John West (missionary)

Transcription

chapter one of the romance of missionary heroism this is a liberal box recording only provokes recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libre of arts degree org this recording by david leeson the romance of missionary heroism by john chisholm lambert chapter one in the steps and desert suv mongolia about the middle of the year eighteen seventy their arrived in taking a young scotch men james gilmore by name who have been sent out to china by the london missionary society to begin work in the capital within a few weeks of his arrival there took place at tents and the port of taking that fanatical outbreak known as the jensen massacre in which a roman catholic convent was destroyed and thirteen french people murdered a widespread panic at once took hold of the capitol the european community felt that they were living on the edge of a volcano for no one knew but that this massacre might be the prelude to a general outburst of anti-foreign hatred such as was witnessed later in connection with the boxer movement all-around kill more his acquaintances were packing up their most precious belongings and holding themselves in readiness for a hurried flight to the south it was at this moment but the newcomer result on a bold and original move instead of fleeing to the south in search of safety he would turn his face northwards and see if no opening could be found for christian work among the mongols of the great mongolian planes he was caught early unacquainted goes with the country and the language but he had long felt a deep and romantic interesting that vast lonely plateau which lies between china proper and siberia and forms by far the largest dependency of the chinese empire d suspension of worked in picking seemed to offer the very opportunity he wanted for pushing his way into mongolia and so as soon as the necessary preparations could be made for gilmore was never the man to let the grass grow beneath his feet he left the capital behind with all its rumors and alarms before long the great wall was passed which ever since the third century bc has defended china from mongolia and then with two candles and a camel karte our intrepid travellers set his face towards the desert of gopi which lies in the very heart of the mongolian plane mongolia the home of the mongols has been described as a rough parallel a gram eighteen hundred miles from east to west and one thousand miles from north to south it is a huge platter lifted high above the sea impart desert in part of treeless expanse of grass east apt and in park covered by mountain ranges who speaks rise up to the line of perpetual snow the climate hot and dry in the summer and bitterly cold in winter makes agriculture impossible except in some favorite spots and so by the force of his circumstances the mongol is unknown that dwelling in a tent and pestering his flocks and herds upon the grass of the step for long centuries the people were constant terror to the chinese even the great wall proved in ineffectual barrier against them and time and again they poured like a mighty flood over the rich lands of their peace-loving neighbors to the south but about five hundred years ago they were converted from their earlier pagan faced to buddhism in its corrupted form of lama ism and this change of faith has had a decidedly softening effect upon the national character much of this no doubt must be attributed to the custom which prevails among them of devoting one or more sons and every family to the priesthood one result of this custom is that the mongol priests or llamas as they are called actually form the majority of the male population and ask the llamas are celebrates in virtue of their office another result has been a great reduction in the population as compared with early days it is calculated that at the present time there are not more than two millions of mongols occupying this vast territory of one million three hundred thousand square miles mongolia is no longer in title now to the name it once received uh... overseen a genteel the manufactory of nations it does not now possess those surplus swarms of bold and warlike course in in which it once sent out to overrun and conquer other lands but like all nomads its people are still in active and hearty race has horsemen tuesday still excel from their very infancy both men and women are accustomed to the saddle and even yet some of them could rival the feats of the horsemen of genghis khan the greatest of all the mongol conquerors of long ago it was to this country and this interesting but little-known people that james gilmore devoted his life his first journey across the great plot to began etc how done which lies to the northwest of taking just within the great wall and terminated i chiapas took on the southern frontier of siberia he made this journey over plane and desert which occupied only a month in the company of a russian official who knew no english well he himself knew neither russian or mongolian he was glad therefore on reaching fiat start to meet a fellow countrymen one of the world's ubiquitous scott's in the person of the trader named grant grant was exceedingly kind to him and took him into his own comfortable house but finding that this contact with civilization was can bring him in his strenuous efforts to master the mongolian language without delay gilmore formed a characteristic resolution this was nothing else tend to go out the pawn the plane and try to persuade some mongolian to receive him as an inmate of his tent it was at night that this idea occurred to him and the next morning he left kiosks dot taking nothing with him but his penang lawyer this it should be explained because a heavy walking stick so-called because in penang it is supposed to be useful in settling disputes gilmore had already discovered that in mongolia it was not only useful but altogether indispensable as a protection against the ferocious assaults of the wall fish looking dogs which invariably russia the traveler if he draws nearer to any encampment one of the first incidence of the caravan journey from college and have been the narrow escape of a russian soldier from being torn down by a pack of mongolian dogs with a stout limb of the law in his first however deal more feared nothing but screwed cheerfully over the plane making for the first ten piece on the horizon has he drew near he heard the sound of a monotonous voice in gauged in some kind of kent and when he entered found a llama at his prayers the l'alma hearing footsteps look around and pronounced the one-word shit and then continued his devotions for another quarter of an power he went on taking no further notice of his visitor meanwhile but suddenly his droning chants east and he came forward and gave gilmore a hospitable welcome gilmore opened his mind to him without delay telling him that it was his desire to spend the winter in his tent and learn mongolian from his instruction the llama was surprised but perfectly willing and agreed to receive his visitor as a paying guest for an indefinite period at the modest rate of about a showing a day and so within a few months of his departure from london we find gilmore living the life of a known that and a tenth of a llama on the mongolian plane once the first novelty has worn off he found the life somewhat monotonous dinner was too great to vent of the day the more so as it is the only meal in which a mongol indulges the preparations for this week past were on varying as also was the subsequent menu toward sunset paloma servant who was himself a llama melted a block of ice in a huge part over a fire which killed the tent with smoke taking a hatchet he next few days solid lump of martin from a frozen carcass and put it into the water as soon as it was boiled he fished it out but the fire tongs and laid it on the board before his master and gilmore who then attacked it with fingers and knives forks were things unknown when the mongol heats he takes a piece of meat in his left hand seizes at with his teeth and then cuts off his mouth full close to his lips by a quick upward movement of his life the operation looks dangerous but the flatness of the native knows makes it's safe enough though it would be very risky in the case of one who was otherwise in doubt among those always thought gilmore's knows tremendous and they excused him for cutting off his mouth falls first and appropriating them afterwards meanwhile as this first course was in progress the servant had thrown some military into the water used for boiling the meat and when the diner set partake in sufficiently of the solid fair disdain rule was served up as a kind of soup the martin gilmore says was tough but he declares that seldom in his life did he taste any preparation of civilized cookery so delicious as this may look soup he admits that he has no doubt that it was chiefly desert hunger that made it seems so good though he hate only once a day at the llama like all mongols consumed vast quantities of t happened on and again that noon the servant prepared a pale full of the cheering beverage giving it always ten or fifteen minutes hard-boiled ng and seasoning it with fat and a little meal instead of milk gilmore accommodated himself to the ways of the tent has a concession to his scotch tastes however he was provided every morning with a couple of meal made into something like poor age by the addition of boiling water this paloma and his servant called scotland and they were careful to set it aside regularly for the use of power gilmore to whom buddhist priests though they were they soon became quite attached before leaving the subject of meals we may mention dot on the last day of the year mongols make up for their abstain yes missed during the other three hundred sixty four by taking no fewer than seven dinners when new year's eva rived the loma insisted that his visitor should do his duty like among goalie and and a yellow coated hold l'alma who was present as a guest on the occasion was told off to keep count of his progress gilmore managed to put down three dinners and was just wondering what to do next when he discovered that his guardian llama and got drunk and lost count in this case although himself a strict tito taller he did not feel disposed to take two severe review of the old gentleman's failing when the time came at last to re-cross the planes gilmore decided to make the homeward journey on horseback instead of by camel karte the one drawback was that he had never get learn to ride but as he had found that the best way to learn mongolian most by being compelled to speak it he considered that a ride of a good many hundred miles might be the best way of learning to sit on a horse the planned proved undecided success in mongolia a man who cannot ride is looked upon as a curiosity and when gilmore first mounted everybody turned out to enjoy the site of his awkwardness but though he had one or two nasty falls through his horse stumbling into holes on treacherous bits of ground such as are very frequent on the planes where the rats have excavated galleries underground he soon learned to be quite at home on the back of his steed when he wrote that last once more through a gateway if the great wall passing the start of mongolia into china again he felt that after the training he had received on his way across the steps and the desert he would be ready henceforth to take the saddle in any circumstances indeed socorro two-seat entebbe come that we find him on a subsequent occasion when he formed one of the company mounted for a journey on chinese murals which will not travel except in single file riding with his face to the tale of his beast so as to be better able to engage in conversation with the cavalier who came behind him this crossing and re crossing of the mongolian plane and especially the winter he had spent in the law must tent had already given gilmore a knowledge of the mongolian language and a familiarity with the habits and parts of the mongols themselves such as hardly any other western could pretend to picking when he returned to it had settled down to something like it's normal quiet but he felt that the ordinary routine of work in the city was not the work to which he was specially called the desert air was in his blood now and mongolia was calling henceforth hit was for the mongols that he lived year-by-year gilmore fared forth into the great plane in prosecution of his chosen task and although it was his custom to return to taking for the winter he still continued while they are to devote himself to his mongol flock between china and mongolia a considerable traders carried on the mongols bringing in hides cheese butter and the other product of a pastoral territory and carrying away in return vast quantities of cheap t_e_ in the form of compressed bricks these bricks being used in gilmore's time not only for the preparation of the favorite beverage but as a means of exchange in lieu of money during the winter months large numbers of traders arrive in pic came from all parts of mongolia and many of them camp out in their tents in open spaces justice state do when living on the planes gilmore frequented these encampments and took every opportunity he could make or find of conversing about religious matters and especially of seeking to come into the jesus doctrine as the buddhists called it one plan that he followed was to go about like a chinese peddler with two bags of books in the mongolian language hanging from his shoulders hall were invited to buy and in many cases this literature was taken up quite he'd really often a would-be purchaser demanded to have a book read aloud to him before he made up his mind about it and this gave the peddler a welcome chance of reading from the gospels to the crowd which gathered and then of introducing a conversation which sometimes passed into a discussion about the merits of jesus and buddha sometimes those who were anxious to body had no money but we're prepared to pay in kind and so not infrequently gilmore was to be seen at night making his way back to his lodgings in the city with a miscellaneous collection of cheese sour chord butter militate and sheets fat representing the produce of part of the day's sales among the most remarkable if gilmore's many journeys to mongolia was one which he made in eighteen eighty four an agent i really on foot he was a tremendous walker at times more perhaps by reason of his unusual willpower and because of exceptional physical strength and is known to have covered three hundred miles in seven and a half days an average of forty miles a day on the occasion of his long tramp over the planes and back he had special reasons for adopting that method of locomotion one was that grass was so scarce during that here that it would hardly have been possible to get past her for a camel or a horse another was that the love of simplicity and unconventional witty which was so market a feature of his character grew stronger and stronger and also the desire to get as near as possible to the poorest and humblest of the people at a later period we find him adopting in its entirety not only the native dress but practically the native food and so far as a christian man could native habits of life an idea of the length to which he carried the rule of plain living maybe gathered from the fact that for some time his rate of expenditure was only three tenths of day his biographer mister love it gives us a graphic picture of him taking his bowl of porridge native fashion in the street sitting down upon almost all the side the boiler of the itenerary vendor from whom he had just purchased it and the plane this of his guard at times may be judged off when we mentioned that in one village on the borders of china he was turned out of the two respectable pins which the place could boast on the ground that he was a foot traveler without kore kore animal must be content to be taken self to the tavern for practice it was in keeping with his tastes therefore as well as from necessities that he wants tramped through mongolia withhold his belongings on his back his equipment when he set out consisted of a postman is brown bag on one side containing his kit and provision on the other and anglers waterproof bag with books et cetera together with china man's sheepskin coat slung over his shoulder by means of a rustic of the pin nine lawyer type in the course of this crap his formidable stick notwithstanding he had some times to be rescued from the teeth of the dogs which flew not unnaturally at a character so suspicious looking but he met with much hospitality from the people boast llamas and lehman wherever he went and returned to cog in without any serious mishap from two dangers of the country he altogether escaped one was the risk of being attacked by waltz which are a perfect error to the chinese traveler over the planes though the inhabitants themselves make light of them and never hesitate when they catch sight of one to become the attacking party the result of this is doctor wolfe is said to distinguish from afar between amman goal and the china man sleeping off as hastily as possible if it sees a way fairer approaching in long skin roads but anticipating a good dinner at the site of another in blue jacket and trousers gilmore himself was of opinion dot mongolian walls or not so dangerous has siberian ones the reason he gives his dot unlike the russians the mongols keep such poor sheet folds that a wolf can help itself to a sheep whenever it likes and so is seldom driven by hunger to attack a man the other danger was from bandits for there are parts of the desert of gopi crossed as it is by the great trade routes between siberia and china which are quite does unpleasant to traverse as the ancient road between jerusalem and jericho but gilmore was probably never more secure against highway robbery them when he walked through mongolia as a missionary tramp it is impossible to enter into the details of the strange and romantic experiences which be felt this adventurous spirit in the course of his many wanderings now we find him spending the night in a long list tent most probably discussing sacred things with his host tool for on courts morning over a glowing fire up our goal or dried cows dong the customary fuels the plane's at another time he is careering across the desert on horseback a swiftly asses mongol companions for he was a man who never liked to be beaten now he is out of marriage feast looking on with observant and humorous highs at the rough but harmless mary makings again he is in the court of justice where punishment is meted out on the spot on the culprits back in the presence of a highly appreciative crowd at one time with a heart full of pity for a superstitious and deluded people he is watching a buddhist turning his prayer wheel with his own hand or hanging it up in front of his tent to be turned for him by the wind at another as he passes a criminal in an iron cage was condemned to be starved to death and is set to day by day in front of an heating house in a large trading settlement for the aggravation of his torturers he is reflecting on the defects of the religion that can permit its followers to enjoy this public exhibition of a fellow creatures dying pains in his journey is he was constantly exposed to the bitter cold of a land where the thermometer falls and winter two thirty four forty degrees below zero and all through the heat of summer huge lumps of ice remain on melted in the wells often he had to endure long spells of hunger interest when on the march worst of all he had to share the filth environment of a mongol tent as well as its hospitality but these things he looked upon as hall in the day's work and though he may sometimes chronicle them in his diary as facts he never makes the matter of complaint among the most interesting incidents which he records or sumin connection with his endeavors to bring relief to those whom he found in sickness and pain although not a doctor by profession he had picked up some medical and surgical skill and did not hesitate to use it on behalf of those for whom no better skill was available in doing this he sometimes ran great risks for with all their hospitality va mong goals are terribly suspicious and ready to entertain the most extraordinary rumors about the designs of any stranger once he persuaded applying man to come with him to picking to have a size operated on for cataract in the hospital there the operation was unsuccessful and the story was spread over a large region that gilmore entice people to taking in order to steal the jewels of their eyes that he might preserve them in a bottle and sell them for hundreds of tales in consequence of this he lived for months under what almost amounted to sentence of death only by showing no consciousness of fear and by patiently living suspicion down did he escaped from being murdered once he had undertaken to treat a soldier for a bullet wound received and then encounter with break-ins thinking that it was only a flesh wound he had to deal with it turned out to be a difficult bone complication now gilmore new hardly anything of anatomy and he had absolutely no books to consult what could i do he says but prairie and a strange thing happened they're tougher talk to him through the crowd alive skeleton a man whose bones literally stood out as distinctly as if you were a specimen in anatomical museum with only a yellow skin drawn loosely over them and then came to beg for cough medicine but gilmore was soon busy fingering a particular part of his skeleton with so stranger smile on his face that he heard a bystander remark dot smile means something so what did gilmore ads it meant among other things that i knew what to do with the wounded soldiers damaged bone and in a short time his wounds was in a fair way of healing james gilmore's among the mongols is a book to be read not only for the romance of its subject matter but because of the authors remarkable gift of realistic statement his power of making his readers see things and bodily presence just as his own eyes had seen them in more ways than one he reminds us of borrow but especially in what borrow himself described as deep part of telling a plane story on the first appearance of home on the mongols very competent reviewer in the spectator traced a striking resemblance in gillmore to a still greater writer of english then the author of let them grow up and the bible in spain robinson crew so he said has turned missionary fifty years in mongolia and written a book about it dot is this book it was high praise but it contains no small degree of truth and to the advantage of gilmore's book as compared with dispose it must be remembered that everything the former tells us is literally true