When he was leaving Cawnpore, Henry Martyn was about to destroy what he called ‘a number of memorandums.’ These afterwards proved to be his Journals from January 1803 to 1811, some of which were written in Latin, and some in Greek, for greater secrecy. Corrie remonstrated with him, and persuaded him to seal them up and leave them in his hands. Lord Minto, the Governor-General, and General Hewett, the Commander-in-chief, after receiving a statement of Martyn’s object, gave their sanction to his spending his sick-leave in Persia and Syria. At first the only ship he could find bound for Bombay, en route to the Persian Gulf, was one of the native buggalows which carried the coasting trade in the days before the British India Steam Navigation Company had begun to develop the commerce of the Indian Ocean all along East Africa, Southern Asia, the Spice Islands, and Australasia. But he wrote to Corrie:
The captain of the ship after many excuses has at last refused to take me, on the ground that I might try to convert the Arab sailors, and so cause a mutiny in the ship. So I am quite out of heart, and more than half disposed to go to the right about, and come back to Cawnpore.
His uncompromising earnestness as a witness for Christ was well known. Fortunately, a month after, the Honourable Mountstuart Elphinstone ‘was proceeding to take the residency of Poona,’ and Martyn secured a passage in the same ship, the Hummoody, an Arab coaster belonging to a Muscat merchant, and manned by his Abyssinian slave as Nakhoda.
His last message to Calcutta, on the evening of the first Sunday of the year 1811, was on The one thing needful. Next morning he quietly went on board Mr. Elphinstone’s pinnace ‘without taking leave of my two dear friends in Calcutta.’ As they dropped down the Hoogli, anchoring for two nights in its treacherous waters, his henceforth brief entries in his Journal are these: ‘8th. Conversation with Mr. Elphinstone, and disputes with his Persian moulvi, left me weak and in pain. 9th. Reached the ship at Saugur, and began to try my strength with the Arab sailors.’ He found that the country-born captain, Kinsay, had been brought up by Schwartz, and he obtained from him much information regarding the habits and the rule of the Lutheran apostle of Southern India. This is new:
It was said that Schwartz had a warning given him of his death. One clear moonlight night he saw a light, and heard a voice which said to him, ‘Follow me.’ He got up and went to the door; here the vision vanished. The next day he sent for Dr. Anderson and said, ‘An old tree must fall.’ On the doctor’s perceiving there was nothing the matter with him, Schwartz asked him whether he observed any disorder in his intellect; to which the doctor replied, ‘No.’ He and General Floyd (now in Ireland), another friend of Schwartz, came and stayed with him. The next fifteen days he was continually engaged in devotion, and attended no more to the school: on the last day he died in his chair.
Henry Martyn was well fitted by culture and training to appreciate the society of such statesmen and thinkers as Mountstuart Elphinstone, Sir John Malcolm, Sir James Mackintosh, and Jonathan Duncan, who in their turn delighted in his society during the next five weeks. Of the first he wrote to Corrie: ‘His agreeable manners and classical acquirements made me think myself fortunate indeed in having such a companion, and I found his company the most agreeable circumstance in my voyage.’ They walked together in the cinnamon groves of Ceylon, when the ship touched at Colombo; together they talked of the work of Xavier as they skirted Cape Comorin, and observed Portuguese churches every two or three miles, with a row of huts on each side. ‘Perhaps,’ he wrote in his Journal, ‘many of these poor people, with all the incumbrances of Popery, are moving towards the kingdom of heaven.’ Together the two visited old Goa, the ecclesiastical capital, its convents and churches. The year after their visit the Goa Inquisition, one of the cruellest of its branches since its foundation, was suppressed. Henry Martyn’s letters to Lydia Grenfell best describe his experiences and impressions:
To Lydia Grenfell
At Sea, Coast of Malabar: February 4, 1811.
The last letter I wrote to you, my dearest Lydia, was dated November 1810. I continued in Calcutta to the end of the year, preaching once a week, and reading the Word in some happy little companies, with whom I enjoyed that sweet communion which all in this vale of tears have reason to be thankful for, but especially those whose lot is cast in a heathen land. On New-year’s day, at Mr. Brown’s urgent request, I preached a sermon for the Bible Society, recommending an immediate attention to the state of the native Christians. At the time I left Calcutta they talked of forming an auxiliary society. Leaving Calcutta was so much like leaving England, that I went on board my boat without giving them notice, and so escaped the pain of bidding them farewell. In two days I met my ship at the mouth of the river, and we put to sea immediately. Our ship is commanded by a pupil of Schwartz, and manned by Arabians, Abyssinians, and others. One of my fellow-passengers is Mr. Elphinstone, who was lately ambassador at the court of the King of Cabul, and is now going to be resident at Poona, the capital of the Mahratta empire. So the group is rather interesting, and I am happy to say not averse to religious instruction; I mean the Europeans. As for the Asiatics, they are in language, customs, and religion, as far removed from us as if they were inhabitants of another planet. I speak a little Arabic sometimes to the sailors, but their contempt of the Gospel, and attachment to their own superstition, make their conversion appear impossible. How stupendous that power which can make these people the followers of the Lamb, when they so nearly resemble Satan in pride and wickedness! The first part of the voyage I was without employment, and almost without thought, suffering as usual so much from sea sickness, that I had not spirits to do anything but sit upon the poop, surveying the wide waste of waters blue. This continued all down the Bay of Bengal. At length in the neighbourhood of Ceylon we found smooth water, and came to an anchor off Colombo, the principal station in the island. The captain having proposed to his passengers that they should go ashore and refresh themselves with a walk in the cinnamon gardens, Mr. Elphinstone and myself availed ourselves of the offer, and went off to inhale the cinnamon breeze. The walk was delightful. The huts of the natives, who are (in that neighbourhood at least) most of them Protestants, are built in thick groves of cocoanut-tree, with openings here and there, discovering the sea. Everything bore the appearance of contentment. I contemplated them with delight, and was almost glad that I could not speak with them, lest further acquaintance should have dissipated the pleasing ideas their appearance gave birth to. In the gardens I cut off a piece of the bark for you. It will not be so fragrant as that which is properly prepared; but it will not have lost its fine smell, I hope, when it reaches you.
At Captain Rodney’s, the Chief Secretary to Government, we met a good part of the European society of Colombo. The party was like most mixed parties in England, where much is said that need not be remembered. The next day we stretched across the Gulf of Manaar, and soon came in sight of Cape Comorin, the great promontory of India. At a distance the green waves seemed to wash the foot of the mountain, but on a nearer approach little churches were seen, apparently on the beach, with a row of little huts on each side. Was it these maritime situations that recalled to my mind Perran church and town in the way to Gurlyn; or that my thoughts wander too often on the beach to the east of Lamorran? You do not tell me whether you ever walk there, and imagine the billows that break at your feet to have made their way from India. But why should I wish to know? Had I observed silence on that day and thenceforward, I should have spared you much trouble, and myself much pain. Yet I am far from regretting that I spoke, since I am persuaded that all things will work together for good. I sometimes try to put such a number of things together as shall produce the greatest happiness possible, and I find that even in imagination I cannot satisfy myself. I set myself to see what is that ‘good for the sons of men, which they should do under heaven all the days of their life,’ and I find that paradise is not here. Many things are delightful, some things are almost all one could wish; but yet in all beauty there is deformity, in the most perfect something wanting, and there is no hope of its ever being otherwise. ‘That which is crooked cannot be made straight, and that which is wanting cannot be numbered.’ So that the expectation of happiness on earth seems chimerical to the last degree. In my schemes of happiness I place myself of course with you, blessed with great success in the ministry, and seeing all India turning to the Lord. Yet it is evident that with these joys there would be mingled many sorrows. The care of all the churches was a burden to the mighty mind of St. Paul. As for what we should be together, I judge of it from our friends. Are they quite beyond the vexations of common life? I think not—still I do not say that it is a question whether they gained or lost by marrying. Their affections will live when ours (I should rather say mine) are dead. Perhaps it may not be the effect of celibacy; but I certainly begin to feel a wonderful indifference to all but myself. From so seldom seeing a creature that cares for me, and never one that depends at all upon me, I begin to look round upon men with reciprocal apathy. It sometimes calls itself deadness to the world, but I much fear that it is deadness of heart. I am exempt from worldly cares myself, and therefore do not feel for others. Having got out of the stream into still water, I go round and round in my own little circle. This supposed deterioration you will ascribe to my humility; therefore I add that Mr. Brown could not help remarking the difference between what I am and what I was, and observed on seeing my picture, which was taken at Calcutta for Mr. Simeon, and is thought a striking likeness, that it was not Martyn that arrived in India, but Martyn the recluse.