CHAPTER VI
'IN JOURNEYINGS OFTEN, IN PERILS OF RIVERS'
The year following the marriage, owing to the absence of Dr. Dudgeon on furlough, was spent almost entirely in Peking. In his absence Mr. Gilmour took charge of what may be called the unprofessional work of the hospital, the purely medical superintendence being in the hands of Dr. Bushell of the British Legation. He varied this work and the routine of ordinary mission duties by an occasional trip to other centres where fairs were being held, in the company of Mr. Murray, of the National Bible Society of Scotland, for the purpose of selling Christian books. There was often a very keen friendly rivalry as to which could sell the most, and not unfrequently very large quantities of tracts and booklets were thus put into circulation.
Early in 1875, with the object of enabling his colleagues and his friends among the other missions which have centres in Peking the better to realise what life in Mongolia was like, he set up his Mongol tent in the compound, and invited them in companies of five or seven to partake of a Mongol dinner, cooked in Mongol fashion, and served as on the Plain. His diary records that five such entertainments were necessary, the utmost limit of the tent accommodation being reached on each occasion.
'The guests came,' we are told, 'at the appointed time, and the fire of wood was lighted in the middle of the tent. While the guests sat around on felt spread upon the ground, Gilmour proceeded to cook the millet and the mutton which furnished the feast. When all was ready a blessing was asked and the meal was eaten. On one occasion a reverend gentleman was called on to ask the blessing, but declined, feeling apparently that what he was expected to eat was not of such a quality that he could ask a blessing on it. Gilmour used often to refer to this with much amusement, though at the time he felt some chagrin.'
In 1876 the Mongolian trips were resumed. No colleague had yet been secured for him, and, with a bravery and consecration beyond all praise, Mrs. Gilmour accompanied him. This she did not once simply. For the first journey the novelty of the experience and the conviction that she could at any rate help to preserve her husband from the feeling of utter loneliness, which had been so hard to bear in past years, were powerful reasons. But she went a second and a third time. She went after the novelty had worn off, after she had learned by very stern experience how hard and rough the life was, after previous exposure had told but too severely upon her physical strength. And thus she deserves the eulogy passed upon her by her husband: 'She is a better missionary than I.' Comparisons of this kind are obviously out of the question. But it would be hard to find a more beautiful illustration of true wifely affection than the love for her husband that made her willing to share his Mongol tent as readily as the Peking compound. And if James Gilmour manifested a Christlike love for the ignorant and stolid Mongols, so also did the delicately nurtured and refined lady who, in order to do her part in winning them to the Saviour, endured privations, faced perils, and bore a daily and hourly series of trials so irksome and so repugnant that no motive short of all-absorbing love to Jesus Christ is strong enough to account for her endurance.
Here are some pictures of what this life meant to Mrs. Gilmour. The first journey which they took together lasted from April 4 until September 23, 1876, one hundred and thirty-six days being passed in Mongolia itself.
'On the evening of April 25 we came upon our servants' tent, already pitched beside some Mongol tents near a stream. Our things were unloaded from the Chinese cart, which soon drove off and left us fairly launched out on the Plain. We had two tents—one for ourselves and one for our servants. They were both alike, made of common blue Chinese cloth outside, and of commoner white Chinese cloth inside. It was originally intended that our tent should be private for our retirement and for Mrs. Gilmour's use; but we soon found that this idea could not be carried out. The Mongols are so much in the habit of going freely into everybody's tent in Mongolia that we found we could not retain our tent to ourselves without running risk of offending them by our seeming haughtiness. That they should think us uncongenial and distant would have been an obstacle to our success among them. So we made a virtue of necessity, and kept open house in the literal sense of the word. At our meals, our devotions, our ablutions, there they were—much amused and interested, of course. It was sometimes annoying to have them so much and so constantly about, but there was no help for it, and soon we began to care little for them, and took their presence not only as a matter of course, but without being disturbed by it.
'One advantage of this sort of public life was that Mrs. Gilmour, being almost constantly in the presence of the spoken language, picked it up very accurately and very rapidly. It is hardly possible to conceive a better plan of becoming easily and well acquainted with any language than that of thus living where it is impossible not to hear it in almost constant use.
'Another advantage of this sort of public life was that one gained the friendship of the people. This perfect freedom of intercourse pleased them much, and even conciliated those not very friendly inclined. It was quite common to hear visitors remark that, while other foreigners in Mongolia are distant and harsh, these people were gentle and accessible, and that such friendly people did a great deal to remove the unfavourable impressions made by other less considerate travellers.
'Our sojourn extended to the end of August, giving us a little over four months at a stretch of tent life. In that time we had experience of many kinds of weather. At first it was cold. Even in May ice was to be seen in the mornings. Then came heat, premature and burning, and all the more trying for ourselves and cattle on account of the lack of rain. Then we had a furious tempest, which raged for about thirty-six hours, overturning our covered cart and threatening to sweep ourselves and our tents away. We had to load down our tent ropes with bags of earth, stones, sod, the bodies of our carts, wheels, boxes, and anything we could find, and even then we had but a precarious existence. Every now and then, by day and by night, there would arise a shout from the one tent or the other, and amid the roar of the wind we heard cries for the hammer and the spare tent pins. We managed to fix ourselves without being blown away, and when the storm was over we patched our riven tents, and were thankful we had weathered it so well. Then came the summer rains—late in season, it is true, but great in strength—pouring and lashing and roaring, the great drops bursting through our rent cloth, broken up into spray and looking like pepper shaken from a box. We had waterproof sheets, but it was next to impossible to keep anything dry. While the rain lasted we sat huddled in our rain cloaks, or, spade in hand, cut new channels for suddenly extemporised streams and pools that grew larger and continued to come closer to our bedding and boxes. As soon as the sun returned, there was a general drying of garments, mattresses, and sheepskin robes. The heat was perhaps the most trying of our meteorological experiences; but even that passed away at last, and before we had left the plains night frost had reappeared, covering the pools about well mouths with thin sheets of ice.
