Ten years in Burma

by Julius Smith

We then contemplated teaching the girls and boys under our care to help themselves where others depended on servants; to do this as a necessary part of a well-rounded education. Of course, we recognized the fact that we were undertaking to modify the social order, universal among an entire people. This was recognized as a very difficult task, and nothing but a settled conviction that the old order was fearfully defective led us to undertake it. Looking back now, we have much interest in recalling the comments on this undertaking. Many assured us that it was a work that should be done, but would fail if undertaken. Others wanted the girls especially trained for housekeepers, “so we can be released from dependence on the Madrassi servants.” This suggestion was wholly philanthropic! Another said several times: “What are you training those girls for? For servants? I want some servants.” The author of the latter remark has never made any other contribution to the Orphanage so far as I can learn. People who had always received something for nothing, of whom there were many, were opposed to the plan. The “prophets,” of whom Asia has her share, were all against us. The “loquacious oracles,” talking about what they did not know, as was their habit, were all against us. But we had a few friends who gave unqualified encouragement. These were of two classes; one a small company of brave missionaries, of whom Bishop and Mrs. Thoburn were the representatives. The other class were those who had done most for and given most money to the Orphanage on the old basis. These people who gave money and sympathy, while others gave poor advice and criticism, said, “If you only teach these boys and girls to care for themselves, it will be the greatest service to them.” We were led to follow the advice of our friends, who really had the problem on their hearts, and our own convictions, and so ventured on this untried undertaking.

The first consideration was to find a more suitable location for our Orphanage. To have undertaken to dispense with servants and all native helpers, and to introduce an entirely new household order in Rangoon, would have been to invite such a degree of intermeddling by irresponsible people, as we did not care to be annoyed with. Besides, the climate in the plains is very hot, and too oppressive for foreigners to do the extent of physical labor required to pioneer such an undertaking. The help that the boys and girls could give at the beginning would be insignificant. We sought a cooler climate. This could only be found in hills high enough to lift you into a substantially cooler and less oppressive atmosphere.

I had been making investigation in the hills of Burma one hundred and sixty miles north of Rangoon, for four years. The original object of this investigation was to find a cool mountain retreat to which our missionaries could go when worn with their labor in the plains. Other parts of India had well-established hill stations, but Burma had none. In my own case, when health failed, I had to go the long journey to India, and to remain there many months. Had I been acquainted with the hills of Burma, this could all have been avoided by a change from the heat of the plains when I first began to decline. After my return to Burma, I determined to find such a place in Burma, if possible.

The first intimation of an accessible place came to me on a visit to Tomgoo, where a member of my Church lived. His name was D. Souza, a pensioner of the Indian Survey Department of the Government. As this good brother was closing his work prior to retiring from the service, he came to survey Thandaung, a hill twenty-three miles northeast of Tomgoo, the head of the district and a town on the railway. Thandaung had been an experimental garden under the Forestry Department of the Government in the seventies, where cinchona cultivation had been undertaken, also tea and coffee had been planted. A school had been established at Tomgoo, intended to teach the Karens how to grow these products. Later the school was closed, and the cultivation on the hills abandoned. At that time Tomgoo was the military outpost, and the authorities built a road to Thandaung, and experiments with the place as a hill station for their soldiers were made. When Upper Burma was annexed in 1885, there was a great rush to Mandalay, and later to regions beyond, where in the regions of Upper Burma various attempts to open military hill stations were made. Thandaung was abandoned, but not till records had been made very favorable to the place as a sanitarium for Europeans. This record did good service for us when we came to reinspect these hills.

Mr. D. Souza secured the most of the area of the old cantonment and some of the buildings, with a view of making a large coffee plantation. He had begun operations early in 1893, and I visited the place first in June of that year. For four years I made frequent visits during different months of the year to test the climate thoroughly. I found the climate in delightful contrast with the plains at all times, and surprisingly invigorating during most of the year. In this investigation I was much aided by my former sojourn in three of the hill stations of India—Almora, Naini Tal, and Mussoorie. It has the altitude of the first and a cooler temperature during the hottest weather than either of the three, while from November to May there is no fog and no rain.

I was convinced that this most accessible hill in Burma would serve admirably for our double need; a location for our industrial plans, for our Orphanage, and a resort for tired missionaries.

By a vote of the Bengal-Burma Conference, I was instructed to apply for land for the enterprise. This Conference authority was sought because it was a good thing to be “regular” in a new undertaking, and to have the moral support of the Conference when the difficult places in working out the new scheme were reached. I learned afterward that a good-natured brother remarked, “O yes, vote him the authority to go ahead; he can only fail anyway.” The Government gave us a lease of one hundred acres of land for the new undertaking, and preparations were begun to move the Orphanage, together with the superintendent and my own family, to this hill. But positive authority to go to our new location was given at the Conference session in February of 1897. It required much haste to close up affairs in Rangoon connected with the Orphanage, and make the move.

Before we actually took the train we allowed all the children whose relations were unwilling to have them go with us into this new location and untried plan to depart from the school. Nearly a dozen left us. People whose children had been fed and clothed and schooled for years for nothing were entirely unwilling to have them go into the new location, where they were to learn to work as well as to eat, and to a small extent work for what they ate. We yielded to them, being conscious all the time of the ingratitude displayed for years of care of their children. Indeed, it is the legitimate fruit of a system that gives everything to dependent people and requires no service in return, that they should come to take your service and care as a right, without even a grateful acknowledgment for favors. There are cases where recipients of free care have taken the position that they were conferring a favor on the missionaries by remaining under their protection and care.

The experimental cinchona garden had grown up in a young forest during the years since the Forestry Department had abandoned it. The roads were all overgrown with rank jungle. We had a small space cleared and a hut erected, made of bamboo mats, and supported on bamboo poles with split bamboo used as tiles folded over each other for a roof. The floor was two feet from the ground, and consisted of split bamboos spread out flat and laid on bamboo poles. This hut was expected to protect us only during the month of April, at the end of which the rains begin. We arrived at Thandaung on March 24th, and took up our abode in the primitive domicile. The whole structure cost thirty dollars, and thirty-five people moved into it, Miss Perkins, the principal of the Orphanage, and the writer and his family included. This furnished us house room at a cost of less than a dollar each.

This frail shelter was only intended to serve as a camping-place for five weeks at the longest. I had planned for a better house than this, and a month earlier I had given the contract for the preliminary work of cutting and dragging timber for the framework, thinking it would be possible to secure some kind of permanent shelter early in the rains. It is true this more substantial building would have to be limited to what could be built for three hundred dollars, as that was all we had in sight for this new enterprise.