During the summer of 1876, in company with Nān Inta, I made a tour among the four nearest provinces to the north and west. The governor of Mûang Kên had long given promise of becoming a Christian, and now invited me to visit his people. On his frequent visits to Chiengmai on business, he always called on me, and no subject was so interesting to him as the subject of religion. Before the proclamation of toleration, while the common people were still afraid of making a public profession of Christianity, our most effective work was probably that with the higher class of officials, who stood in somewhat less fear of the known antagonism of the Chao Uparāt. They were, besides, a more interesting class than the common people, for they were better educated, were more accustomed in their daily duties to weigh arguments and decide on questions of evidence, and many of them had been trained in the religious order. This governor of Mûang Kên had learned enough of the tenets of Christianity to become unsettled and dissatisfied with the prospects of salvation offered by a purely ethical religion. He saw the weakness of the foundation on which he had been taught to rely, and the difference between the authors of the two religions. So he stood on the border land between the two, at the very gate, wishing to enter in, but with many obstacles in his way, and strong opposing influences to overcome. My first objective, then, on this tour was Mûang Kên. The governor had asked me to come and smooth the way for him by teaching his under-officials and his townsmen. Nān Inta was the living, concrete argument, and he put his whole heart into it. We had a few days of deeply interesting work. Few, however, saw the matter as the governor did. Most of them “would consider it.” Some would go further and say that they worshipped Jesus under the name of their promised Buddha Metraya, yet to come. From Mûang Kên we went to Chieng Dāo, where we visited the great cave with its famous Buddhist shrine. Ever since Nān Inta became a Christian, he had been anxious to test the truth of some of the legends connected with the place—a thing he dared not do before. The cave is the abode of the great Lawa spirit, for fear of offending whom Prince Kāwilōrot was afraid to allow us to build to the north of the city bridge in Chiengmai. Chieng Dāo mountain, which rises above the cave, is seven thousand one hundred and sixty feet high—one of the highest peaks in all Siam, and visible from Chiengmai, some thirty-seven miles away. One of the sources of the Mê Ping River, twenty feet wide and knee-deep, flows bodily out from the cave. Since no animal is allowed to be killed in so sacred a place, the stream abounds in a great variety of beautiful fish waiting for the food which no visitor fails to give them. The scramble for it is as interesting to watch as the performance of the sea-lions at San Francisco.