The difficulty was solved. A swift footman was despatched to Chiengmai asking Mr. Martin to send me at once a copy of the Prince’s deed of gift. Next morning it came, and I took it immediately to the Court. The officer’s surprise was evident. He took it and read it carefully through. His word was given. After a moment’s thought he said, “That is all right. It will relieve me of all responsibility.” Then he called up his clerk to copy its terms and execute the new deed. The land was ours to use as long as we should use it for the purposes specified; and that I hoped would be until the millennium! With a light heart I was soon aboard my boat and homeward bound.
When the house had been removed and set up on the lot, Mr. Collins and I went down and spent a week there, with interested audiences every night. It at once became an important out-station of the Chiengmai mission. In the meantime Mr. Dodd had already collected some twenty students for his training-class, but without any quarters for them in Chiengmai. Later Mr. and Mrs. Dodd were put in charge of the station, and the Training School was moved over to Lampūn. When the Lampūn church was organized, its charter members numbered nearly two hundred. It is now the mother of two other churches. Scarcity of men in the mission, openings in other places, and other causes have prevented the Lampūn station from being continuously manned. But now, with such efficient workers there as Mr. and Mrs. Freeman, it has an important future before it, as a sub-station of Chiengmai.
Meanwhile my own sickness had continued, with several relapses. A minor surgical operation had so delayed my recovery that Dr. Cary now advised a change and rest in a boat trip to Bangkok. After the departure of our son to the United States, my wife had remained in Bangkok for a visit, and was soon to return. The telegraph line which the Siamese government had recently completed, enabled me to wire to her to wait for me to come and bring her back. Dr. Cary himself, who had never recovered from the shock occasioned by the tragic death of Mrs. Cary, and who was never well during his whole stay in the mission, decided to accompany me as far as Rahêng.
At Pāknam Pō I left my boat, and took passage for Bangkok by river steamer, thus saving seven days. After remaining in Bangkok only three nights, my wife and I took passage in the same steamer on her return trip, and rejoined our boat at the forks. The water was at its best stage, and we passed up some of the rapids without knowing that they were there. But my trouble had not left me. A low diet and long illness had left me thin and weak. The round trip occupied only two months. Our last Sunday was at Pāk Bawng, two days below Chiengmai. There we held a communion service with the Christian families, and a new family was baptized.
Three miles to the east is Bān Pên, the village which has figured in a previous chapter. The Christians there had long been asking for a visit, which my own sickness and want of time on the part of others rendered it impossible to make. On Monday morning I decided to take the risk and visit it. With some misgivings I saw my wife’s boat move off and leave me—burning, so to speak, my bridges behind me. The whole country was flooded. Discarding shoes and stockings, I made my way on foot, weak as I was, through water, across ditches, or along the narrow ridges of rice-fields, and finally reached Bān Pên in safety.
And what a week I spent in that neighbourhood! At Nawng Sīu, a village two miles distant from Bān Pên, there were six families of professed believers whom Dr. Dodd and I had visited the season before—almost swimming at times to reach them in their scattered homes. Their admission was postponed at that time until they should have had further instruction. To these I specially addressed myself. During the week our faithful elder, Nān Tā, came down to assist me in the work. On Friday evening the session met at Nawng Sīu to examine and instruct these new converts, and again on Saturday morning, closing finally at two o’clock in the afternoon with baptism and the Lord’s Supper. On counting up the numbers, it was found that twenty adults and seventeen children had been baptized. Among them was an aged couple with their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. It was a memorable sight. The Sabbath was spent at Bān Pên, where seven more adults and one child were baptized. On Monday I made my way back to the boat as I had come, and reached home on Tuesday. And now for the strange part of the story. I reached home well. My week’s wading in the water, and the hard work, had done what medicine and doctors and a long boat trip had failed to accomplish!
But a new disappointment awaited me. Before I reached home, Dr. Cary had resigned. His short career is one of the mysteries to be explained in the great beyond. A consecrated physician, he had given his life to the Lāo people. Crushed by his tragic bereavement on the way out, and with a constitution never strong, he contended manfully for two years against the debilitating effects of a malarial climate. But at last he had to give up the fight. His work had been successful. “He saved others; himself he could not save!”
His departure threw on me again the oversight of the medical work. But this time most of the dispensing of medicine to the natives fell on Chanta, a protégé of my own, who had had good training under two physicians. Meanwhile Dr. Cheek looked after the mission families, and, as already stated, was always ready to respond to an urgent call in the hospital. My time was largely given, therefore, to the evangelistic work, to instructing Nān Tā and other elders, and to teaching enquirers and others to read in Siamese, first the Shorter Catechism, and then a Gospel.
The growth of the Chiengmai church, though not phenomenal, was very healthy and very uniform throughout the year. There were accessions every month save one, amounting in all to one hundred and sixty souls. At the end of the year Miss I. A. Griffin returned from furlough, and served a very useful term until 1896, when she retired greatly missed. At Lakawn, Rev. Hugh Taylor and his wife began a twenty years’ course of evangelistic work carried on with indefatigable zeal, while Miss Fleeson was no less zealous and successful in laying the foundation of a Girls’ School, destined to be a power in that province.