Though perfectly sane, and calm and happy,
he was kept under restraint for a month, and he was accustomed to say
that that month, almost entirely alone with God and his Bible, was the
happiest period of his life.
That work of grace, so strangely begun, was thorough and abiding. It
was well known in the station, and produced a great impression for
good, supported as it was by his subsequent consistent conduct. It
was years after his conversion that I knew him intimately in Burma as
a non-commissioned officer, serving in an important and responsible
military position, for which he had been specially selected; and I knew
him for several years as a consistent Christian, whose firm example—and
happy, cheerful character made him a blessing to others, and who was
never backward in quietly and judiciously speaking for the Master.
CHAPTER XIX.
_A JUNGLE JOURNEY._
We had a great desire in the mission to pay a visit to the Chin tribes on
the western frontier, with the view of ascertaining their locality and
circumstances. Consequently, when the cool season arrived, the usual time
of year for tours, I started with my brother missionary, Mr. Bestall,
then stationed at Pakokku, for a journey to the Chin country. The Chins,
as explained in Chapter X., are not Buddhists, but worshippers of spirits
or demons, and are on that account more barbarous, and, contradictory as
it may seem to say so, more ready of access than the Buddhistic races, to
Christian mission effort.
We left Pakokku at 4 A.M. one morning in November, mounted on two lively
Burmese ponies, with a cart drawn by a pair of bullocks for our things.
In travelling through the jungle you need to take almost everything
you require; so that when the sugar, and salt, and tea, and bread, and
butter, and tins of meat (in case the gun brings down nothing), and
soap, and candles, and rice, and curry, and frying-pan, and kettle, and
crockery, and a few other simple necessaries, not omitting medicines,
are packed up in a box, and the pillows and rugs for the night rolled up
in a mat, and a change or two of clothes put in a portmanteau, and a few
Gospel portions and tracts included, to distribute in the villages as we
pass along, you find you require a cart to carry them. As the cart can
only travel, on an average, about two miles an hour, it requires a long
day to do twenty miles. There is no advantage in going ahead of the cart,
you only have to wait at the end of the stage, and it is more enjoyable
to spend the time in leisurely travelling. In this way these jungle
journeys, though the travelling is rough and often fatiguing, are very
serviceable for the sake of the change of air and scene, and the free
out-door exercise they afford.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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