Enough has been done in these four years greatly to encourage those of us who have sacrificed something in planning and carrying forward this new feature of industrial mission work. There is to-day more material advantage in this plant than can be shown in any institution anywhere that I have been for the money invested. More has been done in direct school work, for the money invested, than in almost all the English schools with which I am acquainted. The effect of the work on the boys and girls under our care has exceeded our highest hopes. I am sure not one of us would be willing to go back to the old order of Orphanages. The boys and girls themselves do not want to return to the old order. The school has met with a degree of favor from those whose judgment is counted of the highest value to us, by reason of the fact that they have put money into the plant under the old order and the new also, that we hardly dared to hope for. We have also received a bequest of seventeen hundred dollars with which we have put up a second building. The patronage of the school by people of means and social standing is such as to encourage us much. It reveals the fact that the school meets a want felt most by the people who make a financial success of life, but see that self-help should be taught to every child regardless of financial circumstances. These people believe that indolence, dependence, and slovenly habits are a disgrace, and honest work in all things is honorable.
Miss Perkins, now in the eleventh year of her continuous service on the field, has carried on this work for more than a year, being aided by Miss Rigby, who went to her aid in 1900.
This industrial school was founded to reteach the truth long since forgotten in Asia that all kinds of household and manual toil are respectable. The Lord himself was a carpenter, and washed the feet of his disciples, which many of those who bear his name would be ashamed to do. The school has run four years without a servant, and is stronger than when it began. In this it is the only institution among Europeans in all Asia that is so managed. It is absolutely unique in this. It promises much usefulness and a large growth. But if it were closed up to-morrow, it would still have proved by four successful years that such a plan is possible of successful operation even in Asia.
While it is not directly a part of mission enterprise, it may be of interest to some reader to have some account of experiences and observations in a Burma forest. Some such experiences came to me in connection with life on and about Thandaung. Nearly the entire distance from Tomgoo to Thandaung is through a forest reserve of the Government. Several miles of this forest are made up of the great trees before mentioned. One variety produces an oil used in Europe for making varnish. The method of extracting this oil is very curious. A deep cut is made in the tree near the ground, and in this cut a fire is built and kept burning until the tree is blackened ten feet or more from the ground. Then the coals are taken out of the cut, which has become a sort of cup, into which the oil oozes from the wound made by the fire on the tender tree. It seems almost cruel to treat the giant trees in this way. It is astonishing that they survive and heal over the great blackened scars left on their sides.
Another remarkable thing observed in these forests is the growth of notable vines and parasites. Here is to be seen a great vine, like half a dozen grape-vines joined together, climbing high round and into these splendid trees. The trunk is usually not large, though so tall. Then high up on this tree a spore of the peepul-tree finds a lodgment, and sprouts, the leaf upward, the root running downward, hugging close to the tree as if drawing life from the trunk. Sometimes the young growth starts a hundred feet from the ground. As its main root descends it throws outside roots which encircle the tree, and these roots branch again so the whole trunk is soon inclosed in a great net, ever tightening. Here is seen a very strange thing. These roots do not overlap, but grow right into each other when they come in contact, and the union is made without a trace or scar. As these meshes of the living net grow, they tighten into a hug that kills, first the vine and then the tree. Each in turn is devoured by the great parasite. Its net meantime becomes a solid wooden shell, reaching to the ground and lifting its crown high among the other giants; a tree made great by the death of two others; a tree and vine, each seemingly having as much right to live as this parasite that preys on other forest life.
Another singular circumstance annually occurs in the forest. About the end of January a species of great bees, as large as the American hornet, come from migrations, nobody knows where, and rest upon the under side of the branches in the crowns of these great monarchs of the forest, which sometimes rise two hundred feet from the ground. About this time some varieties of these trees are in heavy bloom, and no doubt it is this which brings the bees. They locate on only one or two kinds of trees, and at once begin to build honeycombs, suspending them from the under side of the limb. They multiply rapidly, and by March there are sometimes as many as twenty to thirty swarms on a tree. The honeycombs are sometimes three feet long, and hang perpendicularly a foot and a half. The study of these bees is very interesting. They build on the same trees from year to year.
But the most impressive fact is to observe the method of collecting the honey. The trees are perfectly smooth, and are often without a limb for one hundred and fifty feet. The Karens usually collect the honey, and the Burmese dealers come to the camps to buy it when first secured, and take much of it away to the towns. How do they get the honey? The Karens climb up these bare trunks. But how? Some of them are seven feet thick, and can not be grasped in a man’s arms so as to enable him to climb. The daring man drives thin bamboo pegs into the bark of the tree, and goes up on these. More, he drives in the pegs as he climbs! They are about eight inches long outside of the small portion imbedded in the bark, and twenty-two inches apart. So the climber, beginning at the ground, can only place two or three pegs before he begins his ascent. In all this perilous climb he never has the use of more than two of these short projections at once. On these he clings with feet and legs while he must use both hands in driving a new one. To get the honey, he must wait till night, and then with material for a torch, a vessel for the honey, and a rope to lower it, he climbs up into the darkness and out onto the great branches, where with lighted torch he drives the bees away and cuts off the well-filled honeycomb, and lowers it to others on the ground. In this manner he takes all the honey from a tree. A more daring feat for a small return can hardly be imagined. And nerves of steadier poise are required to prevent the destruction of the climber. He receives a dollar and a half for clearing one tree. Surely a life is regarded of little value among these people.
CHAPTER XVI
The Present Situation in Missions
The first century of modern missions has closed under circumstances of great encouragement, not without its element of deep solicitude. The last ten or fifteen years have brought to the home Church the report of more triumphs of the gospel than any like period since the days of the apostles. All lands are open, or are being opened, to the missionary. Converts are coming by the tens of thousands annually into our mission Churches, where even a quarter of a century ago the same missions would have been content with scores. Missionaries formerly had only those difficulties to adjust which met the little band of converts, while to-day they have the problem of the rapidly-growing Church, so recently gathered out of heathenism.
China has had an upheaval; but all missionaries believe the future of the Chinese missions is bright with hope. The martyrdom of the missionaries and the Chinese converts has been as heroic as any in Christian annals. Whatever the Chinaman may or may not be generally, as a Christian he has proven himself worthy. The persecuted young Church will be worthy of the millions of converts that are to be gathered in when the country has been settled again.