Four years in Upper Burma

by W. R. Winston

CHAPTER XV.
A TRUE IDEAL MISSIONARY AND A FALSE MISSIONARY IDEAL.

The American Baptist Mission is the oldest Protestant mission working in Burma. It was commenced by Dr. Judson in Rangoon in 1813, and has expanded in Lower Burma to a large and strong mission, having had very signal and rapid success amongst the Karen races, and to a fair extent amongst the Burmans also. As far back as 1824, Dr. Judson, wishing to extend the work to Upper Burma, went up the Irrawaddy and opened a mission at Ava, which was then the capital. Ava is situated about ten or twelve miles from Mandalay, and is now quite an insignificant village, with the remains of the royal city and palace still to be seen. Mandalay, of course, did not at that time exist as a town. Unfortunately, the first Burmese war with England took place whilst Judson was at Ava, and completely broke up the work he had begun to do in the capital, and Judson was imprisoned, together with the few European and American residents, at Ava.

For a year and ten months he was kept in rigorous confinement, under circumstances of great barbarity, first at Ava, and afterwards at the village of Oung-pen-la, which is only about two miles from Mandalay. I have often been to Oung-pen-la, a typical Burmese agricultural village, surrounded by rice fields, which are irrigated from the great Oung-pen-la lake, close by. The site of the old prison is still pointed out by the villagers, but the building itself has been removed, and, being of teak, has left no trace behind. Seldom have the annals of missions furnished a more pathetic narrative of suffering than this.

“On the 8th of June,” wrote Mrs. Judson, “just as we were preparing for dinner, in rushed an officer, holding a black book, with a dozen Burmans, accompanied by one, who from his spotted face we knew to be an executioner, and a ‘son of the prison.’ ‘Where is the teacher?’ was the first inquiry. Mr. Judson presented himself. ‘You are called by the king,’ said the officer,—a form of speech always used when about to arrest a criminal. The spotted man instantly seized Mr. Judson, threw him on the floor, and produced the small cord, the instrument of torture.”

With this the prisoner was bound and dragged off to the court house, where the governor of the city and the officers were collected, and one of them read the order of the king, to commit Mr. Judson to the death-prison. He was suspected of being in communication with the English, with whom they were at war, though of course he had nothing to do with them.

This was the beginning of his long imprisonment. Whilst in prison Judson suffered much. He was loaded with fetters, which left their marks on his limbs till the day of his death. He was placed in the common prison, amidst dirt and noisome smells, in charge of ferocious jailers, who had to be continually plied with presents to secure for him the very necessaries of existence. At night it was the custom to secure the safe keeping of the prisoners by enclosing their feet in a kind of stocks, several of them in a row, the stocks being then hoisted up into the air a little way, so that the feet were elevated higher than the head, which must have caused great pain and inconvenience. During a great part of the time of this captivity the prisoners were in a state of dreadful suspense, not knowing whether they might not be put to death any day or hour. More than once the design was formed to kill them, but by the Providence of God that intention was never carried out.

The death-prison was constructed of boards, and was rather stronger than a common Burman dwelling-house. There were no windows nor other means of admitting the air, except by such crevices as always exist in a simple board house, and only one small outer door. What must have been their state with one hundred prisoners of all classes huddled together, including the worst of criminals, all shut up in one room, loaded with fetters, in the sweltering heat of the hot season of Upper Burma, where the thermometer rises every day to 110° in the shade? Prisoners were continually dying of disease, as well as by violent treatment, and yet the place was always full. Several sepoys, and occasionally English soldiers, prisoners of war, swelled the lists of the miserable. These poor creatures, having no regular supply of food, were often brought to the very verge of starvation; and then, on some worship day, the women would come, as a work of charity, to the prison with rice and fruit, and the miserable sufferers, maddened by starvation, would eat and die.

Suddenly, in May, the very hottest month of the year, when life is a burden, even with all that can be done to mitigate the effects of the climate, and when for Europeans to go out in the sun unprotected is at the peril of their lives, the prisoners were removed from the prison at Ava to Amarapoora, and after that to Oung-pen-la. They were made to walk barefoot a journey of nine miles, chained together two by two. The Burman guards, by a refinement of cruelty, instead of making the journey in the cool of the day or night, set out at eleven o’clock in the day, so that they were under the scorching sun all the time, the sand and gravel like burning coals to tread upon, first blistering their feet, and then taking the whole of the skin off. One of the European prisoners, a Greek, who when taken out of prison was in his usual health, fell down on the way, and expired in an hour or two after their arrival, doubtless from sunstroke. The others reached Oung-pen-la more dead than alive.

The sufferings of Judson’s devoted wife were scarcely less severe than his own all this time, although she was not imprisoned. During all the months he lay imprisoned at Ava she was harassed with the most consuming anxiety for her husband, and had constantly to exert herself to the utmost to get him food into the prison. During that time her child was born. The removal of the prisoners to Oung-pen-la occurred when the babe was only three months old. It occurred suddenly and unknown to her and when she found him gone, she knew not whither to go seeking him. She sent first to the place of execution, fearing the worst, but they were not there; and then she had to follow the party as best she could, finding them at last at Oung-pen-la. The very morning after their arrival there, the little Burmese girl she had with her, to help with the baby, was taken ill of smallpox, and the babe of three months took it from her. After that Mrs. Judson herself was taken seriously ill, and for two months lay helpless on a mat on the floor of the wretched little hut, where she had taken up her abode, to be near her husband in the prison. When the child recovered, the mother was unable to nurse her, so that, being deprived of her usual nourishment, the infant suffered greatly. Neither a nurse nor a drop of cow’s milk could be procured in the village. However, by making presents to the jailers—nothing could be done without presents—she obtained leave for Dr. Judson to come out of prison daily, in order to carry the emaciated little creature round the village, to the houses of those women who were suckling children, and to beg them for pity’s sake to give each a little, to keep the life in the child!