For the tour of 1892 I was to have the company of Dr. McKean as long as he could be spared from Chiengmai, which would greatly enhance the value of the trip. We had also three native evangelist-assistants, and, last, but not least, we were well supplied with Scriptures and tracts in the Lāo dialect. Our start was made on January 5th.

Our first two Sundays and the intervening week we spent in Wieng Pā Pāo, where we established ourselves in the new chapel which the people themselves had built since our last tour. We observed the Week of Prayer with two chapel services daily, and house-to-house and heart-to-heart work in the intervals. The church was formally organized with thirty-six adult members and thirty children, three ruling elders, and two deacons.

From Wieng Pā Pāo we moved on to the village of Mê Kawn, the centre of our very interesting work of the previous year among the Mūsô tribe. The Sunday we spent there was a red-letter day in our missionary life. Of it Dr. McKean writes: “This has been a blessed day. All [of the Mūsôs] desire baptism. Two boys baptized last year were admitted to the communion. Eleven other adults and seven children were baptized, making twenty-two Mūsôs now members of the visible church. One Lāo girl was received on confession, and three Lāo children were baptized. Our Christian Mūsôs were out in full force. A Mūsô officer and others not Christians attended from another village. Before this we had visited these people in their homes. We found that they had built a good chapel for their worship, a better building than either of their own houses. They had been very diligent in observing the Sabbath, in studying the catechism, and in worship.”

We could not have been better pleased with our first success. The exclusion of this little group from the large villages made it possible and easy for all of them to become Christians. The whole-hearted zeal with which they entered the church awakened strong hopes for the conversion of their race. Cha Pū Kaw’s knowledge of the Lāo tongue was above the average even of their head men. It would be a long time before we could have another such interpreter and assistant. And he was nearly, or quite, seventy years old; so that whatever he was to do in teaching his people must be done soon. It was, therefore, thought best to make a strong effort through him and his family during that season.

At our next stopping-place, Nāng Lê, we came near having a serious casualty. Our boys were out on a deer hunt, and one of them bethought him of a novel expedient for getting the game. He climbed a tree, and had the grass fired on the other side of the open space. The grass was tall and dry, and the wind blew strong towards him. He became so engrossed in looking for the deer that he forgot the fire, till it was too late to flee. He could climb beyond the actual flames; but meanwhile the whole air had become like the breath of a furnace. When, at last, the fire had swept past him, and he was able to descend, he was a mass of blisters. The swiftness of the rush of the fire alone saved his life. Had it been slower, he could not have escaped suffocation.

From Nāng Lê we visited a very large Mūsô village. It was a steep foot-climb of four solid hours, and, to make it longer, our guide missed the way. The first sign of human life we saw was a Mūsô girl alone watching a clearing. She fled for dear life, till, recognizing Cha Pū Kaw’s Mūsô speech, she stopped long enough to point the way to the village. Her fleet steps outran ours, and when we reached the village, the people were already assembling to see the unwonted sight of the white foreigners. But the community was greatly disturbed over another matter. One of their leading officers, it seemed, was accused of being the abode of a demon that had caused an epidemic of disease. The authorities were hourly waiting for an order from the court in Chieng Rāi to expel him and his family by force from the province. They had heard of Cha Pū Kaw’s conversion, and were anxious to hear from himself his reasons therefor—which he gave and enforced till late in the night. They were expecting, however, on the morrow a regular conflict which might result in bloodshed, and they evidently preferred that we should not be there. The head Pū Chān was several days’ journey distant. They would confer together among themselves and with him, would let us know the result, and would invite us up again before we left their neighbourhood.

About midnight a fierce storm of wind and rain broke upon us to our great discomfort. Our thin tent afforded but poor protection. We doubled up our bedding over our clothes, and sat upon the pile under our umbrellas, and laughed at the novelty of our situation and the poor prospect of a night’s sleep. But later the storm passed off, and we did get a little sleep. Our visit to that group of Mūsô villages was evidently not well timed. We took the advice of their officers, and returned to Nāng Lê.

Two days later we reached Chieng Sên. Here we received a mail from home, with news that Mrs. McKean was not well, and other members of the station needed the doctor’s presence. It was expressed as “the unanimous judgment of the station that he should return immediately.” We had planned a regular campaign in the Mūsô districts on both sides of the Mê Kōng—the sort of trip in which the medical missionary finds his best opportunity. But the recall was so imperative that it could not be ignored. So I was left to continue the work alone.

The Mūsô tribe was about equally numerous in the mountain ranges on both sides of the big river. On the east side there were eleven villages. It seemed advisable to take that section first, because they were under Chieng Sên rulers, of whose cordial and sincere interest in our work we were sure. Sên Chai, the head man of the large village nearest to the city, was a friend of Nān Suwan, and was strongly inclined to embrace our religion; but felt the difficulty of breaking the tribal bond. Before this I had made him a visit of two or three days, and saw clearly that our only chance of accomplishing anything was to gain all the head men of the eleven villages. It was actually easier to win over the whole as a unit than to win it piecemeal. This was a formidable task to undertake, but with God’s blessing on the labours of Cha Pū Kaw and Nān Suwan, it seemed not impossible.

We set out for the first village one morning shortly after ten o’clock. It was four o’clock when we stopped for rest at the first cluster of houses on the outskirts of the settlement. The news of our arrival soon reached the main village. When we started again we met Sên Chai with a regular serenade-party of men and boys with native reed instruments, blowing their plaintive dirge-like music, to welcome us and escort us in. Soon the population was all assembled—the maidens in their best sarongs, the mothers and grandmothers each with an urchin strapped to her back by her scarf, the men coming in from their work, and the inevitable crowd of children. Cha Pū Kaw was already answering their questions, with Nān Suwan’s sympathetic aid. They were respectfully shy, but there was no cringing. Sên Chai invited the local Pū Chān and all the villagers to assemble after their evening meal to hear the new doctrines. We first had worship with singing, and prayer by Cha Pū Kaw. It was the first time they had heard the Great Spirit addressed in their own Mūsô tongue. There were frequent exclamations of delight that they were able to understand every word.

And then, before that motley crowd, drinking with them their native tea from an earthen teapot, the men seated close around, or reclining as they smoke their pipes, the women and children walking about or sitting on the ground—we tell of God the great Spirit, the Creator, and Father of all—the Bible, His message to men—the incarnation, life, and death of Christ, and redemption through His blood. Before we get through you will hear man after man say, “I believe that. It is true.” One man takes up the story from Cha Pū Kaw’s mouth and repeats it to another—a story that till now he himself had never heard. Another says, “Nān Suwan has told us this before, but now we hear it from the father-teacher.”

Before we retired that night Sên Chai said to us, with the approval of most of his village, “Go on to Sên Bun Yūang and the head men of the other villages. If they agree, we will all accept Christianity. One village cannot accept it alone. If we do not ‘kin waw’ with them—join in their New Year’s feast—we shall be treated as enemies by the whole tribe.”

So, next morning, we set out to find the great Pū Chān—the religious head of the province. On our way to his village we fell in with a man to whom Cha Pū Kaw was speaking with great earnestness. I found on approaching him that he was not a Mūsô, but a Kūi—of a tribe which we had planned to visit later. He was the Pū Chān of his village. He had already invited us through Cha Pū Kaw to change our plan, and visit his village first. It was nearer than the village we were intending to visit, and we were already tired enough with our climb to be willing to stop at the nearest place.

The village was a large one, as mountain villages go—of twenty-five or thirty houses, and from two hundred and fifty to three hundred souls—in general not unlike the Mūsô villages we had seen. The Kūi language also, while different from the Mūsô, is cognate with it, so that Cha Pū Kaw could still act fairly well as our interpreter. His talk with the Pū Chān on the way had already laid a good foundation for our work in the evening, when curiosity and interest in our errand brought the whole village together to hear Cha Pū Kaw’s new doctrine from his own lips. The news of his conversion had already reached them, and he had made a good impression on the religious head of the village.—And, then, it was something new to see the Mūsô boys able to read and to sing. Nān Suwan and Cha Pū Kaw led in prayer, the one in Lāo and the other in Mūsô. Then our religion was explained in its two leading ideas—rejection of the spirit-cult, and acceptance of Jesus for the pardon of sin and the life eternal. Questions were asked and answered.

At last the Pū Chān suggested that, while we continued our reading and singing with the women and children, he and the men, with Cha Pū Kaw, withdraw to a neighbouring house and talk the matter over. It was evident that they would be more at their ease by themselves, unawed by the presence of the foreign teacher. For some two hours the debate continued. I could hear their earnest voices from the neighbouring house, with only now and then a Lāo word that I could understand. Then they returned to make their report. With oriental politeness, they expressed their gratitude to the “great teacher” who had come so far and at such expense, and had brought with him a fellow-mountaineer of theirs, to teach them, creatures of the jungle, the way to happiness. They had talked these matters over, and understood them somewhat, but not fully. Some were greatly pleased with the teachings, and believed them true. But they could not yet come as an entire village, and they dared not separate. Next morning we parted as friends. They were glad that we had found the way to their village. “Be sure to come again!” That I thought surely I should do; but this proved to be my only visit.

At the Sên Lūang’s village, where the great Pū Chān lived, we had the same experience—a good reception, many apparently interested and anxious to escape their own spirit-worship. A number of the head men said, “If such and such a village accepts the Jesus-religion, we will.” But no one could be found to face the clan and make a start.

Thinking that our native evangelists might get at the heart of the people all the better if left to do it alone, and being anxious to get my mail from home, I went down on Saturday to Nān Suwan’s to spend the Sunday there with the Christians. On Tuesday, to my disappointment, the evangelists returned to me discouraged. They were convinced that in the district east of the Mê Kōng River, no break in the solidarity of the clan could be accomplished that season.

But it was important not to leave these people with the impression that we had abandoned them. I had left Sên Chai’s village with the promise to return. So I went up with the Mūsô Christian boys, and spent a last night with them. The village again assembled, and we had an interesting evening. The Sên was greatly disappointed that none of the other villages would join him. But the New Year was at hand, when the clan must be unbroken. They would wait another year, and try to get the other villages to join them. On the whole, I was encouraged. When we left them we were escorted out of the village to the music of their plaintive flutes, more like a victorious than a vanquished army.

After a day or two with the Chieng Sên church, we visited the ridge to the southeast of that city, between it and Chieng Kawng. Our experience there was but a repetition of that from which we were just come—cordial receptions, night audiences, manifest interest, individual believers, anxious consultations, promises for the next year; but the tribal bond was too strong to be broken.

But Cha Pū Kaw was anxious that we should not pass by his own mountain villages on the Mê Kok. So we turned southward again toward Chieng Rāi. This, moreover, was one of those famine years, such as we have already encountered in our story, and shall encounter yet again; many people were on the verge of starvation. In places we could not get food for our own men. And famine was beginning to be followed by disease and death. This was a serious obstacle to our work.

Another serious obstacle was the use of opium, which became more prevalent the further west we went along the Mê Kok range towards Mûang Fāng. We presently reached villages where the poppy was cultivated, until, in the last village, men, women, and boys, and sometimes even girls, were its slaves. Fevers and dysentery prevail during the rainy season. These people have a very scanty pharmacopœia, and no antidotes whatever for these diseases. Opium in some form is probably their surest remedy. Many persons told me that they began by using it in sickness. As sickness recurred the habit grew, until they were fast bound in its chains. These facts largely determined the character of the instruction we gave, and made our tour a kind of anti-opium crusade. Encouraged and disappointed at every village, I was still tempted on by visions of capturing some large village that would prove a more effective entering wedge for the tribe than Cha Pū Kaw’s poor little hamlet. The six weeks so spent were at the time the most novel and exciting, as well as most arduous, of all my missionary experiences so far.

We took both the old Mūsô men as assistants, and the younger ones as carriers for our equipment. Our first day’s journey was a fair sample of what we had to do continually. In many places it would be a misnomer to speak of the track we travelled as a path. We left the plain in the morning, and it was half-past two in the afternoon when we reached the first summit. It was five o’clock when, desperate with thirst, we came upon a flowing brook. There was, then, still another hard climb before we saw our long looked-for first village ahead. And, in general, because of the habit these people have of planting their villages upon the very highest points where they can get water, the journey from one of these villages to another in plain sight, and, apparently, but a short distance away, would take hours of the hardest travel. Sometimes we would walk weary hours through rain, or through bushes as wet as rain, to visit a village; only to walk back again after sitting three hours in wet clothes trying in vain to awaken some interest in old or young.

One of the most interesting, and, at the same time, one of the saddest, cases we met was that of Mûn Kamprai, the head man of a village which clearly bore the impress of his character in the intelligence and industry of its inhabitants. From opium he had kept entirely aloof until, only a few years before this time, under the stress of a severe illness, he began to take it. The poor man now realized that he was becoming a wreck, but seemed to have no will-power left to make the effort to break away from the habit. He was much interested, however, in his two fellow-tribesmen whom I had brought as my assistants; and Cha Waw’s example seemed to afford him a faint gleam of hope. If we would stop a week and teach his people, and would stand by to aid him, he would try. If successful, he would surely become a Christian—and then his village would be the one we had been hoping for to free itself from the tribal bond, and become Christian.

The experiment was, indeed, pathetic. Removing all temptation, he began with a desperate determination to succeed. We encouraged him with human sympathy and the hope of divine aid. We pushed as far as we dared the use of a tonic which Dr. McKean had given me for such cases; and it aided him perceptibly. He held out manfully for several days. But, at last, in an evil hour, he could endure the torture no longer, and before we knew it, he had resumed the use of the drug. For two nights he had not slept. In his own expressive language, it was not his eyes, but his heart that could not sleep. Poor man! his sufferings must have been as near those of the infernal regions as it is possible to experience in the body. And then his absolute wreck of mind, and the contempt he felt for himself when he gave up the struggle as hopeless!

We spared no labour to reach the homes of these people, or their hearts. We tried to become Mūsôs to the Mūsôs that we might win them. Sometimes we had to sleep in their huts—on a floor raised two or three feet from the ground, which the dogs shared with the family, while the pigs and goats were on the ground beneath. In the centre was a raised fireplace on which the native teapot always boiled. Sleeping-mats or thin bedding lay about on the floor, and on this, before bedtime, some of the inmates would lie down and fall asleep even while listening to the conversation.—But everywhere the tribal bond was too strong to be broken.

By this time the rains had set in. The trails—and the leeches that infested them—were getting worse and worse. Soon the torrent-streams would become impassable. We must return while yet we could. Our six weeks’ wanderings we retraced in four days of constant tramping. It had been a hard trip for all of us. I myself had a touch of fever. It seemed good on reaching our camp to have once more the luxury of a chair and a table. And then to be on the sadaw’s back travelling homewards, and to meet a good mail on the way! My three-score and fourth birthday was spent in the forest, and I reached home safely on the 18th of May, after an absence of nearly five months.

The peninsula of Farther India is largely exempt from the terrible scourge of famine which has become almost chronic in Hindustan, its greater neighbour on the west. There the population is so numerous that the normal production of food is just sufficient to supply its needs. Even a local or a partial failure of the crops must produce distress. Siam, on the contrary, is happy in that it not only produces an abundant supply for its own people, but is a granary for the surrounding countries. The worst that has ever been experienced in Lower Siam in years of greatest scarcity, has been the necessity of checking the export of rice. The annual floods there cover the whole country, so that a general failure of crops is, humanly speaking, impossible.

In the northern states the land is higher; and considerable portions of it, being above inundation, are directly dependent upon the seasonal and local rains. But with a population by no means dense, this very diversity of the cultivated areas is a source of safety. A season of heavy rainfall which drowns the lowland rice, is apt to prove exceptionally good for the uplands. And, on the other hand, a season of light rainfall, which cuts short the upland crop, is apt to be a good season for the flooded areas. And in considerable sections of the country there is the chance that a second crop in the same season may make good the loss of the first. There is a further security also in the fact that, until communication with the coast becomes such as to make exportation profitable, the excess of fruitful years remains unconsumed in the country, to supply the need of less fruitful ones. It thus comes about that scarcity amounting to a real famine cannot result from the failure of crops in any single year. It requires two consecutive failures to produce extensive suffering among the very poor, and three to result in a real famine.

This last, however, was the case in 1892. In 1890 there was a light crop throughout the land, with less excess than usual to be stored. In 1891 the crop was lighter still. In the eastern provinces, particularly in Lakawn and Prê, there was very little rice to be reaped. Famine conditions began there long before the time for harvest. People were scattering off in squads or by families into Chiengmai and the northern provinces, begging a daily morsel. They were poverty-stricken as well as famishing. The distress led the brethren in Lakawn to make an appeal to friends in the United States for a famine fund. Quite a liberal response, amounting to several thousand dollars, was made to this call, largely by the friends of the Lāo mission. The relief was almost as timely for the missionaries as it was for the famishing people. Otherwise they scarcely could have lived through the long strain on their nerves and sympathies caused by the constant sight of sufferings which they could not even in part relieve.

The province of Chiengmai could have met its own needs until the new crop came in, had it not been for the constant draft upon its reserves to meet the demands of Lakawn and Prê. But, between high prices offered and pity for the less fortunate, those reserves were steadily drained away, until, during the latter months of the year, famine was upon us in Chiengmai, too. Bands of men from destitute villages, maddened by hunger and unable to buy food, began to roam about the country by night, or, sometimes, by day, and seize rice wherever any little remnant of it could be found. The authorities were powerless to restrain them or to keep order. The condition of the more destitute provinces can better be imagined than described.

At last the relief committee in Lakawn were asked if they could not spare us a small portion of their fund, for it seemed that their condition could not be much worse than ours. A letter from Dr. W. A. Briggs brought us three hundred rupees, but with the following caveat—the italics are his:

“Wherever we can reach the absolutely starving, that is a place to invest. We do not pretend to relieve all the suffering. Now, if the need in Chiengmai, or in the district mentioned, is so great that people are actually dying from starvation, and those now living are living on such stuff as the sample enclosed (cocanut-husks, leaves, bark, etc.), with never a grain of rice, then I would advise you to form a Famine Committee, and go into the business as we have done. The actual starvation must be attended to, no matter where it is. But our saddest experience is within Prê. Some one should be sent there at once.”

The scenes reported from Prê were harrowing. I will not pain the reader by dwelling upon them. One happy result followed the efforts of the brethren who went to the relief of that district. While administering to bodily wants, they preached the Gospel, making such an impression that there was a strong demand for a permanent station there—which was established the next year, with Dr. and Mrs. Briggs as pioneer missionaries.

It should be stated that, toward the last, the Siamese government sent up supplies of rice; but, because of the distance and the difficulty of transportation, not much reached the suffering people in time to help them; and much was lost in passing through the hands of so many officials.