Two native Karens, ordained ministers, were sent by the American Baptist Mission to initiate in Lāo territory a work among the Karens, a hill-people scattered sparsely throughout all the mountain region between Siam and Burma. The native evangelists brought with them letters from the missionaries in Burma, requesting us to aid them in getting Lāo passports. We went with them to the new Prince, and he very graciously gave direction to his brother to see that passports were issued, stating not only that the visitors were to be protected and aided as travellers, but also that they were to be allowed to teach the new religion, and that people were allowed to embrace it without fear. I was specially interested that they should succeed in the first village which they were to visit, for it was the one where I had vaccinated the whole population during the first year of our mission. Since I had failed to make Christians of them—partly, as I supposed, on account of my ignorance of their language, but more on account of the persecution which followed so soon after—I hoped that when the message was delivered in their own tongue, with official permission to embrace it, the whole village might accept the Gospel. What was the astonishment of the preachers that, instead of being received with the characteristic hospitality of their race, they hardly found common civility! At last they learned the reason. The Chao Uparāt had secretly despatched a special messenger with a letter under his own seal, forbidding any Karen subject to embrace the new religion. All who did so were to be reported to him. What that meant, or what he wished them to infer that it meant, was well understood. Our readers, therefore, will not be surprised that we found it necessary to keep an eye on the Chao Uparāt, and to use considerable diplomacy in counteracting his schemes against the church. It was my policy in those days to keep up as close an acquaintance as possible with the members of the ruling family. It was the misfortune of all of them that they were ignorant;[9] and ignorance begets suspicion. Some of them were naturally suspicious of the missionaries. They could not understand what motive could induce men who were neither government officials nor merchants, to leave a great country and come to live in theirs. Footnote 9: This same Uparāt, whose word ruled the country, was unable to write his own orders.