In addition to the feeling of unrest, and the danger of tumult throughout the country, and especially in Mandalay, the focus of all political influences, there was always the climate, with its enervating heat, to contend with. For two months of the year more especially, the dazzling glare and fierce heat of the sun, the parching drought, and the hot winds, are very exhausting, and render it very desirable for Europeans to take a holiday, and get away to the hills, a little time, for change of climate; but no such thing was possible in Upper Burma. There are, it is true, mountains up to five and six thousand feet elevation, where the climate is delightfully cool, but they are out of reach, for want of railways and roads, and no one knows yet where the proper health resorts of the future will be. It requires years of experience to know which of the mountain districts are free from the deadly fever malaria of the jungle, and which are not; consequently there was no chance of a change of climate. Besides this, we cannot undertake pioneer work in a new country, where there has not been the least attempt at sanitary arrangements, without serious risk to life and health. The other missions have already their roll of the dead and the disabled in Upper Burma, and it is considerable in proportion to the number of the workers. The smallpox epidemic, inevitable in a country up to that time without vaccination, attacked two of our number, and one of them was a very serious case, but by God’s preserving mercy they escaped; and typhoid fever, probably the result of an impure water supply, came in its turn, and two others of our little company—one of them the Rev. T. W. Thomas, a new missionary, who had but just arrived—were brought nigh to the gates of death. These, with the ordinary diseases of the country, such as fever and dysentery, befell us, but a merciful Providence brought us all through, and no one has been called away or permanently disabled. CHAPTER XVIII. _SEEKING THE LOST._