James Gilmour of Mongolia: His diaries, letters, and reportsGilmour, James
Religion
James Gilmour of Mongolia: His diaries, letters, and reports
Gilmour, James
Gilmour, James, 1843-1891; Missions -- Mongolia
'To avoid the worry of getting up so early, it was decided after a time
that he should take advantage of an unlet three or four apartment house
in a tenement which belonged to father in Cumberland Street, Glasgow. So
a couple of chairs, table, bed, and some cooking-utensils were got
together, and James entered into possession, cooking his own breakfast,
and getting his other meals there or outside as his fancy or inclination
prompted. Here I think he enjoyed himself very much. He had plenty of
quiet time for study, and he could roam about the city and suburbs for
experience, recreation, and instruction, visiting mills and other large
manufacturing industries as he was inclined.
'After our parents had removed to Hamilton, James took lodgings in
George Street, a regular students' resort when the old college was in
the High Street. It is now removed to the magnificent pile of buildings
at Gilmorehill, in the western district of the city. The site of the old
one in the High Street which James attended is now occupied by the
North British and Glasgow and South-Western Railway Companies.'
James Gilmour left England to begin his Mongolian life-work in February
1870, and then commenced keeping a diary, from which we shall often
quote, and which he carefully continued amid, oftentimes, circumstances
of the greatest difficulty until his death. He gives the following
reasons for this practice at the time when he was living in a Mongol
tent learning the language, hundreds of miles away from his nearest
fellow-worker:--
'I think it a special duty to my friends, specially my mother, to
keep this diary, and to be particular in adding my state of mind in
addition to my mere outward circumstances. In my present isolated
position, which may be more isolated soon, any accident might
happen at any moment, after which I could not send home a letter,
and I think that by keeping my diary punctually and fully my
friends might have the melancholy satisfaction of following me to
the grave, as it were, through my writing.'
In the record of his first outward voyage he included a sketch of his
early life, which we briefly reproduce here, as the correlative and
complement of the picture outlined by his brother:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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