From Egypt to Japan

by Henry M. Field

The visit to these spots, consecrated by so much suffering, had an added tenderness of interest, because some of our own countrymen and countrywomen perished there. In those fearful scenes the blood of Americans—men, women, and children—mingled with that of their English kindred. One of the most terrible incidents of those weeks of crime, was the massacre of a party from Futteghur that tried to escape down the Ganges, hoping to reach Allahabad. As they approached Cawnpore, they concealed themselves in the tall grass on an island, but were discovered by the Sepoys, and made prisoners. Some of the party were wealthy English residents, who offered a large ransom for their lives. But their captors answered roughly: "What they wanted was not money, but blood!" Brought before Nana Sahib, he ordered them instantly to be put to death. Among them were four American missionaries, with their wives, who showed in that hour of trial that they knew how to suffer and to die. Of one of these I had heard a very touching story but a few days before from my friend, Mr. Woodside. When we were standing on the lower range of the Himalayas, looking off to "the snows," he told me how he had once made an expedition with a brother missionary among these mountains, which are full of villages, like the hamlets in the High Alps. He pointed out in the distance the very route they took, and even places on the sides of the successive ranges where they pitched their tents. They started near the close of September, and were out all October, and came in about the middle of November, being gone six weeks. After long and weary marches for many days, they came to a little village called Karsali near Jumnootree, the source of the sacred river Jumna, near which rose a giant peak, 19,000 feet high (though we could but just see it on the horizon), that till then had never been trodden by human foot, but which they, like the daring Americans they were, determined to ascend. Their guides shrank from the attempt, and refused to accompany them; but they determined to make the ascent if they went alone, and at last, rather than be left behind, their men followed, although one sank down in the snow, and could not reach the summit. But the young missionaries pressed on with fresh ardor, as they climbed higher and higher. As they reached the upper altitudes, the summit, which to us at a distance of ninety miles seemed but a peak or cone, broadened out into a plateau of miles in extent; the snow was firm and hard; they feared no crevasses, and strode on with fearless steps. But there was something awful in the silence and the solitude. Not a living thing could be seen on the face of earth or sky. Not a bird soared to such heights; not an eagle or a vulture was abroad in search of prey; not a bone on the waste of snow told where any adventurous explorer had perished before them. Alone they marched over the fields of untrodden snow, and started almost to hear their own voices in that upper air. And yet such was their sense of freedom, that they could not contain their joy. My companion, said Mr. Woodside, was very fond of a little hymn in Hindostanee, a translation of the familiar lines:

I'm a pilgrim, I'm a stranger,

And I tarry but a night,

and as we went upward, he burst into singing, and sang joyously as he strode over the fields of snow. Little he thought that the end of his pilgrimage was so near! But six months later the Mutiny broke out, and he was one of its first victims. He was of the party from Futteghur, with a fate made more dreadful, because he had with him not only his wife, but two children, and the monster spared neither age nor sex. After the Mutiny, Mr. Woodside visited Cawnpore, and made diligent inquiry for the particulars of his friend's death. It was difficult to get the details, as the natives were very reticent, lest they should be accused; but as near as he could learn, "Brother Campbell," as he spoke of him, was led out with his wife—he holding one child in his arms, and she leading another by the hand—and thus all together they met their fate! Does this seem very hard? Yet was it not sweet that they could thus die together, and could come up (like the family of Christian in Pilgrim's Progress) in one group to the wicket gate? No need had he to sing any more:

I'm a pilgrim, I'm a stranger,

And I tarry but a night,

for on that summer morning he passed up a shining pathway, whiter than the fields of snow on the crest of the Himalayas, that led him straight to the gates of gold. Let no man complain of the sacrifice, who would claim the reward; for so it is written, "It is through much tribulation that we must enter into the Kingdom of God."

CHAPTER XVII.

THE STORY OF LUCKNOW.