A FUGITIVE IN THE HIMALAYA MOUNTAINS.
In the summer of 1852 Colonel B——, on an excursion to the snowy range of the Himalayas, had proceeded into the mountains some twenty miles beyond any known habitation of civilized man, when the natives told him that, in a village near by, a white man was living in concealment.
Incredible as it appeared, Colonel B—— followed his guides to a little native hut with mud walls and roof of grass. Taking a peep in at the low entrance, sure enough, there he spied an elderly person with a white face, but in the most shabby dress of the natives, who, on catching a glance of the intruder, rushed into a dark corner of his miserable hovel, out of which the most earnest entreaties and assurances of good intentions scarcely brought him.
He was the son of an English gentleman who, like thousands of the high-bred youths of England, had come to India to procure a title to a Government pension, and, after remaining here ten or twenty years, return home and live in ease. Like not a few who come to this land, supposing he could scarcely avoid becoming rich, he had run recklessly into debt, until he was threatened with a term of years in close confinement unless he should immediately cancel his liabilities, to do which he was totally incapable. He fled beyond the limits of the British territory to the place where Colonel B—— found him, where he had subsisted for some fifteen years, in the manner of the wild natives around him, not excepting their revolting vices.
Colonel B—— told him of a debt he owed, which, if not discharged, might consign him to chains and darkness, not for a term of years, but for eternity; begged him earnestly to seek to escape that everlasting imprisonment in the dungeons of the unutterably miserable; prayed with him, and gave him a few tracts, which, like many good men, Colonel B—— is in the habit of taking with him wherever he goes.
Two years after, he again visited him, and found that the seed he had been permitted to sow was springing up. On reading the tract, "It is the Last Time," he could have no peace of mind until he found assurance of his greatest debt being cancelled by the blood of Christ.
His brother, who was receiving a large salary in India, was delighted to be permitted to meet his earthly liabilities, and requested him to return to England and live the remainder of his days in comfortable ease. But no; he said he had opposed and reviled the Christian religion in India, and here he wished to do what he could to counteract his past evil influence.
He is now at S——, daily assisting a missionary in proclaiming to the heathen the only way of eternal life. May He whose grace has raised him thus far out of the loathsome den, lead him still onward, and make him an eminent aid and ornament to the faith which he so long despised and reproached.
In what various ways does God enable him to do good whose heart is set upon it! The author of that tract probably never thought of its floating over the waves fifteen thousand miles, fluttering on the breeze another thousand miles into the heart of a heathen country, amidst the bears and wolves and wild men of the Himalayas, lighting upon a poor degraded immortal, "twice dead and plucked up by the roots," and proving him a son and heir of the Lord God Almighty, a being to reign on the throne of the universe for ever with the King of kings. "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!"