“Time passed. At 10:30 they were still at their cups. My patience was now clear gone. To go on I was resolved and no longer to be defrauded of my time by a knave. I told him ‘go he must’ or I should go on without him and he should not receive a penny of the half-hire to be paid at the journey’s end, and I should report him to the governor of Korat, who had put me in his care. ‘And how will you go on without the buffalo carts?’ he impudently asked. ‘Do as I did when I went on to Korat; I will hire carriers here in the village and walk on.’ ‘Not a man shall leave this place to help you’—put in the custom house officer, ‘he would forbid their going.’
“I had said nothing to him before, but now I spoke: ‘Mr. Officer, last night you heard my passport read and the peremptory order of the viceroy of Korat that I be not detained a single day on my mission’—and I took him by the arm as I spoke and looked him in the face—‘You dare not stop me. Is his excellency the governor of Korat nobody? I have the royal seal, too—do you not dread that? Keep me here one-half day more and you will repent of it.’
“His anger that was written on every line of his knavish face sobered him. The villagers around looked on astonished at my audacity, bearding this great man in his den, and he did not know what to make of it. Just then, my guide seeing that I was resolute in the matter, gave in, ordered the buffalos to be yoked and told his servants to drive ahead, he would follow. I took a formal but civil leave of the worthy; we were off, and my guide, running after, soon overtook us. Would you believe it, we proceeded but three quarters of an hour, when he drove off the highway to the shelter of some trees by the side of a swamp and there came to a halt, pretending it was necessary to feed the buffalos and that there was no suitable place beyond. So there two or more hours were lost—and this while one of my servants was very ill, our stock of provisions all low, and already seventeen days on a journey that should have taken but seven.”
The river was finally reached; the buffalo caravan dismissed and boats engaged to carry the party to Bangkok, where they arrived after nineteen days’ travel from Korat.
Two lesser trips were made in 1854, which were of some interest. In June, he accompanied the Baptist missionaries on a trip to Bangplasoi on the gulf:
“I had long been promising myself a visit to my old patient, Chek Chong, the Chinese fisherman whose arm I amputated five or six years ago to save his life, threatened by mortification resulting from an alligator bite that had nearly severed the poor man’s wrist. The loss of his arm seems to have been under Providence the means of saving his soul, for the religious impression he received while in the hospital never left him; he then expressed himself willing to make our God his God. Being unable to read and not being able to speak Siamese at all ... we referred him to our brethren of the Baptist mission with some of whose church members he was already acquainted.... After a due season of instruction and probation they received him to church membership about a year ago.
“Living some sixty to seventy miles from Bangkok he cannot often see his spiritual teachers, and would be quite shut out from religious privilege, were it not that Bangplasoi has been made a kind of an outstation by the Baptist mission.... So when I was invited to accompany Mr. Ashmore to that mission, I readily accepted....
“While there, Chek Chong told me that ever since he had lived with us at the hospital he had observed the Sabbath, refraining from labour. Looking around at the evidence of thrift about him, I replied: ‘I do not believe you are the poorer for losing one day’s work in seven.’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘while the fish business has turned out poorly this season, out of thirty engaged in it of my neighbours, only four have succeeded at all, and I am one.’
“We attended morning and evening worship with the family and such of their neighbours as chose to come in and listen.... Chek Chong being called on to lead in prayer, offered up thanks most devoutly that ‘the redheaded (i. e., not black like Chinese) foreign teachers had come to visit him.’ He seems to have much influence for Christ; he is not ashamed of our Christ; two of his nephews are inquirers; the wife puts no hindrance in his way.”
The other trip was made in November, when the doctor explored the Meinam “farthest north” up to that date, reaching Pitsanuloke and Pichit and occupying thirty-three days. Some sixty to seventy villages were visited along the way and more than thirteen hundred tracts given only to those who could read.