A few hours beyond Chieng Rāi on the road to Chieng Sên, was the home of Āi Tū. His was the first Christian family in the province. He had built—in part that it might furnish a guest-chamber for the missionary on his visits, and in part that it might serve as a chapel for worship—the largest house in all that neighbourhood. When we arrived, he had already vacated it for us, and had moved his family down into a shed. A number of families had begun to attend worship, and to keep the Sabbath; but were frightened away by that ridiculously stale story that missionaries were making Christians in order to carry them off in their ships to feed the Yaks! Strange that such a palpable absurdity should deceive any one; yet we have known whole villages to be frightened away by it. At Chieng Sên, in the home of Nān Suwan, we were at once aware of being in a Christian atmosphere—in a consecrated Christian family. That family was a city set upon a hill—a leaven in the new city and province. It alone had given Christianity a good name. The governor was free to say that if Christianity made such men as Nān Suwan, he would like to see the whole country Christian. The influence of the Girls’ School in Chiengmai was strongly reflected in his daughter, Kuī Kêo. She taught no regular school other than her Sunday School; but from time to time during the week she taught the neighbours. Young men who began by trying to ridicule her out of her religion, now treated her with the greatest respect. We were told that rude young fellows singing vulgar songs would lower their voices when passing by the house. We crossed the river in a small boat to spend a few days in teaching four new families of Christians on the eastern side. One of the men was Tāo Rāt, the village officer, and another was his son, Noi Chai. The latter became an influential ruling elder, and, like Nān Suwan, one of the pillars of the church. From Chieng Sên we crossed the broad prairie-like plain westward to Bān Tam. The officer of the village was Sên Yā Wichai—mentioned in the early part of this narrative as the very first believer in Chiengmai. The journey was one of the worst for elephants that I ever made. Heavy rains had soaked the ground so that at every step it seemed almost impossible for them to pull their huge feet out of their tracks. The Sên lived only a quarter of a mile from a remarkable feature of the mountain ridge. The Mê Tam, the largest river in the plain, flows bodily out from under the mountain, much as does one of the sources of the Mê Ping at Chieng Dāo. It was a great pleasure to spend a Sunday with our now venerable Christian and his family. It was a family of officers, his three sons all being either of the grade of Tāo or of Sên—which shows the esteem in which the family was held. But, unfortunately, their official position made it more difficult for the sons to follow the example of their father.