We make our way up the Irrawaddy by one of the splendid steamers of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, and in due time we land at Mandalay, and climb the steep bank of the river, and there we are with our few boxes, strangers in a strange land, knowing nobody belonging to the place, not a word of the Burmese language, with no mission house to turn into, no native Christians, and, worst of all, _no native helpers_. After thirteen years of very happy work in Ceylon, where we have a flourishing mission and a large staff of native helpers, it required a stout heart to face the difficulties of pioneer work, and no little faith, hope and perseverance. Especially did we miss the aid of our native brethren. The chief value of the European missionary, and of the European generally, in the East, is in his capacity as a leader of men. Upon him devolves the initiation, and the vigorous working out, of plans of aggression, and he has to find the enthusiasm for everybody about him. But if the European is brain, and heart, and hand to the mission, his native brethren are equally indispensable as the eyes, ears, and feet. My native brother has a knowledge of his country, and of his people, and of all that is going on, extensive, accurate, and intimate beyond anything I can ever attain unto, and he is in touch with his own people as no foreigner can ever be—no, not if he spends half a century among them. This invaluable help I greatly missed. For some days I lodged with the Rev. J. H. Bateson in a Buddhist monastery, which had been assigned to him by the military authorities. He had arrived from England three weeks previously, in the capacity of Wesleyan Chaplain to the Upper Burma Field Force. It was one of a considerable number of buildings that had been “annexed” for the temporary accommodation of the troops, and which were afterwards handed over again to the Buddhist monks. It was a fine, substantial teak building, raised six or seven feet from the ground, with a broad verandah back and front, and consisted of three rooms. The roof was of the usual fantastic Burmese style, in triple form, and at one end it terminated in a rather tall spire; and the whole of the building, as usual with monasteries, was richly decorated with elaborate carvings in wood. Amidst some disadvantages as a residence it had one very obvious advantage, that we paid no rent for it.