Pioneers and Founders: or, Recent Workers in the Mission fieldYonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
History
Pioneers and Founders: or, Recent Workers in the Mission field
Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
Missionaries
There was a curious scene at a dinner given to the Burmese commissioners,
in a magnificent tent, with all the military pomp the camp could furnish.
When Sir Archibald appeared with Mrs. Judson on his arm, and seated her
by his side, there was such a look of discomfiture on the faces of the
guests, that he asked her if they were not old acquaintance who had
treated her ill. "That fellow with the pointed beard," he said, "seems
taken with an ague fit." Then Mrs. Judson told how, when her husband lay
in a burning fever with the five pairs of fetters, she had walked several
miles with a petition to this man, had been kept waiting till the
noontide sun was at its height, and not only was she refused, but as she
departed her silk umbrella was torn out of her hand by his greediness;
and when she begged at least to let her have a paper one to go home with,
the officer only laughed at her, and told her that she was too thin to be
in danger of a sunstroke! The English gentlemen could not restrain their
countenances at least from expressing their indignation; and the Burmese,
who thought she was asking for their heads, or to have them laid out in
the sun with weights upon their chests, were yellow with fright, and
trembled visibly. Mrs. Judson kindly turned to them with a smile,
assuring them that they had nothing to fear, and, on repeating her words
to Sir Archibald Campbell, he confirmed them to the frightened
barbarians.
That visit to the English camp was one of the few spaces of comfort or
repose in those busy lives. It concluded by the husband and wife being
forwarded to their old home at Rangoon.
It was in the height of the war, when anxieties for the fate of Mr. and
Mrs. Judson were at the utmost, that, on the 4th of July, 1825, George
Boardman and Sarah Hall were married, and sailed for Calcutta, thinking
it possible that they might find their predecessors martyred, and that
they were coming "to step where their comrades stood."
At Calcutta they found Mr. and Mrs. Wade, who had with great difficulty
escaped, and soon after they heard of the rescue of the Judsons, and
welcomed Dr. Price. Rangoon, in the meantime, had been occupied by the
English, and then besieged by the Peguans; the mission-house was ruined,
and the people dispersed, and Moung Shwaygnong had died of cholera,
faithful to the last. The city was to be restored to the Burmese, and
the King, though willing to employ Judson politically, refused toleration
to his subjects; so that, as the provinces on the Martaban river were to
be ceded to the English, it seemed wise to take advantage of the
reputation which the Judsons had established to found a mission-station
under their protection in the new town of Amherst, which Sir Archibald
Campbell proposed to build on the banks of the Martaban river.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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