This letter records a story of nerve and fortitude seldom equalled in the annals of travel and exploration. One must pause after reading it to take in the whole situation. The note itself was written at the close of the day of shock and pain and suffering. It was written while the sufferer was lying flat on his back, scarcely able to move without agitating the wound; and written then lest a night’s delay might find him unable to write. But as you read the letter you are conscious that he writes not because he is thinking of his own need, but because he knows that his friends will be greatly alarmed by his failure to appear. The trip itself had been undertaken in a spirit of self-abnegation solely for the welfare of his fellow missionaries. And the necessity of the trip casts a vivid light upon the deprivations and hardships of those pioneer missionaries. There are those who will exclaim, “Fools! why did they go so far from contact with civilisation and under such circumstances,—five hundred miles from the nearest physician!” Yes, fools! but fools for the sake of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, “of whom the world was not worthy.” Further details of this marvellous adventure are given in a letter written two weeks later from the same place, the original of which is still preserved. “I wonder if any surgeon was ever before called upon to sew up his own abdomen! Somehow nerve was given me to put in the four stitches without shrinking, though it was a work of no little difficulty, as I had to be guided by the reflection in a looking-glass—the wound not being in direct line of vision—as I lay on my back too weak to sit up. All the water I had was in a small porous drinking vessel—not over a pint, and no other supply for miles.... “That evening I arranged for a messenger to carry the tidings of my injury to the mission at Chiengmai. On the evening of the third day they returned, and with them a servant of Mr. McGilvary came along, and also our faithful Christian Siamese brother, Nai Chune, who had gone up in charge of Mr. Wilson’s household goods to Chiengmai.... Had my letter reached Chiengmai a few hours later it would have found Nai Chune gone, for his passage was taken and his things aboard the boat to start that day for Bangkok....