I did not fall asleep after that. The night had become so cold that I could not sleep. Being, as the village was, on an eminence, the cold east wind blew through the frail tenement with chilling effect, all the more that it was the middle of the cold season, when the nights are often piercingly cold. I was glad to get up, long before daylight, rouse my men to get my coffee and quinine, and be off for the village where our gathering was to be held, and where we had a Quarterly Meeting in the enjoyment of which I soon forgot the discomforts of the night. By sunset I was in my own house again. I have heard of men telling of sleeping in huts in Madagascar, with scorpions crawling over them, snakes hanging from the roof hissing in their faces, and of being taken out in the morning, set up to be speared, and only waiting to hear the ‘_Klick_’ (which does not exist in Madagascar) as the signal for being speared! All such are but ‘travellers’ tales,’ the product of disordered livers or diseased imaginations. The scorpions were only cockroaches or rats; the snakes, long festoons of soot, such as hang from the roof of most Malagasy huts, which have no chimneys; the being taken out and set up to be speared, only a dream, probably the effect of too hearty a supper after a long exhausting day’s journey! There were discomforts and difficulties in those days; but they were hardly worth mentioning, when compared with what have to be faced in some mission fields, such as New Guinea, the Congo, and Central Africa. Hotel accommodation cannot be expected in the mission field, and those who look for it ought to remain at home. The Quarterly Meetings grew to be sources of great strength and usefulness. They were the means of uniting all in the common work. I declined to decide cases of dispute, church discipline, or other serious business as an individual. I laid the graver matters before the Quarterly Meeting, and settled them by the vote of the majority. By means of these meetings, pastors, local preachers, deacons, and church members were trained in habits of self-reliance in dealing with the difficulties that were always cropping up in newly formed churches, as well as with general church business. We had, as a rule, good meetings, and not a little to do. I was _ex officio_ chairman, and by the exercise of a little tact, generally got them to vote as I wanted.