One notable trip of Dr. House remains to be narrated, a journey into the land of the Lao—notable because of the accident which nearly closed the career of the doctor. The trip occurred in 1868. The previous year was signalised in the annals of missions in Siam by the establishment of a station at Chiengmai among the Lao people in what is now known as North Siam. It is curious to note that while Dr. House himself had been among the first to become interested in these people as he came into contact with the Lao boatmen at Bangkok and although he once seriously contemplated leaving the Mattoons alone at Bangkok while he should carry the Gospel into the unexplored northland, yet when the proposition was being discussed by the mission to open a station there the doctor enters a record of his judgment that the time is premature. However, additions to the corps of workers having made it possible to establish another station, the mission decided to send Messrs. McGilvary and Wilson, who had made an exploratory trip the previous season, to open work among the Lao tribes. In January of 1867 the McGilvary family set out in small boats, making the journey all the way up the Meinam. In the next December the Wilsons followed along the same route. It was a three-months’ journey up Siam’s great river, whose name means “mother of waters.” Above Raheng the stream forces its way through a narrow gap in the mountain chain, forming a long series of perilous rapids and affording scenery which is described by voyagers as of surpassing beauty. Dr. House wrote concerning the reason for his own trip: “And here I must let you into a little secret. Mrs. Wilson, it seems, will require the attendance of a physician about the first of March, and so also will Mrs. McGilvary. So much the worse for both of them, you will say—seeing they are five hundred miles from medical aid. Must they, then, be abandoned to their fate? You must not, then, dear brother, be much surprised to learn that this double call of Providence has proved too strong for me. Much as I dislike the practise of my profession, much as I dread the long, tedious journey, much as I desire just now to stay with my interesting and most dearly loved flock [the church over which the doctor had just been made pastor] I have felt it would be wrong for me to decline the invitation I have received to visit Chiengmai at the critical time. “But I cannot afford to waste three months on the journey there, when by boat to Raheng in twenty-three days Chiengmai from there can be reached by elephant in eight to ten days more.”