Two motives made Henry Martyn eager to leave India for a time, and to cease the strain on his fast-ebbing strength, caused by incessant preaching and speaking: he desired to prolong his life, but to prolong it only till he should give the Mohammedans of Arabia and Persia the Word of God in their own tongues. After his first, almost fatal, attack at Dinapore, Corrie, who had gone to help him in his duties, wrote to 'the Patriarch,' as they called Mr. Brown, at Aldeen: 'He wishes to be spared on account of the translations, but with great earnestness said, "I wish to have my whole soul swallowed up in the will of God."' Two years after, Corrie wrote to England from Cawnpore: 'He is going to try sea air. May God render it effectual to his restoration. His life is beyond all price to us. You know what a profound scholar he is, and all his acquirements are dedicated to the service of Christ. If ever man, since St. Paul, could use these words, he may, _One thing I do_. But the length of his life will depend on his desisting from public duties.' To Martyn himself, when at last he had left Cawnpore, Corrie wrote: 'If you will not take rest, dear brother, come away back;' informing him, at the same time, that he had returned to a Colonel, whom he had married, 1,600 rupees, he and Martyn having resolved to decline all fees for marrying and burying in India, where such were a stumbling-block in the way of morality and religion, constituted as Anglo-Indian society was at that time. When he was leaving Cawnpore, Henry Martyn was about to destroy what he called 'a number of memorandums.' These afterwards proved to be his _Journals_ from January 1803 to 1811, some of which were written in Latin, and some in Greek, for greater secrecy. Corrie remonstrated with him, and persuaded him to seal them up and leave them in his hands. Lord Minto, the Governor-General, and General Hewett, the Commander-in-chief, after receiving a statement of Martyn's object, gave their sanction to his spending his sick-leave in Persia and Syria. At first the only ship he could find bound for Bombay, _en route_ to the Persian Gulf, was one of the native buggalows which carried the coasting trade in the days before the British India Steam Navigation Company had begun to develop the commerce of the Indian Ocean all along East Africa, Southern Asia, the Spice Islands, and Australasia. But he wrote to Corrie: The captain of the ship after many excuses has at last refused to take me, on the ground that I might try to convert the Arab sailors, and so cause a mutiny in the ship. So I am quite out of heart, and more than half disposed to go to the right about, and come back to Cawnpore.