Soon after his return from this trip into Eastern Mongolia, Mr. Gilmour sent home an elaborate report upon the conditions and prospects of the Mongol Mission. He deals with the whole question of the work, showing why, in his opinion, the _agricultural_ Mongols should be evangelised by Chinese missionaries. Mr. Edkins and others thought that Gilmour should undertake that labour, but after having seen more than any missionary of both regions and classes of Mongols, on the ground that he was the man 'who had to go and begin,' he decided for the Plain. Even at this early date Mr. Gilmour urged repeatedly and strenuously upon the Directors the pressing need he felt for a colleague. And thus early began the long series of seeming fatalities that prevented him from ever receiving this joy and strength. Partly from the needs of the Peking Mission, and partly from respect to a notion which the American Board of Foreign Missions had that their occupancy of Kalgan, on the extreme southern limit, constituted _all_ Mongolia into one of their fields of work, the Rev. S. E. Meech, Mr. Gilmour's old college friend, who had been designated as his first colleague, was stationed at Peking. With reference to this, in closing the report above referred to, Gilmour wrote:-- 'Mr. Meech's perversion from Mongolia to China is much to be deplored. I think it would be wrong in me not to inform you of the true state of matters, and to remind you that it is little short of nonsense to speak of reopening the Mongolian Mission so long as there is only one man in the field. I am fully aware of the difficulty of finding suitable men, and most fully sympathise with you, but don't let us delude ourselves with the idea of Mongol Mission work progressing till another man or two come and put their shoulder to the wheel. All that I can do I am quite willing to do, but my own progress is most seriously hampered because I am alone.' His whole subsequent life is evidence of the splendid way in which Gilmour justified these words, yet perhaps no legitimate blame can be laid at the door of the Directors of the London Missionary Society. Both the friends and the critics of missions are sometimes more ready to tabulate converts than to ponder and estimate aright the difficulties and drawbacks of the work. But in any estimate of the comparative success and failure of the Mongol Mission it should be borne in mind that Gilmour never really had a colleague. He never even had a companion for his work on the Plain, except his heroic and devoted wife. And in later years circumstances over which the Directors could exercise little or no control successively deprived him of the fellowship, after a very brief experience, of Dr. Roberts and Dr. Smith. In the summer of this year, in the company of Mr. Edkins, he visited the sacred city of Woo T'ai Shan, a famous place of Mongol pilgrimage.