Four years in Upper Burma

by W. R. Winston

Another very satisfactory instance of true conversion, mainly owing to impressions produced at the parade services, several Sunday mornings in succession, was that of a pay-sergeant in the regiment then stationed in Mandalay, a married man living with his wife and family in the married quarters, a steady, quiet Scotchman, always well disposed, and of strictly moral life. Parade services are not always thought to be very good opportunities for getting at the hearts of soldiers, seeing that they are marched there by compulsion, not always in the best mood, and with their arms and accoutrements (in India), which is a different thing from going to a voluntary service off parade. But does not this fact challenge, as it were, the chaplain to give them of his brightest and best? It must, before all, be very short, or he will ruin everything, and send them away worse than they came; something short, lively and heart-stirring, full of Christ, full of apt illustration, and full of sympathy with souls, so that he may capture these soldier lads in spite of themselves. Well, it was at these parade services that Sergeant C. felt his mind awakened to new views of truth and duty and Christian privilege. Being aroused about the matter he attended also the evening services, and the devotional meetings on the week-nights, and soon got the light he required, and found himself a new man in Christ Jesus. Well conducted and steady as he had been before, his conversion nevertheless made a great difference to him, giving clearness and brightness to his religious character, and kindling in him a new zeal for the conversion of others.

We found drink to be a fearful curse, not only amongst the English residents, but amongst the natives also. I had a servant, a native of India. He was a great gambler, and very lazy, dishonest and troublesome altogether. Bad as he was, we bore with him over two years, fearing that if we discharged him we might have to put up with somebody worse. Just before we left Burma we dismissed him, because he had sent away his wife and taken up with another. Since coming to England, I learn that this man, in a fit of drunkenness, murdered this woman, with circumstances of unusual atrocity, and that he had to suffer the extreme penalty of the law.

But this drink monster is no respecter of persons, and makes no distinction of race, sweeping down all before it without any discrimination. An English soldier in Mandalay, who had been an abstainer for a considerable period, suddenly took to liquor again one day, and got drunk. That evening he took out his rifle, put in a cartridge, walked down out of the bungalow, and took the direction that the seven devils within him pointed out. This happened to be towards the sergeants’ mess, a separate building a stone’s-throw away. That evening, a party of sergeants were enjoying a festive gathering, in honour of the seventeenth anniversary of the enlistment of one of their number. His health had just been proposed, and he stood up to reply, when at that very moment the poor crazed drunkard outside fired, and shot the sergeant dead. There had been no provocation, and no reason could be assigned for the rash act. It was merely “the drink.” In the distant future, when the temperance reform shall have won its way, and the customs of English society shall have undergone a great change, people will greatly wonder that their forefathers took so long to discover that liquor was their enemy, and not their friend.

Another example, and I bring these reminiscences to a close. It is the case of a soldier, who formerly belonged to a cavalry regiment, stationed at the time I speak of at one of the principal military stations in the south of India. He had plunged into drinking and vice, until at last he was told by the doctor that he had gone as far as his constitution would allow him, and that if he went any further it would be the end of him. This weighed upon his mind, and a deep sense of his sinfulness and a desire for better things resulted. He felt he needed Divine help, and he thought he had better begin again to pray, a thing he had long ceased to do. But how to begin in a barrack-room, where many pairs of eyes would see him, and misunderstand, and ridicule him? Well, he would wait until all was quiet, and then kneel down by his cot and pray. He waited, but as he was musing the fire kindled, and when he did begin to pray, so urgent was his pleading with God for mercy, that his voice rang through the barrack-room, and all his comrades were aroused by it. They thought he was mad. He was removed to the guard-room, and put under restraint. There, in the quietude of that solitary place, he found pardon, and his soul was filled with peace. Next day the medical officer saw him; he could not quite make out the case, but adopted the safe course of keeping him still under restraint. He told the doctor what it was that had caused the trouble of his mind, and how he had gained deliverance, adding that if they had said he was mad before, it would have been quite true, but that now he had come to his right mind. This explanation only induced the man of science dubiously to elevate his eyebrows. It was a kind of case he was not familiar with. Though perfectly sane, and calm and happy, he was kept under restraint for a month, and he was accustomed to say that that month, almost entirely alone with God and his Bible, was the happiest period of his life.

That work of grace, so strangely begun, was thorough and abiding. It was well known in the station, and produced a great impression for good, supported as it was by his subsequent consistent conduct. It was years after his conversion that I knew him intimately in Burma as a non-commissioned officer, serving in an important and responsible military position, for which he had been specially selected; and I knew him for several years as a consistent Christian, whose firm example—and happy, cheerful character made him a blessing to others, and who was never backward in quietly and judiciously speaking for the Master.

CHAPTER XIX.
A JUNGLE JOURNEY.

We had a great desire in the mission to pay a visit to the Chin tribes on the western frontier, with the view of ascertaining their locality and circumstances. Consequently, when the cool season arrived, the usual time of year for tours, I started with my brother missionary, Mr. Bestall, then stationed at Pakokku, for a journey to the Chin country. The Chins, as explained in [Chapter X.], are not Buddhists, but worshippers of spirits or demons, and are on that account more barbarous, and, contradictory as it may seem to say so, more ready of access than the Buddhistic races, to Christian mission effort.

We left Pakokku at 4 A.M. one morning in November, mounted on two lively Burmese ponies, with a cart drawn by a pair of bullocks for our things. In travelling through the jungle you need to take almost everything you require; so that when the sugar, and salt, and tea, and bread, and butter, and tins of meat (in case the gun brings down nothing), and soap, and candles, and rice, and curry, and frying-pan, and kettle, and crockery, and a few other simple necessaries, not omitting medicines, are packed up in a box, and the pillows and rugs for the night rolled up in a mat, and a change or two of clothes put in a portmanteau, and a few Gospel portions and tracts included, to distribute in the villages as we pass along, you find you require a cart to carry them. As the cart can only travel, on an average, about two miles an hour, it requires a long day to do twenty miles. There is no advantage in going ahead of the cart, you only have to wait at the end of the stage, and it is more enjoyable to spend the time in leisurely travelling. In this way these jungle journeys, though the travelling is rough and often fatiguing, are very serviceable for the sake of the change of air and scene, and the free out-door exercise they afford.