Ten years in Burma

by Julius Smith

A little incident occurred the second day after the arrival of our friends, which shows the playful side of missionary life. They arrived in the afternoon, and early next morning I took Mr. Schilling with me a day’s journey by steam launch through one of Lower Burma’s many tidal creeks to a village where we had some Christians. We were so busy we did not allow the new missionary even a day to look around the city of Rangoon, but hurried him immediately into the district. I had the journey planned, and could not delay the trip for pressure of work in the city.

At six o’clock in the evening we arrived at the village of Thongwa, a place of five thousand people. After some three hours’ looking about the town we were tired, and as always in Burma when taking exercise, very much heated. I proposed a swim in the river to cool us down so we could sleep. Mr. Schilling, being a strong swimmer, plunged out into the stream, and did not pause till he reached the opposite side of the river. I, being a very moderate swimmer, remained near the shore. But I was impressed with the dark river lined with palm-trees on a moonless night, with no light except from the stars and a faint glimmer from the lamps of the village. I wondered at the temerity of my fellow-missionary on this, his first night in a tropical country! Perhaps I was not wholly innocent in the practical joke I attempted. Just as I heard a splash on the opposite side of the stream I called out, “Brother Schilling, I forgot to tell you that there are alligators in this river.” There was a splash, a plunge, and heavy breathing of a swimmer exerting all his power in the haste to recross the stream. I was amused at the effect of this bit of information on the missionary recruit. But his amusement arrived only as an afterthought. His first efforts were all spent in getting to my side of the river. He reasoned, “In haste there is safety.” When he recovered his breath he told me that just as I shouted “alligator” he had stepped on some slippery member of the tribe that lives in the muddy ooze of all tropical tidal creeks, and to his imagination the word “alligator” made that squirming creature a very real menace to his personal safety. There were alligators in the stream, but they were several miles further down and, as far as I knew, quite harmless.

Another experience which befell some of us some months before this had features about it too grim for humor, but which may be recorded to show the reality of life in a tropical land. Shortly after the colony was flooded, I made one of my visits to the people. Several times I had to travel in a small boat, a dug-out log. To return to Rangoon I took to the stream after nightfall, and traveled within a mile or two of the railway, and then, the current of the stream becoming too swift for the oarsman, we took to the water, and waded against the current until we reached the station. The particular occurrence occurred when the water was at its highest over an area many miles. The occasion of my making these journeys at night was that I could catch a train bringing me to Rangoon in the morning for my many duties there. As the whole country was flooded, we undertook to guide our boat thirteen miles from the colony to the railway all over an overflowed, treeless plain. Our party consisted of a young Swiss I had in charge of the colony, a Malay servant of the Swiss, who acted as steersman, and a Telegu, a very lazy man, who would not row, and so got a free ride, grudgingly allowed by myself. The Swiss and I had to do all the rowing, no easy task through the protruding elephant grass, which rose several feet above the water in some places. In addition, I undertook to pilot the boat, the open hollow-log canoe, always difficult to keep bottom downward. Without any object to serve as a guide, my own sense of locality, as we had no compass, being my only resource, the downpour of rain every half-hour—all made a combination of circumstances calculated to fill us with doubts as to our success in reaching the railway at all, while the dark hours of the night passed slowly on. We had no light with us, and at times it was exceedingly dark; but the moon showed its half-filled face occasionally. Late in the night we came near to some abandoned grass hut. As an unusually heavy storm was approaching, revealed to us by the beating of the rain on the quiet water of the plain, we concluded to steer our unstable craft in through the open doorway of the hut. There were several feet of water in the hut and on the adjacent fields. As the hut was large enough to accommodate our boat and the roof was intact, we hoped to have shelter until the rain had passed.

We had our misgivings, because we feared the snakes, driven from the grass of the plain by the water, would be finding quarters in the house. This proved to be a very true surmise. We had just got into the house, when our free passenger, the Telegu, took out his matchbox and a cigar and prepared to smoke. I thought I could use that match to better advantage, and demanded it. As the match flashed and then burned steadily for a moment, we searched the thatch sides and roof and bamboo supports for snakes. We were not disappointed. Here and there were the glistening coils of snakes tucked away; but our greatest nervous shock came on looking immediately over our heads, when we were startled to see a very large snake coiled on top of the rafter, while the glistening scales of his whitish belly were only two or three feet above some of our heads. We immediately prepared to leave this place in possession of its venomous occupants. Softly we moved lest we shake snakes into our boat. The Swiss was very eager to avoid colliding with a post and shaking a snake into the boat, especially as we were all barefooted, having removed our shoes.

We took to the storm again, the worst of that weary wet night, thankful to have escaped keeping company with the snakes. About one o’clock at night we found the railroad, and rested until the train came. I look back on that night’s experience with vivid recollections. The long piloting of the boat without guide of any kind for thirteen miles, and then to have made our exact destination, was no ordinary achievement, of which I have always had some pride. The experience with the snakes in the abandoned house seen by the flash of a match makes a memory too vivid to avoid an inward squirming to this day. These disconnected experiences are given to break the monotony of prosaic account of mission work, and to indicate to the reader that there are realities in journeyings about the inhabited parts of a tropical country calculated to impress the memory.

Mr. Schilling’s coming to us was very timely. He began Burmese very soon, in which Mr. Robertson joined him. We at once planned to open a station for a missionary outside of Rangoon. We selected Pegu, a town on the railway fifty-six miles from the capital city, and on the road to Mandalay. We chose this town because it was the nearest station to our broken-up colony, from which also we could work another region which had been given to the people for the colony, and from whence we could reach half a hundred villages of Burmans unsought by any missionary. We needed a town, also, where we could have a physician for the missionary’s family. A place was desired where land and missionary buildings could be secured economically.

Large Image at Pegu

Mr. Schilling was supported by the vigorous missionary Church of Montclair, New Jersey. They paid his passage and his salary, and for the mission house. So prompt was their response and so generous, that the mission was very greatly uplifted. Mr. Robertson lived with Mr. Schilling, and they both made rapid progress in learning the language. In a few months inquirers began to be found. Some lapsed Christians were picked up, and they tried to work them into some Christian usefulness. Before the end of the year they were beginning to preach in the vernacular. Altogether our prospect of doing mission work among the Burmese was becoming promising, and we were all filled with cheer.

Within a little more than a year each of these brethren was doing aggressive evangelistic work. Mr. Schilling remained at Pegu, and traveled somewhat widely in the regions east and north. Mr. Robertson was given the district south of Pegu and east of Rangoon. He lived at Thongwa, the village where our Burmese work was first undertaken in a systematic way. Mr. Robertson had married Miss Haskew, of Calcutta.