“Last week the King sent for your father to treat a prince who had had the fever for fifteen days. During his paroxysms his cries could be heard throughout the whole neighbourhood. In their extremity they sent for your father, and gave up the case to him with permission to remove all spirit-charms during the treatment. He is now out of danger.” [Mrs. McG.]

“For three weeks I have had a young prince in hospital who had attempted suicide by cutting his throat. He was a fearful sight. It did not seem possible that he could survive the night. I sewed up the wound, however, and now he is well, and apparently penitent.” [D. McG.]

“We are well as usual, but engrossed in work. Your father is pressed beyond measure with the work of two men. On the return of Dr. Cheek’s boats, we received forty ounces of quinine; but it is going at a fearful rate. The hospital is full of patients, and there are at least one hundred more to be prescribed for daily. If I did not drop everything else and help him, he could not possibly get through the day’s work.” [Mrs. McG.]

“Soon the quinine was all gone, and our compound was becoming a veritable lazaretto. Most of the patients were anæmic and dropsical from long-standing fever. They came, because to remain at home was to die. Then a new complication arose. Unusual symptoms began to occur that I could not account for. One morning at breakfast we were called to see a little girl who had a hemorrhage. She had no cough and had no consumption. While I was looking up the symptoms and cause, your mother discovered that the bleeding was from the gums. That gave us the clue. It was scurvy. I found that we had at least thirty others whose gums were similarly diseased. We began at once to give them lime-juice, and prescribed vegetables, for the lack of which they were starving. It is the invariable custom of Lāo doctors in cases of fever to put the patient on a strict diet of boiled rice and dried fish. On such diet some of our patients had been living for two or three months. They might as well have been on an arctic voyage!” [D. McG.]

“Day before yesterday we tried to have a picnic. A princess had promised us two elephants, but only one came. Your father took a horse. The three children and I rode the elephant. Our destination was the Doi Sutēp temple. About half the way up the mountain the elephant either concluded that there was no fun in going up alone, or, more probably, that he had an uncomfortable load, and refused to go any further. He turned out of the road, and tried to throw the driver from his neck. The children became alarmed, and we dismounted as best we could. The children refused to try riding him again; and since we had come largely for their pleasure, we had our lunch by a brook, and returned home on foot.” [Mrs. McG.]

“We had an interesting incident at our December communion. Just as I had announced the communion hymn, I saw Chao Borirak—the Nān prince, who had twice accompanied me with his elephant on my journeys, and for whose sake largely one of my trips to Nān had been taken—enter the room. As he had been the subject of much special prayer on our part, I could hardly command my voice sufficiently to proceed with the hymn. On my return from my furlough he had written that he would visit me at the first opportunity. His uncle, the Prince of Nān, had a grandson in danger of losing his sight from an accident. He had persuaded the Prince that possibly our medicine might help him. He brought a few presents from the Prince, and for himself had brought a gold ring with a native pearl from the Nān river. He is very anxious that I should move to Nān, but I tell him that he must wait for you.... With fever and death around us we have been wonderfully preserved from ‘the pestilence that walketh in darkness, and the destruction that wasteth at noonday.’ We have had our anxieties about the children. During the last hot season we were afraid that little Margaret would melt away, she was so thin.” [D. McG.]

But the labours of the year were not in vain. During its progress Nān Suwan, who afterwards became the founder of the church in Chieng Sên, and four others who became influential ruling elders, were baptized. And with these was Pā Kawng, an aged slave of the Prince, who lived to be one of the Lāo saints.

XVIII
WITCHCRAFT

On January 6th, 1878, two native converts were received into the church—Nān Sī Wichai, the fine scholar who had been Dr. Cheek’s teacher, and the wife of a leading elder—and with them our own daughter Cornelia. This was the bright beginning of the year that brought in religious toleration.