ever rung from the bays and rocks of New Zealand. Then he went through the Christmas Day service, his twenty-two English joining in it, and Koro Koro making signs with his switch to the natives when to stand and when to sit. Mr. Marsden ended with a sermon on the Angelic greeting, and when the natives complained that they could not understand, Duaterra promised to explain afterwards, and this he performed—it may be feared, after a fashion of his own, for as yet he was very ignorant, although very acute.

Mr. Marsden’s principle was not that of Eliot, to begin with the faith, then come to civilization. He thought that the benefits of civilization would lead to the acceptance of the faith; and, besides, he had only laymen to act as teachers; and, as his system was that of the Church, he could only employ them in laying foundations, in preparing instead of admitting converts, while his own duties only permitted of his making flying visits. So he established his settlers to show the benefits of peace, industry, and morality, and thus bring the natives to look higher. Seed, tools, clothing, he assisted them in procuring and using, but his smith was expressly forbidden ever to make or repair any warlike weapon, or the settlers ever to barter muskets or powder for any possession of whatever value with the natives. He likewise strove, in his conversations with the chiefs, to show the evils of their vices in such a manner as their shrewd minds could enter into, trying to make them see the disgrace and horror of cannibalism, and the inconveniences of polygamy, thus hoping to raise their standard.

In order that the mission settlement might have some security, he purchased a plot of land in the name of the Church Missionary Society, drawing up a regular deed of sale, to which his signature was affixed, together with a likeness of the tattooed pattern of the Maori chieftain’s face. Duaterra walked about with him in delight, talking of the time when the church should be built, and planning the spot; but the poor fellow had probably never recovered the injury his constitution had suffered, for he fell ill, and his state was soon hopeless. It was a great grief to Mr. Marsden, who had reckoned much on his assistance, and found it hard to acquiesce in the will of Providence, more especially as the poor young man was not yet so entirely a Christian as to warrant baptizing him. He begged Mr. Marsden to pray with him, but he kept his heathen priest at hand, and his mind was tossed to and fro between the new truth and the old superstition. In this state Mr. Marsden was forced to leave him, four days before his death, when Kendall, who visited him to the last, was shocked at the savage manner in which his relatives gashed themselves, to show their grief, and far more when his favourite wife stole out and hung herself, according to a frequent custom, regarded as rather honourable than otherwise!

Soon after his death fresh wars broke out, and a hostile

tribe encamped near the mission settlement, loudly threatening to kill and devour the inhabitants, who, for months together, had to keep watch day and night, put their children to bed in their clothes ready for instant flight, and had their boat always afloat with oars and sails; but they remained steadfast, and the danger passed over.

The Active plied backwards and forwards, supplying them with the necessaries of life, and bringing guests to the farm at Paramatta, where Mr. Marsden provided instruction for them. Two, named Tooi and Teterree, were sent in charge of Mr. Nicholas to visit England in a King’s ship, where they had learnt to speak English tolerably, and to follow the customs of civilized society. They were gentle and intelligent, and eager to learn, but no one could reckon on what would interest or excite them. They were taken to see St. Paul’s Cathedral, which did not seem to strike them at all; but, as they were walking along Fleet Street, they came to a sudden stand before a hairdresser’s shop, screaming out, “Women, women,” as they beheld the display of waxen busts, which they thought did credit to the Pakeha, or English, style of preserving dried human heads! Like Duaterra, their great anxiety was to see King George; but, in 1817, the apology recorded in Teterree’s English letter was only too true,—“I never see the King of England, he very poorly; and Queen Charlotte very poorly too.”

On their return to Paramatta, Mr. Marsden made a second visit to New Zealand, taking them back, and also going to instal some fresh missionaries and mechanics on a new settlement. There was great competition among the chiefs; for the possession of a Pakeha, or Englishman, was greatly coveted as a means of bringing the material good things of life, and Mr. Marsden was eagerly assured that there was no danger of the English being killed and eaten, since the Maori flesh was much sweeter, because the whites ate so much salt. There was as yet no convert, but Mr. Marsden’s resolution by no means failed him; he believed—and he was right—that kindness, truth, and uprightness, in those who could confer temporal benefits, would, in time, lead these intelligent men to appreciate the spiritual blessings that were offered to them.

Presents of hoes, with which to plant the sweet potato, were greatly appreciated. Hunghi’s head wife was working away with a wooden spade, though perfectly blind, and was delighted

with the new instrument. Indeed, Hunghi was one of the most eager friends of the mission, though the splendidly tattooed heads of his enemies decorated his abode, and he defended cannibalism, on the ground that animals preyed upon one another, and that the gods devoured each other. His manners had all the high-bred courtesy that marked the chief, and he was a noble-looking creature, full of native majesty and gentleness. Every hope was entertained of him, and he was sent, in 1820, to visit England, where he had an interview with George IV., and received presents of weapons from him. But the moral Hunghi brought home was, “There is but one king in England. There shall be but one in New Zealand.” And this consummation he endeavoured to bring about by challenging a hostile chief whom he met on his way back from Sydney to New Zealand. He gained the battle, by arranging his men in the form of a wedge, and likewise by the number of muskets with which he was able to arm them. When the chief himself fell by his hand, he drank his fresh blood, and devoured his eye, in the belief that it thus became a star in the firmament, and conferred glory on himself; and the whole battle-field was covered with the ovens in which his followers cooked the flesh of the prisoners whom they did not keep as slaves!

This horrible scene took place while Mr. Marsden was in Australia, but he could hardly have prevented it. Probably the chief’s ferocity, so long repressed, was in a state of reaction; for, though the missionaries were not molested, their efforts seemed lost. Hunghi declared that he wished his children to learn to fight, not to read; and the Maoris insisted on being paid for any service to the missionaries in fire-arms and powder. When this was refused they became insolent and mischievous, intruding into the houses, demanding food, breaking down the fences, and stealing whatever they could seize; and there was reason to fear that any excitement might lead to absolute danger. In this crisis some of the missionaries failed, sold ammunition, and otherwise were wanting in the testimony they were intended to maintain. The tidings determined Mr. Marsden on making a fourth visit to New Zealand: and this time he was able to take with him a clergyman, the Rev. Henry Williams, who lived to become Bishop of a Maori district. It was nine years since the first landing there, and, in spite of all

disappointments, he found many of the natives much improved, and the friendly chiefs quite able to understand his prohibition against the sale of powder, although they were at first inclined to be angry at his having sent home a missionary on that account. The other missionaries expressed repentance for their errors, but he was not thoroughly satisfied with them, though allowing much for their isolation from Christian society and ordinances.

A Wesleyan mission had been established at Wangaroa, which he visited and assisted, and finding Mr. Leigh, the chief minister, very ill, offered him a passage to Sydney for advice, but this ship had scarcely weighed anchor before a great storm came on; the ship was lost, and the crew and passengers had to land in boats, and return for two months longer before a ship could be found to bring them home, and in this time he did all in his power to bring the Maories to agree to some settled form of government under a single chief; but though any chief, especially Hunghi, was quite willing to be that one, nobody would be anything secondary, and thus the project failed. He also set the missionaries the task of endeavouring to collect a fixed vocabulary and grammar, which might be available in future translations. The great kindness shown him at his shipwreck had greatly touched his heart, especially in contrast with the usage he was meeting with in Australia, for this was in the height of the persecution about Ring, which detained him at home for more than two years. During this time Mr. Williams was joined by his brother William, also a priest of the English Church, but the wars of the Maories had become so desperate that the peril of the missionaries had been much increased; indeed, the Wesleyans had had the whole of their premises ravaged, so that the minister came as a fugitive to find a refuge at Paramatta, as a guest of Mr. Marsden.

That brave soldier of his Lord decided on going at once to the scene of peril. Though sixty-three years old, he sailed as soon as possible in H.M.S. Rainbow, but found peace restored and the danger to his missions over. He therefore came back, after remaining only five days at his labours in New South Wales, to the superintendence of the translation of several chapters of Holy Scripture, and to the instruction of the young Maories at the sort of college he had tried from the first to keep up at Paramatta, but which he was forced to abandon, since the

delicate lungs of the Maories could not endure the parching dryness of the Australian climate.

By the time he went again to New Zealand, in 1830, Hunghi had been killed in battle, and the nation was fast dwindling between war and a disease resembling the influenza. It was estimated that in twenty years the numbers had diminished by one-half, and in the meantime English settlers were entering on the lands so numerously that it was evident that before long the islands would be annexed to the British crown. Mr. Marsden had hoped at first that this brave and intelligent people might have been Christianized and civilized, so as to stand alone, but finding that their deadly feuds and internecine savagery rendered this impossible, he thought it best to prepare them to come willingly under a curb that he trusted would be no more than beneficial.

He found the missionaries much alarmed, for a horrible battle had just been fought, caused by the misconduct and insulting behaviour of the crew of an English ship. One tribe had taken their part, another had risen to revenge the affront, and a great mutual slaughter had taken place; victory had remained with the avengers, and though the offending crew had sailed away, it was apprehended that all the English might suffer in their stead. There was not an hour to be lost. Mr. Marsden and Mr. Williams crossed the bay and entered the camp of the English allies, where they were affectionately greeted, and allowed to carry proposals of peace to the victorious party, but there they met with a less friendly reception, being told that they were answerable for the lives of those who had fallen in the battle, since it had been occasioned by the misconduct of their countrymen. When Mr. Marsden promised to write to England to prevent the return of the offenders, the savages desired he would do no such thing, since they only desired vengeance. However, they agreed to hold a meeting with the hostile tribe, and endeavour to come to terms. Early the next morning thirty-six canoes arrived opposite to the mission station, some containing forty men; and notice was given that if the commissioners appointed on either side did not come to terms, the white men would be the sacrifice.

The day was spent in conferences, but at night the chief of the hostile tribe clove a stick in two, in token that his anger was broken, and the two parties joined in a hideous war-dance,

frequently firing their muskets; but peace was ratified, and Mr. Marsden found that real progress had been made among the natives around the stations. Many had become true and sincere Christians, among them the widow and daughters of Hunghi. A Maori Christian woman was married by Mr. Marsden to an Englishman. She made all the responses in good English, and appeared in decent English clothes of her own sewing. He also married a young man, free, and of good family, to a girl who had been a slave taken in war, who was redeemed from her master for five blankets, an axe, and an iron pot. A number of natives lived round the missions, attending the services, and working with a good deal of industry and intelligence, and an increasingly large proportion of these were openly baptized Christians.

A seventh visit was paid by Mr. Marsden in 1837, when seventy-two years of age. On his return an officer in the ship observed: “I think, sir, you may look on this as your last visit to New Zealand.” “No,” he answered, “I intend to be off again in about six weeks; the people in the colony are becoming too fine for me now. I am too old to preach before them, but I can talk to the New Zealanders.” He adhered to his purpose, and his daughter, Martha, who had been with him on his last voyage, accompanied him again in this. There had been some quarrels with the crews of ships, but the natives always separated Mr. Marsden from the misdeeds of his people, and the old chiefs were delighted to see him. “Stay with us and learn our language,” one of them said: “become our father and our friend, and we will build you a house.” “No,” replied another, “we cannot build a house good enough, but we will hire Europeans to do it for us.”

Wherever he went, he was hailed as the friend of the Maori, and he made a progress through all the mission stations, which were growing up numerously, and whence Christianity was fast spreading by the agency of the Maories themselves. A chief named Koromona, made captive in Hunghi’s great war, who had become blind, had been converted by Mr. William Williams, and soon learnt the whole Liturgy, with many chapters of the Bible, and hymns, by heart, and was fit to be sent as a teacher among the other tribes. Sunday was generally observed, cannibalism and polygamy were retreating into the more remote and heathenish regions, and there was every token that the noble

Apostle of New Zealand had verily conquered a country and people for the Church of God. Terrible wars among the tribes, provoking all the old ferocities, still were liable to arise, and the whaling crews, among whom might be found some of the most unscrupulous, licentious, and violent of mankind, continued to take advantage of there being no regular jurisdiction to commit outrages, which spread corruption or provoked retaliation, and for this there was no remedy but annexation to the British crown, which the influence of the mission was leading the natives themselves to desire, though this was not carried out till after Mr. Marsden’s death.

This last visit took place in 1837. By that time the persecutions and troubles of Mr. Marsden’s colonial life had been outlived,—though even as late as 1828, he writes about a pamphlet which actually charged him with inflicting torture to extract confession! But his character outweighed all such absurd charges, and as a more respectable class of settlers flowed into the colony he was better appreciated. What the tone must have been may be guessed from the fact that when, in 1825, Governor Darling began regularly to attend church with his wife and family, it was regarded as an unexampled act in the supreme magistrate!

Mr. Marsden lost his wife in 1835, but his daughter did her best to minister to his happiness, and was his companion and assistant in all he undertook. Once, when she was driving with him, two of the most terrible of the bushrangers, who were feared by the whole country, broke forth upon them, seized the horse, and holding a loaded pistol to Mr. Marsden’s breast, bade her empty his pockets into their hands, threatening to shoot them both if either said a word. Nevertheless, the fearless old man continued to remonstrate with them on their wicked life, telling them that he should see them again upon the gallows, and though they charged him with savage threats not to follow them with his eyes, he turned round and continued to warn them of the consequences of a life like theirs. In a few months’ time they were captured, and it did actually fall to his lot to attend them to the scaffold.

Yet, though of this fearless mould, he was one of the most loveable of men; everyone on his farm, as well as all little children, and the savages he conversed with, all loved him passionately. Some young Maories, whom he brought back on

his last voyage, used to race after his gig to catch his eye, and when they took hold of any book, used to point upwards, as if whatever was associated with Matua, as they called him, must lead to heaven. He was fond of playing with children, and never was so happy as when he yearly collected the schoolchildren of Paramatta on his lawn, for a feast and games after it.

In 1834, the Rev. William Grant Broughton, one of the clergy of Australia, took home an account of the spiritual destitution of New South Wales, and the effect was that in 1836 a bishopric was there created, and the first presentation given to him. Some thought that this was a passing over of the chaplain who had laboured so hard for so many years, but Mr. Marsden himself only observed that it was better thus: he was too old a man, and it was with sincere goodwill that he handed over the charge he had held for more than forty years, so that only the parish of Paramatta remained to him, and there he continued his ministry in church, to the sick, and among the poor to the end.

On the last Sunday of his life he seemed in his usual health; but for the first time he did not take part in the service, and at the celebration he seemed to be so overcome by his feelings as not to move from his place to communicate, when, after a pause, his son-in-law went to him with the sacred elements. There were many tears shed by those who foreboded that his hand would never administer to them again. On the Tuesday he set out for a short journey, but apparently he took a chill on the way to the house of his friend, Mr. Styles, at Windsor, and arrived unwell; erysipelas in the head came on, with a stupor of the faculties, and he died on Saturday, the 12th of May, 1838,—a man much tried, but resolute, staunch, and gallant, and, in the end, blessedly successful.

Two years later, New Zealand, by the wish of the Maories themselves, was added to the British dominions, a bishopric was erected there, and, did not our bounds forbid us to speak of those who are still among us, we could tell much of the development, under Bishop Selwyn, of Samuel Marsden’s work: though, alas! there is a tale to tell that disgraces, not our Government, but our people,—a story of lust of land and of gain, and of pertinacious unfairness towards the Maori, which has alienated a large number of that promising and noble people, led to their

relapse into the horrors from which they had been freed, overthrown their flourishing Church in favour of a horrid, bloodthirsty superstition, and will probably finish its work by the destruction of the gallant race that once asked our protection.

CHAPTER IX. JOHN WILLIAMS, THE MARTYR OF ERROMANGO.

Of Welsh extraction, and respectable though humble parentage, the pioneer and martyr of Polynesia, John Williams, was born at Tottenham High Court, London, in the year 1796. His parents were Nonconformists, and he was educated at a “commercial” school at Edmonton, where the teaching did not aim at much beyond writing and accounts, all that was supposed, at that time, to be needful for a young tradesman. The chief point remembered of his childhood was an aptitude and handiness which caused all little breakages to be kept for John to repair,—a small quality, but one of no small importance in the life of a missionary, who often finds ready resource essential to safety and to influence.

His mother was a good and religious woman, whose one great purpose in choosing a situation was to place him in a family where he might be influenced for good; and she was fortunate in finding a furnishing ironmonger whose care of his apprentices exactly met her views. While serving his time, John Williams was observed to delight in the hard practical work of the forge far more than in the easier and more popular employments of the shop, and he was always eager to be sent out to execute repairs, a task that was rather despised by his companions. He was not regarded as a religious youth till he was about eighteen; he considered that a serious direction had been given to his mind one Sunday evening, when his master’s wife, finding him just about to enter a tea-garden with some idle companions, persuaded him to come with her to chapel, where he heard an impressive sermon that gave a colour to his life.

After this, distinct habits of piety were formed, Williams was admitted to full membership at the chapel called the Tabernacle, and, together with others of the more earnest young men of the congregation, formed a society called “The Youths’ Class,” one of those associations which, under whatever form, have, in all ages of Christianity, been found a most powerful and salutary means of quickening, uniting, and strengthening the young by the sense of fellowship. The lads met every Monday evening for discussion, and every eighteenth Monday was devoted to special prayer. The minister of the chapel did not naturally preside, but would often look in, say a few words on the subject in hand, and thus keep watch that the debates were properly conducted.

It was through this pastor, Mr. Wilks, that John Williams first imbibed his interest in the missionary cause,—an interest that gradually grew upon him so much, that in his twentieth year he decided upon devoting himself to the task. Good Mr. Wilks freely gave the young ironmonger assistance in supplying the deficiencies of his education, and in July 1816 he was presented to the directors of the London Missionary Society, and passed an examination, after which he was accepted, before he was out of his apprenticeship. According to rule, so young and so insufficiently instructed a man would ordinarily have had some years of training before actually undertaking to labour among the heathen, but there was at the moment an urgent call for aid from various branches, and it was decided, by a special vote of the committee, to send him out as soon as possible to the South Sea Islands. His master willingly released him from the seven months that remained of his term; nor had his time of apprenticeship been by any means wasted, for the mechanical skill he had acquired was of great importance to his success as a civilizer. Marriage was always recommended to the missionaries of the Baptist Societies, and Williams’s fate was no sooner decided than he chose Mary Channer, a constant attendant at the Tabernacle, and a woman helpful, kind, and brave, as befitted a missionary’s wife.

A great meeting was soon after held, as a sort of dedication of the new labourers, nine in number, who were thence to go forth,—five to South Africa, four to Polynesia. Among the Africans was Robert Moffat, a name memorable, both on his own account and as the father-in-law of Livingstone. An elderly

minister stood forth and questioned the young men in the face of the congregation on their faith, their opinions, their motives, and their intentions; and then a Bible was solemnly presented to each by an elder minister, John Angell James, of Birmingham, one of the most able and highly reputed Nonconformists then living; and another minister, Dr. Waugh, addressing himself to Williams, who was much the youngest of the nine, said, “Go, my dear young brother, and if your tongue cleave to the roof of your mouth, let it be with telling poor sinners the love of Jesus Christ; and if your arms drop from their shoulders, let it be with knocking at men’s hearts to gain admittance for Him there.”

The impression never left John Williams, and the injunction was fulfilled to the utmost of his power. He was a man of strong and vigorous frame, well fitted to encounter the perils of climate; and with much enterprise, hardihood, and ingenuity. That his mind was in some degree narrowed by want of education, perhaps mattered less in the peculiar field of his labours, where he was seldom brought in contact with wide questions. He had the excellent quality of ready sympathy and adaptability to the persons around him, whether civilized or savage, and was so good-natured and yielding in unimportant matters, that the strength and firmness with which he would stand up for whatever he viewed as a matter of conscience, always took his opponents by surprise; but it was always long before this point was reached, and he was perhaps too ready to give up when it was judgment rather than right and wrong that came into play. Williams’s face, as given in the portrait attached to his “History of Missionary Enterprise in the South Sea,” curiously agrees with his history. There is much power about the brow, much enterprise in the strong, somewhat aquiline nose, great softness and sweetness in the eyes, but the thickness of the lips and chin betray the want of cultivation; indeed, the curious manner in which the mouth is pursed up, would seem to indicate that an eager temper naturally kept it unclosed, and that the restraint of sitting for a picture rendered the expression uncomfortably prim.

The Polynesian Mission on which John Williams was sent, had been commenced in 1796 by the London Missionary Society, partly in consequence of the death-bed entreaties of Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, who had been exceedingly interested by the accounts of the South Sea Islands in Captain

Cook’s Voyages. The subscriptions amounted to 10,000l., and were sufficient to purchase a ship called the Duff, which was commanded by that Captain Wilson whose wonderful history has been noticed in the lives of the Serampore body. Twenty-five missionaries were taken out, and received at Tahiti with grotesque dances and caperings. The dwelling, which had been erected when Captain Bligh was collecting bread-fruit, was given to them, and several were placed there, while the Duff carried others to the Friendly and Marquesan Islands, and, after visiting them all a second time, returned home for reinforcements.

On the next voyage, however, with a different captain, the Duff was captured by a French privateer, the captain of which, when he understood the purpose of the voyage, greatly regretted what he had done, and declared that he would rather have given 500l. than have interfered with it. He landed the missionaries at Monte Video, and assisted them in obtaining a passage home, in the course of which they were again captured by a Portuguese, whose treatment of them was a wretched contrast to that of the friendly Frenchman.

Meantime, many disasters had befallen the unassisted missionaries, who suffered from the hostility of a section of the natives, though the king, Pomare, always protected them. One of their number insisted on marrying a native woman still unconverted, separated from his brethren, and was soon after murdered by the natives. Another was lost in a still sadder way. He reasoned himself into doubts of the Divine power and of the immortality of the soul, and finally left the island, nor was he heard of again for many years, though prayer was constantly made for him, and at length it became known that he had wandered to Serampore, where the influence of Marshman and Carey had prevailed to bring back his faith, but he had since been lost at sea. What wonderful glimpses we get of strange wild lives!

But the Tahitian Mission had not included any one leading character, so that it may be enough to state that, after years of patient effort and often of danger, the missionaries beheld King Pomare II., the successor of him whom they had found on the throne, solemnly burn his idols, and profess himself a Christian.

From that time the island has been Christian. The standard

of morality has been by no means as high as it ought to be, and there is much disappointment in dealing with any nation, with none more so than with an indolent and voluptuous people, in a climate disposing them to inertness, and in a part subject to the visits of lawless seamen of all nations. However, the mission kept its hold of Tahiti, until the French, in 1844, began a series of aggressions, which ended in their establishing a protectorate over the islands, introducing their Church, and doing all in their power to discourage the London Mission, to which, however, many of the natives still adhere.

This, however, is anticipating. When the five young men sailed in 1817, and after a kindly welcome on their way from Mr. Marsden at Sydney, things were in the full blush of promise. Eight hundred people worshipped at the chapel of Erineo, near the landing-place. It was a circular building, a good deal like a haystack, with walls of stakes, a thatch of large leaves, and a desk in the centre of the floor for the preacher. This was his first station, and whilst there he gave his assistance in building a ship, to enable King Pomare to open a trade with New South Wales. He stayed in this place till he had become familiar with the language, and his first child was born there.

Not long after some allies of Pomare, from Huahime, struck with the benefits produced among the Tahitians by the missionaries, entreated that some might be sent to them likewise; and Williams, his wife and child, with two other married pairs, and an interpreter, were told off for the mission.

They were welcomed eagerly, had oval huts assigned to them, and no lack of pork and yams, but Mr. Williams did not long remain there, being called away by an invitation from Raiatea. This is one of the loveliest of tropical islands, the largest of the Society Islands. Huge mountain masses rise from the centre of an isle, about fifty miles in circumference, and give it the grandeur of the rock, the precipice, and the waterfall; but all around and below, the sides are clothed with the exquisite verdure of the southern clime, the palm, the bread-fruit, the yam, and all that can delight the eye; and both this and a little satellite islet are fenced in by an encircling coral reef, within which is clear still deep water, fit for navies to ride in, and approachable through numerous inlets in its natural breakwater. It was a spot of much distinction, containing the temple of the god Oro, who was revered by all the

surrounding groups, as the god of war, to whom children were dedicated to make them courageous. There dreadful human sacrifices were offered, concluded by cannibal feasts. Whenever such a sacrifice was required, the priest and king despatched messengers to the chiefs of the districts around to inquire whether they had a broken calabash, or a rotten cocoa-nut. These terms indicated a man whom they would be willing to give up. The victim was then either knocked down with a blow of a small stone at the back of his head, or else speared in his own house; and when one man of a family had thus been sacrificed, all the rest had the same horrid preference.

The last human victim of Tahiti was verily a martyr. He was designated because he had begun to pray. The emissaries came to his house and asked his wife where he was. Then, borrowing from her the ironwood stick used for breaking open cocoa-nuts, they went after him, and knocked him down with it, binding him hand and foot, and placing him in a long basket made of cocoa-nut leaves. His wife rushed forward, but was kept away, as the touch or breath of a woman is considered to pollute a sacrifice. The man, however, recovered the blow, and spoke out boldly: “Friends, I know what you intend to do with me. You are about to kill me, and offer me up as a tabæ to your savage gods. I know it is vain for me to beg for mercy, for you will not spare my life. You may kill my body, but you cannot hurt my soul, for I have begun to pray to Jesus.”

On hearing this, his bearers set him on the ground, put one stone under his head, and beat out his brains with another, and thus died the last Tahitian sacrifice, truly baptized in his own blood. The other gods besides Oro were numerous, and there were also many animals supposed to be possessed with familiar spirits. A chief was once in the cabin of a ship where there was a talking cockatoo: the moment the bird spoke he rushed away in the utmost terror, leapt overboard, and swam for his life, convinced that he had heard the captain’s demon.

The chief of Raiatea was named Tamatoa, and was a man of considerable power. Two years previously the Tahitian king, Pomare, nineteen of his subjects, and a missionary named Wilson had been driven thither in a canoe by stress of weather; and what Tamatoa had heard from them had so impressed him that he had persuaded his people to build a place of worship,

observe the Sunday, and meet to repeat together the scant lessons they had been able to receive during the visit of the Tahitians. This led to a resolve to entreat for the presence of a missionary among them; and the chieftain himself came to Huahime to make the request. Williams longed to go, but, as the youngest minister, waited till all the rest had decided to the contrary, and then gladly accepted his lot to go with Tamatoa. There was a joyous welcome, and a feast was brought, consisting of five pigs for Mr. Williams, five for his wife, and five for their baby-boy; besides crates of yams, bananas, and cocoa-nuts, which, however, they were not required to eat themselves, only to see eaten in their house.

The islanders were ready to give up their idols and call themselves Christians, to hear Mr. Williams preach, and to observe the Sabbath; being, in fact, like the Red Indians of Eliot’s experience, so idle that a day of no work made no difference to them. Their indolence, the effect of their enervating climate, was well-nigh invincible; they preferred hunger to trouble, and withal their customs were abhorrent to Christian morality. Most islets of the South Seas have much the same experience. The people, taken on their best side, show themselves gentle and intelligent, and their chiefs are dignified gentlemen; but there is a horrible background of ferocity and barbarism—often cannibalism. It generally proves comparatively easy to obtain a recognition of Christianity, and the cruelty and violence are usually laid aside; but to bring purity and morality to bear upon these races is a much more difficult thing, and the apparent failures have been at once the grief and reproach of missionaries, while those who assail them with scoffs forget the difficulty of dealing with the inveterate customs of a whole people, in a luxurious climate, and with little or no inducement to such industrial occupations or refinements of mind, as are the best auxiliaries of religion in raising the tone.

Lands where cold is unknown, and where fruit grows as freely as in Paradise, offer no inducement to labour; and the missionaries, striving in vain to lead the people to think occupation a duty, were deserted as being troublesome when they bade them to work. A school which the Williams’s set up was more popular; the Polynesians had no lack of brains, and reading and writing were pleasanter than digging and building, or carrying logs.

Thinking that examples of the civilization that the islanders had never seen would do more for their advance than anything else, Mr. Williams, with such assistance as he could obtain from the natives, built himself a house with eight rooms, sash windows with Venetian blinds, a verandah, and a most beautiful garden, and filled it with polished furniture, made by his own clever mechanical hands. With the assistance of one or two other missionaries who joined him, he succeeded in thus exciting a certain emulation among the natives. The king had a house built for him like that of the white men, others followed, and thus a very important step was made out of the degraded customs encouraged by the old oval huts. The coral, made into lime, afforded excellent material for plaster, and trades began to be fostered among the natives; they became carpenters, blacksmiths, plasterers, boat-builders, and acquired some ideas of agriculture. By the end of the second year, the chapel and school stood in the midst of white cottages; the population still wore clothing made of their own bark cloth, but in imitation of that of their teachers, and the open savagery of the island was gone. The congregation assembled three times on Sunday, and there was family prayer in almost every house. Cannibalism was ended, and so was infanticide, one of the most terrible customs of the island, for there was scarcely a woman above thirty who had not put to death several of her infants. Much had been done, although the good man to whom so much was owing did not feel satisfied that the profession in many cases was thoroughly deep, and he still knew of many an inveterate evil, that only time, discipline, and above all heartfelt religion, could uproot.

A large chapel, built with all the taste and ornament that he could achieve, was erected, the sides wattled, the roof supported by pillars of tree-trunks, and the floors and pews, the pulpit and desk, which were all to which the young ironmonger at the Tabernacle attached the notion of a worthy place of worship, were solid and well finished. He even fashioned some chandeliers for evening service, and these so astonished the Raiateans, that on first entering the chapel, they broke out into a cry of amaze, “Oh, Britannia! Britannia!” and gave the name to England of “the land whose customs were without end.”

The opening of this chapel was one great step in Mr. Williams’s

work; the next was the inducing Tamatoa and the other chiefs to bind themselves to govern by a code of Christian laws, not complex, but based on the Ten Commandments, and agreeing with those newly established by Pomare in Tahiti, but with this difference, that Williams ventured to introduce trial by jury, in the hope that it would tend to qualify the despotic power of the chiefs. Tamatoa’s brother, Pahi, was appointed judge, and the community was arranged on a Christian basis. The congregation was likewise put under regular discipline after the example of the Independents in England, with ruling pastors and elders appointed from among the people; and an auxiliary Missionary Society was formed for assisting in the conversion of the other isles.

Just as this was thoroughly arranged, in about the fourth year of his mission, Williams suffered from a malady which seemed to him and his companion, Mr. Threlkeld, to necessitate his return home. The information was received by the islanders with something like despair. Old King Tamatoa came to him and said, “Viriamu, I have been thinking you are a strange man. Jesus did not take care of His body. He did not even shrink from death, and now you are afflicted you are going to leave us.”

Prayer was offered all over the island, and in the midst of all the preparations for departure the disease began to ameliorate, and Mr. Williams recovered for a time, though the next year a recurrence of the attack made him resolve upon a visit to Sydney, not only for the sake of advice, but in the hope of establishing a market for the produce of the Society Isles, which might give a motive to the industry he was so anxious to promote, and likewise to obtain a vessel to be used for the missions.

Two Raiatean teachers instructed by him were landed at the island of Aitutake on the way, after the chiefs had pledged themselves to support and protect them, and the voyage was continued to Australia, where there was as usual a warm reception from Mr. Marsden. It was a very important visit. Parts of the Holy Scriptures, catechisms, and spelling-books, were printed; the ship, with the assistance of the Society of which Marsden was agent, was purchased, a schooner of ninety tons, and named Te Matama, the Beginner; a person named Scott secured, at 150l. per annum, to instruct the natives in the cultivation of sugar

and tobacco, and stores laid in of presents for the natives, clothes for the women, shoes, stockings, tea-kettles, tea-cups, saucers, and tea. The natives had a great liking for tea, and as they could not cherish cups and saucers without shelves to put them on, all this was an indirect mode of introducing European comforts and decencies. As to shoes, there can be no spade husbandry with an unshod foot, and thus the system of hoeing-women doing all the labour was attacked.

On the way back to Raiatea, Mr. Williams visited New Zealand, but not at a favourable moment, for the chiefs were at war, and he had to hurry away. The cargo was gladly welcomed at Raiatea, and the desire to purchase European dress was found a great incentive to industry.

In 1823, Mr. Williams began a series of missionary voyages. The events of these have almost too much sameness for description, though full of interest in detail. The people, when taken on their right side, were almost always ready to admit teachers, and adopt certain externals, though the true essentials of Christianity were of much slower growth. Our limits prevent us from giving much of detail of his intercourse with these isles. Raiatea was his first home, Rarotonga his second. There he placed his family, which long consisted of his one boy, John, born in Tahiti, all Mrs. Williams’s subsequent babes scarcely living to see the light, until, in the sixteenth year of her Polynesian life, another son rejoiced her. She became a centre and pattern of domestic life, and instructed the women in feminine habits, and she patiently encountered the anxieties and perils, chiefly from storm and hurricane, that beset her life. The chief troubles that Mr. Williams encountered at Raiatea, were the vices that civilization brought. After old Tamatoa’s death, his son allowed a distillery to be established, and drunkenness threatened to overthrow the habits so diligently taught. May be, the Puritanical form of religion and the acquired tastes of the London tradesman did not allow brightness and beauty enough to these children of the South, and tempted them by proscribing things innocent, but there is no telling: nothing but strictness seemed a sufficient protection from the foul rites of idolatry, and all that his judgment or devotion could devise for these people Williams and his fellows did.

The Samoan group of islands was one of those where the people showed the most intelligence. They were already great

cultivators of the toilette. A Samoan beau glistened from the head to the hips with sweet-scented oil, and was tastefully tattooed from the hips to the knees; he wore a bandage of red leaves oiled and shining, a head-dress formed of a pearly disk of nautilus-shell, and a string of small white shells round each arm. His lady was not tattooed, but spotted all over, and when in full attire, wore a beautiful white silky mat at her waist, a wreath of sweet flowers round her head, rows of large blue beads round her neck, and the upper part of her person was tinged with turmeric rouge.

These Samoans, though they deified many animals, had no temples, idols, priests, nor sacrifices, and thus were more than usually amenable to Christian ideas; and on Mr. Williams’s second visit to the island, he had a numerous congregation, but so arranged that he could hardly keep his countenance. Some had their long hair greased and stiffened into separate locks, standing erect like quills upon the fretful porcupine; while others wore it cultivated into one huge bush, stiffened with coral line, diversified with turmeric. Indeed, there is no rest for such heads as these—none of their wearers dares to sleep without a little stool to support his neck, so as not to crush his chevelure against the ground.

These fine gentlemen had a readiness and intelligence about them that warmed to the first rays of light. They listened eagerly, and their attachment to the missionary was expressed in a song sung in what they called a “heavenly dance” of the ladies in his honour, when he had remained with them long enough to plant the good seed of a growing church.

“Let us talk of Viriamu,
Let cocoa-nuts glow in peace for months;
When strong the east winds blow, our hearts forget him not.
Let us greatly love the Christian land of the great white chief.
All victors are we now, for we all have one God.
No food is sacred now. All kinds of fish we catch and eat,
Even the sting-ray.

The birds are crying for Viriamu,
His ship has sailed another way.
The birds are crying for Viriamu,
Long time is he in coming.
Will he ever come again?
Will he ever come again?”

It was some time before he could come again; for, after

eighteen years of unremitting labour in the isles of Raiatea and Rarotonga, and of voyages touching on many other isles, he had made up his mind to visit England.

He came home in 1834, and remained about four years, doing much for his cause by his personal narratives and vivid accounts of the people to whom he had devoted his life. Curiously enough, his son, now a youth of twenty, was introduced to Earl Fitzwilliam’s gardener, who proved to have been one of the mission party who had been captured in the Duff on the second voyage, and who was delighted to hear of the wonderful progress of the cause from which he himself had been turned back.

A subscription was raised for the purchase of a mission ship, exceeding in size and suitability such craft as could be purchased or hired in Australia; and the Camden, a vessel admirably fitted for the purpose, was obtained and equipped at a cost of 2,600l., the command of her given to Captain Morgan, who was well experienced in the navigation of the Polynesian seas, and had, moreover, such a reputation for piety, that the natives termed his vessel “the praying ship.”

In this vessel a large reinforcement of missionaries was taken out, including a married pair for Samoa, and likewise young John Williams, who had found himself an English wife; but his little brother was left at home for education. The intention of Williams was to station the missionaries upon the friendly isles, and himself circulate among them in the Camden, breaking fresh ground in yet unvisited isles, and stationing first native and then English teachers, as they were prepared for them.

Among the Samoans he remained a good while. He estimated the population at 60,000, of whom nearly 50,000 were under instruction. Several places of worship were opened with feasts, at which huge hecatombs of swine were consumed—1,370 at one festival. One young chief under instruction became so good a preacher, that Williams called him the Whitfield of Samoa; and these islands have, under the training then set on foot, furnished many a missionary and even martyr to the isles around, and are, to the present day, one of the happiest specimens of the effects of missionary labour.

The want of extended views in good Mr. Williams was shown in his manner of regarding the expected arrival of some Roman Catholic priests in the Polynesian seas. He set to

work to translate Foxe’s “Book of Martyrs,” and begged that a present offered him for his people might be expended in slides illustrating it for a beautiful magic lantern which he already possessed, and whose Scripture scenes drew tears from the natives. He had not Church knowledge enough to rise above the ordinary popular view of “Popery,” and did not understand its Christianity enough to see the evils of sowing the bitterest seeds of the Protestant controversy among scarcely reclaimed heathens.

On their side, the Roman Catholics would have done better to enter on untrodden ground, of which there was such an infinity, than to force themselves where, if they did not find their Church, at least they found faith in the Saviour. But the Society Isles were coveted, for political reasons, by the existing French Government, and the struggle was there beginning, of which Mr. Williams was not destined to see the unfortunate conclusion.

Raiatea he found much improving; and at Rarotonga civilization had made such progress, that the chiefs house was two storeys high, with ten bedrooms, and good furniture made in imitation of English, and any linen Mr. Williams left in his room was immediately washed, ironed, and laid ready for use. Much of the lurking heathenism was giving way, and fair progress being made in religious feeling, when, after a stay in Samoa, where Mrs. Williams now chiefly resided, John Williams set out on an exploring voyage in the Camden.

Strangely enough, his last text in preaching to the Samoans was, “Sorrowing most of all for the words which he spake, that they should see his face no more;” and the people, who always grieved whenever he left them, wept as bitterly at the words as if they had known them to be an omen. He was bent on an attempt on the heathen isle of Erromango, which his wife viewed with a foreboding terror, that made her in vain try to extract a promise from him not to land there.

But he viewed the New Hebrides as an important link, leading perhaps to reaching the Papuan race in New Guinea. He hoped to gain a footing there, and make the spot such a centre as Tahiti, Raiatea, Rarotonga, and Samoa had successively been; and, as the Camden glided along the shores of the island, he talked of his schemes, and of a certain sense of fear that they gave him, lest they were too vast to be accomplished

by his means and in his lifetime, but with the sanguine buoyancy of a man still in full vigour, and who had met with almost unmixed success.

On the 20th of November, 1839, the vessel entered Dillon’s Bay, and a canoe with three men paddled up to her. A boat was lowered, in which Mr. Williams, two other missionaries named Harris and Cunningham, Captain Morgan, and four sailors seated themselves. They tried to converse with the natives, but the language proved to be unlike any in use in Polynesia (it is, in fact, one of the Melanesian dialects), and not a word could be made out.

Pulling into a creek, some beads and a small looking-glass were thrown to the natives, and water asked for by signs. It was brought, and this gave more confidence. Harris then waded ashore. At first the people ran away, but Mr. Williams called to him to sit down, and, on his doing so, they came nearer, and offered him some cocoa-nut milk. Mr. Williams observed little boys at play, and thought it a good sign. Captain Morgan wished they had been women, because the natives always send their wives out of the way when they mean violence. However, Williams landed, and divided some cloth among those who stood nearest. Then Harris began to walk forward into the bush, Williams following, and, with a crowd of natives round him, was counting in Samoan, trying whether the boys around would recognize the names of the figures. Cunningham did not like the countenances of the natives, and remarked it to him, but was not heard. Stooping to pick up a shell, Cunningham was startled by a yell, and Harris came rushing along, pursued by a native. Williams turned and looked, a blast on a shell was heard, and he too fled. Cunningham reached the boat in safety, but Harris fell in crossing a small brook, and the natives were at once upon him with their clubs. Williams had made for the sea, apparently intending to swim off and let the boat pick him up, but the beach was stony; he fell as he reached the water, and the natives with their clubs and arrows had fallen upon him before Morgan could turn his boat’s head to the spot, under a shower of arrows, which forced him to put off.

He saw the body lying on the beach, and fired a gun, loaded with powder, in hopes of driving away the natives and rescuing it; but they dragged it away into the bush, and all that was left

for him to do was to sail for Sydney, whence a Queen’s ship, the Favourite, was despatched to endeavour to recover the remains, and to convey the tidings to Samoa.

By the 26th of February the vessel arrived. The war-conch was heard, and the savages were seen flying in all directions; but, as there was no intention of exacting a revenge, means of communication were at last arranged, and it was discovered that these two good men had furnished a cannibal feast, but that their skulls and many of their bones had been preserved, and these were recovered and carried on board ship. The Erromangans have always been an exceptionally treacherous and savage race, and, even to the present day, are more hostile to white men, and more addicted to cannibalism, than any of the other islanders.

The Favourite then proceeded to Samoa, where the weeping and wailing of the tender-hearted race was overwhelming. Mrs. Williams, in her silent English sorrow, was made the centre of a multitude of frantic mourners. “Aue kriamu, aue Viriamu, our father, our father! He has turned his face from us! We shall never see him more! He that brought us the good word of salvation is gone! Oh, cruel heathen, they knew not what they did. How great a man they have destroyed!”

Such laments went on round the widow in the wild poetic language of the poor Samoans, till the other teachers, by their prayers and sermons, had produced a somewhat calmer tone; and the funeral took place beside the chapel, attended by the officers and crew of the Favourite, and a great concourse of natives.

“Alas, Viriamu!” was the cry in every Christian Polynesian island for many a day; and well it might be, for, in spite of the shortcomings of a poorly-educated ministry and a tropical and feeble race, there are few who ever turned more men from darkness to light, from cannibal fury to Christian love, than the Martyr of Erromango,—John Williams,—one of the happiest of missionaries, in that to him was given the martyr’s crown, in the full tide of his success and hope.

CHAPTER X. ALLEN GARDINER, THE SAILOR MARTYR.

The biography we next have to turn to is not that of a founder, scarcely that of a pioneer, but rather of a brave guerilla, whose efforts were little availing because wanting in combination, and undirected, but who, nevertheless, has left behind him a heart-thrilling name won by unflinching self-devotion even unto death.

Allen Francis Gardiner, the fifth son of a Berkshire squire, was born in 1794. He was a born sailor, and became a midshipman before the end of the great war of the French revolution; but the only naval action in which he was engaged was against the American vessel Essex, which was captured by his ship, the Phœbe, off Valparaiso. Allen Gardiner had been carefully brought up by a good mother, but her death in his early youth cast him loose and left him without any influence to keep up serious impressions. He drifted into carelessness and godlessness, though at times some old remembrance, roused by danger or by a comrade’s death, would sting him sharply. Once, feeling ashamed of having forgotten the very words of Scripture, he made up his mind to buy a Bible, and then was so full of false shame that he waited about in the street till the shop should be empty, and then only thought how odd his demand must seem to the bookseller.

Most likely this was at Portsmouth, for he had there met a lady who had been with his mother at her death, and had given him a narrative of her last days, which his father had written, but from some sense of want of sympathy had withheld from the son. The friend judged him better. The copy in his own handwriting bears the date, “Portsmouth, November 18, 1818,” and therewith was a little Bible with the same date written in it. For two years, however, this produced no effect; but in 1820, when at Penang, as a lieutenant in the Dauntless, Allen received a letter of grave reproof from his father, and one of warm kindness and expostulation from the same lady, his mother’s friend, together with some books. Nothing would have seemed

more hopeless than the chance that a letter from a religious old lady would make an impression on a dashing young naval officer, and yet Allen Gardiner always considered this as the turning-point of his life, and connected it with his mother’s prayers.

It was when his thoughts were directed to religious subjects, and his intelligence freshly excited, that he visited the coasts of South America, the region above all others where the Roman Catholic Church is seen to the most disadvantage. Two things most especially struck him, the remnants of the Inquisition at Lima, and the discovery that the poor were buried without prayer or mass. Such scenes as these gave him an extreme horror of Romanism and all that he supposed to be connected therewith, and his next station at Tahiti, in all the freshness of the newly established mission, full of devout people, filled him with strong enthusiasm for the good men who were carrying out the work. Shortly after he was invalided home, and as soon as he was fit for employment he offered himself to the London Missionary Society, begging them to send him to the neglected Indians of South America; but this did not suit their plans, and his ardour was slackened by the more common affairs of life. He fell in love and married a young lady named Julia Reade, and his only voyage was in his naval, not his missionary capacity. But his wife’s health was exceedingly frail, and after eleven years of marriage she died, leaving four children, a fifth having preceded her to the grave. Beside her death-bed Allen Gardiner made a solemn dedication of himself to act as a pioneer in one or other of the most neglected parts of the earth, not so much to establish missions himself as to reconnoitre the ground and prepare the way for their establishment.

Africa was the country to which his attention was first called. His wife died in May 1834, and the 24th of August was the last Sunday he spent in England, at Calbourne, the native parish of Charles Simeon. He sailed at once for Cape Colony, where the English, who had in the course of the Revolutionary war obtained possession of the ground from the original settlers, the Dutch, were making progress in every direction, and coming into collision, not with the spiritless Hottentots of the Cape of Good Hope itself, but with that far more spirited and intellectual race, the Kaffirs—unbelievers, as the name meant—they being in fact of Arab descent, though Africanized by

their transition through tropical latitudes, and not Mahometans. Such traditional religion as they possessed seemed to be vanishing, since only a few of the elders retained a curious legend of a supreme Deity who sent another Divine being to “publish the news,” and divide the sexes. A message was sent to him from the Power in heaven to announce that man should not die, but this was committed to that tardy reptile the chameleon; then another message that man should die was given to the lizard, who outran the chameleon, and thus brought death into the world.

Sir Benjamin D’Urban had just been appointed Governor, and it was apprehended that a war must take place, since the settlers were continually liable to sudden attacks by these wild Kaffirs, who burnt, slew, and robbed any homestead they fell upon. Captain Gardiner thought, and justly, that it would be better to begin by proclaiming the glad tidings of peace to these wild and ignorant people rather than to meet them with the strong hand of war. The colony was lamentably deficient in clergy, and the missions that existed were chiefly to the Hottentots and Bushmen. The Moravians, whose work we have not mentioned because it is a history in itself, had some excellent establishments, but no one had yet attempted to penetrate into the home of the Kaffirs themselves, the Zulu country, to endeavour to deal with their chieftains. This was Allen Gardiner’s intention, and on his outward voyage he met with a Polish refugee named Berken, who had intended to settle in Australia, but was induced to become his companion in his explorations in South Africa.

They rode together from Capetown to Grahamstown, where they obtained an interpreter named George Cyrus, and began to travel in the regular South African fashion, namely, with waggons fitted for sleeping in, and drawn by huge teams of oxen, and taking seven horses with them. Their first adventure during a halt at the Buffalo river was the loss of all their oxen, who were driven off by some natives. They applied to the chief of the tribe, named Tzatzoe, who recovered the cattle for them, but showed himself an insatiable beggar, even asking why, as Mr. Berken had two shoes, he could not spare him one of them. However, he was honest enough, when Mr. Berken chanced to leave his umbrella behind him, to send after him to ask whether he knew that he had left his house.

The next anxiety was at a spot called the Yellow-wood River, where the mid-day halt was disturbed by an assembly of natives with a hostile appearance. Captain Gardiner sent orders to collect the oxen, and in-span (i.e. harness) them as soon as possible, but without appearance of alarm, and in the meantime he tried to keep the natives occupied. To one he lent his penknife, and after the man had vainly tried to cut off his own beard with it, he offered to shave him, lathered him well, and performed the operation like a true barber, then showed him his face in a glass. His only disappointment was that the moustache had not been removed, and as by this time the razor was past work, Captain Gardiner had to pacify him by assuring him that such was the appearance of many English warriors (for these were the days when moustaches were confined to the cavalry). The amusement this excited occupied them nearly long enough, but hostile murmurs then began to be heard—“One of our chiefs has been killed by the white men, no more shall enter our country!” Fearing that an angry word would be fatal, Captain Gardiner asked for a war-song, promising some tobacco at the conclusion. Accordingly they danced madly, and shouted at the top of their voices,

“No white man shall drink our milk,
No white man shall eat our children’s bread.
Ho-how! ho-how! ho-how!”

But this couplet often repeated seemed to work off their rage; they accepted the tobacco, and sullenly said the travellers might pass, but they were the last who should. This was in the Amakosa country, lying between the Grahamstown settlement and Port Natal, and to the present day unannexed, though even then there were traders’ stations at intervals, so filthy and wretched as to be little above the huts of the natives. These Amakosa tribes were such thieves that great vigilance was needed to prevent property being stolen; but the next tribes, the Amapondas, were scrupulously honest and friendly to the English. Their chief was found by Gardiner and Berken dressed in a leopard’s skin, sitting in state under a canopy of shields, trying a rain-maker, who had failed to bring showers in consequence of not having his dues of cattle delivered to him! The chief advised them not to proceed, as he said the Zulus were angry people who would kill them; but they pushed on,

though finding that the journey occupied much longer than they expected, so that provisions became a difficulty.

A full month had passed since leaving Grahamstown, and Gardiner decided on pressing on upon horseback, leaving Mr. Berken to bring up the waggons, and taking with him the interpreter and two natives. The distance was 180 miles, and a terrible journey it was. A few waggon tracks had made a sort of road, but this was not always to be distinguished from hippopotamus paths, which led into horrible morasses, where the horses almost entirely disappeared, and had to be scooped out as it were by the hands; moreover, scarcely any food was to be had. In crossing one river one of the horses was so irretrievably stuck in a quicksand that humanity required it to be shot, and at the next, the Umkamas, the stream was so swollen that the Captain had to devise a canoe by sewing two cowskins together with sinews and stretching it upon branches, in which, as no one save himself had any notion of boating, he shoved off alone. The stream was too strong for him, and he had to return and obtain the help of the only good swimmer among his party. With him he crossed, but with no food save a canister of sugar! However, the native swam back and fetched a loaf of bread, while Captain Gardiner waited among the reeds, hearing the snorting and grunting of hippopotami all round. The transit of the natives was secured by the holding a sort of float made of a bundle of reeds, and in the morning, as the river was too high for the rest of the party to cross, he brought over a few necessaries, and a horse, with which the Captain was able to proceed to Port Natal, where he found English traders, and sent back supplies to those in the rear.

The Zulus, on whom his attention was fixed, inhabit a fine country to the north of the Tugela, which is considered as the boundary of the British territory. The nation is full of intelligence and spirit, and by no means incapable of improvement, and their princes have been for generations past men of considerable natural ability, and of iron will, but often savagely cruel. The first known to Englishmen was named Charka, a great warrior, who kept his armies in a rude but thorough discipline, and had made considerable conquests. About the year 1829, Charka had been murdered by his brother Dingarn, who had reigned ever since, and was the terror of the English settlers, who were beginning to immigrate into the fertile terraced

country of Natal. His forays might at any time sweep away farms and homesteads; and his subjects were continually fleeing from his violence across the Tugela, and thus might bring him down as a pursuer.

Allen Gardiner’s plan was to go to the fountain head and endeavour to deal with the chief himself, so as to make him a Christian instead of an enemy. With this end he set out absolutely unaccompanied, except by Cyrus the interpreter, and a Zulu servant whom he had hired named Umpondombeni, and this with the knowledge that an English officer had shortly before been treacherously murdered, and that Dingarn was a blood-stained savage.

The king had been informed of his coming, and had pronounced that he was his white man, and should make haste to Umkingoglove, his present abode. The first view of this place, with a double circular fence around it, resembled a race-course, the huts being ranged along the ring of the enclosure so as to leave the centre free for the reviews and war dances of the Kaffirs. Gardiner was very near entering by the wrong gate, in which case all his escort would have been put to death. A hut was assigned to him, a sort of beehive of grass and mud, with a hole to enter by. His own lines, strung together in his many unoccupied moments for his children’s benefit, are so good a description of the Kaffir huts that form a kraal or village, as to be worth inserting:—

“I see them now, those four low props
That held the haystack o’er my head,
The dusky framework from their tops
Like a large mouse-trap round me spread.

To stand erect I never tried,
For reasons you may guess:
Full fourteen feet my hut was wide,
Its height was nine feet less.

My furniture, a scanty store,
On saddle-bags beside me laid,
A hurdle, used to close the door,
Raised upon stones, my table made.”

There he received a bundle of the native sugar-cane, a bowl of maize beer from Dingarn, and was invited to his palace.

This was surrounded by a fence, outside which the Captain was desired to sit down. Presently a black head and very

stout pair of shoulders appeared above it, and a keen sable visage eyed the visitor fixedly for some time, in silence, which was only broken by these words, while indicating an ox, “There is the beast I give you to slaughter.” His black majesty then vanished, but presently to reappear from beneath the gateway dressed in a long blue cloak, with a white collar, and devices at the back. After directing the distribution of some heaps of freshly slain oxen that lay around, he stood like a statue till a seat was brought him, and then entered into conversation. Captain Gardiner made him understand that trade was not the object of the visit; but the real purpose was quite beyond him; he seemed to regard what was proposed to him as an impossibility, and began to inquire after the presents, which, unfortunately, were still on the road.

The delay exposed the Captain to some inconvenience and danger, and two indunas, or chiefs, a sort of prime ministers, who were offended with him for not having applied to the king through them, treated him with increasing insolence. At last he persuaded them that he had better send a note to hasten the coming of the presents, and he also managed to write a letter for England, on his last half-sheet of paper, by the light of a lamp made of a rag wick floating in native butter in a calabash. From time to time he was called upon to witness the wonderful evolutions, manœuvres, and mock fights in the camp. The men were solely soldiers; the women did all the work, planting maize, weeding corn, and herding cattle, and thus the more wives a man had the more slaves he could employ. Every wife had a value, and could only be obtained from her father for a certain price in cattle, varying according to his rank. If the full rate were not paid, she remained, as well as her children, the property of her father or the head of her family. The king, having the power to help himself, had an establishment of ninety women, who on gala-days, or when his army was going to take the field, were drawn up in a regiment, all wearing two long feathers on the top of their heads, a veil of strings of coloured beads over their faces, bead skirts, and brass rings over their throats and arms; these beads being the current coin of the traders. They approached and retreated in files, flourishing their arms like bell-ringers, while they sang:—

“Arise, vulture,
Thou art the bird that eateth other birds.”

These were, however, not wives, only female slaves. Either from jealousy of possible sons growing up, or from the desire not to be considered as in the ranks of the umpagati—elders or married men—neither Charka nor Dingarn would marry, and no man could take a wife without the king’s permission. Dingarn wore his head closely shaven, whereas the married trained their woolly hair to fasten over a circle of reed, so as to look much as if they had an inverted saucepan on their heads. Besides this they wore nothing but a sort of apron of skin before and behind, except when gaily arrayed in beads, or ornaments of leopard’s fur and teeth, for dancing or for battle. Their wealth was their cattle, and their mealie or maize grounds; their food, beef, mealies, and curdled milk; their drink, beer, made of maize; their great luxury, snuff, made of dried dacca and burnt aloes, and taken from an ivory spoon. Though sometimes acting with great cruelty, and wholly ignorant, they were by no means a dull or indolent people; they were full of courage and spirit, excellent walkers and runners, capable of learning and of thinking, and with much readiness to receive new ideas.

The presents arrived, and the red cloak, made of the long scarlet nap often used in linings, was presented, and gave infinite satisfaction; the king tried it on first himself, then judged of the effect upon the back of one of his servants, caused it to be carried flowing through the air, and finally hung it up outside his palace for the admiration of his subjects, then laid it by for the great national festival at the feast of first-fruits.

Captain Gardiner’s object was to obtain a house and piece of land and protection for a Christian missionary, and with this object he remained at the kraal, trying to make some impression on Dingarn, and the two indunas, who assured him that they were the king’s eyes and ears. Thus he became witness to much horrible barbarity. One of the least shocking of Dingarn’s acts was the exhibiting the powers of a burning-glass that had been given him, by burning a hole in the wrist of one of his servants; and his indifference to the pain and death of others was frightful. His own brother, the next in succession, was, with his two servants, put to death through some jealousy; and, more horrible still, every living creature in thirty villages belonging to him was massacred as a matter of course.

Captain Gardiner, though often horrified and sickened by the sights he was obliged to witness, remained for a month, and then,

after accompanying the king on his march, and seeing some astonishing reviews and dances of his wild warriors, made another effort; but the king referred him to the two indunas, and the indunas were positive that they did not wish to learn, either they or their people. They would never hear nor understand his book, but if he would instruct them in the use of the musket he was welcome to stay. Dingarn pronounced, “I will not overrule the decision of my indunas;” but, probably looking on the white man as a mine of presents, he politely invited Gardiner to return.

So ended his first attempt, and with no possessions remaining except his clothes, his saddle, a spoon, and a Testament, he proceeded to the Tugela, where he met his friend Berken, who had made up his mind to settle in Natal, and he set out to return to England for the purchase of stock and implements; but the vessel in which he sailed was never heard of more.

Captain Gardiner remained at Port Natal, which in 1835 consisted of a cluster of huts, all of them built Kaffir-fashion, like so many hollow haycocks, except Mr. Collis’s, which was regarded as English because it had upright sides, with a good garden surrounded by reeds. About thirty English and a few Hottentots clustered around, and some three thousand Zulus, refugees from Dingarn’s cruelty, who showed themselves ready and willing to work for hire, but who exposed their masters to the danger of the king coming after them with fire and assagai. Hitherto on such an alarm the whole settlement had been wont to take to the woods, but their numbers were so increasing that they were beginning to erect a stockade and think of defence.

To this little germ of a colony, Allen Gardiner brought the first recollection of Christian faith and duty. On Sunday mornings he stood under a tree, as he had been wont to do on the deck of his ship, and read the Church Service in English to such as would come round him and be reminded of their homes; in the afternoon, by the help of his interpreter, he prayed with and for the Kaffirs, and expounded the truths of the Gospel; and in the week, he kept school for such Kaffir children as he could collect, dressing them decently in printed calico. He began with very few, partly because many parents fancied he would steal and make slaves of them, and partly because he wished to train a few to be in advance and act as

monitors to the rest. The English were on very good terms with him, and allotted a piece of land for a missionary settlement, which he called Berea, and began to build upon it in the fashion of the country.

Fresh threats from Dingarn led the settlers to try to come to a treaty with him, by which he was to leave them unmolested with all their Kaffirs, on their undertaking to harbour no more of his deserters. There was something hard in this, considering the horrid barbarities from which the deserters fled, and the impossibility of carrying out the agreement, as no one could undertake to watch the Tugela; but Captain Gardiner, always eager and hasty, thinking that he should thus secure safety for the colony and opportunities for the mission, undertook the embassy, and set forth in a waggon with two Zulus and Cyrus, falling in on the way with one of the grotesque parties of European hunters, who were wont to go on expeditions after the elephant, hippopotamus, and buffalo, with a hunting train of Hottentots and Kaffirs in their company. On whose aspect he remarks truly:—

“I’ve seen the savage in his wildest mood,
And marked him reeked with human blood,
But never so repulsive made.
Something incongruous strikes the mind
Whene’er a barbarous race we find
With shreds of civil life displayed.

There’s more of symmetry, however bare,
In what a savage deigns to wear,
In keeping with the scene.
These, each deformed by what he wears,
Like apes that dance at country fairs,
Seemed but a link between.”

Dingarn proved to be at Congella, another circular town or kraal, on the top of a hill. He gave a ready welcome to the Captain, and his presents—some looking-glasses, a pair of epaulettes, and some coloured prints, especially full-lengths of George IV. and William IV. The collection in a place such as Natal then was must have been very hard to make, but it was very successful, and still more so was the Captain’s presenting himself in his uniform when he went to propose the treaty. Dingarn said he must look at it before he could do anything else, and fully appreciated the compliment when the sailor said it was his war dress, in which he appeared before King William. He agreed to

the treaty, but declared that the English would be the first to break it. The Captain answered that a true Englishman never broke a treaty, and that any white man who deceived was not the right sort of Englishman; and the king responded that “now a great chief was come, to whom he could speak his heart.” Captain Gardiner tried to impress on him that it was the fear of God that made himself an honourable man, and to persuade him that the knowledge of the “Book” would make him and his people still greater; and the next time of meeting set forth an outline of the morality and promises of Revelation. Dingarn was attentive, and said they were good words, and that he would hear more of them, but in the meantime Gardiner must go back to Natal and see that his people kept the treaty. It was a good deal more than he could do. A Kaffir inkosikase, or female chieftain, who, with two servants and three children, was fleeing into Natal at the time of his return, was sent back, with all her companions. The poor creatures pleaded hard that the Captain would accompany them and save them, and he returned with them, and interceded for them with all his might, but soon found they were being starved to death. “Their bonds must kill them,” said Dingarn. A second great effort resulted in a little food being sent, and a kind of promise that their lives should be spared; but this was only made to get rid of him, and they all perished after his departure.

Deserters, as Gardiner called the fugitives to reconcile the surrender to his loyal English conscience, were hardly such as these: they were the only ones ever sent back, and the loose wild traders, who he ought to have known would never be bound by treaties, were at that very time enticing Kaffirs, who could be useful as herdsmen and labourers, across the frontier. This led to great indignation from Dingarn, and he declared that no Englishman save his favourite great chief should come near him.

Meantime Gardiner was assisting an assembly of traders and hunters who had decided on building a town—all shaggy, unkempt, bearded men of the woods, who decided the spot, the name, the arrangements, the spot for church and magistrate’s house, by vote, on the 25th of June, 1835, the birthday of the town of Durban, so called after Sir Benjamin D’Urban, Governor of the Cape, while the Portuguese name of Natal passed to the entire territory.

The dispute with Dingarn continuing, the Captain was again sent to negotiate. This time he was received in the royal mansion, a magnified beehive, where the king was lying on a mat with his head on one of the little stools made to act as pillows, with about fifty women ranged round. As to the matter in question, Gardiner was able to declare that, in the white settlement itself, no deserters had found a home since the treaty, and that none should do so; Dingarn said he considered him the chief of the whites there, and should look to him to keep them in order. Gardiner explained that he had no authority. “You must have power,” said Dingarn. “I give you all the country of the white people’s ford.” This was a piece of land extending from the Tugela to the Nouzincoolu, from the Snowy Mountains to the sea—in fact, the present whole colony of Natal. A smaller portion, including the district about Natal, was to be his own immediate property. Dingarn was perfectly in earnest, and thus intended to make him responsible for the conduct of every individual of the motley population of Natal, declaring that he should receive no trader who did not bring credentials from him. It was as curious a situation as ever commander in the navy was placed in. All he could do was to return to Durban, explain matters to Mr. Collis and the other traders, and then set out for the Cape to consult Sir Benjamin Durban.

His journey across the mountains was very perilous and difficult, and took much longer than his sanguine nature had reckoned; but he reached Grahamstown at last, and explained matters to the Governor, who instantly sent off a British officer to assume authority over the settlement at Natal, and try to keep the peace with Dingarn, while Captain Gardiner embarked for England to lay the state of things before Government and the Church Missionary Society, at whose disposal he placed all his own personal grant from Dingarn. When the prospects of the mission were proclaimed, the Rev. Francis Owen volunteered for it, and Captain Gardiner collected all that he thought needful for the great work he hoped to carry out. He married Miss Marsh, of Hampstead, and, with her and his three children, Mr. Owen and his wife and sister, sailed on the 24th of December, 1836; but the arrival was a sorrowful one, for his eldest child, a girl, of twelve years old, was slowly declining. She died just as they

entered Durban Bay, and was buried at Berea immediately on their arrival. As soon as the Kaffirs heard of Captain Gardiner’s landing, they flocked in to express their willingness to live under his authority. He chose a pleasant spot for his home, and having settled his family there, went up to see Dingarn. The presents this time were indeed ecstatically received, and especially a watch and seals, and a huge pair of gay worsted slippers. “He took my measure before he went,” cried Dingarn, who had tried a pair of boots before, but could not get them on. The king was made to understand that his gift of land must be not to the Captain, but to the King of England, and with this he complied. He was also persuaded to modify his demands; as to the fugitives, Gardiner undertook not to encourage or employ them, but would not search them out or return them. Mr. Owen was also favourably received, as the umfundisi or teacher; a hut was allotted to him, and he was allowed to preach. He took up his abode at Umkingoglove, the first town where Captain Gardiner had seen the king, held services and opened a school, often holding conversations with the king. “Has God commanded kings and indunas to learn His word?” demanded Dingarn; and he actually did learn to read the words printed upon a card for the children.

Meantime Captain Gardiner was forming his settlement at a place which he had named in the Kaffir tongue, Hambanati, “Go with us,” in allusion to Moses’ invitation to Hobab: “Go with us, and we will do thee good.” It was half-way between Durban Bay and the Tugela, on a hill-side in the midst of the beautiful undulating ground and rich wood characteristic of the country, and with a river in front. There he had raised a thatched house for himself, and around it Zulu huts were continually multiplying. The English carpenter and labourers whom he had brought out instructed the Kaffirs in various kinds of labour, for which they were quite willing; and as they wore decent garments, they were called the clothed tribe. School was kept for the children in the week; for the grown-up people on Sunday; and on every alternate morning some Scripture fact was read and explained to them, the Captain still being obliged to act as chaplain, until the arrival of Mr. Hewetson, whom the Church Missionary Society were sending out.

Never had the generous toil of a devoted man seemed likely to meet with better success, when a storm came from a most

unexpected quarter. The original colonists of the Cape of Good Hope were Dutch, and the whole district was peopled with boers or farmers of that nation, stolid, prosperous, and entirely uncontrolled by public opinion. They had treated the unfortunate Hottentots as slaves, with all the cruelty of stupidity, and imported Malays and Negroes to work in the same manner; and they had shown, even when under their native state, a sort of grim turbulence that made them very hard to deal with. When in 1834 the British Government emancipated their slaves, and made cruelty penal and labour necessarily remunerative, their discontent was immense, and a great number sold their farms, and moved off into the interior to form an independent settlement on the Orange River. A large number of them, however, hearing of Dingarn’s liberality to Captain Gardiner, were determined to extort a similar grant to themselves by a display of power. First came a letter, which Mr. Owen had to read and interpret to the chief, and not long after a large deputation arrived, armed and mounted on strong horses. Dingarn showed them a war-dance, and they in return said they would show how the boers danced on horseback, and exhibited a sham-fight, which did indeed alarm the savage, but, so far from daunting him, only excited his treachery and fierceness. He gave a sort of general answer, and the messengers retired. But from that time his interest in Mr. Owen’s teaching flagged; he wanted fire-arms instead of religion, and preachings led to cavillings. Indications of evil intentions likewise reached Captain Gardiner, who sent to warn Mr. Owen, and to offer him a refuge at Hambanati in case of need. Still Mr. Owen could gather nothing; he was called from time to time to read the Dutchmen’s letters, but was never told how they were to be dealt with. In fact, Dingarn had replied by an offer of the very district he had given Captain Gardiner, on condition that the new-comers would recover some cattle which had been carried off by a hostile tribe. This was done, and the detachment which had been employed on the service arrived at Umkingoglove, where they were welcomed with war-dances, and exhibited their own sham-fights; but in the midst of the ensuing meal they were suddenly surrounded by a huge circle of the Zulus, as if for another war-dance. The black ring came nearer and nearer still, and finally rushed in upon the unhappy boers, and slaughtered every man of them.

Mr. Owen had suspected nothing of what was passing, till

he received a message from Dingarn that he need not fear; the boers had been killed for plotting, but the umfundisi should not be hurt. A time of terrible anxiety followed, during which the Owen family saw large bodies of the Kaffir army marching towards the Tugela, and in effect they fell upon the Dutch camp, and upwards of a hundred and fifty white men, women, and children were massacred. This horrible act, showing that no reliance could be placed on Dingarn’s promise, made the Owens decide on leaving Umkingoglove, and they arrived at Hambanati, whence they proceeded to Durban. The Gardiner family waited for another week; but, finding the whole of the settlers infuriated, and bent on joining the Dutch in a war of extermination against Dingarn, they were obliged to retreat to the coast. First, however, Captain Gardiner assembled his Kaffirs, and promised to do his utmost to find another tract, where they might settle in peace, if they would abstain from all share in the coming war. They promised; but in his absence the promise was not easy to keep; they joined in the fight, many were killed, and the settlement entirely broken up. The cause seemed to Gardiner hopeless; and, after waiting for a short time in Algoa Bay, he decided on leaving the scene of action, where peaceful teaching could not prevail for some time to come. Whether it would not have been better to have tarried a little while, and then to have availed himself of the confidence and affection he had inspired, so as to gather the remnants of his mission again, we cannot say. At any rate, he consoled himself for the disastrous failure at Natal by setting forth on a fresh scheme of Christian knight-errantry on behalf of the Indians of South America.

Long ago, in Brazil, the Jesuits had done their best to Christianize and protect the Indians; but the Portuguese settlers had, as usual, savagely resented any interference with their cruel oppressions, broken up the Jesuit settlement, and sold their unfortunate converts as slaves. After this, the Jesuit Fathers had formed excellent establishments in the more independent country of Paraguay, lying to the south, where they had many churches, and peaceful, prosperous, happy communities of Christian Indians around them. South American Indians are essentially childish beings; and the Jesuits, when providing labour enough to occupy them wholesomely, found themselves obliged to undertake the disposal of the produce, thus not merely rendering

their mission self-supporting, but so increasing the wealth of the already powerful Order as to render it a still greater object of jealousy to the European potentates; and when, in the eighteenth century, the tide of opposition set strongly against it, the unecclesiastical traffic of the settlements in Paraguay was one of the accusations. The result was, that the Jesuit Fathers were banished from South America in 1767; and whether it was that they had neglected to train the Indians in self-reliance, or whether it was impossible to do so, their departure led to an immediate collapse into barbarism; nor had anything since been done on behalf of the neglected race. Indeed, the break-up of all Spanish authority had been doubly fatal to the natives, by removing all protection, and leaving them to the self-interested violence of the petty republics, unrestrained by any loftier consideration.

In the Republic of Buenos Ayres, under the dictatorship of General Rosas, the lot of these poor creatures was specially cruel. A war of extermination was carried on against them, and eighty had at one time been shot together in the market-place of the capital. Nothing could be done towards reclaiming them while so savage a warfare lasted; but Gardiner hoped to push on to the more northerly tribes, on the borders of Chili, and he took a journey to reconnoitre across the Pampas, with many strange hardships and adventures; but he found always the same story,—the Indians regarded as wild beasts, and, acting only too much as such, falling by night on solitary ranchos, or on lonely travellers, and murdering them, and, on the other hand, being shot down wherever they were found.

With great difficulty and perseverance he made his way to the Biobio river, leaving his family at Concepçion, the nearest comparatively civilized place. Here he meant to make his way to a village of independent Indians, with whose chief, Corbalan, he had hopes of entering into relations.

To cross the rapid stream of the Biobio, he had to use a primitive raft, formed of four trunks of trees, about eighteen feet long, lashed together by hide-thongs to two poles, one at each end. A horse was fastened to it, by knotting his tail to the tow-rope, and on his back was a boy, holding on by the single lock of the mane that is allowed to remain on Chilian horses, who guided him across with much entreating, urging, and coaxing. On the other side appeared Corbalan, the Indian

chief on horseback, and in a dark poncho, a sort of round cloak, with a hole to admit the head, much worn all over South America. He took Captain Gardiner to his house, an oval, with wattled side-walls, about five feet high and thirty-five long, neatly thatched with grass, with a fireplace in the centre, where a sheep was cooked for supper. Corbalan could speak Spanish, and seemed to be pleased with the visit, making an agreement that he should teach Gardiner his Indian tongue, and, in return, be instructed in the way of God and heaven. He had convened forty-five of his people, among whom were five chiefs, each of whom made the visitor the offering of a boiled chicken, while he gave them some coloured cotton handkerchiefs and some brass buttons. It was a beautiful country, and reminded the guest so much of some parts of England, that it needed a glance at the brown skin, flowing hair, and long poncho of Corbalan to dispel the illusion that he was near home. Things looked so favourable, that he had even selected a site for the mission-house, when some change of sentiment came over Corbalan, probably from the remonstrances of his fellow-chiefs: he declared that a warlike tribe near at hand would not suffer him to harbour a stranger, and that he must therefore withdraw his invitation.

So ended this attempt; and the indefatigable Captain turned his attention to the Indians to the southward, but he found that these were on good terms with the Chilian Government, and that no one could come among them without a pass from thence; and, as there was a cautious attempt at Christianizing then going on, by persuading the cacique to be baptized and to admit priests to their villages, there was both the less need and the less opening for him.

So, picking up his wife and children again at Concepçion, he sailed with them for Valdivia, where, as wandering Europeans were always supposed to be in search of objects for museums, and perhaps from some confusion about his name, he was called “El Botanico.” Again he plunged among the Indians; but, wherever he came to a peaceable tribe, they were under the influence of Spanish clergy, who were, of course, determined to exclude him, while the warlike and independent Indians could not understand the difference between him and their Spanish enemies; and thus, after two years of effort, he found that no opening existed for reaching these wild people. A proposal was made to him to remain and act as an agent for the

Bible and Tract Societies among the South American Roman Catholics, but this he rejected. “No,” he said; “I have devoted myself to God, to seek for openings among the heathen, and I cannot go back or modify my vow.”

The Malay Archipelago was his next goal. He sailed with his wife and children from Valparaiso for Sydney on the 29th of May, 1839, but the vessel got out of her course, and was forced to put in at Tahiti, where he found things sadly changed by the aggression of Louis Philippe’s Government, which had claimed the protectorate. The troubles of Queen Pomare’s reign were at their height, and the conflict between French and English, Roman Catholic and Protestant, prevented any efficient struggle against the corruption introduced by the crews of all nations.

The great savage island of New Guinea seemed to Captain Gardiner a field calling for labour, and, on his arrival in Australia, he found that the Roman Catholic Bishop of Sydney was trying to organize a mission. He left Australia, hoping to obtain permission from the Dutch authorities at Timor to proceed to Papua, to take steps for being beforehand with the Australian expedition. He reached the place with great difficulty, and he himself, and all his family, began to suffer severely from fever. The Dutch governor told him that he might as well try to teach the monkeys as the Papuans, and the Dutch clergy gave him very little encouragement. He remained in these strange and beautiful islands for several months, trying one Dutch governor after another, and always finding them civil but impenetrable; for, in fact, they could not believe that an officer in her Britannic Majesty’s Navy could be purely actuated by missionary zeal, but thought that it concealed some political object. They were not more gracious even to clergy of other nations. He found an American missionary at Macassar, whom they had detained, and some Germans, who were vainly entreating to be allowed to proceed to Borneo; and his efforts met only with the most baffling, passive, but systematic denial. It was reserved for the enterprise and prudence of Sir James Brooke to open a way in this quarter.

The health of the Gardiner family had been much injured by their residence in those lovely but unwholesome countries, but the voyage to Capetown restored it; and immediately after they sailed again for South America, where the Captain had

heard of an Indian tribe in the passes of the Cordilleras, who seemed more possible of access. Here again he was baffled in his dealings with the local government by the suspicions of the priests, and never could obtain the means of penetrating beyond the city of San Carlos, so that he decided at last to repair to the Falkland Islands, and make an endeavour thence to reach the people of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, where no hostile Church should put stumbling-blocks in his way.

A doleful region he found those Falkland Isles, covered only with their peculiar grass and short heather, and without a tree. A little wooden cottage, brought from Valparaiso, sheltered the much-enduring Mrs. Gardiner and the two children, while the Captain looked out for a vessel to take him to Patagonia; but he found that no one ever went there, and the whalers who made these dismal islands their station did not wish to go out of their course. Captain Gardiner offered 200l., the probable value of a whole whale, as the price of his passage; but the skippers told him that, though they would willingly take him anywhere for nothing, they could not go out of their course.

To seek the most hopeless and uncultivated was always this good man’s object. The Falkland Isles were dreary enough, but they were a paradise compared to the desolate fag-end of the American world,—a cluster of barren rocks, intersected by arms of the sea, which divide them into numerous islets, the larger ones bearing stunted forests of beech and birch, on the skirts of hills covered with perpetual snow, and sending down blue glaciers to the water’s edge. The narrower channels are very shallow; the wider, rough and storm-tossed; and scarcely anything edible grows on the islands. The Fuegians are as degraded a people as any on the face of the earth, with just intelligence enough to maintain themselves by hunting and fishing, by the help of dogs, which, it is said, they prize so much that they would rather, in time of scarcity, eat up an old mother than a dog; and they are churlishly inhospitable to strangers, although with an unusual facility for imitating their language, nor had any one ever attempted their conversion.

However, the master of the Montgomery, who had brought the Gardiners out to the Falkland Islands, hearing of the offer, undertook such a profitable expedition; but his schooner was utterly frail, had to be caulked and to borrow a sail, and, as he was losing no whales, Captain Gardiner refused to give more

than 100l., a sufficiently exorbitant sum, for the passage of himself and a servant named Johnstone. While the crazy vessel was refitting a Sunday intervened, during which he offered to hold a service, but only two men attended it, the rest were all absent or intoxicated.

The poor little ship put to sea, and struggled into the Straits of Magelhaen, drifting near the Fuegian coast. Landing, the Captain lighted a fire to attract the attention of the natives, and some came down and shouted. The English did not, however, think it safe to go further from the boat, and presently the Fuegians likewise kindled their fire, whereupon Gardiner heaped more fuel on his own, and continued his signals, when two men advanced, descending to the beach. They were clad in cloaks of the skin of the guanaco, a small kind of llama, and were about five feet ten in height, with broad shoulders and chests, but lean, disproportionate legs. Each carried a bow and quiver of arrows; and they spoke loudly, making evident signs that the strangers were unwelcome. Presents were offered them; brass buttons, a clasp knife, and worsted comforter; and they sat down, but apparently with a sullen resolution not to relax their faces, nor utter another word. A small looking-glass was handed to one of them, and he was grimly putting it under his cloak when Captain Gardiner held it up to him, and he laughed at the reflection of his own face; and his friend then looked at the knife, as if expecting it to produce the same effect, but, though they seemed to appreciate it, they made no friendly sign, and appeared unmoved when spoken to either in Spanish or in the few Patagonian phrases that Captain Gardiner had managed to pick up; nor did anything seem to afford them any satisfaction except demonstrations of departure.

Nothing seemed practicable with these uncouth, distrustful beings, and the Captain therefore went on in search of a tribe of Patagonians, among which, he was told, was a Creole Spaniard named San Leon, who had acquired great influence by his reckless courage and daring, and through whom it might be possible to have some communication with them. The camp of these people on the main continent, near Cape Gregory, was discovered newly deserted, with hollow places in the ground where fires had been made, and many marks of footsteps. This extreme point of the continent was by no means so dreary as the Land of Fire; it bore thorny bushes ten feet

high, wild celery and clover, and cranberry-bushes covered with red berries. Indeed, the Patagonians—so called because their big splay boots made Magelhaen conclude they walked on patas (paws), like bears—are a superior race to the Fuegians, larger in stature than most Europeans, great riders, and clever in catching guanacos by means of bolas, i.e. two round stones attached to a string. If the Fuegians are Antarctic Esquimaux, the Patagonians are Antarctic Tartars, leading a wandering life under tents made of skins of horses and guanacos, and hating all settled habits, but not so utterly inhospitable and impracticable as their neighbours beyond the Strait. In truth, the division is not clearly marked, for there are Fuegians on the continent and Patagonians in the islands. Ascending a height, the Captain took a survey of the country, and, seeing two wreaths of smoke near Oazy Harbour, sailed in, cast anchor, and in the morning was visited by the natives of their own accord, after which he returned with them to their camp, consisting of horse-hide tents, semicircular in form, and entirely open. They were full of men, women, and children, and among them San Leon, to whom it was possible to talk in Spanish, and indeed several natives, from intercourse with ships, knew a few words of English. San Leon had been with the tribe for twelve years, and said that American missionaries had visited them, but that they had gone away because the Fuegians who crossed the Strait were such thieves that they ate up their provisions and cut up their books. However, no objection was made to Gardiner’s remaining, so he set up a tarred canvas tent, closed at each end with bullock-hides, and slept on shore, a good deal disturbed by the dogs, who gnawed at the bullock-hides, till a coat of tar laid over them prevented them. Not so, however, with another visitor, a huge Patagonian, who walked in with the words, “I go sleep,” and leisurely coiled himself up for the purpose, unheeding Johnstone’s discourse; but the Captain, pointing with his finger, and emphatically saying “Go,” produced the desired effect. Then followed the erection of seventeen skin tents, all in a row, set up by the women. These Patagonians behaved well and quietly; but, in the meantime, the master of the schooner had asked San Leon to obtain some guanaco meat for the crew, and the natives who went in search of the animals insisted on being paid, though they had caught nothing. These however were Fuegians, and

the Patagonians were very angry with them. Captain Gardiner even ventured to remain alone with Johnstone among this people, while San Leon went on to Port Famine in the Montgomery, which was in search of wood; but, in the meantime, he could do nothing but hold a little monosyllabic communication; and once, when he and his servant both went out at the same time, they lost their dinner, which, left to simmer over the fire, proved irresistible to the Patagonians. They, however, differed from the Fuegians in not ordinarily being thieves.

A chief named Wissale arrived with a body of his tribe with whom he had been purchasing horses on the Rio Negro, and bringing with him an American negro named Isaac, who had three years since run away from a whaler, and who spoke enough English to be a useful interpreter.

Wissale, with Isaac’s help, was made to perceive Captain Gardiner’s intentions sufficiently to promise to make him welcome if he should return, and to declare that he should be glad to learn good things. There seemed so favourable an opening that the Captain made up his mind to take up his abode there with his family to prepare the way for a missionary in Holy Orders, for whom he never deemed himself more than a pioneer.

After distributing presents to the friendly Patagonians, he embarked, and making a weary passage, reached the Falkland Islands, where he found the two ships Erebus and Terror anchored, in the course of their voyage of Antarctic discovery. The presence of the two captains and their officers was a great pleasure and enlivenment to the Gardiners, who received from them many comforts very needful in that inclement climate to people lately come from some of the hottest regions of the southern hemisphere.

Whalers continually put in, but not one, even though Captain Gardiner’s offers rose to 300l., would undertake to go out of his course to Patagonia to convey him and his family, and he would not trust his wife and children on board that wretched craft the Montgomery, so he waited on at the Falkland Islands, doing what good he could there, and expecting the answer of a letter he had despatched to the Church Missionary Society, begging for the appointment of a clergyman to this field of labour. After six months’ delay, the letter came, and proved to be unfavourable; there was a falling off in the funds of the Society, and a new and doubtful mission was thought undesirable.

The Captain believed that nothing but personal representations could prevail, and therefore decided on going home to plead the cause of his Patagonians. He sailed with his family for Rio in a small vessel, and the voyage could not have been one of the least of the dangers, for the skipper was a Guacho who had been a shoemaker, and knew nothing about seafaring, and there was not a spare rope in the ship. From Rio Gardiner took a passage home, and safely arrived, after six years of brave pioneering in three different quarters of the globe.

He found, however, that the Church Missionary Society could not undertake the Patagonian Mission, and neither could the London nor Wesleyan Societies. He declared that every one grew cold when they heard of South America, and viewed it as the natural inheritance of Giants Pope and Pagan; and for this very reason he was the more bent upon doing his utmost. Failing in his attack on Pagan he made an assault on Pope, obtaining a grant of Bibles, Testaments, and tracts from the Bible Society, and in 1843 sailed for Rio to distribute them; this time, however, going alone, as his children were of an age to require an English education and an English home.

He undertook this mission, in fact, chiefly for the purpose of continuing his attempts to reach the Indian tribes. His journey was, as usual, wild and adventurous, and its principal result was an acquaintance with the English chaplains and congregations at several of the chief South American ports, from whom he received a promise of 100l., per annum for the support of a mission to Patagonia.

With this beginning he returned home, and while residing at Brighton, his earnestness so stirred people’s minds that a Society was formed with an income of 500l., and Mr. Robert Hunt, giving up the mastership of an endowed school, offered himself to the Church Missionary Society. A clergyman could not immediately be found, and it was determined that these two should go first and prepare the way. In 1844, then, they landed in Oazy Harbour in Magelhaen’s Straits, and set up three tents, one for stores, one for cooking, and one for sleeping. One Fuegian hut was near, where the people were inoffensive, and presently there arrived a Chilian deserter named Mariano, who said that he had run away from the fort at Port Famine with another man named Cruz, who had remained among the Patagonians. He reported that Wissale had lost much of his authority, and

that San Leon was now chief of the tribe; also that there was a Padre Domingo at Port Famine, who was teaching the Patagonians to become “Catolicos.”

To learn the truth as soon as possible, the Captain and Mr. Hunt locked up two of their huts, leaving the other for Mariano, and set off in search of the Patagonians; and a severe journey it was, as they had to carry the heavy clothing required to keep up warmth at night, besides their food, gun, powder, and shot. The fatigue was too much for Hunt, who was at one time obliged to lie down exhausted while the Captain went in search of water; and after four days they were obliged to return to their huts, where shortly after Wissale arrived, but with a very scanty following, only ten or twelve horses, and himself and family very hungry; but though ready to eat whatever Captain Gardiner would give him, his whole manner was changed by his disasters. He was surly and quarrelsome, and evidently under the influence of the deserter Cruz, who was resolved to set him against the new-comers, and so worked upon him that he once threatened the Captain with his dirk. Moreover, a Chilian vessel arrived, bringing Padre Mariano himself, a Spanish South American, with a real zeal for conversion, though he was very courteous to the Englishmen. An English vessel arrived about the same time, and Gardiner, thinking the cause for the present hopeless, accepted a homeward passage, writing in his journal, “We can never do wrong in casting the Gospel net on any side or in any place. During many a dark and wearisome night we may appear to have toiled in vain, but it will not be always so. If we will but wait the appointed time, the promise, though long delayed, will assuredly come to pass.”

But if he was not daunted his supporters were, and nothing but his intense earnestness, and assurance that he should never abandon South America, prevented the whole cause from being dropped. His next attempt was to reach the Indians beyond Bolivia, in the company of Federigo Gonzales, a Spaniard, who had become a Protestant, and was to have gone on the Patagonian Mission. Here fever became their enemy, but after much suffering and opposition Gonzales was settled at Potosi, studying the Quichuan language, and hoping to work upon the Indians, while the unwearied Gardiner again returned to England to strain every nerve for the Fuegian Mission, which lay nearest of all to his heart.

He travelled all over England and Scotland, lecturing and making collections, speaking with the same energy whether he had few or many auditors. At one town, when asked what sort of a meeting he had had, he answered, “Not very good, but better than sometimes.”

“How many were present?”

“Not one; but no meeting is better than a bad one.”

He could not obtain means enough for a well-appointed expedition such as he wished for; but he urged that a small experimental one might be sent out, consisting of himself, four sailors, one carpenter, with three boats, two huts, and provisions for half a year. He hoped to establish a station on Staten Island, whence the Fuegians could be visited, and the stores kept out of their reach.

Having found the men, he embarked on board the barque Clymene, which was bound for Payta, in Peru, and was landed on Picton Island; but before the vessel had departed the Fuegians had beset the little party, and shown themselves so obstinately and mischievously thievish, that it was plainly impossible for so small a party to hold their ground among them. Before there could be a possibility of convincing them of even the temporal benefit of the white man’s residence among them, they would have stripped and carried off everything from persons who would refrain from hurting them. So, once more, the Captain drew up the net which had taken nothing, decided that the only mission which would suit the Fuegians must be afloat, and went on to Payta in the Clymene.

While in Peru, he met with a Spanish lady, who asked if he knew a friend of hers who came from Genoa, and then proceeded to inquire which was the largest city, Genoa or Italy, and if Europe was not a little on this side of Spain, while a priest asked if London was a part of France. After spending a little time in distributing Bibles in Peru, he made his way home by the way of Panama, and on his arrival made an attempt to interest the Moravians in the cause so near his heart, thinking that what they had done in Greenland proved their power of dealing with that savage apathy that springs from inclemency of climate, but the mission was by them pronounced impracticable.

In the meantime, his former ground, Port Natal, was in a more hopeful state. Tremendous battles had been fought

between Dingarn and the boers; but, in 1839, Panda, Dingarn’s brother, finding his life threatened, went over to the enemy, carrying 4,000 men with him, and thus turned the scale. Dingarn was routed, fled, and was murdered by the tribe with whom he had taken refuge, and Panda became Zulu king, while the boers occupied Natal, and founded the city of Pieter Maritzburg as the capital of a Republic; but the disputes between them and the Zulus led to the interference of the Governor of the Cape, and finally Natal was made a British colony, with the Tugela for a boundary; and, as Panda’s government was exceedingly violent and bloody, his subjects were continually flocking across the river to put themselves under British protection, and were received on condition of paying a small yearly rate for every hut in each kraal, and conforming themselves to English law, so far as regarded the suppression of violence and theft. One of the survivors of Gardiner’s old pupils, meeting a gentleman who was going to England, sent him the following message: “Tell Cappan Garna he promise to come again if his hair was as white as his shirt, and we are waiting for him;” and he added a little calabash snuff-box as a token. But the Captain had made his promise to return contingent upon the Kaffirs of his settlement taking no part in the war, and they, poor things, had, with the single exception of his own personal attendant, Umpondombeni, broken this condition; so that he did not deem himself bound by it. Moreover, means were being taken for providing a mission for Natal, and Christian teachers were already there, while he regarded his own personal exertions as the only hope for the desolate natives of Cape Horn. So he only sent a letter and a present to the man, urging him to attach himself to a mission-station, and then turned again to his unwearied labour in the Patagonian and Fuegian cause. His little Society found it impossible to raise means for the purchase of a brigantine, and he therefore limited his plans to the equipment of two launches and two smaller boats. He would store in these provisions for six months, and take a crew of Cornish fishermen, used to the stormy Irish Sea. As to the funds, a lady at Cheltenham gave 700l., he himself 300l. The boats were purchased, three Cornishmen, named Pearce, Badcock, and Bryant, all of good character, volunteered from the same village; Joseph Erwin, the carpenter, who had been with him before, begged to go with him again, because, he said, “being

with Captain Gardiner was like a heaven upon earth; he was such a man of prayer.” One catechist was Richard Williams, a surgeon; the other John Maidment, who was pointed out by the secretary of the Young Men’s Association in London; and these seven persons, with their two launches, the Pioneer and the Speedwell, were embarked on board the Ocean Queen, and sailed from Liverpool on the 7th of September, 1850. They carried with them six months’ provisions, and the committee were to send the same quantity out in due time, but they failed to find a ship that would undertake to go out of its course to Picton Island, and therefore could only send the stores to the Falklands, to be thence despatched by a ship that was reported to go monthly to Tierra del Fuego for wood.

Meantime, the seven, with their boats and their provisions, were landed on Picton Island, and the Ocean Queen pursued her way. Time passed on, and no more was heard of them. The Governor of the Falklands had twice made arrangements for ships to touch at Picton Island, but the first master was wrecked, the second disobeyed him; and in great anxiety, on the discovery of this second failure, he sent, in October 1851, a vessel on purpose to search for them. At the same time, the Dido, Captain William Morshead, had been commanded by the Admiralty to touch at the isles of Cape Horn and carry relief to the missionaries.

On the 21st of October, in a lonely little bay called Spaniards’ Harbour, in Picton Island, the Falkland Island vessel found the Speedwell on the beach, and near it an open grave. In the boat lay one body, near the grave another. They returned with these tidings, and in the meantime the Dido having come out, her boats explored the coast, and a mile and a half beyond the first found the other boat, beside which lay a skeleton, the dress of which showed it to be the remains of Allen Gardiner. Near at hand was a cavern, outside which were these words painted, beneath a hand:—

“My soul, wait thou still upon God, for my hope is in Him.

“He truly is my strength and my salvation; He is my defence, so that I shall not fall.

“In God is my strength and my glory; the rock of my might, and in God is my trust.”

Within the cave lay another body, that of Maidment. Reverent hands collected the remains and dug a grave; the

funeral service was read by one of the officers, the ship’s colours were hung half-mast high, and three volleys of musketry fired over the grave—“the only tribute of respect,” says Captain Morshead, “I could pay to this lofty-minded man and his devoted companions who have perished in the cause of the Gospel.” There was no doubt of the cause and manner of their death, for Captain Gardiner’s diary was found written up to probably the last day of his life.

It appeared that in their first voyage, on the 20th of December, they had fallen in with a heavy sea, and a great drift of seaweed, in which the anchor of the Speedwell and the two lesser boats had been hopelessly entangled and lost. It was found impossible for such small numbers to manage the launches in the stormy channels while loaded, and it was therefore resolved to lighten them by burying the stores at Banner Cove, and, while this was being done, it was discovered that all the ammunition, except one flask and a half of powder, had been left behind in the Ocean Queen; so that there was no means of obtaining either guanacos or birds. Attempts were made at establishing friendly barter with the natives, but no sooner did these perceive the smallness of the number of the strangers, than they beset them with obstinate hostility. Meantime, Gardiner’s object was to reach a certain Button Island, where was a man called Jemmy Button, who had had much intercourse with English sailors, and who, he hoped, might pave the way for a better understanding with the natives.

But the Pioneer had been damaged from the first, and could not go so far. At Banner Cove the natives were hostile and troublesome, and Spaniards’ Harbour was the only refuge, and even there a furious wind, on the 1st of February, drove the Pioneer ashore against the jagged root of a tree, so as to damage her past all her crew’s power of mending, though they hauled her higher up on the beach, and, by the help of a tent, made a lodging for the night of the wreck close to the cave, which they called after her name.

The question then was, whether to place all the seven in the Speedwell with some of the provisions and make for Button Island, and this might probably have saved their lives; but they had already experienced the exceeding difficulty of navigating the launch in the heavy seas. Both their landing boats were lost, and they therefore decided to remain where they were

until the arrival of the vessel with supplies, which they confidently expected either from home or from the Falklands. Indeed, their power of moving away was soon lost, for Williams, the surgeon, and Badcock, one of the Cornishmen, both fell ill of the scurvy. The cold was severe, and neither fresh meat nor green food was to be had, and this in February—the southern August. However, the patients improved enough to enable the party to make a last expedition to Banner Cove to recover more of the provisions buried there, and to paint notices upon the rocks to guide the hoped-for relief to Spaniards’ Harbour; but this was not effected without much molestation from the Fuegians. Then passed six weary months of patient expectation and hope deferred. There was no murmuring, no insubordination, while these seven men waited—waited—waited in vain, through the dismal Antarctic winter for the relief that came too late. The journals of Williams and Gardiner breathe nothing but hopeful, resigned trust, and comfort in the heavenly-minded resolution of each of the devoted band, who may almost be said to have been the Theban legion of the nineteenth century.

For a month they were able to procure fish, and were not put on short allowance till April, when Williams and Badcock both became worse, and Bryant began to fail, though he never took to his bed. They, with Erwin, were lodged in the Speedwell at Blomfield Harbour, a sheltered inlet, about a mile and a half from the wreck of the Pioneer, where, to leave the sick more room, Captain Gardiner lodged with Maidment and Pearce.

With the months whose names spoke of English summer, storms and terrible cold began to set in. The verses that Gardiner wrote in his diary during this frightful period are inexpressibly touching in the wondrous strength of their faith and cheerfulness.

“Let that sweet word our spirits cheer
Which quelled the tossed disciples’ fear:
‘Be not afraid!’
He who could bid the tempest cease
Can keep our souls in perfect peace,
If on Him stayed.
And we shall own ’twas good to wait:
No blessing ever came too late.”

This was written on the 4th of June; on the 8th their fishing-net was torn to pieces by blocks of drifting ice. On the 28th Badcock died, begging his comrades to sing a hymn to him in

his last moments. In August, Gardiner, hitherto the healthiest, was obliged to take to his bed in the Pioneer, and there heard of the death of Erwin on the 23rd of August, and of Bryant on the 27th. Maidment buried them both, and came back to Captain Gardiner, who, as he lay in bed, had continued his journal, and written his farewell letters to his wife and children. Hitherto, the stores of food had been eked out by mussels and wild celery, but there was now no one to search for them. Gardiner, wishing to save Maidment the journeys to and fro, determined to try to reach the Speedwell, and Maidment cut two forked sticks to serve as crutches, but the Captain found himself too weak for the walk, and had to return. This was on the 30th of August. On Sunday, the 31st, there is no record in the diary, but the markers stand in his Prayer-book at the Psalms for the day and the Collect for the Sunday. On the 3rd of September, Maidment was so much exhausted that he could not leave his bed till noon, and Gardiner never saw him again. He must have died in the Pioneer cavern, being unable to return. The diary continues five days longer. A little peppermint-water had been left by the solitary sufferer’s bed, and a little fresh water he also managed to scoop up from the sides of the boat in an india-rubber shoe. This was all the sustenance he had. On the 6th of September he wrote—“Yet a little while, and through grace we may join that blessed throng to sing the praises of Christ throughout eternity. I neither hunger nor thirst, though five days without food! Marvellous loving-kindness to me, a sinner. Your affectionate brother in Christ,—Allen F. Gardiner.”

These last words were in a letter to Williams. He must afterwards have left the boat, perhaps to catch more water, and have been too weak to climb back into it, for his remains were on the beach. Williams lost the power of writing sooner, and no more is known of his end, though probably he died first, and Pearce must have been trying to prepare his grave when he, too, sank.

What words can befit this piteous history better than “This is the patience of the saints”?

The memorial to Allen Gardiner has been a mission-ship bearing his name, with her head-quarters at the Falkland Isles. We believe that these isles are to become a Bishop’s See. Assuredly a branch of the Church should spring up where the seed of so patient and devoted a martyrdom has been sown.

CHAPTER XI. CHARLES FREDERICK MACKENZIE, THE MARTYR OF THE ZAMBESI.

That Zulu country where poor Allen Gardiner had made his first attempt became doubly interesting to the English when the adjoining district of Natal became a British colony. It fell under the superintendence of Bishop Robert Gray, of Capetown, who still lives and labours, and therefore cannot be here spoken of; and mainly by his exertions it was formed into a separate Episcopal See in the year 1853. Most of the actors in the founding of the Church of Natal are still living, but there are some of whom it can truly be said that—

“Death hath moulded into calm completeness
The statue of their life.”

Charles Frederick Mackenzie was born in 1825 of an old Scottish Tory family, members from the first of the Scottish Church in the days of her persecution. His father, Colin Mackenzie, was one of Walter Scott’s fellow-Clerks of Session, and is commemorated by one of the Introductions to “Marmion,” as—

“He whose absence we deplore,
Who breathes the gales of Devon’s shore;
The longer missed, bewailed the more.”

His mother was Elizabeth Forbes, and he was the youngest of so unusually large a family that the elders had been launched into the world before the younger ones were born, so that they never were all together under one roof. The father’s delicacy of health kept the mother much engrossed; the elder girls were therefore appointed as little mothers to the younger children, and it was to his eldest sister, Elizabeth (afterwards Mrs. Dundas), that the young Charles always looked with the tender reverence that is felt towards the earliest strong influence for good.

From the first he had one of those pure and stainless natures that seem to be good without effort, but his talents were only considered remarkable for arithmetic. His elder brothers used

to set him up on a table and try to puzzle him with questions, which he could often answer mentally before they had worked them out on their slates. His father died in 1830, after so much invalidism and separation that his five-year-old boy had no personal recollection of him. The eldest son, Mr. Forbes Mackenzie, succeeded to the estate of Portmore, and the rest of the family resided in Edinburgh for education. Charles attended the Academy till he was fifteen, when he was sent to the Grange School at Bishop’s Wearmouth, all along showing a predominant taste for mathematics, which he would study for his own amusement and assist his elder brothers in. His perfect modesty prevented them from ever feeling hurt by his superiority in this branch, and he held his place well in classics, though they were not the same delight to him, and were studied rather as a duty and as a step to the ministry of the Church, the desire of his heart from the first. At school, his companions respected him heartily, and loved him for his unselfish kindness and sweetness, while a few of the more graceless were inclined to brand him as soft or slow, because he never consented to join in anything blameable, and was not devoted to boyish sports, though at times he would join in them with great vigour, and was always perfectly fearless.

From the Grange he passed to Cambridge, and was entered at St. John’s, but finding that his Scottish birth was a disadvantage according to restrictions now removed, he transferred himself to Caius College. He kept up a constant correspondence with his eldest sister, Mrs. Dundas, and from it may be gathered much of his inner life, while outwardly he was working steadily on, as a very able and studious undergraduate. With hopes of the ministry before his eyes, he begged one of the parochial clergy to give him work that would serve as training, and accordingly he was requested to read and pray with a set of old people living in an asylum. The effort cost his bashfulness much, but he persevered, with the sense that if he did not go “no one else would,” and that his attempts were “better than nothing.” This was the key to all his life. At the same time he felt, what biography shows many another to have done, the influence of the more constant and complete worship then enjoined by college rules. Daily service was new to him, and was accepted of course as college discipline, but after a time it gathered force and power over his mind, and as the Magnificat

had been a revelation to Henry Martyn, so Charles Mackenzie’s affection first fixed upon the General Thanksgiving, and on the commemoration of the departed in the prayer for the Church Militant.

His fellow-collegians thought of him as a steady, religious-minded man, but not peculiarly devout, and indeed the just balance of his mind made him perceive that the prime duty of an undergraduate was industry rather than attempts to exercise his yet unformed and uncultivated powers. In 1848 he was second wrangler. There were two prizes, called Dr. Smith’s, for the two most distinguished mathematicians of the year. The senior wrangler’s papers had the first of these; for the second, Mackenzie was neck and neck with a Trinity College man, and the question was only decided by the fact that Dr. Smith had desired that his own college (Trinity) should have the preference.

After this he became tutor and fellow of his college, taking private pupils, and at the same time preparing for Holy Orders, not only by study of books, but by work among the poor, with whom his exceeding kindness and intense reality gave him especial influence at all times.

He was ordained on the Trinity Sunday of 1851, and took an assistant curacy at a short distance from Cambridge, his vigorous powers of walking enabling him to give it full attention as well as to his pupils and to the University offices he filled. His great characteristic seems always to have been the tenderest kindness and consideration; and in the year when he was public examiner, this was especially felt by the young men undergoing an ordeal so terrible to strained and excited intellect and nerves, when a little hastiness or harshness often destroys the hopes of a man’s youth.

With this combination of pastoral work and college life Mackenzie was perfectly satisfied and happy, but in another year the turning-point of his life was reached. A mission at Delhi to the natives was in prospect, and the Rev. J. S. Jackson, who belonged to the same college with him, came to Cambridge in search of a fellow-labourer therein. During the conversations and consultations as to who could be asked, the thought came upon Mackenzie, why should he strive to send forth others without going himself. He could not put it from his mind. He read Henry Martyn’s life, and resolved on praying for

guidance as to his own duty. In the words of his letter to Mrs. Dundas, “I thought chiefly of the command, ‘Go ye and baptize all nations,’ and how some one ought to go; and I thought how in another world one would look back and rejoice at having seized this opportunity of taking the good news of the Gospel to those who had never heard of it; but for whom, as well as for us, Christ died. I thought of the Saviour sitting in heaven, and looking down upon this world, and seeing us, who have heard the news, selfishly keeping it to ourselves, and only one or two, or eight or ten, going out in the year to preach to His other sheep, who must be brought, that there may be one fold and one Shepherd; and I thought that if other men would go abroad, then I might stay at home, but as no one, or so few, would go out, then it was the duty of every one that could go to go. . . . And I thought, what right have I to say to young men here, ‘You had better go out to India,’ when I am hugging myself in my comfortable place at home.” And afterwards, “Now, dear Lizzie, I have always looked to you as my mother and early teacher. To you I owe more than I can ever repay, more than I can well tell. I do hope you will pray for me and give me your advice.”

Mrs. Dundas’s reply to this letter was a most wise and full expression of sympathy with the aspiration, given with the deep consideration of a peculiarly calm and devotional spirit, which perceived that it is far better for a man to work up to his fullest perception of right, and highest aims, than to linger in a sphere which does not occupy his fullest soul and highest self; and she also recognized the influence that the fact of one of a family being engaged in such work exercises on those connected with them.

Others of the family, however, were startled, and some of his Cambridge friends did not think him adapted to the Delhi Mission, and this therefore was given up, but without altering the bent that his mind had received; and indeed Mrs. Dundas, in one of her beautiful letters, advised him to keep the aim once set before him in view, and thus his interest became more and more turned towards the support of missionary work at home.

In 1854, the first Primate of New Zealand, George Augustus Selwyn, visited England, after twelve years of labour spent in building up the Colonial and Maori Church, and of pioneering for missions in the Melanesian Isles, over which his vast see

then extended. He preached a course of four sermons at Cambridge; Mackenzie was an eager listener, and those forcible, heart-stirring discourses clenched his long growing resolution to obey the first call to missionary labour that should come to him, though, on the other hand, he desired so far to follow the leadings of Providence that he would not choose nor volunteer, but wait for the summons—whither he knew not.

Ere long the invitation came. The erection of the colony of Natal into a Bishop’s See had been decided upon a year before, and it had been offered to John William Colenso, a clergyman known as active in the support of the missionary cause, and a member of the University of Cambridge. On his appointment he had gone out in company with the Bishop of Capetown to inspect his diocese and study its needs, as well as to lay the foundations of future work. In the party who then sailed for Natal was a lady who had recently been left a widow, Henrietta Woodrow by name, ardent in zeal for the conversion of the heathen, and hoping that the warm climate of Africa would enable her to devote herself to good works more entirely than her delicate health permitted at home.

Pieter Maritzburg had by this time risen into a capital, with a strange mixture of Dutch and English buildings; but the English population strongly predominated. Panda was king of the Kaffirs, and fearfully bloody massacres had taken place in his dominions, causing an immense number of refugees to take shelter in the English territory. Young people who thus came were bound apprentices to persons who would take charge of them for the sake of their services, and thus the missions and those connected with them gained considerable influence for a time. A Kaffir, who must have been Captain Gardiner’s faithful Umpondobeni, though he was now called by another name, inquired for his former good master, and fell into an agony of distress on hearing of his fate.

Mrs. Woodrow at once opened an orphanage for the destitute English children that are sure to be found in a new colony, where the parents, if unsuccessful, are soon tempted to drink, and then fall victims to climate and accident. The Kaffir servant whom she engaged had already been converted, and was baptized by the name of Abraham, soon after he entered her service; but “Boy,”—the name at first given to him,—became a sort of surname to him and to his family. While

watching over the little band of children, Mrs. Woodrow was already—even though as yet only learning the language—preparing the way for the coming Church. She wrote of the Kaffirs: “They come to me of all ages, men and women, some old men from the country, with their rings upon their heads, and wrapped in their house blankets. Then they sit down on the kitchen floor, our ‘Boy’ telling them, in his earnest way, about Jesus Christ. These I cannot speak to, but I manage to let them know that I care for them, and ‘Boy’ says they go away with ‘tears in their hearts.’”

About two years previously, a Scottish colonist at the Cape, named Robert Robertson, had been touched by the need of ministers; had been ordained by the Bishop of Capetown, and sent to Natal as missionary clergyman to the Zulus. Early in 1855 these two devoted workers were married, and, taking up their abode at Durban, continued together their care of the English orphans, and of the Kaffir children whom they could collect.

In the meantime, Bishop Colenso, having taken his survey of the colony, had returned to England to collect his staff of fellow-workers; and one of his first requests was that Charles Mackenzie would accompany him as Archdeacon of Pieter Maritzburg. There was not such entire willingness in Mrs. Dundas’s mind to part with him on this mission as on the former proposal; not that she wished to hold him back from the task to which he had in a manner dedicated himself, but she preferred his going out without the title of a dignitary, and, from the tone of the new Bishop’s letters, she foresaw that doctrinal difficulties and differences might arise.

Her brother had, however, made up his mind that no great work would ever be done, if those who co-operated were too minute in seeking for perfect accordance of opinions; and that boundless charity which was his great characteristic made him perhaps underrate the importance of the fissure which his sister even then perceived between the ways of thinking of himself and his Bishop. His next sister, Anne, whose health was too delicate for a northern climate, was to accompany him; and the entire party who went out with Bishop Colenso numbered thirty or forty persons, including several ladies, who were to devote themselves to education, both of the white and black inhabitants. They sailed in the barque Jane Morice early in

the March of 1855, and, after a pleasant and prosperous voyage, entered Durban Bay in the ensuing May.

The first home of the brother and sister was at Durban, among the English colonists. It somewhat disappointed the Archdeacon, as those who come out for purely missionary aims always are disappointed, when called to the equally needful but less interesting field of labour among their own countrymen; put as he says, he satisfied his mind by recollecting, “I came out here simply because there was a scarcity of people that could and would come. I did not come because I thought the work more important than that I was leaving.” So he set himself heartily to gather and confirm the congregation that had had its first commencement when Allen Gardiner used to read prayers to the first few settlers; and, at the same time, Kaffir services were held for the some thousand persons in the town in the employment of the whites.

The Archdeacon read prayers in Kaffir, and Mr. Robertson preached on the Sunday evenings. The numbers of attendants were not large, and the most work was done by the school that the Robertsons collected round them. The indifference and slackness of the English at Durban made it all the harder to work upon the Kaffirs; and, in truth, Archdeacon Mackenzie’s residence there was a troublous time. The endeavour, by the wish of the Bishop, to establish a weekly offertory, was angrily received by the colonists, who were furious at the sight of the surplice in the pulpit, and, no doubt, disguised much real enmity, both to holiness of life and to true discipline, under their censure of what they called a badge of party. Their treatment of the Archdeacon, when they found him resolute, amounted to persecution; the most malignant rumours were set afloat, and nothing but his strength and calmness, perfect forgiveness, and yet unswerving determination, carried him through what was probably the most trying period of his life.

Intercourse with the Robertsons was the great refreshment in those anxious days. A grant from Government had been made for a Church Mission station upon the coast, and upon the river Umlazi, not many miles from Durban; and here Mr. and Mrs. Robertson stationed themselves with their little company of orphans, refugees, and Kaffirs; also a Hottentot family, whose children they were bringing up.

Their own house had straight walls, coffee-coloured, a brown

thatched roof, and a boarded floor, in consideration of Mrs. Robertson’s exceeding delicacy of health; but such boards! loose, and so springy that the furniture leapt and danced when the floor was crossed. It was all on the ground-floor, partitioned by screens; and the thatched roof continued a good way out, supported on posts, so as to form a wide verandah; and scattered all around were the beehive dwellings of the Kaffir following, and huts raised for the nonce for European guests.

At six o’clock in the morning a large bell was rung. At eight, Kaffir prayers were read by Mr. Robertson, for his own servants, in the verandah, and for some who would come in from the neighbouring kraals; then followed breakfast; then English matins; and, by that time, Kaffir children were creeping up to the verandah to be taught. They were first washed, and then taught their letters, with some hymns translated into their language, and a little religious instruction. The children were generally particularly pleasant to deal with, bright and intelligent, and with a natural amiability of disposition that rendered quarrels and jealousies rare. Good temper seems, indeed, to be quite a Zulu characteristic; the large mixed families of the numerous wives live together harmoniously, and the gift of a kraal to one member is acknowledged by all the rest. Revenge, violence, and passion are to be found among them, but not fretfulness and quarrelsomeness.

After the work of instruction, there was generally a ride into the neighbouring kraals, to converse with the people, and invite the children to school. They had to be propitiated with packets of sugar, and shown the happy faces of the home flock. There was, at first, a good deal of inclination to distrust; and the endeavour to bring the women and girls to wear clothes had to be most cautiously managed, as a little over-haste would make them take fright and desert altogether.

The Kaffir customs of marriage proved one of the most serious impediments in the way of the missionaries. The female sex had its value as furnishing servants and cultivators of the ground, and every man wished to own as many wives as possible. Not only did the question what was to be done in the case of many-wived converts come under consideration, but the fathers objected to their daughters acquiring the rudiments of civilization, lest it should lessen their capabilities to act as beasts of burden, and thus spoil their price in cattle,

(the true pecunia of the Zulu). Practically, it was found, that no polygamist ever became more than an inquirer; the way of life seemed to harden the heart or blind the eyes against conviction; but the difficulty as regarded the younger people was great, since as long as a girl remained the lawful property of the head of her kraal, she was liable to be sold to any polygamist of any age who might pay her value; and thus it became a question whether it were safe to baptize her. Even Christian Zulus marrying Christian women according to the English rite could not be secure of them unless the cows were duly paid over; and as these Kaffirs are a really fine race, with more of the elements of true love in them than is usual in savages, adventures fit for a novel would sometimes occur, when maidens came flying to the mission station to avoid some old husband who had made large offers to their father; and the real lover would arrive entreating protection for the lady of his heart until he could earn the requisite amount of cows to satisfy her father.

Mr. Robertson was always called the umfundisi, or teacher. He held his Sunday Kaffir service in a clearing in the bush, and gained many hearts to himself, and some souls for the Church, while toiling with his hands as well as setting forth the truth with his lips. Mrs. Robertson at the same time worked upon the women by her tenderness to their little ones, offering them little frocks if they would wash them, caressing them with all a woman’s true love for babies, and then training their elder children and girls, teaching them needlework, and whatever could lead to aspirations towards modesty and the other graces of Christian womanhood. Often extremely ill, always fragile, her energy never failed; and there was a grace and dignity about her whole deportment and manner which caused “the Lady” to be the emphatic title always given to her by her husband and his friends. Of these the Mackenzie family were among the warmest, and the Archdeacon gladly gave valuable assistance to Mr. Robertson by supplementing an education which had not been definitely clerical, but rather of that order which seems to render an able Scotsman fit to apply himself to almost anything.

In February 1857 another sister, named Alice, joined the Mackenzie family, when they were on a visit to the Umlazi station. Her quick powers and enthusiastic spirit fitted her in a wonderful manner for missionary labour, and she was at once

in such sympathy with the Kaffirs that it was a playful arrangement among the home party that Anne should be the white and Alice the black sister.

Just after her arrival, it was determined that the Archdeacon should leave Durban, where, indeed, he had been only filling the post of an absent clergyman, and take a district on the Umhlali river, forty miles from Durban, containing a number of English settlements, a camp, and a large amount of Kaffir kraals. Every Sunday he had five services at different places, one of them eighteen miles from the nearest, a space that had to be ridden at speed in the mid-day sun. There was no house, but a couple of rooms with perpendicular sides and a verandah, one for chapel, the other for sitting-room, while Kaffir beehive huts were the bedrooms of all. For a long time blankets and plaids did the part of doors and shutters; and just as the accommodations were improving, the whole grass and wattle structure was burnt down, and it was many months before the tardy labour of colonial workmen enabled the family to take possession of the new house, in a better situation, which they named Seaforth, after the title of the former head of the Mackenzie clan.

All this time the whole party had been working. A school was collected every morning of both boys and girls; not many in number, but from a large area: children of white settlers, varying in rank, gentlemen or farmers, but all alike running wild for want of time and means to instruct them. They came riding on horses or oxen, attended by their Kaffirs, and were generally found exceedingly ignorant of all English learning, but precocious and independent in practical matters: young boys able to shoot, ride, and often entrusted with difficult commissions by their fathers at an age when their cousins at home would scarcely be at a public school, and little girls accustomed to superintend the Kaffirs in all household business; both far excelling their parents in familiarity with the language, but accustomed to tyrannize over the black servants, and in danger of imbibing unsuspected evil from their heathen converse. It was a task of no small importance to endeavour to raise the tone, improve the manners, and instruct the minds of these young colonists, and it could only be attempted by teaching them as friends upon an equality.

With the Kaffirs, at the same time, the treatment was

moulded on that of Mr. and Mrs. Robertson, who at one time paid the Umhlali a visit, bringing with them their whole train of converts, servants, orphans, and adopted children, who could be easily accommodated by putting up fresh grass huts, to which even the Europeans of the party had become so accustomed, that they viewed a chameleon tumbling down on the dinner-table with rather more indifference than we do the intrusion of an earwig, quite acquiesced in periodically remaking the clay floor when the white ants were coming up through it, scorpions being found in the Archdeacon’s whiskers, and green snakes, instead of mice, being killed by the cat.

The sight of Christian Kaffirs was very beneficial to the learners, to whom it was a great stumbling block to have no fellows within their ken, but to be totally separated from all of their own race and colour. At Seaforth, the wedding was celebrated of two of Mr. Robertson’s converts, named Benjamin and Louisa, the marriage Psalms being chanted in Kaffir, and the Holy Communion celebrated, when there were seven Kaffir communicants. The bride wore a white checked muslin and a wreath of white natural flowers on her head. This was the first Christian Zulu wedding, and it has been followed by many more, and we believe that in no case has there been a relapse into heathenism or polygamy.

The Mackenzies continued at Seaforth until the early part of the year 1859. The work was peaceful and cheerful. There were no such remarkable successes in conversion as the Robertsons met with, probably because in the further and wilder district the work was more pioneering, and the Robertsons had never been without a nucleus of Christians, besides which the gifts of both appear to have been surpassing in their power of dealing with natives, and producing thorough conversions. Moreover, they had no cure but of the Kaffirs, whereas Archdeacon Mackenzie was the pastor of a widely scattered population, and his time and strength on Sundays employed to their very uttermost. Church affairs weighed heavily upon him; and another heavy sorrow fell on him in the death of the guardian elder sister, Mrs. Dundas. Her illness, typhus fever, left time for the preparation of knowing of her danger, and a letter written to her by her brother during the suspense breathes his resigned hope:—“Dear Lizzie, you may now be among the members of the Church in heaven, who

have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. If so, we shall never meet again on earth. But what a meeting in heaven! Any two of us to meet so would be, more than we can conceive, to be made perfect, and never more to part.” And when writing to the bereaved husband after the blow had fallen, he says: “Surely we ought not to think it strange if the brightest gems are sometimes removed from the workshop to the immediate presence of the Great King.”

But the grief, though borne in such a spirit, probably made him susceptible to the only illness he experienced while in Natal. The immediate cause was riding in the burning sun of a southern February, and the drinking cold water, the result of which was a fever, that kept him at home for about a month.

There was at this time a strong desire to send a mission into independent Zululand, with a Bishop at its head. Bishop Colenso was at first inclined to undertake the lead himself, resigning Natal; and next a plan arose that Archdeacon Mackenzie should become the missionary Bishop. The plan was to be submitted to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and for this purpose the Archdeacon was despatched to England, taking Miss Mackenzie with him; but the younger sister, Alice, having so recently arrived, and being so valuable as a worker among the natives, remained to assist in the school of young chiefs who had been gathered together by Bishop Colenso.

The time of the return of the brother and sister was just when Dr. Livingstone’s account of the interior of Africa, and of the character of the chiefs on the Zambesi, had excited an immense enthusiasm throughout England. He had appealed to the Universities to found a mission, and found it they would, on a truly grand scale, commensurate with their wealth and numbers. It was to have a Bishop at the head, and a strong staff of clergy, vessels built on purpose to navigate the rivers, and every requisite amply provided. Crowded meetings were held at each University, and the enthusiasm produced by the appeal of Dr. Livingstone, a Scottish Presbyterian, to the English Universities, as the only bodies capable of such an effort, produced unspeakable excitement. At a huge meeting at Cambridge, attended by the most distinguished of English Churchmen, Archdeacon Mackenzie was present. His quiet remark to the friend beside him, was, “I am afraid of this. Most great

works have been carried on by one or two men in a quieter way, and have had a more humble beginning.” In fact, Bishop Gray, of Capetown, had long been thinking of a Central African Mission; but his plan, and that which Mackenzie would have preferred, was to work gradually northwards from the places already Christian, or partially so, instead of commencing an isolated station at so great a distance, not only from all aid to the workers, but from all example or mode of bringing civilized life to the pupils. But Livingstone had so thoroughly won the sympathies of the country that only the exact plan which he advocated could obtain favour, and it was therefore felt that it was better to accept and co-operate with his spirit than to give any check, or divide the flow by contrary suggestions.

Thus Livingstone became almost as much the guide and referee of the Zambesi expedition as ever a Cardinal Legate was of a crusade. Nor could this be wondered at, for the ordinary Englishman is generally almost ignorant of missions and their history, and in this case an able and interesting book of travels had stirred the mind of the nation; nor had experience then shown how much more there was of the explorer than of the missionary in the writer.

From the first, Archdeacon Mackenzie was designated as the chief of the mission. He felt the appointment a call not to be rejected. His sister Anne viewed it in the same spirit, and was ready to cast in her lot with him, and letters were written to the other sister in Natal proposing to her to accompany them. Then came a year of constant travelling and oratory in churches and on platforms, collecting means and rousing interest in the mission—a year that would have been a mere whirl to any one not possessed of the wonderful calmness and simplicity that characterized Mackenzie, and made him just do the work that came to hand in the best manner in his power, without question or choice as to what that work might be.

By the October of 1860 all was ready, and the brother and sister had taken leave of the remaining members of their family, and embarked at Southampton, together with two clergymen, a lay superintendent, a carpenter and a labourer, and likewise Miss Fanny Woodrow, Mrs. Robertson’s niece, who was to join in her work. Their first stage was Capetown, where it had been arranged that the consecration should take place, since it is best that a Missionary Bishop governing persons not

under English government should not be fettered by regulations that concern her Prelates, not as belonging to the Church, but to the Establishment. There was some delay in collecting the bishops of South Africa, so that the Pioneer, placed at Dr. Livingstone’s disposal, could not wait; and the two clergy, Mr. Waller and Mr. Scudamore, proceeded without their chief.

On the 1st of January, 1861, the rite took place, memorable as the first English consecration of a Missionary Bishop, and an example was set that has happily been since duly followed, as the Church has more and more been roused to the fulfilment of the parting command, “Go ye, and teach all nations.”

And, on the 7th, the new Bishop sailed in H.M.S. Lyra, Captain Oldfield, which had been appointed, in the course of its East African cruise, to take him to the scene of his labours, on the way setting down the Bishop of Natal at his diocese. The first exploration and formation of a settlement had been decided to be too arduous and perilous for women, especially for such an invalid as Miss Mackenzie, and she was therefore left at Capetown, to follow as soon as things should be made ready for her. The so-called black sister, who then fully intended also to be a member of the Central African Mission, came down to meet her brother at Durban, and a few days of exceeding peace and joy were here spent. The victory over his opponents at Durban had been won by the recollection of his unfailing meekness and love; they hailed him with ardent affection and joy, expressed their regret for all that had been unfriendly, and eagerly sought for all pastoral offices at his hand. He consecrated a church, and held a confirmation at the Umlazi; but the Robertsons were not there to welcome him. The long-contemplated mission into independent Zululand had devolved upon Mr. Robertson, and he and his wife, and the choicest and most trustworthy of their converts, had removed across the Tugela into the territories of old King Panda, the last of the terrible brotherhood, and now himself greatly ruled by the ablest and most successful of his sons, Ketchewayo by name. The work was very near Bishop Mackenzie’s heart, and, both with substantial aid, prayers, blessings, and encouragements, he endeavoured to forward it.

His last day in Natal was spent in a service with a confirmation at Claremont, and an evening service at Durban. “As we were returning,” wrote his sister Alice, “we saw a rocket

from the sea; a gun fired, the mail was in; and the captain, who was with us, said he would let us know the first thing in the morning the hour he would sail. Well, after this, there was little peace or quiet. We were too tired to sit up that night, and next morning there was much to arrange, and everybody was coming and going, and we heard we were to go by the half-past two train. A great many friends were with us, but on the shore we slipped away, and, leaning together on a heap of bricks, had a few sweet, quiet collects together, till we were warned we must go to the boat. We went on board the tug, and stood together high up on the captain’s place; we were washed again and again by the great waves. When he went, and I had his last kiss and blessing, his own bright, beautiful spirit infected mine, and I could return his parting words without flinching; I saw him go without even a tear dimming my eye: so that I could watch him to the last, looking after our little boat again crossing the bar, till we could distinguish each other no more.

“In speaking one day of happiness, he said, ‘I have given up looking for that altogether. Now, till death, my post is one of unrest and care. To be the sharer of everyone’s sorrow, the comforter of everyone’s grief, the strengthener of everyone’s weakness: to do this as much as in me lies is now my aim and object; for, you know, when the members suffer, the pain must always fly to the head.’ He said this with a smile, and oh! the peace in his face; it seemed as if nothing could shake it.”

The last photograph, taken during this visit to Durban, with the high calm brow, and the quiet contemplative eye, bears out this beautiful, sisterly description of that last look.

The Lyra next proceeded to the Kongone mouth of the Zambesi, where the two parties who had gone forward, including Dr. Livingstone himself, were met, and a consultation took place. The Bishop was anxious to go forward, arrange his settlement, and commence his work at once; but Dr. Livingstone thought the season a bad one, and was anxious to explore the River Rovuma, to see whether its banks afforded a better opening; and it ended in the Bishop feeling obliged to give way to his experience, although against his own judgment.

He therefore, with Mr. Rowley, who had joined him at Durban, accompanied Livingstone in the Pioneer, leaving the others at Johanna, a little island used as a depôt for coal.

The expedition was not successful; there was only water enough in the channel to enable the Pioneer to go thirty miles up in five days, and it failed more and more in the descent. The steamer, too, though built for the purpose of navigating the shallows of rivers, drew more water than had been expected; the current when among shoals made the descent worse than the ascent; there was a continual necessity for landing to cut wood to feed the engine; and, in five days, the Pioneer had not made ten miles. The Bishop worked as hard as any of the crew, once narrowly escaped the jaws of a crocodile, and had a slight touch of fever, so trifling that it perhaps disposed him to think lightly of the danger; but he was still weak when he came back to Johanna, and, by way of remedy, set out before breakfast for a mountain walk, and came back exhausted, and obliged to lie still, thoroughly depressed in mind as well as body for two days. The expedition proved the more unfortunate, that it delayed the start for the Zambesi from February, when the stream was full, till May, when the water was so low that a great quantity of the stores had to be left behind, in order that the Pioneer might not draw too much water. The chief assistants were the Malokolo, a portion of a tribe who had attached themselves to Dr. Livingstone, and had been awaiting his return on the banks of the river. The Bishop would fain have gone without weapons of any sort, but Dr. Livingstone decided that this was impracticable. He said, by all means take guns, and use them, if needed, and they would prove the best pacificators; and Mackenzie, as usual, yielded his own judgment, and heartily accepted what was decided on for him.

All those left at Johanna had suffered from fever, and were relieved that the time of inaction was over when they embarked in the Pioneer on the 1st of May, and in due time ascended the Zambesi, and again the Shire, but very slowly, for much time was consumed in cutting wood for the engines, every stick in the mud costing three days’ labour, and in three weeks going only six or seven miles, seeing numerous crocodiles and hippopotami by the way.

It was not till the middle of July that they reached the landing-place. As soon as the goods had been landed the whole party set out on an exploration, intending to seek for a place, high enough on the hills to be healthy, on which to form their settlement.

Their goods were carried by negroes, and a good many by themselves, the Bishop’s share being in one hand a loaded gun, in the other a crozier, in front a can of oil, behind, a bag of seeds. “I thought,” he writes, “of the contrast between my weapon and my staff, the one like Jacob, the other like Abraham, who armed all his trained servants to rescue Lot. I thought also of the seed which we must sow in the hearts of the people, and of the oil of the Spirit that must strengthen us in all we do.”

The example of Abraham going forth to rescue Lot was brought suddenly before the mission party. While halting at a negro village, a sound was heard like the blowing of penny trumpets, and six men, with muskets, came into the village, driving with them eighty-four slaves, men, women, and children, whom they had collected for Portuguese slave-dealers at Tette.

The Bishop and Mr. Scudamore had gone out of the village to bathe just before they arrived; but Dr. Livingstone, recognizing one of the drivers, whom he had seen at Tette, took him by the wrist, saying, “What are you doing here, killing people? I shall kill you to-day.”

The man answered: “I do not kill; I am not making war. I bought these people.”

Then Livingstone turned to the slaves. Two men said, “We were bought.” Six said, “We were captured.” And several of the women, “Our husbands and relatives were killed, and here we are.”

Whereupon Livingstone began to cut the bonds of cord that fastened them together, while the slave-catchers ran away. All this was over before the Bishop returned; and Livingstone was explaining to the rescued negroes that they might either return to their homes, go to Tette, or remain under English protection, while they expressed their joy and gratitude by a slow clapping of the hands. They told a terrible story, of women shot for trying to escape, and of a babe whose brains were dashed out, because its mother could not carry it and her brothers together.

If asked by what authority he did these things, Livingstone would have answered, by the right of a Christian man to protect the weak from devilish cruelty. There was no doubt in his mind that these slaves, even though purchased, were deprived of their liberty so unjustly, that their deliverance was only a sacred duty, and that their owners had no right of property in them. If a British cruiser descended on a slave-ship, and

released her freight, should he not also deliver the captive wherever he met him?

And, with this, another question was raised, namely, that of the use of weapons. The party were in the country of the Man-gnaja, a tribe of negroes who were continually harried by the fiercer and more powerful neighbour-tribe of Ajawa, great slave-catchers, who supplied the slave-hunters who came out from Tette to collect their human droves. These were mostly Arabs, with some Portuguese admixture; and the blacks, after being disposed of in the market at Tette, were usually shipped off to supply the demand in Arabia and Egypt, where, to tell the truth, their lot was a far easier one than befell the slaves of the West, the toilers among sugar and cotton.

A crusade against slave-catching could not be carried on without, at least, a show of force; and, this granted, a further difficulty presented itself, in the fact that, out of the scanty number of white men, one was a bishop and two were priests of the English Church, and one a Presbyterian minister. In all former cases, the missionaries had freely ventured themselves, using no means of self-defence, and marking the difference between themselves and others by the absence of all weapons. But, in those places, it was self-defence that was given up; here the point was, whether to deliver the captive, or, by silence, to acquiesce in the wrong done to him; and if his rescue were attempted, it was in vain, unless the clergy assisted; and thus it was that the mission party did not march so much as men of peace as deliverers of the captive and breakers of the yoke. The captives had no power of returning home, and chose to remain with their deliverers; and the next day the party reached a negro village, called Chibisa’s, after the chief who had ruled it at the time of Dr. Livingstone’s first visit. He was now dead, but his successor, Chigunda, begged the white men to remain, to protect him from the Ajawa, who were only five or ten miles off, and from whom an attack was expected.

It was decided to forestall it by marching towards them. On the way another great convoy of slaves was encountered, and with the merest show of force, no bloodshed at all, more than forty were liberated—the men from forked clogs to their necks, consisting of a pole as thick as a man’s thigh, branched at the top like the letter Y, so that the neck of the prisoner could be inserted, and fastened with an iron pin.

The large number of these liberated captives made it necessary to choose a home, but Chibisa’s was not the place selected, but a spot some sixty miles further on, called Magomero. It was on a plain 3,000 feet above the level of the sea, or rather in a hole on the plain; for it was chosen because the bend of a river encircled it on three sides, so that a stockade on the fourth would serve for defence, in case of an attack from the Ajawa; and this consideration made Livingstone enforce the choice upon the Bishop, who again yielded to his opinion. The higher ground around was not unhealthy; the air was pure, the heat never excessive; but the river was too near, and brought fever to a spot soon overcrowded. It was occupied, however, with high hope and cheerfulness; huts, formed of poles and roofed with piles of grass, were erected, a larger one set apart for a church, and a system established of regular training for the numerous troop of clients, now amounting to above a hundred. To give them regular religious instruction, without being secure of the language, was thought by the Bishop inexpedient, and he therefore desired, at first, to prepare the way by the effects of physical training and discipline. This was a Magomero day:—English matins at early morning; breakfast on fowls or goats’-flesh, yam, beans, and porridge; then a visit to the sick; for, alas! already the whole thirteen of the mission staff were never well at the same time. After this, the negroes were collected, answered to their names, and had breakfast served out to them; two women being found to receive and apportion the shares of the lesser children, and this they did carefully and kindly.

The tender sweetness of Mackenzie told greatly in dealing with these poor creatures. He did not think it waste of time to spend an hour a day trying to teach the little ones their letters; and Mr. Rowley draws a beautiful picture of him feeding, with a bottle, a black babe, whose mother had not nutriment enough to sustain it,—the little naked thing nestling up to his big beard, and going to sleep against his broad chest.

Work followed. One whith man drilled the boys, one command being for them all to leap into the river at the same moment to bathe; one bargained with the vendors of mealies, beer, goats, fowls, yams, &c., who came in numbers from the villages round, and received payment in beads, and a blue cotton manufacture, called selampore, which is the current coin of Central Africa. Others worked, and showed how to work,

at the buildings till one o’clock, when the dinner was served, only differing from breakfast in the drink being native beer instead of coffee. Rest followed till five, when there were two hours’ more work, nearly till sunset, which, even on the longest day, was before half-past six; then tea, evensong, and bed.

The great need was of some female element, to train and deal with the women and girls; and there was an earnest desire for the arrival of the sisters. But, in the meantime, the occupation of Magomero proved far from peaceful. The Ajawa were always coming down upon the Man-gnaja to burn their villages and steal slaves, and the Man-gnaja called upon the whites as invincible allies.

The Bishop and his clergy (Livingstone had now left them, and gone on to Lake Nyassa) thought that to present a resolute front to the Ajawa would drive them back for good and all; and that the Man-gnaja could be bound over henceforth to give up slave-dealing, and, on this condition, they did not refuse their assistance. Subsequent events have led to the belief that this warfare of the Ajawa was really the advance of one of those great tides of nations that take place from time to time, and that they were a much finer people than the cowardly and false Man-gnaja; but, of course, a small company of strangers, almost ignorant of the language, and communicating with the natives through a released and educated negro, could not enter into the state of things, and could only struggle against the immediate acts of oppression that came before them.

There were thus about three expeditions to drive back the Ajawa and deliver the rescued slaves—bloodless expeditions, for the sight of the white men and their guns was quite enough to produce a general flight, and a large colony of the rescued had gathered at Magomero in the course of a few months. Meantime another clergyman, the Rev. H. De Wint Burrup, with his newly-married wife and three lay members of the mission, had arrived at Capetown, and, leaving Mrs. Burrup there with Miss Mackenzie, had come on to join the others. Mr. Burrup and Mr. Dickinson (a surgeon) actually made their way in canoes and river boats from Quillinane up to Chibisa’s, where the Pioneer was lying, Dr. Livingstone having just returned from his three months’ expedition.

It was an absolute exploit in travelling, but a very perilous one, since these open boats, in the rain and on the low level of

the river, exposed them to the greatest danger of fever; and there can be no doubt that their constitutions were injured, although, no serious symptoms appearing, the mission party were still further induced to underrate the necessity of precaution.

The Bishop coming down to visit Livingstone (seventy miles in thirty hours on foot), gladly hailed the new-comers, and returned rapidly with Mr. Burrup, both a good deal over-fatigued; and, indeed, the Bishop never thoroughly recovered this reckless expenditure of strength. He considered that things were now forward enough for a summons to the ladies at Capetown. Communication was very difficult, and the arrangements had therefore to be made somewhat blindly; but his plan was, that his sisters and Mrs. Burrup should try to obtain a passage to Kongone, where the Pioneer should meet them, and bring them up the rivers to the landing-place at Chibisa’s. He did not know of his sister Alice’s marriage at Natal, though he would have rejoiced at it if he had known. He himself intended to come down to the spot where the rivers Shire and Ruo meet, and there greet the sister and the wife on board the Pioneer, and return with them to Magomero.

The way by the river and by Chibisa’s was a great circuit, and it was thought that a more direct way might be found by exploration. Mr. Procter and Mr. Scudamore, with the black interpreter, Charles Thomas, and some of the negroes, started to pioneer a way. After five days Charles appeared at Magomero, exhausted, foot-sore, ragged, and famished, having had no food for forty-eight hours, and just able to say “the Man-gnaja attacked us; I am the only one who has escaped.”

When he had had some soup, he told that the party had come to a village where they had been taken for slave-dealers, and the natives, on finding they were not, put on a hostile appearance, and as they pushed on came out in great numbers with bows and arrows, insisting on their return. After consulting they thought it would be better to turn back and conciliate the chief, rather than leave a nest of enemies in their rear, and they therefore turned. Unfortunately the negroes had caught sight of the 140 yards of selampore that they were taking with them as cash for the journey, and though the chief, who had been at Senna and Quillinane, was civil, there was much discontent at their not expending more in purchases of provisions; and Charles told them that their bearers had overheard plans

for burning their huts in the night, killing them and taking their goods. They decided to escape; and occupying the chief’s attention by a present of a bright scarf, they bade their men get under weigh. A cry arose, “They are running away.” There was a rush upon them, and Charles managed to break through. He heard two shots fired, and was pursued for some distance, but, as darkness came on, effected his escape.

It seems to have been just one of the cases when a little hesitation and uncertainty on the part of the civilized men did all the mischief by emboldening the savages. Of course it was necessary to rescue them, but as the Ajawa were but twenty miles off, and Magomero must be guarded, there was no choice but to have recourse to the Makololo, and thus let loose one set of savages against another. Just, however, as a message was being despatched to bring them, the two clergymen were seen returning. They too had walked eighty-five miles in forty-eight hours, and had had but one fowl between them. They had in fact got out of the village almost immediately after Charles, but closely beset with natives armed with bows and poisoned arrows. Some tried to wrest Mr. Procter’s gun from him, and even got him down, when he defended himself with his heels, until Mr. Scudamore, who was a little in advance, fired on his assailants, when they gave back; but an arrow aimed at him penetrated the stock of his gun so deeply that the head remained embedded in it. Firing both barrels, he produced a panic, under cover of which they made their way into the bush, and contrived with much difficulty to reach home.

Six of their eight bearers gradually straggled in, and the last brought the following message from a chief in the next village: “I am not in blame for this war; Manasomba has tried to kill the English, has stolen their baggage and their boy, and has kept two of your men. He says if the English want the men, let them come and buy them out, or else fight for them.”

It appeared that Manasomba was not a Man-gnaja, and that his suspicions were excited by anything so inexplicable to the negro mind as white men going about with so much cloth without buying slaves nor much of anything else.

There were still two men to be rescued, and the question was, whether to wait for Livingstone, who was armed with authority to give a lesson to the negroes, or for the mission party to undertake it themselves, especially in the haste which was

needful in order to be in time for the meeting with the Pioneer. They decided on the march, so as to release the men, and thus were forced to break up the calm of the Christmas feast. “If it is right to do it at all, it is right to do it on a holy day,” was the Bishop’s argument, and so the Christmas Day was spent, partly in walking, partly at Chipoka’s village, where was held the Holy Communion feast. “How wondrous,” wrote the Bishop, “the feeling of actual instantaneous communion with all you dear ones, though the distance and means of earthly communication are so great and so difficult!” The negroes of the neighbouring villages joined them, and they proceeded. Near Manasomba’s village they met a large body of men, with whom the Bishop attempted to hold a parley, but they ran away, and only discharged a few arrows. The village was deserted except by a few sheep, goats, and Muscovy ducks, and these were driven out and the huts set on fire.

This punishment was as a “vindication of the English name,” and as an act of self-defence, since any faltering in resolution among such savages would have been fatal; but, after all, the men were not recovered, and the expedition had been so exhausting that none of the party were really fit to push on for the place of meeting with the Pioneer, nor would Chipoka give them guides or bearers in that direction, saying it was all occupied by Manasomba’s friends.

They came back to Magomero grievously exhausted; Scudamore fell down on a bed only just alive, and even the Bishop, though he tried to act and speak with vigour, was evidently suffering from illness and over-fatigue.

But there was the appointment to be kept with Livingstone and the ladies at the Ruo, and, unfit as he was, he persevered, setting off with Burrup, sadly enough, for Scudamore was lying in a dangerous state; but no one guessed that they would never meet again upon earth.

It was on the 4th of January, 1862, that they started with a few Malokolo and the interpreter Charles, and it was six weeks before the colony at Magomero heard any tidings. There the stores were all but exhausted, and having hardly any goods left for barter, there was little food to be obtained but green corn and pumpkin, most unsuited to the Englishmen’s present state of health.

Meanwhile, in constant rain and through swollen streams,

Mackenzie and Burrup had made their way down to the river, and there with much difficulty obtained a canoe. On the first night of the voyage all the party, except the Bishop, wished to go on, because the mosquitoes rendered rest impossible. He thought moving on in the dark imprudent, but gave up his own will, and even wrote jestingly afterwards on the convenience of making the mosquitoes act as a spur. The consequence was that they came suddenly upon a projecting bend; the boat upset, and everything they had was in the water. They spent more than an hour in recovering what could be brought up; but their powder and their provisions were spoilt, and, what was still worse, their medicines: including the quinine, almost essential to life, and that when they were thoroughly drenched in the middle of an African night.

Making sure, however, of speedily meeting Dr. Livingstone, they pushed on; but when they came to Malo, the isle at the confluence of the Ruo and Shire, they learnt from the natives that the Pioneer had gone down the stream. The negroes could give no clear account of how long ago it had been. If they had known that it had been only five days, they would probably have put forth their speed and have overtaken her, but they thought that a much longer time was intended, and that waiting for the return would be not only more prudent, but might enable them to make friends with the chief, and prepare for a station to be established on the island. A hut was given them, and there was plenty of wholesome food on the island.

Inaction, is, however the most fatal curse in that land of fever. There is a cheerful letter written by the Bishop to his home friends, on the 14th and 15th of January; but his vigour was flagging. He spoke with disappointment of the inability of Dr. Livingstone to bring up stores to Chibisa’s, and longed much for his sisters’ arrival, telling his companion it would break his heart if they did not now come. He also wrote a strong letter to the Secretary of the Universities’ Mission, begging for a steam launch to keep up the supplies, where the Pioneer had failed. Soon after this, both became grievously ill; the Bishop’s fever grew violent, he perceived his danger, and told the Malokolo that Jesus would come to take him, but he presently became delirious and insensible, in which condition he lay for five days, the Malokolo waiting on him as well as they could under Burrup’s superintendence.

The negro tribes have an exceeding dread of death, and a hut which has had a corpse in it is shut up for three years. Probably for this reason the chief begged that the dying man might be carried to another hut less needful to himself, and as he had been kind and friendly throughout Mr. Burrup thought it right to comply. Shortly after, on the afternoon of the 31st of January, the pure, gentle, and noble spirit passed away. The chief, from superstitious fear, insisted that the body should be immediately interred, and not on the island, and Mr. Burrup and the Malokolo therefore laid it in their canoe, and paddled to the mainland, where a spot was cleared in the bush, the grave dug, and as it was by this time too dark to see to read, Mr. Burrup said all that he could remember of the burial service, the four blacks standing wondering and mournful by.

He saw that for himself the only hope was in a return to Magomero. The canoe was tried, but the current was so strong that such small numbers could not make head against it. He therefore proceeded on foot, but fell down repeatedly from weakness, and was only dragged on by his strong will and the aid of the Malokolo. They behaved admirably, and when he reached Chibisa’s, and could walk no longer, they and the villagers contrived a palanquin of wood, and carried him on in it. The chief, finding that his store of cloth (i.e. coin) was expended, actually offered him a present of some to carry him on.

On the 14th of February, one of the Malokolo appeared before the anxious colonists at Magomero. His face was that of a bearer of evil tidings, and when they asked for the Bishop, he hid his face in his hands. When they pressed further, he said, “wafa, wafa” (he is dead, he is dead). And while they stood round stunned, he made them understand that Burrup was at hand, so ill as to be carried on men’s shoulders.

There was nothing to be done but to hurry out to meet him, taking the last drop of wine remaining. He had become the very shadow of himself, but even then he slightly rallied, and could he have had nourishing food, wine or brandy, the strength of his constitution would probably have carried him through; but the stores were exhausted, there was nothing to recruit his powers, and on the 23rd of February he likewise died.

Meantime, his young wife, with Miss Mackenzie and Mrs. Livingstone, had sailed in December in a wretchedly uncomfortable little craft, called the Hetty Ellen. On reaching the

Kongone they saw no token of the Pioneer, but after waiting in great discomfort, tossing at the mouth of the river, the vessel made for Mozambique. There they fell in with H.M.S. Gorgon. Captain Wilson, resolved to render them every service in his power, took the ladies on board, the vessel in tow, and carried them to Quillinane, where they presently fell in with Dr. Livingstone and the Pioneer.

His little lake steamer, the Lady Nyassa, had been packed on board the Hetty Ellen, and had formed the only shelter Miss Mackenzie had from the sun, and the transference of this occupied some time. Then the unhappy Pioneer began to proceed at her snail’s pace, one day on a sand-bank, another with the machinery out of order, continually halting for supplies of wood, and thinking a couple of miles a good day’s work. Captain Wilson, shocked at the notion of women spending weeks in labouring up that pestiferous stream, beset with mosquitoes by night and tsetse flies by day, offered to man his gig and take them up himself. So desperate a journey was it for a frail invalid like Miss Mackenzie, that one of the sailors took a spade to dig her grave with; and in fact she was soon prostrated with fever. None of the party knew who lay sleeping in his grave under the trees. The natives on the island entirely denied having seen or heard anything of the Bishop, and never gave Mr. Burrup’s letter, fearing perhaps that some revenge might fall on them. Baffled by not meeting him, Captain Wilson still would not leave the ladies till he should have seen them safe among their friends, and pushed on his boat with speed very unlike that of the tardy Pioneer, and thus, in a day and a half, arrived at Chibisa’s, where the Malokolo came down to the boat, with tidings that, though their language was but imperfectly understood, were only too certain. The brave and tender-hearted leader of the mission was dead! Still there was hope of Mr. Burrup; but Captain Wilson would not allow the young wife to take the difficult journey only to find desolation, but went on by land himself, leaving her with Miss Mackenzie, under charge of his ship’s surgeon, Dr. Ramsay. He came back after a few days, having become too ill by the way to get further than Soche, where he had been met by three of the mission party, who now returned with him to Chibisa’s, with the tidings in all their sad fulness; and the mournful party set forth upon their return. On coming to the island, he demanded Mr. Burrup’s

letter, and the negroes looked at one another, saying, “It is all known.” They gave him the letter, but it was with very great difficulty that they could be persuaded to show him the grave, over which he set up a cross of reeds, and then continuing this sad voyage, placed the ladies on board his ship, and carried them back to Capetown.

Bishop Mackenzie had executed a will not six weeks before his death, bequeathing to the Additional Bishoprics Fund his property, and to the mission his books, except those specially connected with his personal devotions, which were to go to his family, and which Captain Wilson brought down with him, the Bible, Prayer-book, and “Christian Year,” bearing tokens of that immersion in the water which, by the destruction of the medicines, may be believed to have been the chief cause of his death. Until the arrival of a new Bishop, or of instructions from the Metropolitan of Capetown, the headship of the mission was to remain with the senior clergyman, or failing him, of the senior layman. Thus the little colony had their instructions to wait and carry on the work: but further difficulties soon arose. Stores were still wanting, fever prevailed even among the negroes. All the class of little children whom the Bishop used to teach had died under it, each being baptized before its death, and the Ajawa began to threaten again. The lessened force, without a head, decided that, though their advance might drive the enemy back, it was better to avoid further warfare, and relinquish the post at Magomero. With the long train of helpless natives, then, the few white men set forth, and after several days’ tedious and weary march came to Chibisa’s, where they founded a new station on a hill-side, above the native village, and tried to continue their old system; but by Christmas Mr. Scudamore had become fatally ill, and he died on the morning of New Year’s Day, 1863, greatly lamented, not only by the remnant of his own party, but by all the negroes; and on the 17th of March he was followed by Dr. Dickinson.

We do not deal with those still living, therefore we will only further mention that on the 26th of June following Bishop Tozer arrived at Chibisa’s. He decided on removing to a place called Morumbala, a station nearer Quillinane, which he hoped might prove healthier, and out of the reach of the Ajawa. The remaining clergy of the mission were greatly concerned at this,

for they had hopes of influencing the Ajawa, and besides, the negroes whom they had rescued, who had been now more than a year under their care, could not for the most part be taken to Morumbala; for, though grieving much at losing their “English fathers,” they would be placed at a distance from their own tribe, among strangers and possible enemies.

The families who could provide for themselves were left at Chibisa’s, Mr. Waller making the best terms in his power for them. It was sad to leave them without having more thoroughly Christianized them, but the frequent sicknesses of the clergy, the loss of the chief pastor, and the want of some one to take the lead, had prevented their instruction from being all that could have been hoped. They had become warmly attached to the English, and had in many respects much improved, and it is hoped that they may keep alive the memory of the training they have received, and prepare the way for better things.

There were about twenty orphan boys, for whom Bishop Tozer undertook to provide; but there were also ten or twelve women and girls, the former old and infirm, the latter orphans, and these Mr. Waller could not bear to abandon, so he carried them with him to Morumbala, and supported them at his own expense, until at the end of five months it was decided to give up Morumbala, and fix the head-quarters of the Central African Mission at Zanzibar. Then, as it was not easy to convey the boys, or provide for them there, Mr. Waller took the charge of them likewise, and, with Dr. Livingstone’s assistance, conveyed both them and the women and children to Capetown, where he succeeded in procuring homes for them in different families and mission schools or stations. All are now Christians, and show themselves gentle, and susceptible of training and education; nor have they much of that disposition so familiar to us in the transplanted negroes of Western Africa. Four boys were brought to England, but the climate would soon have been fatal to them, and it is evident that Capetown or Natal and its dependencies must be the meeting ground of the English and African races, since there alone can both retain their vigour in the same climate.

Thus ended the first venture of the University mission, in the sacrifice of four lives, which may be well esteemed as freely laid down in the cause of the Gospel. Such lives and such

deaths are the seed of the Church. It is they that speak the loudest in calling for the fresh labourers; and though the Zanzibar Mission has drifted far away from the field of Mackenzie’s labours, and has adopted a different system, and though his toils in Natal never were allowed to continue long enough in a single spot for him personally to reap their fruits upon earth, not only has his name become a trumpet call, but out of his grave has sprung, as it were, a mission in the very quarter where, had he been permitted, he would have spent his best efforts, namely, the free Zulu country, Panda’s kingdom, to the north of the Tugela.

It has been already mentioned that Mr. and Mrs. Robertson had removed thither, from their station upon the Umlazi, taking with them a selection of their Christian Kaffirs, and settling, with the king’s permission, at a place called Kwamagwaza. At first they lived in a waggon and tents, for, delicate and often ill as was Mrs. Robertson, she shrank from no hardship or exertion. She writes, “My own health has been wonderful, in spite of much real suffering from the closeness of the waggon, and exposure to rain or hot sun, which is even more trying. I often have to sleep with the waggon open, and a damp foggy air flowing through to keep me from fainting, and I have often told myself, ‘You might be worse off in the cabin of a steamer,’ that I might not pity myself too much.”

A hut was soon raised, and Mrs. Robertson here ruled in her own peculiarly dignified and tender way as the mother of the whole station, keeping guard there while her husband went on expeditions to visit the king and his son Ketchewayo, the chief executive authority. Another hut was raised to serve as a church, and the days were arranged much as those on the Umlazi had been. Children were born to the Christian couples, and Mrs. Robertson spent much time and care in teaching the mothers how to deal with them after a civilized and Christian fashion. Other children were sometimes brought to her to be adopted, and when entirely made over by their parents were baptized and bred up as Christians. The general trust in Mr. Robertson’s skill as a doctor brought many people under his influence, and likewise gave some, though very slight assistance, in combating the belief in witchcraft, the worst enemy with which Christianity has to contend.

Whenever a person falls sick or meets with an accident, a conjurer is sent for, who attributes the disaster to some other person, on whom revenge must be taken. In the British territory, no more can be done than to treat the supposed wizard with contumely, such as to render his life a burthen to him, and he can generally escape this by entering some white man’s service, or attaching himself to a mission-station; but in independent Zululand, any disaster to prince or great chief was sure to be followed by a horrible massacre of the whole family of the supposed offender, unless he had time to escape across the border. Many a time did wounded women and children fly from the slaughter to Kwamagwaza, and Mr. and Mrs. Robertson protect them from the first fury of the pursuers, and then almost force consent from Ketchewayo to their living under the protection of the umfundisi.

Visits to Ketchewayo formed a very important part of the work, since they gradually established his confidence in Mr. Robertson, and obtained concessions that facilitated the Christianizing of his people. One of his great objections was the fear of losing their services as warriors. The regiments still assemble at his camp as in the days of Dingarn, go through their exercises and sing their war-songs, into some of which are introduced lines in contempt of the Kaffirs who have passed the Tugela to live under British law:—

“The Natal people have no king,
They eat salt;
To every tag-rag white man they say,
‘Your Excellency!’”

Mrs. Robertson’s niece, Miss Fanny Woodrow, who had come out to join her, arrived at Durban, and was there met by Mrs. Robertson herself, in her waggon, after the long and perilous journey undertaken alone with the Kaffirs. Her residence at Kwamagwaza was a time of much interest and prosperity; she threw herself into the work, and much assisted in the training of the women and children, and one or two visits she made to Ketchewayo greatly delighted the prince. She came in June 1861, but she had become engaged on her way out to the Rev. Lovell Procter, and when the mission at Chibisa’s was given up, he was in such a state of health as not to be able to continue with the University Mission. Therefore

he set out on his return, and, coming to Natal by the way, arrived at Kwamagwaza early in 1864. He was the first brother clergyman Mr. Robertson had seen since coming into Zululand, and the mingling of joy at the meeting, and of sorrow for Bishop Mackenzie, were almost overwhelming. At Easter Mr. Procter and Miss Woodrow were married, in the little mission church, built of bricks made by Mr. Robertson’s own hands and those of his pupils; and soon after Mr. and Mrs. Robertson set out in their waggon to escort the newly-married pair to Durban, taking with them several of their converts, and all their flock of adopted children.

The stay in Durban, and Pieter Maritzburg, among old friends, was full of comfort and pleasure; but the indefatigable missionary and his wife were soon on their way home, their waggon heavily loaded with boxes sent by friends in England, containing much that they had longed for—among other things, iron-work for fitting their church. On the 18th of June, when they were three days’ journey across the Tugela, while Mr. Robertson was walking in front of the waggon to secure a safe track for it, the wheels, in coming down a descent, slid along on some slippery grass, and there was a complete overturn, the waggon falling on its side with the wheels in the air, and Mrs. Robertson, and a little Kaffir boy of three years old, under the whole of the front portion of the load.

Her husband and the Kaffirs cut away the side of the waggon with axes, and tried to draw her out, but she was too fast wedged in. She said in a calm voice, “Oh, remove the boxes,” but before this could be done she had breathed her last, apparently from suffocation, for her limbs were not crushed, and her exceeding delicacy of frame and shortness of breath probably made the weight and suffocation fatal to her. The little boy suffered no injury.

The spot was near a Norwegian mission station, where the kindest help was immediately offered to the husband. A coffin was made of plank that had been bought at Durban to be made into church doors, and when her husband had kept lonely vigil all night over her remains, Henrietta Robertson was laid in her grave, where the Norwegians hope to build their church, Mr. Robertson himself reading the service over her.

But her work has not died with her. Mr. Robertson returned to his lonely task, helped and tended by the converted man

and his wife, Usajabula and Christina, whom she had trained, and whose child had been with her in the fatal overturn. A clergyman returning from the Zanzibar Mission came to him and aided him for a while; other helpers have come out from time to time, and meantime, Miss Mackenzie exerted herself to the utmost, straining every nerve to obtain funds for the establishment of a Missionary Bishopric in Zululand, as the most fitting memorial to her brother, since it was here that, had he chosen for himself, his work would have lain. After several years of endeavour she has succeeded, and, even as these last pages are written, we hold in our hands the account of the arrival of the new Bishop at Kwamagwaza.

So it is that the work never perishes, but the very extinction of one light seems to cause the lighting of many more; and thus it is that the word is being gradually fulfilled that the Gospel shall be preached to all nations, and that “the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”