These two great questions settled, we left North Carolina in March, 1874—my wife with the two younger children, to visit friends and relatives in the North; and I, as I hoped, to visit the churches and the seminaries in search of recruits. But a cold contracted on the trip north ran into a dangerous attack of pleuro-pneumonia, followed by a slow recovery. Thus I missed my visits to the seminaries and the meeting of the General Assembly in St. Louis. The return to the field was by way of San Francisco, and we reached Bangkok on August 27th, 1874. On November 14th a son was given us to take the place of the children left behind. In December began our river journey to Chiengmai. The river was low, and we were a month and a day from Bangkok to Rahêng. There we found four missionaries of the Nova Scotia Baptist Board seeking to establish a station among the Karens of Siam. But they found their villages too small and too widely scattered to justify the establishment of a station. So they were returning to Burma. On Saturday night we all dined together, and had a sociable hour. On Sunday evening we drew up our boats side by side, and had a prayer-meeting that we shall long remember. There was something delightful in thus meeting and enjoying Christian fellowship on a sand-bar, and then passing on to our respective fields of work. Some of these men afterwards went to India, and started the Telegu mission, which has had phenomenal success. There were still the rapids and four more weeks of travel before we could reach our Lāo home. But the home-coming at last was delightful. Our faithful old coolie, Lung In, with his wife, met us in a small boat three days’ journey below Chiengmai, with fruit and fowls lest we should be in want. Then the tall figure of Nān Inta, with his face like a benediction! It was February 7th, 1875, when at last we drew up alongside our own landing-place, and felt the warm handshake of old friends. Among the Lāo at last!—and no place that we had seen would we exchange for our Lāo home. For the first time since our arrival in 1867 we had a permanent house to enter! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ XV MÛANG KÊN AND CHIENG DĀO