the church and house, and from thence paid a visit to the school to see Mr. Wright. Our house is beset with visitors, and will be, I suppose, while the "Meander" is here.'

Bravely as she had parted from her eldest child, he seems to have been ever in her thoughts, and her heart hungered for news of him. During the six years up to their first return home no mail seems to have given her the opportunity of writing that she did not address a letter to the kind friends who had taken charge of him, as if beseeching for a reply. In one of these letters, dated Sept. 21, 1848, she writes: 'God is very good to us in giving us such friends as you and John are This thought is the most efficient check I have recourse to when a spirit of despondency seizes me or when I am unduly sad at the distance which parts me from all my heart's treasures. But this feeling is only very occasional and I have no excuse for it; I ought ever to bear about the most thankful heart in the world for all the mercies with which we are surrounded here, and the merciful tidings which the mail has hitherto brought us. You are so kind in writing regularly; do not weary of it, most precious friends, for you can never know, unless you were similarly placed, all alone in a new world, how refreshing and comforting home letters are, how they gird us up for the following weeks, supplying us with pleasant thoughts and images of you all. There is no virtue in my writing home regularly, for it is my greatest pleasure, and one I could not be happy without. I have no one to talk to except my dear husband, and when we do get a chat we have so many business matters to discuss, that it leaves little time for what is nearest our hearts. Sometimes Frank suddenly says to me, "How much happier our boy is than we could make him, and what much better impressions he is receiving than he would get here!" True enough, for the more observing he is the more he would suffer from living the first years of his life in a heathen country. We can scarcely appreciate the great strength of our earliest impressions, the hallowing influence of a

Christian Sabbath, the music of church bells, the venerable building sacred to God's service which has an awfulness to a child, giving him his best and truest idea of God Himself; then the constant outflowings of love, neighbourly kindness, and Christian charity with which a child is surrounded in a Christian home-lessons never to be forgotten, finding a ready sympathy in the tender heart of a child which no steeling of future years can obliterate. If I felt on leaving England that we did right in not bringing Charley with us, I am now fully convinced of it, and, believe me, my Ellen, if any mother's feeling sometimes makes me long to fold him in my arms, I would not wish to take him from yours. If the moving even of my finger would bring him, he should remain where he is.'

In his first report from Sarawak to the Rev. C. D. Brereton, and before the arrival of the Rajah, McDougall describes his choice of the ground on which he proposed to build the church and permanent mission buildings, and the narrow quarters in which, until those buildings could be prepared, the missionary party was located, and he mentions that he had established a dispensary. This,' he says, 'has succeeded admirably, and has fully occupied me with patients every week-day from 12 to 2 or 3 o'clock. They mostly come to me; those that cannot come I visit. On looking at my case-book I see that I have had fifty fresh cases this last fortnight, of which one half were ague, fever, and rheumatism, the remainder diarrhoea, bronchitis, and surgical cases. I hope that the Rajah will found a hospital. It would be of great use. I have had several Dyak patients. They appear a fine, guileless, honesthearted people; very much may be done with them even in this generation, but the only way of fully reaching them will be by having men who will live amongst them. A dozen, aye twenty men, might each find a noble sphere of labour amongst the various tribes, of which I am told there are now at least five and twenty in our Rajah's territory, besides the numerous bordering tribes, which are all accessible. I would

willingly give myself to one or two tribes and live amongst them entirely, but I believe that my vocation is here. As soon as Dr. Treacher comes over on his way to Labuan I must take the opportunity of leaving my patients in his hands to visit some of the tribes myself, to see where stations can best be chosen for acting on the greatest number. I hope by the next mail to forward the plans for the church and house, and that you will like them, especially as I must not only be architect, but head joiner, carpenter, and blacksmith, and must make a working-model for everything. It should be our endeavour to do what is to be done substantially, and in a manner worthy of the Church of England. Nothing shall be wanting on my part to do what is necessary both cheaply and well. We expect the Rajah, or Sir James, as he is now called, in about a fortnight. There is to be a grand feast among the natives on his arrival. early expedition against the piratical Dyaks on the Serebas and Sakarran rivers, who are now "out" with twenty boats. About six weeks ago they were "out" and killed fifteen poor fellows belonging to Sadong and took their heads.'

There will also, most probably, be an

In undertaking to carry out the mission buildings in this independent manner, he seems to have taken the committee by surprise, as they had expected the usual building routine to be observed, and architect's plans and estimates to be followed by tenders and contracts to be submitted to them. But when they found what manner of man they had to do with they very wisely gave him a free hand, and the result was that the works were carried out with great success, and in a climate where a very few years are generally sufficient to render buildings ruinous, the church and mission house at Sarawak were completed not only economically, but substantially.

At the same time he spared no pains to obtain the best advice on the subject. In May 1849 he writes from Singapore, to which place he had run over in an E. I. Government steamer, to consult Major Faber and Mr. Thomson, the mili

MALAY MOHAMMEDANISM

33

tary and civil engineers there, about some points of the church on which he doubted his own opinion, but which he was glad to find they confirmed. And again he begs his correspondent to consult Captain Bethune on the subject of lightning conductors for the church and mission house, which he thought absolutely necessary to protect wooden buildings at Sarawak from fire, a subject to which he again returns, saying that he had had a letter at a later date from Major Faber cautioning him about the church, for which he predicted a fiery fate if due precautions were not taken.

In a letter written on August 1, 1848, to the Rev. T. Stooks, Honorary Secretary of the Borneo Church Mission, he says:

'We use the dispensary in the morning for an adult school. We have already six scholars who understand a little English, and are desirous to learn to read and write. As soon as we can get a suitable place we shall open a children's school, but I am in no great hurry to begin it, as a little time will enable Wright and myself to know the language better. I am learning to speak it by frequent converse with the natives, but when I shall have time for the literary part of the language I hardly know, certainly not until our building operations are under way. The Mohammedan Lent began yesterday, which the Malays keep very strictly. My patients, who are very fond of medicine, would not touch a drop yesterday before sunset. In one case where a man was very ill and needed it much, he persisted in refusing, but said that I might give him or do anything with him after sunset. Though they worship God in error, I am sure that they do it in sincerity. These Mohammedans are certainly a rebuke to the Christians in these countries, who have the light but choose not to walk in it.' He adds: 'I consider this a very healthy place. No one need fear the climate who will take care of himself, and live on dry ground; but this house, I am sorry to say, stands almost in the river; high tides surround it, and I fear that if we have to stay here very long, we shall

D

some of us feel the effects of the situation.

When the spring

tides come they surround us, and retiring leave a good deal of decaying vegetable matter, which drying in the hot sun engenders miasma.'

In forming the opinion that the climate was a healthy one, Mr. McDougall must have been influenced by his sanguine temperament, for, as we shall see, the history of the mission and of the Europeans of the settlement was one of constant sickness and incapacity from the climate, through which none passed unscathed, and from which none suffered more cruelly than did he and his successor in the bishopric. It is hard for those who stay at home to realise the effect upon European constitutions of long-continued residence in tropical or equatorial regions. This expression of opinion on McDougall's part reminds us of a speech once delivered by an eminent and eloquent prelate, since departed, in which, describing a region still more deadly than Borneo, namely, the delta of a South African river, he said that it was a mistake to suppose that it was unhealthy, all that was required was to take a good dose of quinine every day, and then the European constitution might brave it. Whether good Bishop Mackenzie, to whom the orator was wishing God-speed, held the same opinion we can never tell, but we may be sure that his confidence was not in the drug. It is, however, curious that in the disastrous expedition in which his life was sacrificed, it was to the loss of his quinine and other medicines by the capsizing of his canoe on the river Shire, an affluent of the Zambesi, that his death by fever was attributed.

Mr. McDougall was not long in learning a little more of the climate, for on October 26 he writes: 'I am sorry to say that I have been laid up since I last wrote [about six weeks before] with a sharp attack of fever, and now, though convalescent, I can scarcely hold my pen, owing to the large abscesses which are forming one under each arm.' This, however, he thought due to the insalubrious building which they