Earth S Remotest End

Against the real ann -; - iniir

of Asia today, J. < '.. '"-" - - * the

moral battle f- : )nl "

inunism. l eat

cities, - ! " ilc

r vtU'inh's. 10 lind

.^ i Christian teaching Is
lM\inj in Asian affairs. He came away
with the conviction that Christianity
might well be the deciding {"actor in the
struggle of East and West lor the minds
and souls of the Asian peoples.

This trip took the author 33,000 miles
through 15 different countries, from Pak-
istan and India through Laos and In-
donesia to the Philippines and then
Japan, to name but a few. He saw ancient
cultures, "cultures well acquainted with
Western ways, and primitive communi-
ties that seemed all but forgotten by the
rest of the world.

Among the people the author talked
with were India's Nehru, U Nu of Bur-
ma, the Princes of Thailand, and the
Chief Justice of Japan; but perhaps the
people who best reflect the human con-
dition in Asia are the hundreds of native
people the author visited. It is these peo-
ple, Christian and non-Christian alike,
and the missionaries working among
them, that will decide the course of Asia
in the next decade.

Here, in this fascinating report, are
these countries and their people in full
perspective.

Jacket design by Robert Jonas
Jacket photograph by Anne P

KANSAS CITY, MO. PUBLIC LIBRARY

D DDD1 D3DlflH A *

266 P77e
Pollock

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Earth's Remotest End

Text J. C. Pollock 1960
Illustrations Anne Pollock 1960

All rights reserved no part of this book may be
reproduced in any form 'without permission in writing
from the publisher, except by a reviewer who "wishes
to quote brief passages in connection with a review
written for inclusion in magazine or newspaper.

First Printing

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress catalog card number: 60-14293

FOREWORD BY BILLY GRAHAM

One of the thrills of my life has been the discovery, during recent
evangelistic travels, of the "hidden Church" warm, devout groups
of believers who are active today wherever faithful missionaries have
preached the Gospel Many of these Christians shame us by their
lives of prayer, witnessing and sacrifice. Their personal knowledge
of Jesus Christ is rich and full-bodied, and something of which the
West stands in genuine need.

The Reverend J. C. Pollock, a competent British Christian journal-
ist and former editor of The Churchman, here describes his arduous
travels into the sections of Asia where unknown and unsung mis-
sionaries have been at work for years. His skillful pen has brought
to light the increase that God has given. At the same time he has,
in this very personal account, managed to bring into focus some of
the fantastic difficulties the work of Christ faces in the East.

The conclusions he leaves to us, but to me they are inescapable.
The Christians of Asia, like those of America, must learn to live day
by day at the foot of the Cross, walking in love in the midst of rising
and sometimes antagonistic ideologies.

Furthermore, the work of Christian missions is not over ; it has
barely begun. Most certainly we are witnessing a revolution in
missions. The church is re-thinking the entire approach to such
words as "mission," "commitment," and "evangelism." The fact is,
Christianity is a shrinking minority in a world of revolt, confusion
and tension. One of the definite movings of the Holy Spirit that can
be discerned as one travels throughout the world are "little groups"
of "called-out ones" meeting here and there, dedicated, disciplined

vi FOREWORD

and ready to sacrifice their very lives. I have noticed at various
church conferences and retreats that the emphasis is increasing
toward the "house church" in many parts of the world. Perhaps the
Holy Spirit is getting His Church ready for a trial and tribulation
such as the world has never known. One of Europe's greatest theo-
logians recently said: "Within a generation the Church may well
be underground." Hopeless? Yes, but also hopeful. To read this book
is not only to enjoy a modern-day adventure but to see Jesus Christ,
the Man of Asia, crucified and risen for the peoples of that great
continent. It is to get a glimpse into the personal experiences of these
heroic twentieth century followers of the God-Man from Nazareth.

PREFACE

Throughout Asia so many helped us that it would be impossible for
my wife and me to thank them here individually. To the officials of
Her Majesty's Foreign Office, Commonwealth Relations Office, Colo-
nial Office, and British Administrators and Representatives abroad
I would express gratitude for their assistance. I should also like to
thank the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Liverpool, Field Mar-
shal Sir Gerald Templer, Major General F, S. G. Piggott, Sir Chris-
topher Summerhayes, and Miss Joy Ridderhof.

J. C. POLLOCK
November 23rd, 1959

CONTENTS

Foreword by Billy Graham v
PART ONE HINDUSTAN PRELUDE

1 Nine Men and a Girl 3

2 Katmandu n

3 A Witch Doctor and Others 17

4 The Mountain Trail 24

5 Gas-Can Hospital 30

6 Tibet 37

7 Elusive Ind 47

8 Way of Obscurity 57

9 Seats of the Mighty 65

10 South India 68

PART TWO LANDS OF THE YELLOW ROBE

11 No Murders on Christmas Day 81

12 Into Burma 83

13 Jinghpaw Jangle 91

14 Shans, Irish, and Sawbwas 100

15 Jungle Dqdg'ems 109

16 Pooh-Bah and U Nu 116

17 Bangkok to the Back of Beyond 125

18 Forest Trail in Laos 131

19 Fear Beside the River 141

20 The Land of Never Mind 150

21 Bread upon the Waters 157
2 2 "And Put Forth His Hand" 165

ix

x CONTENTS

PART THREE ISLES OF THE SOUTHERN SEA

23 After the Shooting 175

24 Last Days of a Colony 184

25 South to Java 189

26 The Edge of the Volcano 196

27 Indonesian Look- Around 204

28 No Gaiters in a Canoe 212

29 Sarawak Storm and Sunshine 219

30 In the Interior 229

31 The Tribe That Nearly Died 242

32 Spontaneous Expansion 249

33 Through the Sulu Sea 258

34 In Search of Words 263

35 Manila Calling 273

PART FOUR FARTHEST EAST

36 Pearl of the Orient 283

37 Approach to Japan 291

38 Enigma 301

39 The Morning Sun 308

40 Typhoon 315

Appendix Log of the Tour 321
End Paper Map Author's Route Through Asia

ILLUSTRATIONS

DAWN IN WEST NEPAL Facing

The View of Annapurna from Shining Hospital 52

CENTRAL INDIA

A beggar waving a peacock-feather blessing 53

SOUTH INDIA

Fishermen near Trivandrum 53

UPPER BURMA

Demon altars in a Jinghpaw village 84

THAILAND

Literature from the launch 85

SARAWAK

The Bishop of Borneo and Father Basil 244

The Kayan longhouse near Belaga 245

MINDORO

Hazel Page and an informant at Binli 276

Agin preaches the Good News to wayfarers 276

HONG KONG COLONY

Street Scene on Cheung Chau Island 277

Temple on Cheung Chau Island 277

JAPAN

Torii to a Shinto shrine at Nikko 277

one

Hindustan Prelude

ONE

Nine Men and a Girl

Mountains in the starlight. I looked, and wondered why Anne and I
walked in a lane deep in Nepal in the middle of the night, with a
Bengali road engineer, a young Punjabi businessman, and a six-foot-
four Communist from South India who had a long gray beard, a
black robe, a copper kettle.

I had been there before or nearly so : overhead, in a plane, thirty-
six hours earlier. Anne and I were due at Katmandu, the capital,
which had been remote behind its barriers of mountain and political
isolation but which now was only an hour by air from India.

On Friday, October 3, 1958, at about 1 130 P.M., we had been flying
half an hour. The steward came down the plane. "We are turning
back to Patna," he said. "There's a storm in the mountains and we
can't get through."

The next day we were in the air again. Saturday in Nepal is
reckoned an inauspicious day; as a special concession our plane was
allowed to make for Katmandu. And the laugh was on the Hindu
astrologers as once more the pilot turned back. He flew through and
above the weather, and over the mountains, high enough to make
me breathless in the unpressurized cabin. We saw nothing. Twice
he circled Katmandu, looking for a break in the clouds ; he dared
not risk a blind approach, since to come in a little off course would
crash us against the hills. In Katmandu it rained all that day; they
heard us overhead.

During the descent to Pataa, I looked out at the familiar Ganges,
broad and muddy and dotted with brown sails, and at the spacious

4 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

bungalows of the state capital, and waved sadly to King-Emperor
George V before Government House. In the afternoon heat at the
airport, we extracted a light lunch from the reluctant air line, and
ate it in a small room at the back of the terminal in the company of
a goldfish. I could understand the feelings of the goldfish.

Back at the air-line office in the city the station officer, speaking
animatedly with a waggle of the hand and that confusing affirma-
tive shake of the head which are part of every Indian conversation,
explained that tomorrow's regular flight was already full. If there
were unexpected vacancies they would go to the diplomatic and
United Nations personnel stranded from our flight. An extra flight
was most unlikely, though he would try for one. Days might pass
before we could get to Katmandu.

A Nepalese, a professor of education with a chubby, cheerful face,
turned to me. "Why don't we go overland?" he asked. "There's the
new jeep road over the mountains. You take a train to the border
and on to the foothills and then you hope for a jeep. It may be
rough, and it may take thirty-six hours, but it should cost no more
than the flight." I found that there were five Nepalese, including the
Director-General of the Health Services, a noted radiologist who had
the fair skin, high cheekbones, and slightly Mongoloid eyes of the
Nuwars, the earlier rulers of the Nepal Valley, who were displaced
by the Gurkhas, Three of the others were professors, including one
who had just flown back after a year in the United States. He had a
blue American suit and a Donald Duck badge. He was Donald Duck
in voice and looks, but not in character. Nothing could depress,
annoy, or deflate him.

"Why don't we go overland ?" they were all saying. I looked out at
the city street. Fat white-clad Bengalis and Biharis lolled by on the
seats of bicycle-rickshaws pedaled by barefooted coolies, themselves
comfortable in long cotton collarless shirts and dhotis, the garment
which hangs loosely around the legs and which in this area is tucked
up between them. In tibe office yard rickshaws waited. Sacred cows,
long-legged, heavy and humped, rucked in the garbage. A squatting
coolie unhurriedly placed bricks on his head, pair by pair, until it
seemed the pile must topple, and then with faultless balance rose and
walked away. I love India, but not Patna at the end of the southwest
monsoon*

Nine Men and a Girl 5

That night we crossed the Ganges. There were ten of us, Anne
and I the only Europeans. With the Director-General and the
three professors was a young Nepalese engineering student returning
from Delhi who kept assuring us : "You have nothing to worry about.
We will entertain you." Three Indians from the stranded plane had
joined us. The Bengali, Mr. Bose, fortunately held a high position in
the administration of the new road over the mountains. The Punjabi
businessman was boisterous and amusing, with a penchant for Agatha
Christie and films. His strict vegetarianism and involuntary exclama-
tion of horror at a near collision with a cow showed him to be a
Brahman, the highest, most orthodox caste of Hindu. The giant
South Indian, the only one in the party not in Western dress, had
little English, and his mother tongue, Malayalam, was useless in the
North. He said he was a political leader, and since Kerala was then
Communist he was darkly suspect. But he had the eyes and smile of
an aged saint.

The Ganges crossing took over two hours, upstream against a river
full after the rains. We chanced on the best of the two flat-bottomed
paddle steamers, the other being a three-storied sardine tin. In the
saloon, where a standard fan whirled, insects buzzed round the lights,
and a dwarf beggar walking on his knees sought alms, we chatted
of Nepal and England. I could sense the pleasure of being, in effect,
guests of cultured men from races with a true tradition of hospitality.

In the last minutes of the voyage the ferry listed sharply to port,
staggered like a drunken man to the landing stage, and spilled its
contents in a seething mass which ran toward a train standing aloof
and mysterious in darkness. Before the lights came on, Professor
Donald Duck used up most of my torch in settling us all.

The next morning I woke to one of the loveliest sights of India-
dawn and sunrise in the countryside. Woods and green crops of
sugar cane and rice, and the little villages of tiled or thatched huts,
were bathed in freshness. In blue pools small boys scrubbed water
buffaloes, patient dark gray beasts absurd with long thrusting heads,
swept-back horns, and drooping donkey's ears. They have no sweat
pores, and in the heat must be allowed a long daily wallow. Far away
under the morning sun, and against a background of blue, rose a
superb snow peak of the Himalayas.

At Raxaul, the last town in India, Anne and I got fried eggs, tea,

6 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

and toast ; had I known what lay ahead I would have eaten the meal
three times. We crossed a wrought-iron bridge over the line, walked
up a garden path, turned a corner, and found most of the others
grouped round a toylike train which sat engineless in an open space
between the booking office and a row of dirty gray cottages flanked
with banana trees. Two children played on a grass-rope swing; a
pony covered with sores stood tethered to the booking office ; and a
man crouched over the line blowing his nose on his fingers.

We all sat on a circular stone seat under a well-trimmed mango
tree until the engine appeared, half an hour late, and the day's train
crawled over a bridge into Nepal.

I have seen the Nepal Government Railway described as running
through "some of the most breath-taking scenery in the world."
Actually, it wanders lazily across a plain, drawing deep breaths at
tiny stations shared with goats and cows, until it disappears into the
belt of forest, the terai, dividing the plain from the hills.

Three and a half hours to cover twenty-nine miles are time enough
to tell you why I had come to Nepal.

The story had really begun nearly three years earlier. An ordinary
English parson of the younger generation, I had had the opportunity
of flying out to India and Pakistan on a two-month visit. Already,
like many of my contemporaries, I was disturbed at the ineffective-
ness of the churches in Western countries. In England great congre-
gations could be found here and there, and able leaders of all de-
nominations, and the Christian faith received more respect than it
had twenty years earlier. Yet millions had no active allegiance;
clergy and ministers had a daily treadmill as welfare officers, odd-
job men, and masters of ceremonies. And the emphasis was entirely
local. Apart from lip service and occasional bursts of interest in other
lands, each parish or church was absorbed in its own affairs.

India opened my eyes. Though I had never subscribed to the view
that couples old maids and missionaries pale reflections of pale
curates I 1 was typical enough to consider them as of no concern to
mysell India forced a ckamge of outlook. I saw the working condi-
tions of missionaries and their national colleagues, and the problems
they faced in a non-Christian land.

The air journey showed how small is the world. It took less time

Nine Men and a Girl 7

to return to London than to travel between two parishes at opposite
ends of England, yet missionaries were treated as if on another
planet. Political interaction was accepted as normal; yesterday's
events on the other side of the world disturbed the Englishman's
digestion at breakfast, and the American Secretary of State might
chat with the British Foreign Secretary in Oxfordshire on the way
from Formosa to Washington by way of Rome and the North Pole.
The church overseas, a factor in world affairs, was almost ignored.

Did this indifference, this condescending detachment while ab-
sorbed in local interests, partly result from lack of knowledge?

Should ordinary citizens make conducted tours of the mission
field, their indifference would evaporate. Someone must go as their
representative, to see and hear (and smell) as they, to experience
their reactions and draw their conclusions, and then to put the evi-
dence before them. Travel writers who condescend to notice mis-
sionaries portray them as foolishly simple, paving a primrose path
with good intentions, or hard-faced bigots. Missionary literature
consists largely of specialist volumes out of reach of the general pub-
lic, or pious works assuming the reader's sympathy and often couched
in language of a nineteenth century tract. Even the best normally
is limited to one small area. The travel book I wanted must cover a
continent.

It turned out that I should be the one to go. In the late summer of
1958, with my wife as secretary, business manager, and photog-
rapher, I left England by sea.

This is not a book for the experts. They will find nothing in it they
do not know already. It merely records the adventures of an in-
quisitive man and his wife, thirty-three thousand miles through
fifteen countries, to remote areas of mountain and jungle, to great
cities and overpopulated plains, by sea and air, rail, car and foot.

I began with the basic belief of any convinced Christian, that
Christ is the Saviour of the whole world, the way, the truth, and the
life. Beyond that, my mind was open. I wanted to see whether the
churches were making good the Christian claim. I was ready to be
disillusioned or profoundly impressed ; to be constructively critical or
frankly admiring. Traveling on behalf of the general reader in
We&ten* countries, I sought also to see through Eastern eyes. An

8 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

Englishman of the Church of England, my inquiries were not limited
to British or to Anglican activity.

After it was all over, however, I had to decide how much to dis-
cuss the Roman Catholics. I had talked with one or two of their
leaders, a special memory being of the affable, bearded Indo-Irish
Archbishop of Delhi-Simla. I had heard also serious criticisms of
Roman methods. I have no wish to pass on these secondhand detrac-
tions without adequately presenting the other side. But Roman
Catholicism in Asia plows its own furrow, and except for coopera-
tion in certain social- or political matters it is so completely a sepa-
rate department that to study it as fully as I did the Protestant
churches would have required far more time and money than I could
afford. Moreover, though I have no doubt I should have been wel-
comed, I could hardly have expected, in view of drastic doctrinal
divergences, the opportunity for frank assessment. And so I have
been compelled to leave the Roman Catholics aside they have many
and admirable writers until I reach the Philippines, where they are
a factor of major importance to the whole political and religious
situation, and to confine myself to Protestants,

As I traveled, above all else I wished to find the answer to the
question : Is the work of churches and of missionaries in Asia a vital
factor in the world today? If it is, we should take urgent notice.
Literary critics, whose favor is life to a book, seem to envelop this
subject in a conspiracy of silence. Perhaps the spectacle of a parson
resigning his parish and its security to write a travel book will in-
terest them.

It was a gamble for an obscure individual to go off on his own
through the East, And, as you shall hear, it nearly failed within the
first few months,

The little train of dark brown carriages emerged from the forest
and dumped us at the railhead, Amlekganj.

The Director-General had already secured the promise of an
official jeep for himself and the professors. At Amlekganj he ne-
gotiated for a private-hire jeep for the rest of us. This was fortunate,
for the only other transport was an ancient yellow and red bus with
springless seats. We passed it later in full flight in the rain, bodies
bulging from the windows and late comers perched on the roof under

Nine Men and a Girl p

umbrellas. Ninety miles over the mountains in that would have
been martyrdom.

The Director-General bargained with the jeep driver ; the young
Punjabi and I scavenged. It was nearly 3 :oo P.M., over six hours
since the eggs at Raxaul. The others, who would not come for the
eggs, had eaten Indian sweetmeats in the train, using leaves as plates
and, at the next stop, pouring water into their mouths without touch-
ing the brass vessel with their lips. They had pressed sweets on us,
but there was little enough between them and we took only a taste.

Amlekganj was truly Nepal no beggars and no staring and had
rows of booths where cross-legged shopkeepers offered uncooked rice
and vegetables, but it had neither fruit nor chapatties nor eggs. The
best we could find were two packets of Britannia biscuits, and on
these and on glasses of tea we existed until late that night.

At half-past three the jeep moved. At the others' insistence Anne
and I had the comfortable front seats, and in the back Bose, the
Bengali road engineer, the Punjabi, the young Nepalese, and the
South Indian giant sat Eastern fashion on the luggage which had
been squeezed in by careful packing. We drove a hundred yards and
stopped for gas. We drove two hundred yards more, and the whole
jeep was unloaded for customs. At last we were off. For a few miles
we drove on the old road through woods and across shallow fords.
With the hills, the new road began. It had been built, as Bose told
us, by Indian engineers over a period of five years, and opened in
1956. It is called Tribhuban Raj Path, after the King of Nepal who
died in 1955, and it is a magnificent feat of engineering. Especially
I liked its width ; at no time is there a sense of being on the edge of
the precipice.

Thick cloud obscured the view of the tops of the hills, and when,
after crossing a bridge, we subsided with a puncture in the middle
of a village, rain was falling. The driver changed the wheel in ten
minutes under the amused eye of a policeman, while goats jostled
by, and countrymen almost hidden under loads of hay carried on a
pole across the shoulders. Higher up, beyond the rain, a rainbow
spanned the hills.

On and up went the jeep, twisting and turning in a rock-and-roll
progress round hairpin bends, our bodies swerving in unison over
to the left, over to the right, over to the left again. The driver, a

io EARTH'S REMOTEST END

silent young man with closely shaved head, and lower lip thrust
grimly forward, was one of the best I have ever had. As darkness
closed in ; the rain stopped and I took a last look back at India,
showing red in a sunset we could not share.

The Punjabi businessman was overcome with mountain sickness.
He and I changed places. I could not hold up my head in the back,
and before many miles I too had to stop the jeep and stagger into
the night. By the time we crossed the pass, at 8,500 feet, no one
either expected or wanted us to hustle to Katmandu, still over fifty
miles away. Bose's own Public Works camp, Palung was now not
far, and he proposed that we should all stay overnight.

Palung is in a saucer of hills, and its lights were visible below as
the road wound down from the pass. I was sitting in the front, think-
ing of steak and bacon and eggs and hot soup, none of which I was
likely to get, when the jeep turned a corner and drew up sharply
behind an unlighted lorry. A line of big trucks, Katmandu's only
channel for heavy goods, had been stopped by a roadblock. Bose
found that the road was closed until dawn.

We did not carry a senior engineer for nothing. He said he would
find the barrier key. We waited, shivering in our thin clothes. Bose
suggested we should walk to the camp, for getting the key might
take time. The Nepalese stayed to guard the luggage, since he felt
the cold least.

And so we walked, a quarter of a mile up the road and then into
the lane leading to the camp; the South Indian plodding in his
sandals, the Punjabi subdued with fatigue, Bose pleased at being
able to offer hospitality, ourselves hungry, cold, and silent, yet curi-
ously elated as we looked around at these hills under the stars, deep
in a country which only a few years before had been fast closed to
the world.

I shall not forget the kindness of Bose's colleagues, the Indian
P.WJX officers in their NissenMype huts with flickering hurricane
lamps. They made all ten f us welcome, turning out of their bunks,
producing blankets, and making the best meal they could, which
was painfully slow to con^e and ju$t chappaties, lentil, and a little
cooked and flavored rice but a feast tt> stomachs that had gone for
over twenty-four hours cm two eggs, two pieces of toast, biscuits, and

Katmandu n

tea. Anne and I were then given a hut to ourselves. The beds were
hard boards, but to me seemed soft as down.

Nor shall I forget the splendid panorama of the mountains in the
early-morning sun as soon as we crossed over the rim of the saucer,
some twenty minutes from Palung. Much of the lower ground was in
cloud, but beyond rose snow peaks and plateaus the length of the
horizon, stately in shape and symmetry ; only the extreme east of the
line was blocked by cloud, robbing us of Everest.

The road doubled down the mountain toward the central valley,
past woods and rice terraces, and countrymen in their floppy brim-
less Nepalese hats, carrying black umbrellas. At 8 120 A.M. we met a
closed barrier: "This road," it announced, "will remain open only
between 5-7 A.M., and 2-4 P.M." We sat in front of it under the sun,
munching bananas in lieu of breakfast, until Bose and the Director-
General, after fifteen minutes, proved more powerful than regula-
tions. Outside Katmandu was a road tax barrier. Here were Professor
Donald Duck's students to garland him in welcome.

We drew up in the Durbar Square of Katmandu, in front of a pair
of heraldic lions, a few minutes before 10 :oo A.M. on Monday, Oc-
tober 6th, four hours after leaving the Public Works camp at Palung,
and seventy hours after the plane had first taken off for its scheduled
one-hour flight.

How effortless that experience seemed in the light of later ad-
ventures farther Eastl

TWO Jf* Katmandu

Katmandu is not, like Zermatt in Switzerland, steep streets, and the
mountains on the doorstep. It lies in the middle of a fertile central
valley seventeen miles long and fifteen wide; and, small as it is,
gives a sense of spaciousness, though the back streets look as hig-
gledy-piggledy as any Indian bazaar. All around are hills, and away
to the north the snow mountains, lovely in the evening light when
the clouds cleared and the pink of the sunset rose steadily toward
the stoimit.

12 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

Katmandu's temples resemble Chinese pagodas : two or three roofs
on top of each other in a pyramid of red tile, supported by gables
heavily carved with gods and goddesses. In contrast, the numerous
palaces are in the English Georgian or Regency styles Corinthian
columns and white stucco. The palace in the Durbar Square, all
proper with balustrades and pillars, might have been an English
town hall except for the sentries and black cows dozing below. Most
of the city is less than thirty years old, having been devastated by
earthquake ; but so cleverly had the chief buildings been restored,
including the tall tower which I thought must be a minaret but was
only a folly, that no one could tell.

Equestrian statues, cast in England and carried over the moun-
tains in the old days by mule or man, dominate the streets. Most of
them are of hereditary maharajah prime ministers, of the Shum
Shere Jung Bahadur Rana family who, for a hundred years, kept the
kings from power, treated the revenues as their own privy purse, and
excluded foreigners. The British Ambassador showed me a book
which listed every foreigner who entered Nepal between 1881 and
1924. Apart from the British Resident, his staff, the annual inspectors
of his escort, and an occasional special envoy, there were only sixty-
six in forty-four years. But the latest statue was not that of a
Prime Minister, Looking down New Road toward the British In-
formation Room and the American Library stood King Tribhubana,
the savior of his country. His dramatic escape to the Indian Em-
bassy on November 6, 1950, was the signal for the rising which
overthrew the Ranas, restored the King to his own, and opened
Nepal to the world. Since then the nation has been striding out of
the Middle Ages and into the twentieth century.

Beyond the river, over the iron bridge brought a hundred years
ago from England by the Prime Minister who visited Queen Vic-
toria, is the United Mission Hospital at Shanta Bhawan,

Shanta Bhawan was formerly a palace of one of the Ranas, and
the guest room his summer house, a creeper-covered cottage in a
little garden. The garden had statuary, and an ornamental pond
from which we drew water in kerosene tins to pour down the lava-
tory, taking care not to catch a fish. It had also chickens, and a
white rabbit belonging to the daughter of the American heads of the
hospital Dr. Bethel Fleming, the medical superintendent, and Dr.

Katmandu 13

Bob Fleming, the administrative. Beyond the garden wall were fields,
and in the fields was a charming small house where lived two Nor-
wegians, the Robert Bergsakers.

Bergsaker, who was superintending the building of the new mis-
sion hospital at Bhatgaon, a few miles away, could turn his hand to
anything. On the walls of their living room hung his oil paintings
and his woodcut of a rhino in the terai ; on a table lay silver boxes
he had wrought ; and above the door, holding gaily colored plates,
was a rack he had carved. Here, in a room bright with carpets and
embroidery, over coffee, waffles, and yak cheese, I heard how the
United Mission began.

The Flemings were on the staff of a school in North India, Dr.
Bethel as medical officer, Dr. Bob as head of the boys' side. Bob
Fleming is also an ornithologist, and it was as such that he was
permitted by the prerevolutionary government to lead an expedition
in 1949 to West Nepal, where he saw the complete lack of medical
facilities, the almost unbroken illiteracy and widespread poverty.
He also made a powerful friend in Tansen's Governor Rudra Rana.

At that time Fleming had no thought of missionary work in Nepal,
nor did he when he returned in December, 1951, for a second
ornithological expedition lasting four months. Dr. Bethel came too,
and set up a temporary clinic in Tansen. The revolution was over.
The country had opened its doors. American aid was pouring in, and
the United States Operations Mission was building public works.
And the Jesuit Father Moran, the first foreign missionary to be ad-
mitted as a resident, had started a school in Katmandu which now
educates the children of most of the leading families.

On his third visit, trekking overland from Tansen to Katmandu,
Fleming grew convinced that he and his wife should open a Christian
hospital in Nepal if such a thoroughly Hindu state would permit it.
He had Tansen in mind, but was persuaded that an application to
open in so remote a place would be rejected; the government needed
the prestige of a modern hospital in Katmandu. He drew up and
presented a formal proposition, accompanied by a private assurance
that his hospital would not evangelize and that he would respect the
customs and religion of the country, but asking for freedom of wor-
ship on his own compound. In the course of 1953 the Nepal Govern-
ment accepted the proposition on terms that included the right,

14 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

after five years, to take over the hospital and everything in it, in-
cluding expensive equipment brought from abroad.

The mission opened modestly in January, 1954, an American
Methodist venture. A few months later Bishop Jarrell W. Pickett,
the famous Methodist Bishop of New Delhi, boldly expanded it into
a United Mission, interdenominational and international, so that
eleven denominations or societies are represented and the mission-
aries are drawn from nine nationalities : Nepalese from North India,
Indians, Americans, British, Canadians, Norwegians and Swedes,
Germans and Swiss. It spread. A hospital at Tansen opened in 1954,
and schools and clinics at Katmandu and elsewhere. The government
has suggested more projects than the mission has as yet funds or
members to support.

Nepal, geographically like a step between the plains of India and
the high plateau of Tibet, is balanced politically between com-
munism and democracy. Both sides seek to charm her with presents
and persuasion, and the issue, when I was there, was by no means
certain. The work of the United Mission made an undoubted factor
in favor of democracy.

There is, however, a serious criticism that has been leveled by
those who have not been to Nepal : that the United Mission absorbs
money and men but may not do the first work of a mission
evangelism.

We discussed this criticism during a picnic at the site of a pro-
jected leprosy hospital on the edge of the valley, having driven out
along a rough road through villages of red-brick houses. Chil-
dren, recognizing the hospital car, cheered and laughed and held
grubby little fingers together before their faces in the ancient greet-
ing of Namastay. "Namastay I" they cried, and "Ingrezil Ingrezil"
Every white man is English to the Nepalese villager. On the street
rice was laid out to dry which women in saris with bangles on their
arms and gold in their noses threshed and winnowed. Before the
houses were poles stacked roimd with earn on the cob, and the walls
were gay with stringy of red pepper.

The Fleming^ know where they stand. Dr. Bethel, gray-haired and
motherly, said: "We feel that we are doing Christian work just by
being here, Nepalese are seeing the meaning of Christian values.

Katmandu 15

And we are an encouragement to the little Nepalese church in Kat-
mandu." Dr. Bob, a man thin in body and face, with a pointed chin,
small gray mustache and graying hair, a laconic Midwesterner of
twinkling eyes and a dry sense of humor, maintained that the hos-
pital played an important part in demolishing prejudice and prepar-
ing the way for complete freedom of religion.

From what I learned elsewhere I believe he is right. The situation
was delicate. Younger educated Nepalese wished to see democracy
a reality. When the codification of the penal code in 1956 had been
found to include imprisonment for the propagators or converts of
any religion except the Hindu or Buddhist, public reaction was
sharp not through friendship to Christianity but because the clauses
were undemocratic. Yet, though these clauses were shelved, during
my visit three Nepalese pastors were awaiting trial for public preach-
ing and baptisms in the terai.

I could detect the tension. At Shanta Bhawan the atmosphere of
spruce solemnity common to large hospitals, East and West, seemed
to spread to mealtimes in the staff dining room, partly because the
pressure of work induced exhaustion but mainly because they were
there on sufferance. As Western aid they were welcome ; as Chris-
tians, officially, they were not. Despite the undoubted friendliness
and innate courtesy of the educated Nepalese, and the gratitude of
the poor, they had to watch their steps.

Four months later, in February, 1959, the King proclaimed par-
liamentary government. Yet though "fundamental rights" are con-
ferred on the peoples, personal liberty, equality before the law,
economic, political, and religious freedom, an article of the new
Constitution specifically states that "no person shall be entitled to
convert another person to his religion," Freedom extends to practice
and to profession but apparently not, as in India, to propagation, un-
less the new Supreme Court, "to protect the people against the in-
vasion of their fundamental rights," interprets the article more
generously.

Looking at the expensive medical equipment given by American
churches to the United Mission, I could understand why the or-
dinary Nepalese, however grateful for skilled attention, regards
Shanta Bhawan as foreign, and its religion as foreign.

i6 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

Fortunately, its staff were not the only Christian missionaries in
Katmandu. One afternoon Dr. Bob Fleming took me to the city to
meet the Mar Thoma boys.

Some thirty-five years ago a peasant girl in South India heard
Sadhu Sundar Singh, that prophetic character who, after making
considerable impact on East and West, disappeared in the Hima-
layas, speaking of Nepal's need of the Christian Gospel. The girl
was a member of the Mar Thoma church, a branch of the ancient
"Syrian" church in Kerala. When she married she dedicated her
first son to missionary service in this country at the other end of
her world. Her hopes were fulfilled. While still students, he and a
friend made two preaching tours in the terai, the first before the
revolution and the second after, and on February 8, 1953, they
opened house in Katmandu, nearly a year earlier than the medical
mission- Little more than boys then, they have been "the Mar
Thoma boys" ever since.

The peasant woman's son was in the United States for further
training. I found his original companion and two others, one being
a priest of the Mar Thoma church, up ladder-like stairs behind New
Road. The street was so narrow I could have poked with a stick
the woman in a brown sari sitting in the window opposite. Men in
the shirts and Nepalese loose jodhpur-like trousers, their hats at a
rakish angle, gossiped noisily below. Flies, that curse of Katmandu,
buzzed in the sunlit dust between the houses. Nearby were some
of the numerous temples where all day long a trickle of worshipers
cast petals and sweets to the idols.

They told me that they had a common purse and discipline, meet-
ing for prayer three times a day. When they arrived in 1953 they
found one Nepalese Christian, a member of the dominant Rana
family who had been converted over the border. Now they have a
roomful, some thirty or forty every Sunday for service, of converts
and inquirers, "It is private, as the law demands," they said, "in
that it is in our own house. But it is public in that thousands know
about it." Inquirers come at all hours every day. One young man
had; been thrashed by his shopkeeper-father for attending, and was
called an atheist when he abandoned worship of the Hindu gods.
He dared not be baptized, as some others had, because he would have
been expelled from his home.

A Witch Doctor and Others 17

Round the Mar Thoma boys a church was growing. There was
also another group, led by a Nepalese pastor from Kalimpong. I
would have met him, but the delay in reaching Katmandu cut short
our visit ; and much time had to be spent in the Central Secretariat,
once the palace of the Maharajah Prime Minister (white stucco and
Corinthian pillar mixture as before) but now housing almost all the
government departments. Here, from a sea of polite prevarication
and genuine Nepalese charm, I extracted at last, in the record time
of four days, the necessary pass to the mountains of West Nepal.

THREE *$* A Witch Doctor and Others

Through the cockpit window I watched green hills and deep narrow
valleys slide below. To the right, at eye level, Himalayan peaks
emerged from swaths of cloud.

We were nearing Pokhara, a week's trek over a roadless country-
side but only thirty-five minutes due west from Katmandu by air.
Before I left the cockpit the Sikh pilot pointed out the first sight
of the valley, the second largest in Nepal, and banked to starboard
to begin the descent. Back in the cabin after the wheels were low*
ered, I looked out on the grass landing ground and was relieved to
see no herd of cattle lining up to charge across the runway as they
had one day a few seconds after the touchdown, with disastrous
results. The plane landed bumpily and taxied to a halt in front of
two bamboo huts.

From the moment that Jean Raddon, Stanley Wall, and the Nepal-
ese pastor waved to us from the little knot of country people meet-
ing the plane until we trudged off into the mountains three days
later, the Nepal Evangelistic Band gave us unforgettable hospitality.

It was late afternoon that we went up to the hospital, having
spent the day at a cluster of thatched huts above a gorge near the
airfield, where Eileen Lodge, a young London nursing sister with
fair hair and light blue eyes, and Barbara Best, who had first come
to India in 1930 and who had a pleasing touch of empire builder,
tan a primitive but effective leprosarium. The walk to the hospital,

i8 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

out on the north road, took us right through the tumbled-down city
which boasts of being the third in size in Nepal. Children and
adults greeted Jean Raddon with Namastay* Little Tibetan terriers
lay cozily beside their owners ; in the plains of India dogs are mostly
pariah, and their characteristics are fleas and the fear of man, but
here in the hills many were pedigreed. I saw no jeep or motorcar or
wheeled cart in streets where grass grew between the stones. Every
load is carried by coolie.

The track led up across an open space to a plateau flanked by
modern buildings the new government school built by American
aid, and a row of dazzling aluminum huts, like miniature aircraft
hangers, which were the wards of the mission hospital. The land fell
away to the river, beyond which deep green hills rose into low
clouds.

To the right of the aircraft hangars, past a buffalo pond and through
a little gate down to the staff compound, was a group of jungle
houses. The straw color of their thatched roofs and dried banana-
leaf walls was offset by orange Klondike planted all around. Tower-
ing above in white majesty stood the peaks. Not until sunrise on
the Sunday morning did the whole range come out of cloud : Fish-
tail (Marchha Pucha) in the center, sharp-pointed like the Mat-
terhorn; Sitting Elephant and Himal Chuni ("Knobs On") to
the east, their names expressive of their shape, forming the Anna-
purna range. To the west, a separate mountain, the massive block
of Dhauligiri.

These names figure frequently in headlines as climbers come and
go. Yet as if to emphasize the loneliness of the place, a woman
entered the compound just behind us carrying the first delivery
of magazine mail for four months, freighted by air from the plains
that afternoon* Letter mail came from Katmandu about once a
fortnight. In the rains, when the landing ground was flooded and the
hills blacked out by storms, no plane could get through for weeks,
and isolation was complete.

In this remote outpost the Nepal Evangelistic Band had created
a borne. The little bute with their mud floors and leaf walls were
gay with check curtains, yellow,, red, and green. Each had a name.
Otir^s was Badger's Glory, which took me right back to a keeper's
cottage I knew in the Dorset cou&tryskte. The others were Bamboo

A Witch Doctor and Others ig

Hall, Barn House, Bleak House, and Buckingham Palace. The
living room had sofa and chairs in the Indian bungalow style
(cane and polished wood), and pictures: autumn beeches in Eng-
land, St. Ives Harbour, and the like; a view of mountains with
a text, "Let Christ Rule," superimposed, a colored calendar, plenty
of books of all sorts, and a battery wireless presented by the Swiss
Dhauligiri Expedition of 1953. It was dead, having once gone to
Katmandu for repairs.

Two dogs completed the household. Goley, six, was a Schitzu
terrier from Tibet, low on the ground, long in body, round of head,
who when given to the hospital by a patient, at the age of six
months, was so small that he was christened Goliath and once
got his head stuck in a condensed-milk tin. Stumpy was a mongrel
puppy from the bazaar, though believed to be Goley's grandson.
He was black with white tips, and in the slipper-eating, trouser-
pulling stage.

Food was a perpetual difficulty to the hospital staff. The Brahmans
of Bokhara were strong enough to prevent more than an occasional
killing of buffalo ; the sheep were for wool and not mutton, and as
for beef, the staff could only dream of it. That left goat, expensive
and unsatisfying, and chicken. Vegetables were scarce, owing to
some oddity of the local soil. Dishes were well served and helpings
big; no one rose hungry, but all joked about the shortages. In one
or two other places, as I scraped up the last of an inadequate
plateful, I had to smirk and pretend that I had had quite enough,
thank you.

These pioneers did not go around with dedicated looks on their
faces, eat off enamel, and wear jumble-sale dresses. There was
nothing of wisp and bun about their hair. Yet they were building
a solid work in conditions of privation and loneliness. Apart from
their innate sense of humor and, on a deeper level, an unwavering
faith in a Christ who to them was as real and present as to the
first disciples, I ascribed their balance partly to an insistence on
regular relaxation. I believe the "sabbatical" principle one in
seven as a day of rest to be of divine institution, ignored at
peril, except in emergencies. Men and women of God seem the
quickest to break it. They cannot generally rest on a Sunday, and
therefore should take another day. They seldom do. "I've got a

20 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

conscience," said one man in India; "I'm supported by the gifts
of people at home. I oughtn't to let up." "We don't know how long we
shall be here," said another; "we cannot miss a moment." "Don't
tell the folks at home," said a third as he painted a toy truck he
had made for his small son. With that attitude goes tension, weari-
ness, low output.

Bokhara hospital was called Shining Hospital. Far up on the
trade route to Tibet, as we saw for ourselves one day, and high on
the slopes of Annapurna, the aluminum wards could be seen shining
in the sun, throwing off the rays, and cool inside. Plans have been
laid to bring up another six or eight huts from Calcutta, expensive
to buy but cheap to maintain, and raise the hospital to a hundred
beds. It is a simple affair, but the first medical aid the district has
known. Patients come from days away. Occasionally a Brahman
objected if he was placed next to a low caste. He would be told:
"This is a Christian hospital and has no caste distinctions. You
must conform or leave." Sometimes a man would hesitate to enter
the outpatients clinic. "I'm very low caste; can I come in?" "We
generally place him next to a Brahman ! " said Dr. Gerald Turner.

When they first came, in April, 1952, the land they were given
was haunted, though they did not know it, nor did they know that
the people waited breathlessly to see them destroyed by evil spirits.
The bazaar was hostile, and once they heard of plans for an attack
on the compound. But as men and women were cured or relieved,
acceptance came, and then popularity. Even the Brahmans now
admire the N.E.B. as holy people because they heal sick Brahmans,
thereby gaining merit. Treatment of lower castes is in their eyes an
unnecessary waste.

Now, after six and a half years at Pokhara, the mission hoped
for government leave to survey the northern valleys, steep and
remote but with a considerable population deep in poverty and
the darkness of witchcraft, a shadowy borderland between the
Hinduism of Nepal and the lamaistic Buddhism of Tibet. To open
five or six new clinics they required forty-five recruits, Nepalese
and European.

The N.E.B. has not joined the United Mission, as the latter
hoped and as material considerations might have suggested, "We've

A Witch Doctor and Others 21

prayed about it," they said, "and we just do not feel led that way.
We are alert to any leading in that direction but it hasn't come."
I have no wish to dispute that, after studying work astonishingly
successful. Organic unity should never be imposed, and could mean
less than the present close sympathy. The N.E.B., a small group
of twelve or fifteen, with no powerful backing, had been working
for Nepal from over the border when the United Mission was not
even a dream. It had grown like a family. The family relationship
would be jeopardized by absorption in a large combine.

Someday there will be a united church when Christianity in Nepal
is stronger. Missions are only temporary.

The Nepalese pastor stood behind a large lectern Bible which he
did not use, but fingered a lighter one of his own. Pastor David had
fair skin, high cheekbones, large spectacles, a gray mustache, and a
thin neck, On his left forearm was a tattoo, relic of the wild oats
sown by this son of a Darjeeling Christian before being brought to
a living faith.

I was sitting on a mat, my shoes off, on the floor of the first
church to be built in Nepal in modern times ; in the late eighteenth
century the Romans had a mission until expelled. It was a mere
jungle shelter three bamboo poles and two of wood in the center,
a thatched roof, and a low bamboo fence round the side but it
was a church, cool and airy, with a cross on the apex of the roof ;
the cross had fallen askew and had not yet been righted. The men
squatted on one sicte and the women on the other, the missionaries
and ourselves at the back. Anne and I were on the outside of our
sexes and thus next to each other. The sermon was forty-five
minutes of Nepali. I will confess that during long sermons in
English churches we have been known to squeeze hands; sur-
reptitious rubbing of big toes was a new game.

Other than missionaries some dozen men and boys were on the
left, and fourteen women on the right in white saris. And Stumpy. He
had followed the Nepalese nurses, been tied up at the pastor's
house, eaten through the rice-grass rope, and now lay at the entrance
and quietly nibbled his paws, cocking an eye at the preacher.

Except for one or two who had come from India with Pastor
David a&d the missionaries, the members of the congregation were

22 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

all local born. They formed about a third of the church membership,
drawn from rough country villagers around. They had never so much
as heard of Christ until a few years back. Rhoda (they were given
Biblical names at baptism) had been searching for peace of mind.
An old woman of her village returned after treatment at the hospital
and told what she could remember of the Christian message. Rhoda
immediately went and heard for herself; she was now training to
go into distant villages as nurse and teacher. There was Timothy,
a former leper, who had greeted me at the leprosarium where he
now worked, a pleasant young man in blue shorts and a dirty white
shirt (he had a cleaner one for church) who had stood smiling at
us, shyly twisting his hands. His wife Lois had been a water carrier
in the early days of the hospital, which Timothy had attended as a
leper outpatient. One morning Lois shook Timothy awake as they
lay on their sleeping mat on the mud floor. "I have had a dream,"
she said. "I saw the hospital all lit up. Everywhere around was
dark. This village was dark, so dark I was afraid. The town was
dark. But light streamed from the hospital. If we want to know the
truth, or ever to have light in our lives, we must go and learn it
there."

Eventually both Timothy and Lois were baptized, for though
baptism was against the law Pastor David was willing to risk
prosecution. When the Brahman priest next came to the village,
Timothy did not kiss his feet. The priest angrily asked why he had
not received his customary salute. Timothy replied: "Why should
I kiss your feet? I'll give you a salaam and all respect due to an
older man, but not special honor. What do I owe you? You kept us
in the dark all these years."

After the last hymn, during which a butterfly flew in and out
and an ant scurried across my feet, I was taken to the pastor's
house so that three could tell me their stories. I sat on a bed, with
Stanley Wall and, as Interpreter, a young man called Prem, which
means love, as I had realized from frequent repetition in the sermon.
Prem, an orphan, had been brought up in Assam with the pastor's
sons.

The three men sat on little stools and rose one by one to speak
and answer my questions. The eldest was fifty-two, a former Brah-
man fanner who had given the land for the church and parsonage.

A Witch Doctor and Others 23

Buddhi Sagar had a strong, open face, heavily mustached. Like
many Nepalese he had emigrated, and in Shillong, Assam, in 1938,
he met Pastor David. "When I heard of the Gospel," he said, "I
gave my heart to God." His brothers, furious, confiscated all his land
at Pokhara except a few acres to keep him from destitution. The
decision to open at Pokhara in 1952 partly sprang from his offer of
land for a church, and his knowledge of the area.

Lucius, in his mid-thirties, stood up next, a small, smiling man
in gray shorts and a white shirt not quite Sunday best* "I had no
peace from the placating of the gods," he began, "When I was
recovering from a bad illness, I felt thirsty in my heart." He talked
fast, and the interpreter could give me only the gist: a woman in
his village told him that Buddhi Sagar had a book that might
help. Lucius called on the farmer, who gave him a Bible. "He told
me that Jesus had died to take away my sins so that I would not
have to fear any more. And that He could be my Friend." At
length Lucius believed, was baptized, and developed an unquench-
able zeal to spread his good news. A former Gurkha officer whom
I know had him as a porter on trek. When at the end of each day
the Englishman was drooping with fatigue, Lucius would ask him
to unpack his Nepali Bible and give them teaching ; his last waking
memories were of Lucius singing little hymns to villagers he had
collected.

These were the stuff of which the Pokhara church was made.
Its members had the strength and weaknesses of young Christians :
enthusiasm, a vivid gratitude for freedom from superstition and
fear, a sense of mission. On the other hand, they were semi-illiterate,
so that to draw constant invigoration from the Bible was difficult.
Little literature was available; as one of the missionaries com-
plained, "People were on the border for a hundred years, yet
hardly any Nepali Christian books were written or translated."
Bickerings broke out occasionally; there were backslidings and
failures, but no more and no less than those described in the young
churches of the New Testament.

The third convert to tell me his story that morning was Dhun
Raj, a heavy dark-skinned man of twenty-eight, with almond eyes
and a shock of black hair. He was rather unsmiling, but this was

24 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

caused by shyness. He was to be our chief porter for the trek to
Tansen.

He had been a witch doctor. He lived at a village four hours away
and could not often come in to church. Like so many of his race,
he had had an aching desire for spiritual satisfaction. He sought it
on the Tibetan border by learning witchcraft and sorcery and the
worship of evil spirits, yet returned disillusioned, with long hair
and wild look. In Lucius 7 village, which by then had several Chris-
tian families, he discovered a little book, a life of Jesus Christ.
Slowly he spelled his way through it. "I found," he told me, "peace
of God, and friendship, and fellowship with God through reading
the whole book." Another booklet clinched his discovery.

Prem was retailing this to me when Dhun Raj cut in : "Tell him
I was filled with joy."

I asked Dhun Raj what he would say if the evenings of our trek
offered opportunity of talking with villagers. Without hesitation or
embarrassment he replied, "If I meet anybody, if I get any chance
I shall tell them the story of Jesus ask if they know Jesus."

FOUR *f* The Mountain Trail

Twenty-four hours later we stood at the top of the pass. Fishtail
peeped from the clouds.

To reach Tansen, chief city of West Nepal, a Ia2y man could take
the plane to the border and walk back in a day. The Nepal Govern-
ment had given us permission to go direct through the mountains, a
three-day trek southward, and an imposing letter as passport.

In the half-light early that morning, Dhun Raj had arranged
the suitcase, the bedroll, floppy bag, and picnic basket into two
cunningly balanced loads. The other porter was Fish, so called by
the mission as the first of Dhun Raj's friends whom he had hooked
into the Christian Church, an elderly man too elderly as it tunied
oirt-^whose closely shaved head still had a Hindu tuft on the
crown. He wore a smock-like garment tucked into a webbed army
belt. Below was nothing but a G string revealing bare buttocks that
waggled beneath the load.

The Mountain Trail 25

When all was ready, the mission staff stood round and the doctor
commended us in prayer.

A sharp walk of an hour took us to the landing ground to meet
Barbara Bsst and Eileen Lodge, who led us out of the valley and
across a swift narrow stream which a few yards higher up dis-
appeared underground in a white boil of foam. Later we forded a
wide shallow river to begin the main ascent. Barbara and Eileen
plied us with scones and tea in the shade, and pressed their water
bottle on us ; in Europe we never carry water on the longest walk.
We had two Thermos bottles of water now, and thought that would
be enough. Fortunately, they overbore our protests, before turning
back, leaving with us the Nepalese advice on what to do if you meet
a tiger : put your hand in his mouth and pull his tail inside out.

Another hour and a half brought us to the summit where a
little village perched and small boys clustered around while we
waited for Dhun Raj, by now well behind, and Fish even farther ;
because the small boys tired of us before he arrived, we ate lunch in
peace. After that, it was away into the mountains, and no European
face for three days ; an elemental, invigorating existence. The track
ran along a ridge from which sharp spurs and valleys branched out,
a study in green, thick wood or paddy terraces from base to summit
merging into fold upon fold of hills. Sometimes the path ran flanked
with stone walls well back, reminiscent of the English Lake Dis-
trict; sometimes it zigzagged, but remained clear to the eye for
miles ahead, proclaiming itself the main road of West Nepal.

Almost always we were greeted cheerfully by Namastay with
hand and voice, except from coolies whose heads bent forward under
the strap which balanced the tapering basket load. They looked up,
the whites of their eyes vivid against dark faces. Trade coolies came
in strings of four or five, personal-baggage coolies in ones or twos,
laden with yellow or red tin trunks ; the owners marched unencum-
bered in front, barefoot, shading themselves with black umbrellas.
A young sadhu, saffron robe slung across shoulder, walked naked
except for a loincloth. He had discarded the wooden dogs of his
kind, and a shining begging bowl jingled at his side.

Numerous Gurkha soldiers were going on leave for the Dasshera
festival. The Indian Army passed unsmiliiig; the British Army
grinned with pleasure at a white face above an Aertex shirt and
khaki shorts, with an old army knapsack slung over the shoulder,

26 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

and a memsahib, and they saluted military fashion with (whatever
the time) "Good morning, sir!" They would stop for a chat, and
some had a little English. "British officer, sir?" "Well, I was, but
not now." "What regiment, sir?" And I would ask who their com-
manding officer was and how long they had served. One, no longer
in uniform but merely a coolie, told me at great length, as we were
eating lunch on the third day, that he had been a prisoner nearly
four years in Italy and Germany, and how cold it had been.

As afternoon drew on, we passed a large village dominated by a
brick-built house, a flagpole, and an ancient cannon Nuwakot,
capital of a province. The track at once descended through a steep
jungly gully and through a home-going flock of sheep and goats,
so alike that I understood the parable. When the overhanging rocks
fell away and the rushing stream became a sedate little river, I felt
it time to wait for the porters lest we be benighted alone.

We sat on a chautra. All the way along, the pious, to gain merit,
had built stone seats where coolies could rest their loads beneath
the shade of specially planted trees, one always the sacred bo tree.
We sat an hour and a half. Apparently Dhun Raj was waiting for
Fish, whose load was really too much for his age. Dhun Raj led
on as daylight fast faded, and after twenty minutes turned a corner.
There before us lay a wider valley. From its center a brilliant sun-
set flamed in a victory sign of flaky clouds.

We spent the night in the village at the head of the valley. By
Nepalese custom a traveler may sleep without payment in any
house, though he is expected to buy a meal ; lodging means merely
floor space to roll out your bedding. Dhun Raj found a two-storied
house for us belonging to a former British Gurkha who gave the
whole of his lower room, six feet square, to our party, and placed
rugs on the newly washed floor of dried cow dung and mud, and a
guttering vegetable-oil lamp above the little fireplace. We duly
bought his rice, but had been warned that it would be too coarse.
Besides, I prefer to walk on meat; we had brought a supply of
tinned Spam, packets of powdered soup, fresh bread, squashy
bananas and Nescaf6, and Dhun Raj boiled water, some of which
we put aside to cool for safe drinking next day. Four men and two
boys, one with a rasping cough, squatted on the floor, and watched.

We crossed the street and by torchlight found the way to the

The Mountain Trail 27

river. Sanitation was equally simple. When we returned, Dhun Raj
and Fish were back from dinner and swiftly cleared the room of
spectators. We went to bed. Fish smoked contentedly, coughing a
good deal, and Dhun Raj took from his pack a large Nepali Bible
which dwarfed my pocket New Testament and must have added two
or three pounds to his ninety-pound load.

At least we had no livestock sharing our stuffy bedroom except
one cockerel ; it gave a squawk as we went to sleep but was mercifully
too lazy to keep first or second cockcrow and came on the air only
after we had started to get up at 5 130 A.M.

The village took their places for the morning's entertainment.
My clockwork razor and the deflating of the air mattresses lent by
the Nepal Evangelistic Band were the hits. Breakfast included two
fried eggs each ; in the semidarkness I forgot that the plate belonged
to our hostess and I sopped up the yoke too thoroughly; some of
the dirt got inside.

The mist still had not risen from the hills when we were faced
with the alternative of a steep detour or wading half a mile. We
chose to wade, guided by a man who had been cutting foliage. At the
deepest part, where the river was up to the knees, he made us link
arms and splash along so fast that I nearly fell over and Dhun Raj
bruised his bare feet ; Fish was out of the convoy as usual. I tipped
the guide. The country opened and we pressed ahead of Dhun Raj.
All that day we walked south along the valley, the track sometimes
wide and flat, sometimes a series of steps over bluffs or merely a
narrow path through paddy.

The blue of sky and river, and the white of clouds and flecking
waves made a gay contrast to the greens of rice, hillside, and
forest, and a backcloth to the colorful passing show: women in
purple or blue and gold, smoking cigarettes from holders, the long
ash drooping ; a woman with a chicken sitting on her pack, shaded
by an umbrella ; another carrying a kid in her baggage ; a funeral,
the body shrouded, relatives carrying wood for the burning and
others in front blowing conch horns to warn Brahmans to keep dear
lest they be defiled ; and the unending friendly procession of coolies,
soldiers, and chokidars in uniforms of businesses as far off as Cal-
cutta, for Nepalese make fine watchmen. I was new enough to the

28 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

East to be surprised at the sense of security we felt in so remote a
place.

When my watch warned me that the sun would go down soon,
the mountains were closing in. I learned later that to keep to
schedule we should have been well up into them before the second
night, but owing to Fish we had to stop at their foot. The house was
smaller and rougher than last night's but the woman in green sari
and blouse and a medieval coif was more efficient as a hostess. A
crowd of coolies gathered round two or three fires between the stream
and the houses, and I wondered after dinner whether Dhun Raj
would try a little evangelism. But we had walked him too hard. I
could hardly blame him for crawling into bed as soon as we did, in
a corner beneath hanging goatskins.

Outside, the coolies chattered. Someone began to play a pipe
the sound of which, with the fall of the mountain brook, drifted
in and out of my dreams.

So far the trek had not been as grueling as I had been led to
expect. The third day was harder the mountains steeper, the
march longer, the day hotter. Incidentally, as we strode along under
the midday sun, hatless though wearing dark glasses, I laughed as
I thought of the topi. Not many years ago no European dared go
In the sun without a topi for even a minute one of the great
examples of the power of mass suggestion ; it is still worn, especially
in Burma, but hardly ever by Europeans except Roman Catholic
priests, for whom it is a kind of uniform.

We passed Dhun Raj and Fish a few steps after starting up the
mountain in the thick morning mist, and that was the last we saw
of them till noon the following day.

The path rose to get above the mist and then dropped by a little
village of banana-leaf huts. Oversized spiders hung in webs from
bushes ; here and there a red or blue dragonfly flew ; travelers were
no less than before and kept us sure of the trail except once, when
it ran roughly and narrowly down a most unlikely place and I had
to shout my Nepali phrase Tonsen-ko Bato? to an old man chop-
ping branches sixty feet up a tree. Later we lost the trail, and the
way became markedly lonely until,, directed by hilltop villagers, we
regained it, and knew so at once by the hustle of coolies, to say

The Mountain Trail 29

nothing of a pilgrim who walked with a sprig of herbs between his
hands, murmuring prayers. I bowed politely and he bowed back.

Also reassuring were telegraph poles, some with wisps of wire, put
up for the sole purpose of enabling Ranas to telegraph to India
general public not admitted. Though the new government had no
money to maintain so expensive a toy, and most of the wire had long
since been stolen, the line of derelict poles ran the whole way to
the border.

We were now higher up on a great spur round which, far below,
curved the broad Kali Gandhak, making a deep divide. Away beyond
the divide we could see the hills of Tansen, and assumed hopefully
that the city lay on the near side, for Dhun Raj that morning had
said nine miles. Whether he meant nineteen or nine hours or nine as
the crow flies, his promise acted like a carrot to a donkey.

The track kept to the southeast side of the spur, the red earth
for a short distance becoming sandy-yellow and almost shadeless.
We refilled the water bottle from a stream as near the top as possible,
using sterlizing pills, and moved on down into a shadier section.
I shall not forget the blessed chautras nor the succulent Nepalese
pears looking like russet brown apples; some months later, on a
far more grueling trek, I thought wistfully of those pears. After
a tumbledown leprosarium a mere place of incarceration we
began the descent to the river and crossed it at a magnificent gorge
by a narrow swinging 11 suspension bridge two hundred feet above
the water where men from the large village beyond were bathing.

The path left the main valley at once and worked steeply up be-
side a tributary. We bought bananas at a wayside farm, if such a
name is not too grand, pleasantly surprised that the woman refused
half of what we offered. At the next village we bought mugs of
cinnamon tea. It took time and much adjusting of embers and wood
and peeping into the large pot before the man had the brew really
on the boil, but it was then supremely satisfying. We asked other
travelers, by signs, how far it was to Tansen. One replied, "Down
a rise and up" ; another said, "one hour" ; and a third, to general
merriment, "Eleven o'clock tomorrow morning."

Passers-by now seemed more than friendly; they smiled broad
smiles as of recognition; we were near enough to the Tansen
hospital for reflected glory.

30 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

The steep trail, always upward, narrowed. At five o'clock we had
less than an hour and a half of daylight, and behind us already the
views of ridge upon green ridge were superb in the evening sun ; if
only the Himalayas had come out of cloud. Walking up a path like
an English "drain" in company with two coolies, the edge col-
lapsed and I fell into a man-sized ditch; roaring with laughter
the coolies pulled me out. Higher up, the road leveled slightly;
down to the left boys flew kites, a craze in Nepal at that time of
year, running over the hillside at astonishing speed. Above us, the
hill disappeared in cloud.

We passed through houses that I hoped were the outskirts of
Tansen, but wrongly; my "Tansen~ko Bato?" was becoming rather
plaintive as the light faded fast. We emerged above a broad valley
and at a fork started to descend, but I felt I was wrong and shouted
in the twilight to a soldier who saluted and pointed the other way.
I said to my wife that I was not going on except in company, as our
torch was too low to show the path or scare off leopards. So we kept
in with the soldier until he came to a temple bell and turned off,
waving us on. Far down in the valley a fire flared in the darkness.
Up here a little light remained. A few yards and we came to a
fork. The right led into cloud, the left into darkness. Though I knew
Tansen was on a hilltop, I did not relish disappearing into a cloud.
"We'll go left," I said. "If it starts going down well stop and try
the other." We had been on the trail eleven hours and twenty
minutes.

It did go down, sharply. Suddenly, just below, I saw a shadowy
something I recognized as a wind generator. A few steep steps
more and a window blazed with unwonted electric light, so abruptly
below that we could see the floor but nothing else.

Then, unmistakable, a white woman's legs.

FIVE #F Gas-Can Hospital

How anyone could live and work in the rickety, rat-infested
house that was then the United Mission Hospital at Tansen was a
marvel.

Gas-Can Hospital 51

The new hospital was going to be excellent, but it would not be
ready for another six months. Only two units were completed : the
American medical superintendent's house, where Dr. and Mrs. Carl
Friedericks had welcomed and fed us, and that of the Norwegian
engineer, Od Hofton, in command of the builders, where we spent
the night in borrowed things. The new site on the steep hillside
beside the town provided a fine view of the snows behind and the
distant valley beneath. But the old hospital where they had worked
since 1956 was awful. I am glad we stayed there for the rest of our
visit not only because of our hostess, the young English woman
Dr. Margery Foyle, but also because it gave an insight into con-
ditions.

The house was decrepit : "No one would live in it but us ; that's
why we got it," they said ; and its fagade, like those of most of the
large houses in Tansen, was, surprisingly, nineteenth century French
provincial. An earth closet in the garden did for sanitation, and for
bath a small tin tub was brought to the entrance of our bedroom.
A bathroom had projected from a landing. It rattled so much when
the midday signal gun fired that Margery vowed never to be in it
just then; sure enough, it collapsed one day at noon.

Margery's tiny consulting room served as operating theater, X-ray
and labor room ; Dr. Friederick's was also outpatients' department.
The distillery was wedged into a corner of the narrow courtyard
and the sister's office into a passage. The beds in the little wards
were mostly packing cases, and surgical and medical patients lay
side by side. "If we mixed them like this at home," said Margery,
"we would get cross-infection, but the Lord seems to give us a
special protection." In the women's ward, where relatives sat beside
each patient, were six beds in a room of about twelve foot by five : ,
dysentery, starvation, leg amputation the weight being kept off the
stump by a contraption made from a Nescafe tin maternity, a
child with a broken jaw, an infected foot. The starvation case
showed something of the pathos of Hinduism: because she was a
beggar admitted in this condition, but a Brahman, defiled if she ate
in company of low-caste people, she was eating squatting on the floor
facing the wall, trying to pretend no one was breathing down her
neck.

Everywhere I saw old Caltex gas cans. The place seemed made
of them. They were water jugs, washbasins, store places, lampstands.

3 2 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

The heavy medical equipment and the kerosene refrigerator and
the construction machinery being used on the new site had all been
brought up on the backs of coolies, who took a fortnight to do the
day's walk from the roadhead, carrying these deadweight loads a
few yards and then resting, and so on day after day up the mountain.

On the first afternoon, we called on the Governor of Tansen.

We walked up the steep narrow street of red bricks and grass and
weeds, and caught a glimpse of the governor's garden neat with dark
red crotons such as grow in English hothouses, and came to a
dirty white gate where a sentry squatted ; he had no uniform, but
negligently rested an ancient musket between his arms. On his
forehead was a large tttak, or worship mark. He grinned at Od
Hofton's young American assistant as we entered the grounds of
the imitation chateau. At the end of a short avenue stood two
blue Victorian street lamps perched on rough wooden poles, and
behind them a tumbledown porch and a sentry picking his nose.

We turned right across a lawn into a courtyard crowded with
townsfolk dominated by a great gateway of tall wonneaten
wooden doors guarded by a policeman carrying a 1914 Lee~Enfield.
Beyond was the governor's temple; the protective lions, first cousins
to Burmese Chinthes, were covered with blue shirts laid out to
dry, and the tilt of their heads had an air of violent protest. Up-
stairs, past sentries carrying fowling pieces, we came to the gov-
ernor's anteroom. We were told to take off our shoes.

His Excellency was signing documents of rustling rice paper.
"Just two or three minutes/' he said in English. At last he pushed
the papers aside and graciously asked us where we were from. He
made warm if rather platitudinous references to the hospital. "We
are modeling our government hospital on the mission one," he said,
and discoursed on local development plans. "We could make a jeep
road in six months from the plain, . . . But there is so much to do.
You are seeing the birth of a new nation."

<c Tansen is much harder-hearted than Pokhara, Here they are
vary proud. And there is much devil worship. Caste, Brahtaans, they
are very strong. Some people know the truth but they are afraid of
the people."

Gas-Can Hospital 55

Three of the few local Christians were sitting round the tea table
in the pretty and homelike living room at the old hospital. I was
on a sofa of packing cases backed by a camp bed, so well covered
by cushions and material that I had not realized how it was formed.
On my left, between the windows which looked across the valley,
was a large map of Nepal and on a little table a small Nepalese
flag. The walls had pictures of Norwegian and English scenes and
the Twenty-third Psalm on parchment, and the door of the re-
frigerator (medical as well as household) displayed a transfer of a
Dutch boy.

Mrs. Mathews, a young Indian Christian, interpreted for me.
Next to her sat the Nepalese from Darjeeling, a small, fair, squat-
nosed man who was surgical dresser and unofficial pastor, and a
pock-marked young man from East Nepal who had been converted
recently through the only missionary in that area, since deceased,
and had come to Tansen for medical training. Completing the party
was a local girl, Om Shanti, or Ruth, as she had been baptized, less
than eighteen months ago.

They told me they had held daily ward services to which they
welcomed anyone from the bazaar until the previous governor had
forbidden public preaching, so that it must now be for patients and
staff only. It was after this order that Ruth at hospital prayers
publicly testified to her belief in Christ ; the governor was furious.
Her reply might have seemed priggish in easier circumstances, but
not for a young girl against overwhelming official and public opinion :
"He's not my governor," she said; "He's only here." The present
governor showed more tolerance, yet while we were at Tansen one
of the Hindu staff of the hospital was called to the police to report
on its Christian activities. This, in 1958, and on the right side of the
iron curtain. . . . But the new Constitution was on its way.

I questioned this group closely. I knew that some people in my
own country casually supposed that Hinduism was the "best religion
for Indians and Nepalese, so why worry them with ours," and I
wanted to discover what had been found wanting. "There's no peace
in the Hindu religion," said Ruth. "It was peace I was after, peace
of heart." In this she echoed Lucius and Dhun Raj.

Ruth and the young man from East Nepal explained to me that
Hinduism offers no assurance of heaven and no certainty on earth*

34 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

or sense of companionship with God. "They go to the sacred river to
bathe and wash away their sins, but it doesn't bring peace, nor
does it when they go to the temple to worship the gods and ask for
what they want." They must work, work, work for their salvation.
There is no certain knowledge that in the ceaseless migration of
souls they will rise higher in the next life ; each soul must be reborn
over eight million times, rising from the lowest to the highest, from
animals up to the heavenly scale, put forward or back according to
their actions. "If a wife washes her husband's feet each day, and
drinks the water she has washed them in, she might be born as a
man next time, and that would be wonderful."

On our last night these four were among the congregation in a
simple service of Holy Communion that I was asked to conduct.
Some of my brethren in the Church of England might have been
shocked at this service; only two out of the eighteen present were
Anglicans. Presbyterians, Methodist, Baptists, a Mennonite, two
Syrian Jacobites from South India, and others were represented, and
we followed a modified Church of England rite, leaving out congre-
gational parts which others did not know; the Nepalese could not
follow my English anyway. The little chapel was hot from pressure
lamps ; a squeaky harmonium gave the music. We were a little group
of Christians cut off from any others by mile upon mile of mountain
and a population hard in its Hinduism. We came from six nations.
It seemed to me a moving expression of Christian unity.

As we chatted on the downward trail early next morning, I asked
Margery Foyle, who with the Norwegian nursing sister Ingeborg
Skjeruheim accompanied us part of the way, about some of the
personal difficulties of missionary work. Margery was not an obvious
pioneer ; Jean Raddon at Pokhara looked the sort who would rap a
tiger on the nose, but Margery, frail in build, had endured much
ill-health since coming to Nepal, culminating in a big operation for
which she had been specially flown back to England. Not that this
deters her ; she thinks Tansen too comfortable, and hopes one day
to get deeper into the mountains.

One remark of bar's struck me forcibly: "The greatest difficulty,"
she said, "is the attack of Satan on your mind. I find it difficult
sometimes actually to read the Bifole, or to make the mental act of

Gas-Can Hospital 35

kneeling for prayer." It was not overtiredness, as they had about the
right amount of medical work ; but, apart from the strain of living
among a people of strange tongue and hard heart, if friendly ways,
she considered its cause to be the difficulty of getting relaxation,
such as concerts, to unwind the mind.

We passed on to discuss the Nepalese church of the future. Nepal,
to its advantage, has missed the old "imperial" type of mission
based on large stations dominated by missionaries expecting to be
obeyed. From the start foreigners have seen themselves the servants
of the national church in the making, which in years to come may
therefore develop a virility lacking in many parts of Asia. Margery
agreed. "The real Nepalese," she said, "people like these porters are
intensely loyal. Witness the Gurkha soldiers. I believe this loyalty
can be transferred to Jesus Christ, and will mean a great deal to
the Church in the East."

Margery and Ingeborg left us when the path down the precipitous
hillside and along a narrow valley began to rise again toward the
final pass where, during lunch, we caught a last but inadequate
glimpse of Annapurna before starting the descent to the plain. Much
of the way now was down a "staircase" built by slave labor but
long since fallen into decay; it made for painful walking, especially
in the heat hitting up at us from India. This trail seemed suburban,
littered with Bat cigarette cartons and with nearly every building
an inn if report be believed, a brothel.

We came to a river about fifty yards wide, and thigh-deep. A
knot of men bathed or sat about, waiting for fares, and two carried
us over pick-a-back, our legs tucked up so that they hardly got
wet. The luggage porters took off their shorts and splashed through in
loincloths, arms linked. I paid a rupee each to the ferrymen, only
to find that we must be carried farther upstream another twenty-
five yards ; when the track was reached they laughed and salaamed,
making no attempt, as many coolies in India would have done, to
extract more. Beyond the river,. at a substantial village, we sat at
a table waiting for a man with shaved head and a tilak to bring his
pot to the boil by blowing at the fire through an iron pipe, that
we might have oomale chiya, or boiling tea. A woman and a baby
squatted on a mat; chickens and goats wandered around and a
cockerel crowed at my feet, but the water would not oomale. The

36 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

porters drank noisily, wrapping the hot glasses with their shirt-
tails before drinking.

After four miles of gorge, and, in fine form about eight and a half
hours after leaving Tansen, having dropped nearly 4,500 feet, we
marched into Butwol, a ramshackle straggle of houses and bazaars
with an excessive population of puppies, baby chicks, and kids.

Because I had heard tales of travelers stranded all night, I
wanted to squeeze into an old blue bus just leaving for Nautanwa,
the railway station over the border, but fortunately I was dissuaded ;
it was oozing with humanity, and probably springless. Another bus,
a man said, was leaving two hours later at 6 :oo P.M., his bus. He
put us in, sold us tickets, demanding Indian or, as the Nepalese
say x with a sublime disregard of a hundred years of history, Com-
pany's money, and tried to charge a rupee for each piece of baggage.
I cowld see by the grins of the crowd that he was trying a fast one,
so, guessing he could not read, I knew that the time had come to use
my government letter. It had nothing to do with such a case, but it
worked.

By five-thirty no one had joined the bus. I feared the worst until
the man came back and volunteered that a truck was leaving in a
few minutes. As he had no English and we were not to be put upon,
he took some time to convince us. He paid back our money and
summoned friends to carry our cases, but not for love. Though I let
a small boy take the bedroll, I saw no reason to waste annas on the
rest, and took the suitcase myself, the crowd not knowing whether
to be shocked or amused. "Coolie sahib," I called out to the man
as I trotted off.

As night fell, the truck took up a load of faggots and set off, our-
selves in front more comfortable than in any Nepalese bus. The road
was terrible, and since the driver kept the light in the cab on, all
the midges of the district made a meal of us, but he was courteous
and helpful, seeing me through the Nepalese customs at the border
town, where I was nearly trodden on by an elephant Once across
the border the road changed from cart track to tarmac, and soon
we saw again the familiar oxcarts of North India,

At his destination in Natrtanwa the track driver gave me a final
taste of Nepalese politeness by taking our fares with a warm hand-
shake and gradous N0m0$tay. A coolie appeared to carry our load

Tibet 37

to the railway station. It was 8 :$o P.M., and the train did not leave
until 3 :oo A.M. Carl Friedericks at Tansen, who had been in China
and round the world, judged Nautanwa the worst railway station he
had ever seen. One look sent us doubling back, coolie and all, to
find the old mission house of the Nepal Evangelistic Band. A one-
armed Christian took us in, lit a hurricane lamp, boiled water for
soup to go with our last tin of meat, and laid mattresses on the beds
upstairs. The chokidar promised a call at 1:45 A.M.; he said he
had a coolie coming to take our luggage the mile back to the station.

At two-twenty Anne woke, rushed downstairs, shook the chokidar
awake, and sent him to get the coolie while I put my boots on. He
returned and signed to us that no coolie was about.

There was no time to be lost. Fortunately the chokidar, taking
his sandals off, laid aside his dignity and seized the bedroll and floppy
bag. Anne took the picnic basket and small things ; I shouldered the
suitcase ; and we set off at speed through the warm night.

"Coolie sahib" with a vengeance.

SIX Jf* Tibet

At a little wayside station in West Bengal the crack mail train had
dug itself in. Already four hours late, we had stopped again. A
perspiring guard was gurgling loudly in English down the telephone
in the booking office, where the clerk sat busy at the telegraph,
oblivious of the country folk patient beyond the ticket window.

The guard replaced the receiver, and I asked, "What's wrong?"
In that singsong Indian English which is as distinctive as an Amer-
ican accent or the King's English, he replied: "A freight-train de-
railment. A truck off the line. I can't say when well get on."

From Nepal we had returned over the Ganges to the Duchess of
Teck Hospital at Patna, our 'temporary base, and after a few days
crossed again to catch the mail train for Siliguri, the junction for
Darjeeling, the famous hill station and tea-growing center. Before
touring the Ganges Plain, the heart of Hinduism, I wanted to see
something of the small minority of Buddhists, whose founder had

3 S EARTH'S REMOTEST END

lived and died in India and whose religion, once so powerful there,
is confined to the Himalayan hill tracts. And I had heard rumors
of stirrings within Tibet, and wished to get as close as I could. This
was over four months before the flight of the Dalai Lama. The
world knew nothing.

Fortunately, because the Dasshera festival, or Durga Puja as it
is called in Bengal and Bihar, had overcrowded the trains, we had
settled on the extravagance of traveling "air conditioned" and were
comfortable while the train stood sweltering. At last the "up" mail
train came through, and the line was ours.

We reached Siliguri after dark too late to catch the miniature
train that puffs and circles up into the hills the fifty miles to Dar-
jeeling. I approached a resplendent figure I took for a station of-
ficial, but saw after I had spoken that he was a police lieutenant; in
black peaked cap, smartly pressed khaki, Sam Browne, and fine
mustaches he looked like Lord Kitchener in the recruiting posters
of the First World War. I apologized for my mistake, but Lord
Kitchener was at once at my service. I told my story and he took
us across the bridge, followed by the trail of coolies without which
no one can move on an Indian station, to apply for a refund on the
tickets (a lengthy process I am still waiting). Just then a puja
procession chugged into the station. A cheering crowd sat on rail-
way trucks behind a light engine, banging cymbals and drums in
front of the eight-armed benign figure of the goddess Durga. Kit-
chener's eyes gleamed.

"Now we will go and negotiate for a car to Darjeeling. Mem-
sahib waits here." But I prefer to have Anne in on any negotiation.
Kitchener was pained. Having booked places in a car, he took us up-
stairs, past the tidy restaurant, to an overcrowded, squalid upper-
class waiting room. "They will bring your meal here," he said ; "this
is where sahibs eat." We said thank you, but we would rather sit in
the restaurant- Lord Kitchener was shocked.

Just as he was seeing us off at the car, another puja procession
came noisily down the road. Kitchener seized my arm. "You must
see this before you go, Sahib I Come along quick." A gaily decorated
lorry drove by, the goddess in the back, followed by other trucks
in which youths stamped their feet and clapped their hands, shout-
ing cheerfully in unison. Some waved incense, others banged drums.

Tibet sg

Behind, more young men danced a jiggledy dance with rapture, and
others had mock fights with swords and single-sticks. The procession
was brought up by a truck of blaring musicians.

"Oh," said this intelligent officer, "isn't it wonderful? We worship
the goddess Durga. She gets the victory for us. She is the goddess of
protection and treads underfoot the evil gods. At the end of the festi-
val she is immersed in the river with prayers for her return next
year."

Of the rest of the journey to Darjeeling the less said, the better.
We sat in front of a large car with two Indian men and one woman
behind. The driver squealed the tires round the sharp corners as
we made the ascent. After fifteen miles he discovered that the bedroll
of one of the Indians had fallen off. He turned round and free-
wheeled down in the darkness, peering hopefully into most of the
ditches, right back to the station, without result. We had now lost
an hour and a half and it was nearly 9 :oo P.M. We began the ascent
again, stopped to inquire whenever a car passed in the other direc-
tion, had a puncture, found that since the driver had freewheeled
with his headlights he had exhausted the battery and that the only
way to start was to push the car precariously downhill until it
engaged. At Kurseong, the police headquarters, a fat, bustling police
lieutenant whose rimless spectacles and peaked cap gave a Ger-
manic look took endless details from the cringing Indian that had
lost the bedroll. "We'll detail him here overnight," the lieuten-
ant announced, as if the poor man were the criminal, "so that we can
make further inquiries."

I gave the car a push down the street, and the driver en-
gaged. We screamed round bends, lights growing dimmer, and drew
up in Darjeeling at the bottom of a long flight of steps at i :oo A.M.
as the headlights failed. Our Canadian hosts, routed from bed,
promptly produced a first-class meal.

A lama in a drab yellow short coat over a yellow robe so faded
as to be almost white, and a purple Tibetan hat topped by a little
red knob, walked down the hillside path ringing a bell, with his
other hand holding a scarf of respect attached to a coffin behind him.
In front two more lamas, one in red and one in yellow wearing an
ordinary woolen cap, as if to emphasize that he was a gardener in

40 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

private life, blew clarinet-like instruments called Gye-lings. A boy
in shorts and shirt had a conch shell ; a young man clanged cymbals
softly; and others held bamboos on which red, green, and yellow
flags had been tied. Behind the tail of mourners rose the wailing of
^vomen left at the house.

This Buddhist funeral to which we had been invited was a fu-
neral with a difference. The dead man, a Nepalese estate worker,
though never baptized had asked on his deathbed for a Christian to
come and pray with him; he had said he wanted no lamas and,
moreover, that a Bible and a cross should be burned with him. All
this had been refused by his relatives, and the lamas had been
chanting since the previous day. He had died that morning. His
eldest son, nearly a Christian, was angry but impotent.

Reaching a narrow space cut into the hillside not far down from
the center of sleek, cosmopolitan Darjeeling, the coffin was put to
one side while men made ready, rather casually, the pyre of wood.
They stuck into the ground a banner of the sort carried by mothers 7
unions up cathedral aisles, but picturing Buddha and the wheel of
life, and a prayer flag such as Tibetans fly everywhere, inscribed
with verses of Buddhist scripture for the wind to blow to heaven.
Garlands of marigolds lay around. A coolie arrived with oranges,
pineapples, milk, and little lumps of cloth containing scriptures:
food for the soul. The lama laid out the scriptures beside bowls
of holy water a few paces from the pyre, pushed his biretta to the
back of his head, scratched himself, and smoothed his large mus-
tache.

They were Nepalese following a debased form of Tibetan Bud-
dhism, itself derivative. The coffin was prized open and the shrouded
corpse laid on the pyre and covered over with more wood, including
the now broken-up coffin. A man smoking a cigarette looked on, and
the two sons, men in their early twenties, set up a violent wailing,
beating their heads against their arms.

"Is this part of the proceeding or real emotion?" I asked AJ, a
tall Canadian of my own age, "It's genuine," he said. "They are not
taught to control their emotions as we do."

The sons were led away weeping, but when holy water had been
sprinkled with a peacock's feather and the face of the corpse cov-
ered with clarified butter called ghee the eldest had to set it alight
He screwed himself to the ordeal.

Tibet 41

Thin wisps of smoke drifted up. Drums and cymbals boomed and
clashed rhythmically in the background; lamas chanted. The man
with the cigarette stepped across for what he supposed would be
a last look at the face. Lest the soul should return to the body,
passes were made with a kukri and the fire was sanctified by the
waving of burning rags attached to sticks. These Nepalese Bud-
dhists believe that the soul hovers until a final ceremony two or
more weeks later, when it ascends to Nirvana, which in contrast to
pure Buddhism they think of as a heaven of conscious bliss.

I had to leave after an hour and a half. Perhaps it was as well.
Al said that the wood burned too slowly. After a while a foot fell
off and was shoveled on. He could see the brain exposed. They turned
the half-burned body over and he saw the intestines. The sons had
to help turn it, but their emotion had dried up. Al stayed to the
end and succeeded in not being sick.

The funeral gave a small insight into the way of life on the
Tibetan border,

Tibetan monasteries such as Ghum near Darjeeling gave more,
but were spoiled by their artificiality as tourist attractions. Buxom
women in ample skirts fronted by brightly striped woolen aprons,
their hair in pigtails but, unlike Indians and Nepalese, uncovered,
walked about carrying little silver prayer wheels (108 turns wipe
out one sin) and twirled the large copper prayer wheels beneath
the dragon over the monastery door; when not doing that, they
seemed to spend most of the time knitting. Inside the monastery,
lamas at morning worship chanted the scriptures, but their eyes
roved around the tourists. Beside the Buddha were idols eloquent
of ancient devil worship which plays much part in Tibetan Bud-
dhism the idol of eleven heads and a thousand hands, every hand
having an eye ; the goddess of strength with staring eyes and crown
of skulls ; she is husband of Shiva, but the lama-guide stoutly denied
that she was imported from Hinduism.

Our hosts had arranged for us to visit Sikkim, the Tibetan pocket-
handkerchief state, a Buddhist holy land, to stay with the only
European resident for the occasion of the Birthday and Fortieth
Accession Anniversary of His Highness the Maharajah. So to Gang-
tok, the capital, by Land-Rover bus accompanied , by Al. We
went down six thousand feet from Darjeeling to the Teesta River,

42 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

over the fine concrete bridge which Tibetans have protected with
prayer flags, up again four thousand feet to Kalimpong (thirty-two
miles from Darjeeling yet only nine as the crow flies) to make a
connection; back nearly to the Teesta bridge and turn right, the
road running through the forest beside the river to the frontier
which is marked by a bridge over a tributary: "One Car or Five
Mules Only." Al and I sat at the back with two Nepalese and a
small boy who was quietly sick over my suitcase five minutes before
we arrived.

The road from the frontier rose gently into the mountains. Only
the last ten miles were steep. Then we could see Gangtok scattered
over the hillside above, and the rice, still green lower down, drooped
yellow-ripe over the terraces. The roofs of small, neat public build-
ings gleamed with fresh paint, blue, green, and gold, in honor of
Mr. Nehru's recent visit. Behind, to the northwest, rose the "Pro-
tecting Deity of the Snowy Ranges," Kanchenjunga.

The visit to Sikkim added little to my inquiry. I could describe
the reverend abbot of the Palace Monastery blessing the kneeling
faithful ; I could give a pen picture of our hostess, the New Zealander
headmistress of the Girls' High School founded by the Scottish Uni-
versities Mission the whole state her schoolroom. I could describe
the comic-opera uniforms of the palace guards. I can tell you no
more of lamas and prayer wheels and the strange beliefs and
stranger achievements of the religion of the roof of the world.

Yet I would not have missed it.

Apart from our hostess and a sad-looking Oxford scholar, Al and
ourselves were the only Westerners to see the ceremonies of the
Birthday and Accession Anniversary.

Sikkim was never an integral part of the Indian Empire but a
protectorate, and thus not absorbed into the Republic. The Maha-
rajah, of Tibetan stock, is therefore the only prince to exercise sov-
ereignty, which he does tinder the guidance of an Indian Political
Officer. His Dewan, or Prime Minister, a Parsee educated at Cam-
bridge, is seconded from the Indian Civil Service.

As we stood on the Birthday morning in front of the modest palace
of cream walls and a maroon tin roof, the officials and landed gentry
gathered in their long Sikkimese robes to present scarves of respect.
The atmosphere was Tibetan rather than Indian, but the colors were

Tibet 43

as vivid: the Dewan in bright yellow with mauve sash, the heir
to the throne in red, the royal grandsons playing about on the lawn
in yellow offset by red sashes, the First Secretary in purple with
his hair parted down the middle and braided over the forehead in
the Tibetan way. When His Highness the Maharajah, accompanied
by the royal party, ambled across the lawn to the durbar in the
Prayer Pavilion he was resplendent, small though he is, in a rich
white silk jacket over an orange robe embroidered with dragons,
and a mandarin hat with a yellow crown and a red bobble.

It was the old Chinese Empire sprung to life from the mists of
the past. One aged landowner who had long jade earrings appeared
to have stepped straight from a Chinese tapestry. When Lepchas
and Bhutias received certificates of merit we saw variations of the
kowtow. A man in Lepcha costume even went down on his face,
rose to attention, down again and up three times ; merely a chauffeur
rewarded for good driving. The durbar ended with a blessing from
a line of lamas who faced the Maharajah on his throne and chanted
Buddhist scriptures.

That evening we watched an open-air concert of local songs and
dances it would have been better had the lights been stronger
and then moved to the palace grounds for a display of fireworks.
The Dewan invited us to the lower veranda, and APs democratic
Canadian soul got an immense kick from sitting in the royal arm-
chairs nibbling royal refreshments, the Dewan on the arm of his
chair chatting to him, the Crown Prince a few paces off.

The following day the Maharajah, in a fine embroidered orange
robe and circular Sikkimese hat, attended sports. A monastery band
lined up at the entrance to the ground wearing large red and yellow
hats shaped rather like helmets of ancient Greece. As he passed, they
banged, blew, and walloped: great bass trumpets supported on the
shoulders of lamas in front, great drums slung on the back of
one and beaten by another, cymbals, a triangle, and the clarinet-
style, wide-mouthed Gye-lings. After the parade of the military
might of Sikkim (the police force commanded by a Sikh) and
solemn chanting by the monks' school, sports began.

It was characteristic of this happy little state that the Crown
Prince and the Prime Minister were the referees, the Chief Magis-

44 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

trate was the starter, and most of the cabinet (if they call it that)
had jobs on the ground.

A new road has been built from Gangtok to the Nathula Pass,
frontier of Tibet, with one of the finest views in the world. I asked
the Political Officer for permission to go, but only New Delhi could
grant it.

So I had to content myself with the Tibetan mule trains trotting
into the bazaar. The first and last mule had bells and bright flags,
and the men rode ponies. Burly muleteers dwarfing the Sikkimese
strode about the streets, their brown woolen robes thrown off their
shoulders and tied back round the waist. Soon there would be many
fewer, because English engineers were constructing a ropeway to the
frontier to carry the trade at reduced cost.

I was no closer to Tibet. At that time the world's press was almost
silent, choosing to disbelieve or ignore, except for an occasional
halfhearted article, rumors of Tibetan resistance to Red China.
Apart from the intrinsic interest, if that is not too callous a phrase,
of the death throes of a nation, the upshot related to religious free-
dom in a part of Asia where it has never been known.

Two interviews, somewhat contradictory, took me almost as near
as a foreigner could hope to get to this closed, unhappy land.

The first, back in Darjeeling, was with George Patterson, the
young Scots special correspondent and author whose Tibetan Jour-
ney was a best seller. His later books have been notable for their
controversial tone and for slashing attacks on fellow missionaries,
some of which, to my mind, were in bad taste ; but I forgive him all
as one of the few missionary writers of the present day to be read
widely by the general public.

Though I had been warned that George was a prickly person, I
found him charming and communicative. His wife is doctor to the
Planters 7 Hospital, and it was in the doctor's house high up in
Darjeeling, looking across to Kanchenjunga, that the Pattersons
had us to tea, m a beautifully f urnished drawing room of red sofa and
chairs, polished tables, and thick pile carpets, a tea such as no
mission house could boast: drop scones, savory sandwiches, bread
and a huge round of cheese, cream cakes and fruit cake, served by a
faultless Nepalese servant aad preceded by an unhurried prayer of

Tibet 45

blessing. A golden labrador wandered in and out, and a fire was lit
in the grate before the end.

Patterson, shorter than his photographs suggest, wore horn-
rimmed spectacles and a neat beard. His smart clothes had a dash
of Teddy boy. He told me that he spent his time writing and acting
as a political agent for the Tibetan nationalists in their struggle
against the Chinese. He had been careful to tell the Indian Govern-
ment that he was no longer a missionary and that his activities were
not representative ; indeed, he claimed to have their confidence and
to be used as a go-between, and was in touch with the British Foreign
Office. He gave me fuller details than had been available in England
of the Tibetan struggle to overthrow the Chinese, hereditary enemies
and now doubly hateful; of high casualties and full-scale battles,
of the Communist policy of deliberate annihilation; and of the
refusal of the Western powers and India to intervene either directly
or indirectly by sending in the ammunition which, he was con-
vinced, was all they needed for victory and independence.

His political activities were a means to an end. George Patterson
is nothing if not consistent, and for ten years he has lived for the
evangelization of Tibet. "I have had a vision/ 7 he said; "I know
I am going to get in/ 7 and by vision he meant something seen with
the eyes and heard with the ears. He believed that his political ac-
tivities would ensure that on liberation the Dalai Lama would turn
to the Pattersons and, reversing the previous policy of exclusion,
invite them to choose a team to organize medical and social relief
and advancement ; it would be the story of Nepal over again. "Tibet
is not particularly open to the Gospel, but it will be open to me,
and I shall choose Christians. In that way the Gospel will enter."

My other interview gave the impression that George Patterson
was overoptimistic. I was received by a very high-ranking member
of the former Tibetan cabinet, but in the cloak-and-dagger atmos-
phere that surrounds Tibetan politics in exile I was told not to say
who he was or where I saw him, though if you glance at newspaper
files of more recent date your guess would not be far wrong. This
man distrusted Patterson, even blanched at the name, for Patterson
was closest to the Khambas who originally had cooperated with
the Red Chinese and let them enter Tibet, though now they were
foremost in fighting them.

46 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

The former cabinet minister handed me a copy of the Manifesto
lately dispatched to members of the United Nations as a plea for
help. On a margin of the day's Statesman he scribbled a diagram
to show that of the three supply routes from China to Lhasa, two
had been cut by the nationalists; until the other could be cut the
Chinese would hold Tibet.

I asked him if a liberated Tibet would open fully to the world. "I
cannot speak for Tibetans," he replied. "This is a personal opinion ;
but I say that the whole world is changing, Tibet must change, and
welcome foreigners and our people go to foreign lands.'' I wished
to ask if religious freedom would be granted, but my sponsor warned
me that the question was unwise.

The former cabinet minister was sadly realistic about victory.
"As a Tibetan I hope against hope. Every true Tibetan should. But"
he spread his hands deprecatingly "we have no ammunition,
no helper."

Meanwhile there are missionaries devoted to Tibet who offer the
traders Christian literature, and at the caravanserais play records
of Christian talks. A pure-blood Tibetan pastor to whom I was
introduced seemed more concerned with the activities of the under-
ground movement than with the Gospel ; he would argue, with Pat-
terson, that liberation is the prelude to evangelization. Many of the
missionaries are Finns and Scandinavians, for a Finnish mission has
been on the border for years, I met two old ladies, one of seventy-
eight (and never once home to Europe), the other of eighty-two (she
had allowed herself one furlough) who are still at it, though officially
retired, and who told of reliable evidence that the recently translated
Tibetan Bible, an enormous volume, is read in monasteries far up
on the high plateau. Far more has been done by one young South
Indian than by his foreign predecessors before the area was closed
to them, and an Englishman recently toured the Bible schools, urg-
ing young men that Tibet was their sphere rather than that of Wes-
terners.

Missionaries were brave in confidence that at any time news of
victory would sweep them in. But I remembered the plaintive
words of the former cabinet minister; "Tibet is helpless, and there
is no one to speak for us."

Elusive Ind 47

SEVEN *0* Elusive Ind

The disappointing failure to reach the Tibetan border or (through
no fault of our hosts) to dig beneath the surface of lamaism was the
prelude to a succession of checks and false casts which dogged my
efforts in India.

It may have been that a little knowledge is dangerous. In 1956
I had visited Bombay and Calcutta and some dozen other centers
to which I did not return in 1958. Perhaps I should have returned.
Or it may have been that in India, alone of the countries covered,
we were generally guests of individuals or of institutions, not of
widespread missions or dioceses ; and the one mission that was host
to us could not do all it wished because of the delicacy of local
affairs. Certainly the India section was the least intimate of the tour.
We met kindness and hospitality, and one man in particular took
great pains to assist planning ; yet whereas in other lands I seemed
to see things just happen, as if I were a lizard on the wall, in India
I was never more than a visiting journalist, and seldom got away
from the obvious.

These are excuses. The fault lay no doubt in myself. Had I been
attempting a survey or encyclopedia of missions, or had this run of
misfortune continued once we crossed the Bay of Bengal, I should be
in sorry case. But this is a record of personal experience. You must
take the rough with the smooth. Meanwhile, I have had to decide
whether to trot out conventionalities or to cut this section to a
minimum undeserved. Preferring to rely on your charity rather than
to try your patience, I choose the latter.

So I give detached memories. Do not look for profound conclusions
or exhaustive description. I serve an Indian hors d'oeuvre. The main
courses are coming. Don't sack the cook.

The North India cold weather had begun, surely one of the finest
climates in the world, cloudless skies, warm days, cool nights.

We had come down to the railhead in a bus that did not free-
wheel. Directly behind our seats beside the driver sat a strong-smell-

48 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

ing lama with a cold at least, in intervals of chanting he expector-
ated noisily and frequently an inch from my ear. The night railway
journey was mercifully without incident except that the air con-
ditioning for which we had paid had been withdrawn, so we were
without bedding, for you do not need a bedroll in the A. C. class ;
the substantial refund reached me in Singapore six months later.

Once more we were back at the Duchess of Teck Hospital in Patna
to pick up the rest of our luggage.

A hostess in England asked to lend her chauffeur at 3 .-30 A.M.
would have a fit. India travels round the clock, however, and the
Teck Hospital driver took us uncomplainingly through darkened
streets to Patna Junction for the train to Banaras. It had left
Calcutta about seven yesterday evening, and thirty-six hours later
would reach Amritsar on the frontier about seven tomorrow morning.

At almost any hour of day or night an Indian street is alive.
Men (and dogs) sleep on the pavement in broad daylight, but the
small hours might deceive you into assuming a high proportion of
homeless. Most of the bodies are rickshaw coolies by their bicycles.
Nearly all have homes, but it is as easy to lie on the floor of a
pavement as that of an overcrowded house. At 3 :3o A.M. there was
not much buying or selling, nor small boys relieving nature in the
gutter; otherwise little differed from daylight: cows wandered;
men sat, squatted, stood, talked; coolies splashed water in front
of their shops or brushed away dust; oxcarts lumbered by. At the
station Anne had to step over bodies to reach the booking window.
Again, they were not homeless but had walked from distant villages
to take the train the following day. What more sensible place to
sleep?

No Westerner in India can ever forget the widespread poverty
that meets him at every turn, or the dirt, dishonesty, and unceasing
begging partly begotten by it, Indian public opinion is somewhat
sensitive to Western comments on the subject, but to dissemble
would be as wrong as to ignore the active measures which the Gov-
ernment of India is taking, in face of mountainous difficulties, to
conquer poverty; moreover the Englishman does well to remember
that England even in the late nineteenth century had conditions
as bad. Much of the begging would cease had it not the sanction of
Hinduism. Begging is nt sfo noticeable farther East because religion

Elusive Ind 49

does not encourage it. When a man gives in India, the beggar, fawn-
ing enough in solicitation, shows no gratitude. Why should he? He
has helped the donor acquire merit.

Coolies carried our cases on their heads over the bridge with ef-
fortless balance to the "up" platform, which was almost as noisy as
in broad daylight. Vendors of bananas, nuts, and sweetmeats cried
their wares. Passengers stood or squatted around tin trunks, baskets,
cooking pots, and children. A post-office mechanical trolley trundled
by, uprooting a few of the coolies asleep on the platform. Pariahs
broke into a violent dogfight on the "down" line. At last the Amritsar
Mail drew in, thirty minutes late, a searchlight beaming from the
powerful engine.

The conductor, always friendly and courteous, walks up, checks
our seats from his board, and unlocks the compartment. Ragged
blue coolies sweep out the dust, a most necessary process, and rag-
ged red coolies arrange our luggage and are paid off an art in itself,
as they always try for more, and the greater the initial overpaying,
the harder they try. Unhurried cheerful bargaining and possibly an
extra pittance given with a show of spontaneous reluctance sends
them away happy; if they are obstinate the door must be firmly
locked in their faces. Never begin to pay until they are outside the
carriage. All takes time; there is plenty before the warning bell
dangs.

I never lost the fascination of Indian railway travel, once I had
geared myself to an Oriental concept of time. Other railways in the
East may be faster (on this particular journey the Mail, fastest of
trains, took five hours to cover 143 miles), more comfortable, or
cleaner, sleeker, or provide towels and toiletpaper ; the Indian train
is in a class of its own. When we were able to reserve a coupe to
ourselves we seemed to have a home again, the world locked out.
Indian trains have no corridors, except in certain of the air-condi-
tioned coaches, and are designed for long journeys, each passenger
allotted a bunk by night ; even in daytime he has plenty of elbow
room. That is in the first class, which has a standard of comfort a
little lower than English second. Third class must be seen to be
believed, preferably at festival time when I have watched entranced
a train moved off with bodies packed to suffocation, others hanging
out of the windows, dinging to the doors, and sitting on the roof.

5 o EARTH'S REMOTEST END

Because for this journey we were unable to book a coupe, we could
not unroll our bedding. One man did, taking up three people's space,
but he was a Member of Parliament and the others dared do no
more when the carriage crowded up than push back his toes. Once
again we watched the loveliness of dawn and sunrise over the red-
tiled village huts and the patchwork of crops and plowland, inter-
spersed with trees, which stretched out flat as a billiard table as far
as eye could reach the Ganges Plain, flatter than any countryside
I have known, and every yard cultivated or occupied by teeming
millions.

Dotted across the landscape in the morning sun were close-built,
tight-packed villages, less substantial than in the prosperous Punjab
but more so than in Central India. India of the villages is, and for
long years must be, the real India; whatever the extension of in-
dustry under Five- Year Plans, by far the most Indians are villagers.
And in the North you can travel mile upon mile without meeting a
village Christian.

There are exceptions to that, for in the Punjab and in Uttar Pra-
desh (United Provinces), are the areas of the mass movements. Early
in the century, and on into the 1920'$ and 1930*8, a new phenomenon
altered the statistics and the outlook of Christianity in the North.
Outcaste and low-caste villages, the refuse and offscouring of Hindu-
ism, began to turn to Christianity for the succor and for the recog-
nition of their rights as humans that Hinduism denied. Through the
courage and perspicacity of a number of missionaries, of whom
Jarrell W. Pickett of the American Methodists was the mouthpiece
in Christ's Way to India's Heart, these stirrings were directed into
the channels of the regular churches, and village after village was
baptized en masse, a distant echo of the conversion of the Anglo-
Saxons. Pastors and teaching, so far as opportunity allowed, were
provided. Undoubtedly many individuals found solace, and some
fine characters were molded from the least attractive human ma-
terial.

To these Christian villages missionaries and national workers
have easy access. I recall one village not far from the Ganges, near
the bank of a canal. We walked through narrow streets between high
walls of baked mud, and sat outside the headman's little house
surrounded by small boys and buffaloes, while a sari-clad girl Bible

Elusive Ind 51

teacher conducted a class for adult illiterates in the shade of a
banyan tree beside the village pond.

Mass movements breed problems. A prominent Indian layman
told me of his regret, though a close friend of Pickett, that the mass
movements had ever occurred. He believed that too many villages
had been prompted by mere desire for social or economic betterment.
The movement had also mixed Christianity with politics as badly
as Hinduism and Islam were mixed, for in the days of communal
representation toward the close of British rule a sufficient increase
of Christian converts could shift political balance.

That factor has disappeared. Undoubtedly, however, mass move-
ments have burdened the Indian churches with the pressing prob-
lem of the nominal Christian whose ethical level, men say, too
often is lower than that of his Hindu neighbor.

I came in touch with two Indians who, not only in the mass-move-
ment areas, might hold the solution.

Brother Bakht Singh, one of the most controversial names in
Christian India, may yet be one of its chief hopes. More probably
he has been permanently deflected into a bypath. I had hoped to
meet the man himself an impressive experience, I believe but he
had left for the United States before I could reach Hyderabad, his
headquarters.

Bakht Singh when a young man in beard and turban and other
signs of a Sikh, with their pride and independence of spirit, traveled
to Canada in the early IQSO'S for higher education, and was con-
verted to Christ. Returning to Karachi transformed in heart and ex-
perience, with a vivid sense of mission, he ran up against a British
missionary of the old school who treated him as inferior in status ;
Bakht Singh (or any other "native") might not enter the mission
bungalow without permission, would be, kept waiting deliberately,
and must suffer petty slights lest he get above his station. Bakht
Singh was put off missionaries.

Nevertheless he worked with the Anglicans, and in Karachi and
afterward in Lahore brought new life into deadwood churches. "I
have never heard anyone who can preach on sin so scathingly or on
Christ's power so effectively as Bakht Singh" ; words such as these
have been said to me by several foreigners and Indians, including

5 2 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

some who disapprove of him on almost every other ground. His im-
patience mounted: impatience with the dependence of Indian
churches on the West, with the standards, too frequently low, of
Indian Christians. His feelings bubbled up in a denunciation of
missionary failings, using as his platform the Annual Convention for
the Deepening of Spiritual Life at Sialkot in the Punjab. "Many
of the things he said needed to be said," I was told, "but he went
too far. The Punjab became too hot for him and about 1940 he
moved to South India."

Here too conversions and revival followed. To this day Bakht
Singh is a foremost evangelist and preacher in India, farther Asia,
and in the United States. A crisis came in his life ; to criticize an-
other man's decision made before God is to invite our Lord's "Judge
not that ye be not judged," yet it is hard not to feel that Bakht
Singh's was a grievous blow to the church in India. When we were
discussing him, the Bishop in Madras, David Chelappa, remarked:
"Every pulpit in the city was open to him once. Now there's
scarcely one."

Bakht Singh's crisis arose from serious concern at the number
of his converts Hindus, Moslems, and nominal Christians whose
faith afterward fossilized. He ascribed the failure to the unhealthy
condition of many of the churches of all denominations to which
these converts were linked. A conflict developed in his mind and
conscience. "If you bring children to birth should you leave them
to die in a ditch?" He heard God calling him to form new congre-
gations on which his converts could be grafted, coming out of the
old churches or coming in fresh from Hinduism or Islam. He fore-
saw the antagonism such a policy would arouse, but the conviction
grew so strong that he yielded, and founded his first "Assemblies."
A storm beat about his head as it had about Wesley's in some-
what similar circumstances.

Bakht Singh went further. He worked himself into the belief
that the Assembly was the only truly apostolic "ark of salvation." It
was the church; the rest were outside. On this point one of his
closest associates, a friend of mine, broke with him. Bakht Singh
had reached the position of the Roman Catholics this and this only
is the church of God and thereby had merely formed another de-
nomination. He himself refuses to accept that his assemblies are a
denomination ; they are the church.

DAWN IN WEST NEPAL
The view of Annapurna from Shining Hospital

CENTRAL INDIA

A beggar waving a peacock-feather blessing

SOUTH INDIA

Elusive Ind 53

The power, the urgency, the apostolic vision combined with an
indigenous approach which might have brought a blood transfusion
to the Indian churches have been deflected and circumscribed. The
assemblies will cooperate with no one. On the other hand, from what
I have heard, the love they show to individuals regardless of per-
sonal attitude is quite remarkable.

I wanted to see for myself. One Sunday we went to the Assembly
on the outskirts of a North Indian city. The service had been on
for two hours already when we arrived, and was to last another
three, a truly Indian conception of time; also, people came and
went freely, either having had their fill or to visit the latrines behind
an unkempt banana plot visible through the door beyond the
preacher.

The chapel, below the house of the pastor was a low white build-
ing well kept within and without. On the walls were painted texts in
English, Hindi and Nepali: "Surely the Lord is in this place" an-
nounced the outer wall ; "Christ is Lord of all" proclaimed the wall
behind the preaching desk ; the center beam : "Holy and Reverend
is His Name."

About thirty-five of each sex and a number of remarkably well
behaved children sat on mats. They use no benches, for they owe
nothing to the West perhaps a trifle affected for these days. I
recall a bishop of one of the ancient indigenous churches of South
India saying that his people were beginning to put in chairs because
so many now used them at home : "Just because Father sat on the
floor in church, why should we?" The congregation of El Shaddai
were grouped according to the sexes anything different would
scarcely be expected in India and the women were all covered.

The pastor wore a brown suit, a blue shirt done up at the collar,
but no tie. As we entered he was preaching on Samson. Beside him
a local businessman in, a light blue suit and open-neck shirt inter-
preted into English (not very well), swaying as he spoke, announcing
almost every phrase with "This brother he say . . ." The interpre-
tation was not for our benefit but for one old English lady who
came regularly, a touching consideration on the part of the Assembly,
Both men held large Bibles.

After half an hour the pastor was replaced by a young former
carpenter with tousled black hair who had been sent by the As-

$4 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

sembly on a i5o-mile three-week preaching tour and who now re-
ported, with engaging modesty and humor, the conversions from
Hinduism (most of the congregation now present were . converts,
though a few had "come out" from the regular denominations), the
opposition of some nominal Christians and of Hindus. He had
supplied himself through the charity of friends made on the way.
He spoke, with interpretation, an hour. They sang a hymn, a
thoroughly Indian hymn accompanied by a drum, a floor harmon-
ium, and tambourines, and during the singing we all filed up, row
by row, to hand in our collection. Then we prayed.

It was a prayer meeting rather than a liturgy. We knelt with
legs tucked under knees, sometimes leaning forward with heads
on the ground. Everyone, including women, might pray aloud, ex-
tempore, and occasionally someone struck up a song and all joined
in unaccompanied. Shortly before three-thirty the Lord's Supper
began, quite short and very informal. For wine, orange juice, for
bread the common bread of the people, chappati. The pastor brought
the elements round while the congregation remained at prayer;
anyone not ready to receive was sharply rapped on the head. Oddly
enough, people continued to- withdraw to the latrines during this
most sacred part of the service.

When it was over, the chapel became a social hall; we had a
cup of sweetened milky tea preceded by a long grace, and I was in-
troduced to the pastor and elders.

The Assembly membership in this city was some two hundred. An
English woman missionary told me more about it as we walked
home. "They are very dear brethren but they do love long meetings ! "
she said. More seriously : "They seek to be truly simple and apostolic.
They are very aggressive and are always on the go a really strong
sense of mission. Nearly every night there are meetings for evangel-
ism or building up. But they are very suspicious of the older
denominations and doubt if any who are in them are 'born again.'"

This pattern would be repeated in any of the several hundred as-
semblies founded by or in connection with Bakht Singh in various
parts of India. Undoubtedly they have burning faith and a supreme
sense of the omnipotence of God and a vivid experience of re-
demption. How much more significant for India if Bakht Singh,
who cooperates warmly with other Christians when out of his

Elusive Ind 55

own country, could demolish the dam of exclusiveness which keeps
the waters of his movement from irrigating parched areas!

I met the other man of the future in the guest room of an impor-
tant Methodist city church where he was conducting a mission.
Sitting on his bed while I sat on the only chair was a man of thirty-
eight in a gray check suit, red waistcoat, and a blue tie pinned by
an enamel brooch decorated with the picture of a coach. His black
hair was swept back ; he had the light-brown skin of a Punjabi, a
Douglas Fairbanks mustache and, curiously for an Indian, a slight
American accent.

Dr. Akbar Haqq, a man of brilliant scholarship and son of a
notable convert from Islam, had been head of the Henry Martyn
School of Islamics until Dr. Billy Graham came to India in 1956.
Dr. Haqq told what had happened : "I had been aware of the dire
need of spiritual awakening in the Indian Church, but I did not
believe in the need of evangelization or of decisions for Christ among
nominal Christians. I was intensely disturbed by the state of the
Church you grafted a Muslim convert to a local church; they
saw the sort of life being lived, and they went back. All our worst
opponents have been apostates or near converts. I was dismayed, too,
by the spiritual condition of many mission compounds. I saw the
need of a man to bring revival. When Billy Graham came, I thought
he was the man."

Dr. Haqq was interpreter at Dr. Graham's meetings in Delhi in
February, 1956. They had long talks together. "Billy Graham,"
continued Haqq, "said: 'I am not the man to be used for a spir-
itual awakening here. It has to be an Asian. I think you are the
man.' I was overwhelmed at the vision, and doubted. When, later
in 1956, I returned from taking part in the Louisville Crusade I
thought I would give God a chance. I had been invited to be evan-
gelist in a city-wide campaign in Kanpur sponsored by the Evangeli-
cal Fellowship of India. If it's your will I should do this work,'
I prayed, 'Let me know in the context of this campaign.' When
on the first night I gave the invitation I closed my eyes; I didn't
want to see failure. But scores came upl And our audiences grew
from four hundred on the first night to over five thousand before
the end.

5 6 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

"Since then God has never failed me, all over India. Wherever
God has taken me He has honored His contract." Dr. Haqq's
preaching is, as he puts it, "more of divine than of emotional reason-
ing/' and when he gives the invitation he seeks to discourage all but
the spiritually hungry. His follow-up system is similar to Dr. Gra-
ham's, and as church-centered. His message is firmly based on Bibli-
cal theology, and he preaches either in Hindu or in English. " God's s
pattern in these campaigns is so wonderful," he said, "It includes
both non-Christians coming as well as nominal Christians. In my
three years at the School of Islamics I had no convert. Since begin-
ning this ministry I have had scores."

Dr. Akbar Haqq has now conducted campaigns in several cities
of India, and in Ceylon from one of the Anglican bishops I heard
warmest commendation of the campaign which had concluded shortly
before this Delhi interview. "A splendid job ! " said the Bishop of
Karunegula, "especially among intellectuals and university students.
He got a lot of half-baked Christians warmed up! Because he is
one of us he can do what Billy Graham never could have done. He
can do such a great job in Asia."

In that little guest room in Old Delhi words poured out from
Dr. Haqq which will be proved the shrewder as the years pass:
^'Missions were designed to lean heavily on support from abroad,"
he said. "We have got to get to the position of self-support, in the
context of spiritual awakening. Therefore we ought to talk less of
'self-support' and more of the Spirit of God. . . . Revival in the In-
dian Church must not be an end in itself. If it is it will go wrong,
will stagnate 1 Revival must be seen as a means to change the face
of Asia 'Ye shall receive power . . . and ye shall be witnesses unto
me ... unto the uttermost part of the earth." . . . When I go to the
West it is a demonstration of the fact that Jesus Christ is a uni-
versal Saviour. Hitherto it has been too much a one-way traffic,
West to East. Yet we need fellow Christians from the West out
here, called of God, to prove the universality of Christ, though the
actual evangelizing now has to be done mostly by Indians."

Dr. Haqq rose from the bed he had been sitting on. "We must get
o<ut of the old idea of sending missionaries to pagans. The whole
world is a missionary field, and we Christians have to band to-
gether to confront the East and the West with God."

Way of Obscurity 57

EIGHT Jffc Way of Obscurity

They were burning her a few feet off. We sat in a boat on the
Ganges soon after sunrise in company of a Christian sadhu whose
saffron robe, young face, and black beard were faintly suggestive
of John the Baptist.

She had died in Banaras (or Varanasi, as it is now officially
called), in that part of the city beside the waterfront called Kashi.
In popular Hindu belief by dying there her soul was freed from
any further migration and would be absorbed into Brahma, the
Spirit of Life : she had gained salvation by the place of her death.

The corpse in its pink shroud (a man's would have been white)
had already been dipped in the river. The husband, dressed in
white, his head newly shaved except for the little tuft on the crown,
walked round the pyre holding a bunch of long twigs. A few other
men stood about, but the wailing and the women had been left be-
hind. A temple official took the twigs from the husband and kindled
them from a fire burning night and day and placed them under
the pyre.

As our boat drifted away the pyre was burning strongly, and the
husband would not need to wait long before the half-burned body
could be raised to a sitting position so that he, as nearest relative,
might break a hole in the skull to prevent it bursting : If the skull
bursts the spirit has not been released. When the body was burned
the ashes would be thrown into the river.

Every day a succession of corpses are carried down through the
narrow gullis between the houses and temples to the river. To die at
Banaras, or at least to be burned there, is the hope of every devout
Hindu, though the climate imposes a strict time limit on the distance
a corpse can be carried.

A few quiet strokes of the boatmen's oars brought us to the bath-
ing ghats from which arose chatter and prayer. I watched one of
the many pilgrims, in loincloth, step into the river to his knees,
scoop a little water, and throw it in the direction of the "sun god,"
now well risen over the south bank. He scooped another handful and

$8 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

drank it, murmuring a ritual prayer toward the sun. The Ganges is it-
self a goddess; a woman cast flowers on the water; another was
filling a brass vessel to carry home and place on the household altar
of the one- or two-roomed hut in a village perhaps hundreds of miles
away.

Bathers also thoroughly washed themselves (someone irreverently
described Hinduism as a mixture of devotion and laundry) or had
a short swim. A few young men did physical jerks on a stone platform
above the ghat; others sat cross-legged in the position of medi-
tation, soles turned upward, which is difficult for an Easterner and
almost impossible for a European. A launch of American tourists
chugged by. .

We landed and walked up to one of the pundits under his large
umbrella with whom, for a fee, the pilgrim leaves his outer clothes
and after bathing returns to be ritually marked on the forehead, for
a further fee, with the tilak of colored ash according to the god or
goddess worshiped. And so to the temples where the pilgrim must
next go. The temples vary in shape and size, for nearly every Hindu
divinity, sect, and caste has its own. The general pattern is the same :
a conical roof set about with lesser cones to denote that the many
(gods and goddesses) are the manifestation of the one (Brahma) :
a sublime conception which those who know India best emphatically
believe to mean nothing to the illiterate villager ; the idol is all.

At the top of steps by the entrance to the narrow gulli leading
to the Golden Temple a man threw bananas from a sack into the
cups of beggars, male and female, adult, adolescent, and small,
who are liberally sprinkled all over the temple area to provide the
devout with opportunity of merit : the man was mobbed by a clamor-
ing crowd, and tempers rose on both sides before he walked off an-
noyed. Sacred cows and brahmani bulls do not wait for alms:
they take them from the vegetable stalls. Nor need they push their
way through the gullis as we must ; the crowd makes way and they
plod in godlike superiority.

It is a fashion among some Western writers to applaud the mys-
tical atmosphere of Banaras. To me it seemed pathetic, lacking in
awe of the Divine or in the beauty of holiness. The noise and shout-
ing, the clang of bell as worshipers bade the god listen, the slush
where sacred water had been sprinkled on the image, the chattering

Way of Obscurity jp

of devotees bringing petals and sweetmeats to the idols made me think
of the prophets of Baal rather than of Elijah. And behind it all lie
the distinctions of caste, in some ways still rigid despite government
attempts to ease them caste, that age-old domination by the
accident of birth, a status, high or low, which cannot be changed by
achievement or failure, poverty or wealth ; a negation of the Chris-
tian belief that all men are created equal and are brothers. To the
question "Who is my neighbor?" Hinduism answers, "One of my
caste."

The worship of Banaras is the worship of the mass of India. The
large Muslim minorities, especially around Lucknow and Hyderabad,
the minority religions, such as the Parsees, and what might be
termed the reformed Hindu sects, such as the Sikhs, whose refresh-
ingly austere temple at Amritsar in the Punjab we had visited on
our way through to Patna, are few compared to the millions upon
millions who with local variations worship the Banaras way.

This immense religious devotion which should put most Christians
to shame and which should be neither despised nor condemned rep-
resents a deep-seated hunger for peace of soul. Again and again
converts from Hinduism told of this search for peace. Sadhus will
travel for years all over India from shrine to shrine, temple to tem-
ple, preaching and teaching, but essentially searching for peace and
for that ecstasy of union with God to be attained, they believe, only
by prolonged asceticism, unwearying pilgrimage, and the cultivation
of virtue. Hinduism knows nothing of salvation as the gift of God.

With hunger goes a widespread reverence for the holy, though
holiness often has a different connotation from the Christian's: in
Banaras cantonment, the residential and military area laid out by
the British on the outskirts, in the dusk one evening we saw a full
grown man walking stark naked, his hands folded in prayer. Such
are considered highly holy, and it was when pressing to see a group
of naked fakirs that a vast crowd got out of control with fatal
result at an Allahabad puja some years ago.

With reverence goes prejudice, ignorance, and a deep-seated fear
of angering the gods.

Village Hinduism appears quite different from that of philosophers,
and from that of the highly educated and cultured men and women

60 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

of affairs, politicians, businessmen, and army officers whose friend-
ship is to be prized and whose company is delightful.

Of the many conversations which I had with Hindus and former
Hindus as we traveled round India, I would recall three.

The first was at Kanpur (the Cawnpore of history). We were
staying a few days with a British businessman and his wife, Ken-
neth and Pat Willcox, old friends of ours, in their spacious bungalow.
The British business community in Kanpur, though dwindling, is one
of the largest outside Calcutta and Bombay. The Willcoxes took
us to several parties at the bungalows of Indian colleagues or neigh-
bors, and as I munched chicken curry and other good things, now
chatting to an Indian manufacturer, now to an Englishwoman, and
next to a government official, I reflected on what a long way the
world had come since the frigid separations of E. M. Forster's A
Passage to India. '

One evening we went to a Dewali party at the home of a charm-
ing well-read woman whose father is a notable Indian diplomat.
Dewali is the festival of lights in honor of the goddess of wealth.
Wicks set in little bowls of vegetable oil were alight all down the
drive, on the roof, on window ledges, so that with every Hindu
house lit up Kanpur was enchanting. Kenneth's small sons William
and Stephen were thoroughly enjoying themselves as their host
popped off fireworks in the garden. Dewali provides Hindus with the
presents and jollifications of the Christians' Christmas and is espec-
ially a children's festival ; when they have gone to bed their elders
gamble through the night, testing their luck to see whether the
goddess is smiling.

As soon as our hostess, in a very pretty sari of red, the Dewali
color, heard why I was in India she drew me aside and, while the fire-
works whooshed and banged and servants handed round sweets, out-
lined higher Hinduism. "It is essentially a philosophy, not a creed,"
she reminded me. "We believe that all religions are manifestations of
the truth of God. We revere Jesus as having been an incarnation of
Brahma, and accept His teaching of the Sermon on the Mount.
Buddha too was an Incarnation." She might have added that many
modern Hindus consider Gandhi to have been another. And an In-
dian Christian showed me a Home Science textbook in which Bud-

Way of Obscurity 61

dha, Christ, and Radhakrishnan, the modern philosopher, were men-
tioned in one breath.

This philosophy seems remote from the ceaseless idolatry of the
poor, I suggested. "You must remember," she said, "that many of
them live as animals, poor things. But the more I have studied the
so-called 'higher 5 philosophical streams, the more tolerant have I
become of the so-called 'lower' ones. This is not to suggest that I
consider blind idolatry on a par with the kind of religious conscious-
ness which is always seeking to broaden its vision, and awareness of
the multitude of ways in which God chooses to manifest Himself.
But taken in the context of certain physical circumstances, includ-
ing accidents of birth, I think blind idolatry no worse, in its own
place, than other more aesthetic forms of worship." This is an at*
titude typical of the thoughtful, cultivated Hindu, those men and
women who move with such gracious ease in the conference halls
of the United Nations or the drawing rooms of London and Wash-
ington that religion is a matter of endeavor and that any form of
belief or action is valid if it is sincere.

I asked why Hinduism, so tolerant philosophically of other reli-
gions, is in practice grievously intolerant : a Hindu seeking baptism
may suffer not only social stigma but physical hurt. She had begun
her answer when her principal guest, the Canadian High Commis-
sioner, arrived and our conversation ceased.

This point I took up a month later in South India with a dis-
tinguished Hindu philosopher, Dr. K. Sheshadri, in his modest almost
bare house in Trivandrum. I had hoped in New Delhi to meet the
greatest of them all, Radhakrishnan, now Vice President of India,
but he was in Paris for the UNESCO meeting. Dr. Sheshadri is a
loving, humble, and friendly man in his mid-fifties, a follower
of the Visishta Advaita based on the teaching of the eleventh century
Tamil saint Ramanujam. I told him of a young South Indian I had
seen recently at a seminary whose story was certainly not unusual.
While away from his village he had become a Christian, and his
hitherto affectionate father had tried everything from tears to witch-
craft and attempted murder, and now had renounced him as a son.

"The father must have been more of a father than a Hindu," said
Sheshadri, cryptically. If a son of his, he said, began to believe in
Christianity, he would show him that everything Christianity offered

62 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

was already in the Gita, the Hindu sacred books. He would let him
absorb all the Bible but saw no need of outward rite, "You Christians
would have far more influence if you did not insist on conversion"
by which he meant baptism. It puzzled him that Christ should
demand exclusive, open allegiance.

I widened the discussion by asking whether he would agree that
Hinduism "absorbed" truth from other religions Radhakrishnan is
continually quoting the Bible, "No," he replied, "but other religions
have helped us to see more clearly what was already in Hinduism."
"What would you say of the malpractices of Hinduism which so
revolted Europeans early in the last century? Widow burning, hook
swinging, and the rest of it. You know the saying : ' Whereas Chris-
tianity has crept steadily into the statute book, Hinduism has been
steadily edged out.' Were these things mere accretions?"

"That wasn't the only bad period of Hinduism," he replied.
" There have been many others."

Sheshadri was satisfied with his philosophy, certainly one of the
finer of the many teachings which are all Hindu, however they differ.
Each aspect of Christianity to which I referred he capped with a
Hindu quotation, and yet there was always a subtle miss of the
point. We were discussing the Atonement. I had said that Christians
believe that because we are sinners salvation lies not in what we do
but in what Christ has done for us ; Hinduism has no such sense of
sin and thus its way is not by atonement but attainment. " 'Nothing
in my hand I bring' is an unknown attitude to a Hindu," I sug-
gested. Sheshadri went to his desk and took out a typescript of
English translations from the Alwars, the twelve Tamil Saivite
saints. "Twelve" he murmured ; "there's a parallel there, too. . . ."
But he did not press it. He read a passage which began, "I am not
of high caste and have no power. . . ." "There you have it," he said :
*"resourcelessness, helplessness."
"But not guilt," I replied.

Geoffrey Paul, a Church Missionary Society missionary and an
able theologian who had brought me to Sheshadri, tried to make the
point plain. "Hindu philosophy teaches that salvation lies within
you, doesn't it? That it consists in discovering the true self, the
atman, the center of your being, and that that is pure? The real
center core of your being, if you can find it, is pure?" Sheshadri

Way of Obscurity 63

agreed. "Then," continued Geoffrey, "may I put it like this? I find
that the deepest level in my being is not pure. It is sinful, corrupt.
That is why I need a Saviour."

"Ah," said Sheshadri, "but you have not understood your real
center ! "

And so he would have us search on for a divinity within, instead
of humbly accepting the forgiveness of sins as the gift of a personal
God releasing us for untrammeled service.

Sheshadri himself goes on searching. "If I could see that Chris-
tianity offered what I have not got already," he said, "I would
change. But so far I cannot see that it does." As Geoffrey and I left
this sterling character, we agreed that the Christianity which is to
win such a man must be utterly in the Spirit of Christ.

The third conversation took place over a New Delhi luncheon
table.

In New Delhi we stayed with the Dennis Clarkes, opposite the old
Hindu astronomical observatory, Jantar Mantar. Though Dennis
and I are poles apart ecclesiastically, we have close sympathies and
especially a common interest in Christian literature. He has founded
with great success a Christian Literature Institute (Masihi Sahitya
Sanstha) for production and distribution in Hindi. Hindi covers
already over a third of the population of India and is being promoted
as the national language. There is therefore more than enough need
for M.S.S., the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge,
and other mission publishers, since literacy leaps ahead.

When the Bible Society ran a nation-wide campaign printing the
Gospel of St. Mark in vernacular newspapers, M.S.S. was given as
the address for inquiry by readers of the principal Hindi paper. One
of Dennis Clarke's assistants is a man who in his youth was a militant
Hindu, then a communist, and now a strong Christian. His corre-
spondence with many hundreds of these inquirers gave him good
understanding of the middle-class Hindu in North India.

He and Dennis had been acquainting me with the three principal
organized strands of modern Hinduism: the Brahma Somaj, which
accepts Christianity as one of the world's great religions, and seeks
to absorb it in a syncretion in many ways more dangerous than open
antagonism, but which reacts sharply to Christianity's claim to
uniqueness; the Arya Somaj, which is militant against Christianity

64 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

and even promotes campaigns of reconversion ; and the Maha Sabha
and the Jam Sangh of politico-religious extremists who equate
Hinduism with India, who wish to see India as a Hindu state, and
who claim that Christianity is anti-Indian.

In contrast the educated middle classes display a growing interest
in Christianity. "There are three reasons," said Dennis' assistant.
"The first is disillusion. They had hoped that the new India would be
a better place as a result of freedom and all the application of new
knowledge. It is not. They know there is, for instance, corruption in
all but the highest levels." Gladys Clarke interposed that the govern-
ment lately had made a determined effort to improve the ethics of
the people by emphasizing the great virtues, clothing Christian quali-
ties in Hindu dress. Perhaps too, I thought, men sense that beneath
the Indian assertion to be a people of peace and nonviolence in con-
trast to the warlike West lies the violence which broke out so ter-
ribly in 1947.

He continued: "The second reason is uncertainty. There is no
certainty about anything. Partition is partly responsible. They feel
a sense of instability spiritual, not political. The foundations are
being shaken. Religion might give a sense of security.

"The third is that Hinduism has provided no answer."

Some of the dissatisfied turned to the Buddhists of Ceylon, and
many to communism. But increasing numbers ask about Christianity.
I was shown translations of some of the letters received from edu-
cated Hindus who often collect their neighbors and friends to read
and discuss the Bible and Christian literature. "Many have said,"
ran one from a man lately Hindu, "that they are the incarnation
of God, or angels, but only the Lord Jesus claims to have brought
salvation to man. With the help of science man can do many things,
but no man can change the stricken nature, only through Jesus Christ
can we get a new nature and a new birth."

"The real trouble," said the Clarkes, "is the large number of Chris-
tians who cannot give any answer when asked about their faith,
though they would rather die than throw it over. Look at Delhi
1,000,000 population, 18,000 Christians: if all went and told others,
think of theeffectl"

Seats of the Mighty 65

NINE *P* Seats of the Mighty

The Prime Minister's anteroom clock showed twenty minutes after
the hour of appointment. The day previous had been Mr. Nehru's
birthday. To judge from newspaper photographs he was now de-
layed at his home by a Sikh sadhu ceremonially garlanding him
with a live snake.

As I sat on the comfortable yellow sofa, idly turning pages of
glossy official propaganda, my feet on a green carpet opposite a hand-
some and solemn private secretary, I recalled that Pandit Jawaharlal
Nehru has been termed the missionary's best friend. His own beliefs
no one knows. A Hindu by name, a Christian in ethics, an agnostic
at heart? When Hindu extremists introduced into the Lok Sabha
an Anticonversion bill, Mr. Nehru's personal intervention demolished
it. From the start he has done more than anyone to uphold the
freedom of all religions to believe, to practice, and to propagate that
is enshrined in the Constitution.

Forty minutes late, the Prime Minister entered his room by an-
other door and I was invited in. He stood, slender, short, fair-skinned
behind the wide desk of polished wood so shaped that four men may
have a side and yet face him. He was dressed in a brown achan
buttoned to the neck, and his customary boutonniere was a red rose.
He smoked a cigarette in a holder and did not look so tired as when
I had formerly seen him, having lately taken his first holiday in ten
years.

Mr. Nehru is reputed a man of moods. A distinguished American
told me that the Prime Minister hardly said a word until the last
minutes of the interview. Perhaps because many of my family have
beepi lawyers and because I too was at Trinity College, Cambridge,
he very kindly spoke freely.

After the usual courtesies the Prime Minister sat waiting far me
to open th conversation. I reminded him that my previous interview,
in 1956, had taken place soon after a scare in the British press that
missionaries would be shortly expelled or prevented from returning
after leave. His assurances then had not been vain, and there now

66 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

seemed less uneasiness. He agreed. I had sensed, however, a wide-
spread belief that the government's policy was to cut down the num-
ber of foreign missionaries. "That is not correct," said the Prime
Minister. "The government has no such policy. India still welcomes
missionaries provided they have some qualification doctors, nurses,
teachers, so on. They must not be just evangelists. Indeed it is in
their own interests that direct evangelical work should be done by
Indians." He told me a story of a foreigner who read out to a village
audience some strictures written by a Hindu against errors in
Hinduism. "They gave him a beating. Now if it had been an In-
dian, that wouldn't have happened. And they must be invited by
recognized bodies. We don't want people just wandering about."

I referred to the criticism that few recruits from non-Common-
wealth countries were given visas whereas non-Commonwealth tech-
nicians came in freely. The Prime Minister answered : "Technicians
come and go. They enter to do a job and then leave the country after
two or three years. The missionary wants to settle down."

"A very clever answer," commented an Indian Christian to whom
I told this. The denial of visas to Americans and Continentals
only seven of the language students at Landour in 1958 were non-
Commonwealth shows that the government's admission of mission-
aries is closely bound to the principle of reciprocity: if India wants
her people admitted freely to other Commonwealth countries she
must not discriminate herself. It is not surprising that a South
African would find entry impossible. Commonwealth missionaries
must have a "Special Endorsement" which is not needed by business-
men, and a "no objection to return" when they go on furlough. This
is discrimination, though so far merely a formality. The Prime Minis-
ter ascribed it to the need to keep check on numbers ; it certainly
gives missionaries a feeling of insecurity.

Our talk broadened to the general attitude of the government.
Mr. Nehru pointed out that in one respect missionaries were less
restricted than in British days, for several of the former Native
States now merged in the Republic, and therefore open, had then
excluded them. "But you must remember that the States of the Re-
public are semi-independent and vary in their treatment of the
question. . . ." Frontier districts? Missionaries were excluded from
the Inner Line not because they were missionaries but because they

Seats of the Mighty 67

are foreigners. "An Indian Christian can go where he pleases. No
nation can tolerate foreigners on its frontiers." And to this all sensi-
ble people will assent, especially since the Chinese aggressions;
though it was a typically Indian experience of one man who was
held in jail thirteen days because the Inner Line was moved behind
his house without anyone telling him, he being then arrested for
living on the wrong side.

Undoubtedly the Indian Government is hypersensitive about "po-
litical interference" by missionaries. I have often tried to trace the
source of this myth. Had the Prime Minister real evidence? "We
have some, but not very much." That was as far as he would go.
"Political interference" remains a myth except for the case of an
American who in early days of independence unwisely encouraged
the Nagas.

I asked the Prime Minister if I might be permitted to visit the
Nagas. In the Naga Hills the Indian Army is operating against the
only active rebels in the Republic. The Nagas are mostly Christian.

"No, I am afraid not," he replied. "White faces up there are an
embarrassment even United Nations personnel. Ideas are built up
round them which are not helpful. Besides, there is your own safety.
. . ." He went on to say that the government did not blame the
missionaries, though the leader of the hostiles was a Christian. "These
primitive tribes are inclined to slip back to whatever they were."

The Nagas of Assam, fierce head-hunters turned to Christ by
American Baptists in one of the most spectacular advances of Chris-
tianity, had not taken kindly to the ending of British rule, and
after five years rose in a revolt still not fully suppressed. An official
who ought to know assured me that the rebellion certainly was not
the fault of American missionaries except that they had built them-
selves up as fathers and mothers of the people rather than training
responsible leaders. The government had withdrawn missionaries
from the Naga Hills too abruptly.

Mr. Nehru, having politely turned me from the Nagas, was now
discussing the famous Nyogi Report.

This report was issued recently by a commission of the Madhya
Pradesh government. The commission's composition and its methods
of securing evidence scarcely entitled it to be termed unbiased, and
its pages bristle with explosive extravagances: "Evangelization in

68 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

India appears to be part of the uniform world policy to revive Chris-
tendom for re-establishing western supremacy and is not prompted
by spiritual motives. . . , A vile propaganda against the religion of
the majority community is being systematically and deliberately
carried on so as to create an apprehension of breach of public peace."
The report recommended an absolute prohibition of any attempt,
direct or indirect, successful or not, to "penetrate into the religious
conscience of persons, whether of age or under age, for the purpose
of consciously altering their religious conscience or faith."

"It went too far/' the Prime Minister said. "It was against the
spirit of the Constitution. It rebounded on its own head." In fact, it
encouraged more men and women of intelligence to investigate
Christianity. And, ironically enough, Nyogi, the exponent of "abso-
lute prohibition" on change of religion has himself switched from
Hinduism to Buddhism.

As the interview drew to a close I asked the Prime Minister
whether, quoting a favorite phrase of his, he considered that Chris-
tians contributed to the "emotional unity of India." "In the North,
no ; in the South, yes," he replied. Christianity is reckoned to have
been in South India for two thousand years, and is one of the ancient
religions of the land. "In the North, however, it came in with the
British. The Church of England before Independence, remember, was
an arm of the Imperial Government. Christianity in the North is
still too much in the pattern of the West, not fully integrated in the
life of India."

TEN F South India

The Church of South India is probably the most written about of all.
I touched only the fringe. For in a way which occurred nowhere else
my plans were thwarted. Some Indians who, I had hoped, would take
me out on their excellent evangelism among children were too busy
the one week I could come. Bishop Lesslie Newbigin of Madura,
who was enthusiastic to show me Ms diocese of the C.S X, was on
furlough. A man of influence in another important diocese, though no

South India 6p

longer resident, had promised valuable introductions but did noth-
ing. To cap it all, a hammer-and-tongs argument with the Minister
of Education of the then Communist Government of Kerala became
dead mutton when the Communists were deservedly dismissed by
presidential action some months afterward.

Because rail communications in South India are slower than in
any other part of the Republic, the traveler with limited time must
be selective. Looking back on the ruin of my intentions, I have at
least no regrets that I chose to go to Kerala, an eye-opener to a
Western Christian.

In the second week of December we awoke one- morning in a train
below rugged hills east of Coimbatore, over eighteen hundred miles
from Delhi. It ran on beside a river of wide sandbanks, shallows, and
frequent busy fords. At the stations beggars were more insistent,
more dirty. Vivid against the dark faces of irrepressible small boys
who darted about the platform were their white teeth, not yet
blotched and reddened by betel nut. An elderly, bearded, hook-nosed
munshi in a white and gold fez, yellow scarf, and cotton clothes sat
patiently on a bedroll.

The Cochin Express, which crosses South India, turned deep into
Kerala, "land of the coconuts," the old name revived when Travan-
core, Cochin, and Malabar were reorganized into one state : a fantasy
of green banana plants, their great leaves frayed in the wind;
coconuts in all stages from prodding bushes to graceful palms shoot-
ing up slender and bare to spill over in waving fans ; paddy fields
under water as if red-brown inland seas ; palm-fringed lagoons ; red
earth and a background of hills in the heat haze. The train whistled
interminably past level crossings where on tarmac roads unexpected
lines of cars gave evidence of the high development of this land of
tea, coffee, and rubber.

How the Malayalas stride! They have athletic bodies, square
heads of high cheekbones, thick lips, heavy foreheads, and dark
wavy hair, and pace along in starched white or yellow shirts, dhotis
tucked up to hide their shirttails, black umbrellas hooked over their
shoulders. The familiar soiled look is missing ; even the peasants in
the fields appeared clean as the sun shone on chocolate skins. How

70 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

inquisitive the Malayalas are ! At one station I counted forty-three
adults beyond the fence, quietly watching.

Whistle full blast, the train hurried through village after village
and then idled away its gains at each town. Every village and town
had its Christian church. In contrast to the North and Central In-
dian countryside, a church is part of the Kerala landscape. Kot-
tayam, where we were guests of Mr. A. V. George, a banker, news-
paper, and plantation owner who is reputed a rupee millionaire and
who is Lay Secretary of the Diocesan Council, has more churches
than most English towns and more bishops of varying ecclesiastical
hues than anywhere outside Rome.

' Mr, George sent us in his car to tour his plantations. After a
huge lunch of typically fiery curry with his brother, we were driven
deeper into the hills to reach Ashley Estate at Peermade, a famous
hill station. The road led through strings of houses. Every so often
we saw a church, Roman, Syrian, Mar Thoma, or Church of South
India, or a Christian shrine ; we passed trucks displaying names such
as "St. George," "St. Mary," "The Good Shepherd." To Ashley,
where most of the workers are Christians, though labor troubles are
by no means thereby removed, we came in the early evening and
said we would like to climb the hill above the estate. Good Mr,
Kurien, the manager, gave a distinct "mad dogs and Englishmen"
look but put us on the track. We climbed. The scenery was reminis-
cent of Wester Ross. Out over the Malabar coast the sun dropped
steeply in a glorious blaze to be extinguished by the sea.

Beside us, from the summit of the hill, rose a tall wooden cross.

His Holiness the Catholicos of the East leaned on the arm of a
monk at the entrance to the Catholicate Aramana in Kottayam.
Eighty-five years of age, forty-six a bishop and twenty-four head of
the Orthodox Syrian Church, Moran Mar Baselius' ancestors were
worshiping Christ in South India when mine were dancing round
Stonehenge or sacrificing to some dark druidic god. He was a
patriarchal sight with his long white beard, a red robe which but-
toned down the middle like a shirt, a gold cross and chain, and on
his head a cap of St. Anthony, the Syrian monastic order, dark blue
with little white crosses. The whole effect was slightly spoiled by
brown shoes worn at the toes.

South India 71

He was toothless, had a humorous face, and when we were seated
in a room hung with portraits of his predecessors he lay back with
his head aslant and mouth hanging open; a charming interpreter
with a cold in one eye rendered my opening remarks into Malayalam,
a language which sounds like water down a bath drain and looks
like the letter m run riot. Priests (bearded), deacons (beardless),
and even house servants peeped over screens or round doors.

As we talked, the names of ancient councils and theological bat-
tles long ago were bandied back and forth : Chalcedon, Nicaea, Mono-
physite controversy, filioque clause. The "Syrian" Christians (who
are as Indian as anyone else) claim descent from the converts of St.
Thomas the Apostle, whom they believe to have landed in India in
A.D. 52 ; his supposed grave is shown at Madras. The evidence that
St. Thomas came to India is only circumstantial ; irrefutably in the
year 345 several hundred Christian immigrants from Syria took up
residence on the Malabar coast and found others already established ;
since the fourth century the records of Christianity in South India
are unbroken.

I was shown copper plates dating from 1325 renewing, in the
name of the local King, high privileges awarded the Christians a
thousand years earlier. The plates were a clue to the tragedy of
Syrian Christianity in South India : the Christians became just an-
other caste, below the Brahmans but above the caste of the Kings.
They fell into the attitudes of a caste, exclusiveness and pride. In-
stead of evangelizing in farther provinces and among the Hindus
around, they guarded jealously their caste position. They fossilized
in their little corner of India behind its hills.

In the sixteenth century the Portuguese attempted to subjugate
the Syrians to the pope, concentrating all missionary energy to the
questionable task of forcing an ancient, independent tradition into
a foreign strait-jacket. After lengthy wrangles they secured a super-
ficial success until the authority of Rome was repudiated by the
majority in 1653. The Syrians have maintained their independence
ever since, and, as the Communist Chief Minister admitted, are
among the foremost citizens of Kerala in commerce, education, and
wealth.

I have met Orthodox Syrians (or Jacobites, as some prefer to be
called) active in other parts of India where they have gone as pro-

72 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

fessional men or as missionaries. They work closely with Protestants,
and one was chairman of the Billy Graham Committee in Delhi. I at-
tended a service of Holy Qurbana, massive in its ancient ritual,
among a large congregation in St. James by the Kashmir Gate, an
Anglican church in Delhi which is lent each Sunday. Corporately,
the Syrians of the old tradition have never exerted the weight they
might. Their energies have been dissipated in legal disputes between
two sections, which have subdivisions too entangled to unravel. After
fifty years the Catholicos had won the final legal decision a few
weeks earlier. With unconscious irony he said, "Now that we have
won, we shall get down to work in other parts of India."

In the early nineteenth century the Church Missionary Society,
at the suggestion of the British Resident at the Court of Travancore,
sent a Mission of Help to the Syrian Christians which was designed
to strengthen and awaken without destroying the traditional struc-
ture of their church. In 1836 the Mission of Help ended in apparent
failure. Yet numbers of Syrians were not content to abandon the
light which, they believed, the C.M.S. had brought. Some, finding
the church of their fathers obdurate in what they now conceived as
error, threw in their lot with the Anglican missionaries. The diocese
of Central Travancore, since 1947 part of the Church of South India,
resulted.

Bishop M. M. John, a comparatively young man, had been elected
to step into the very large shoes left by the late Bishop C. K. Jacob,
who had known the Bible like the back of his hand and was
one of those men whom you never forget. Bishop John had moved
into the house on the hill which looks across to Kottayam C.S.I.
Cathedral. Pictures of Ireland and of a castle in England remain
from the days of the English bishops, above garlands, scrolls of
greeting, and processional photographs of his recent consecration,
and a Teddy bear, "a gift from Canada to our youngest," said Mrs.
John. Like the Catholicos and our host, Mr. George, they had a re-
production of Hofmann's "Christ in Gethsemane."

I had wondered whether the Church of South India, over twelve
years after its inauguration in 1947, would prove merely a loose
federation of different traditions, each keeping to its own ways in its
own area. The late Bishop Jacob, Bishop John, and others assured

South India 73

me that this is not so. The ordinary untraveled parishioner may not
sense much difference, for he will worship in the old way, but a true
sense of unity pervades the higher reaches of church life.

Certainly there are tensions remaining. In Trivandrum, where
Bishop Legg in South Travancore and most of his clergy are former
Congregationalists, the people of the former Anglican Christ Church
insist on remaining under the jurisdiction of the Bishop in Central
Travancore. This, however, is not so much because of ecclesiastical
scruple as on the more reprehensible ground of social snobbery : they
are Syrians, of ancient Christian lineage, come to Trivandrum on
business. And they do not like to mix with the Trivandrum Chris-
tians, who are mostly of low-caste origin, products of the London
Missionary Society's work. Another, more understandable tension,
was resolved at Trivandrum while I happened to be there. The mainly
former Congregationalist diocese had been reluctant to give full sup-
port to the C.SJ.'s women's order which seemed to them to savor
of "high church." At length this hesitation had been overcome, and
in the Kerala United Theological Seminary chapel, that Saturday
afternoon, at a service which included celebration of the C.Sl.'s own
liturgy of the Holy Communion, a girl was received into the order.

A sign of the C.SJ.'s spiritual health has been seen in its elections,
I heard much talk about a recent episcopal election where the right
man, it was felt, had emerged despite attempts by interested parties
to press by doubtful means the claims of another : if not to rig the
election yet to press members of the synod to cast votes for the
wrong reasons. "Again and again," a C.S.I, presbyter said, "our elec-
tions have thrown up the man who seems to prove to have been
God's choice,"

The C.S J. has had undoubted effect beyond its own borders. There
is no need to refer to the changed attitude of most of those in the
Church of England at home who, having opposed the union for doc-
trinal reasons, now give nearly unqualified support. I feel that any
still opposed cannot have visited India and seen the absurdity of
keeping the East permanently in the divisions of the West. One
bishop of the C.S.I, told me he had been born an Anglican "simply
because my great-grandfather went to bed a Lutheran and woke up
SJP.G. the missions had changed their boundaries 1" The success of
the C.SI. has been an important factor in the progress of the re-

74 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

union schemes in Ceylon and North India, both rapidly nearing
fulfillment. The Anglican Bishop of Delhi, an Irishman and one of
the few non-Indians still on the bench, had given me the latest news
of the North Indian scheme. It will include the Baptists; in the
South they did not enter. And equally notable is the fact that
whereas the Anglicans of the South were predominantly evangelical,
and thus more at home with non-Episcopalians, in the North many
are Anglo-Catholic ; and it had been the Anglo-Catholics in England
who opposed the creation of the C.S.I. As another Anglican said,
"In these lands you cannot afford to hate your brother."

"There has been a great increase of spiritual power since Reunion,"
Bishop Jacob had said in 1956, and in support stressed the widening
part played by the laity. "Kerala holds the key to the evangelization
of India," he maintained, and his son has told me that it was a
favorite thought. Certainly Travancore is the only state in India
with a substantial reservoir of Christian manpower, apart from
Assam. The church in Assam is a recent church with a missionary
framework ; but the Church of South India, especially in Kerala, is
indigenous, with a handful of missionaries.

The Bishop in Madras, David Chelappa, said, "Depend upon it,
Mr. Pollock, the Church in India will never get on until all pre-iQ47
missionaries are withdrawn." He is noted for provocative remarks,
not to be taken too seriously, for they are aimed to make people
think. I understand he has difficulties with certain older American
missionaries who insist that they and not the bishop should have the
last word in the allocation of their money and men. Most mission-
aries, old and young, have adjusted their outlook to the new age. I
asked a South Indian layman, prominent in the educational world, if
a place remained for foreign missionaries. "Undoubtedly," he replied,
"but they must be men of very definite Christian character." An
Englishman said, "India wants from the West saints, men of Christ-
like life this more than experts." A South Indian lady said, "Send
us people who can show us how to live." Her Christian ancestry
stretches into dim, forgotten centuries.

South and North the Indian Church still needs Westerners of tact,
unending patience, and complete absense of personal ambition.
Though the missionary in India may not need to be so tough physi-
cally as in some of the countries we visited, he needs to be seasoned

South India 75

in character and spirit, displaying the attitude of an American who
had been out since the mid-igao's: "When people ask me what I do,
I reply that I am a servant of the Church in St. Paul's sense: a
slave"

Not all the dissatisfied Syrians of Travancore joined the Church of
England on the failure of the Mission of Help in 1836.

The Right Reverend Philipose Mar Chrysostom, over coffee in
his little house at the seminary on Zion Hill at Kottayam, told me
the story of the reformation which led to an exciting development of
Indian Christianity too little known in the West: the Mar Thoma
Syrian Church. The bishop, like the Catholicos, wore a cap of St.
Anthony. His beard was black, with a few gray hairs, for he is in
early middle age. He is tall, and has a pair of the brightest, most
smiling eyes. He was not in episcopal dress that morning but a plain
white cotton robe. He had spent a period at St. Augustine's, Canter-
bury; present at our conversation was a part-time lecturer who is
also incumbent of a parish, who had attended Westcott House, Cam-
bridge. Several bishops have had theological training in America.

"We do not talk of the founding of the Mar Thoma church," said
the bishop, "but of the Reformation, just over a hundred years ago.
We believe that we returned to the teaching brought by St. Thomas."
A Syrian priest called Abraham Malpan had contrasted the biblical
teaching of the C.M.S. with the current beliefs of the Orthodox
church to which he belonged, and on the withdrawal of the Mission
of Help took a stand for which his metropolitan excommunicated
him. He and his people had no desire to abandon their traditional
forms and be Westernized, yet they could not be blind to the light
they had received Abraham became the Luther of the Syrians. In
southwest India the story of the Protestant Reformation in Europe
was repeated, not without some of its more unsavory touches, until
from small beginnings and through much opposition the Mar Thoma
Syrian church has grown into a vigorous force. Their episcopal and
priestly orders are as valid as the highest churchman could desire.
Their liturgy is essentially Syrian. Like the early Protestants, they
threw over practices and ideas which they believed to conflict with
primitive Christianity: prayers for the dead and to the Virgin, the
sacrificial view of Holy Communion, intercession of the saints, auri-

7 6 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

cular confession, a mediatory priesthood, all of which are tenets of
the Orthodox Syrians. They brought much in. "A true church/ 7 said
Bishop Philipose, "must be a biblical church and a witnessing
church. Evangelism must be church-centered, but a church which is
not witnessing is not true."

While still small and despised, as far back as 1888 they founded
an Evangelistic Association. Their annual conventions at Marama
for the deepening of spiritual life are famous throughout India, and
draw great preachers from the West. Their Sunday-school organiza-
tion is second to none. In Singapore and Malaya are Mar Thoma
missionaries. I met a Mar Thoma at Djakarta returning from train-
ing in Australia ; four are teaching at an Anglican school in Borneo.
The "Mar Thoma boys" in Katmandu and Brother George on the
Tibetan border are not officially sponsored, though by the way the
church authorities speak it might seem so ; much of their support
comes from their own and neighboring parishes in Kerala. The Mar
Thoma church encourages young men to follow their lead.

Bishop Philipose did not talk in quite such Billy Graham language
as one of his episcopal colleagues whom I have met, but the effect
was the same: a church clothed in Eastern dress speaking with a
strongly evangelical voice.

That the Mar Thomas have not joined the Church of South India
is a trifle strange. "We felt that by not being in we could form a
bridge between the Orthodox and the C.S J.," said the bishop. Many
of the younger clergy are anxious to join. Practical relationships are
close ; in interdenominational concerns, such as the Kerala Band of
the Children's Special Service Mission, or the Bible Society, C.S.I.
and Mar Thoma work side by side.

The venerable Catholicos, I am afraid, is bitter against the Mar
Thomas. "It was all because of a court case," he complained. "They
failed, and so became schismatic, but pretended it was because they
wanted to be more evangelical. There are two kinds of faith. Theirs
is hypocrisy and superstition." It took me some time to ease him
away from a diatribe which seemed as out of keeping with the facts
as with the kindly old gentleman's character.

I had hoped to attend a Mar Thoma Communion Service, their
reformed Holy Qurbana. The only celebration on the Sunday when
I could go was in the local prison. The general opinion was that
though I would be let in easily enough I might never emerge 1

South India 77

We left for Ceylon by ferry on December 16, 1958. Adam's Bridge,
the distance between Dover and Calais, is where the monkeys tied
their tails together so that Rama could cross to rescue his wife from
the demon-king of Lanka.

The sandspit behind Dhanushkodi Pier reflected the gold of a
splendid sunset. From the kaleidoscope of memories one was with
me: Mount Everest at dawn and sunrise, from Tiger Hill above
Darjeeling. A great mountain dominated the scene, not Everest but
Kanchenjunga, a thousand feet lower, less than a quarter of the
distance. I at length discovered Everest over on the western horizon,
center of three peaks peeping above a nearer range. Everest did not
appear the tallest of the three. Because of my stance the highest
mountain in the world looked trivial.

The Indian Church may look trivial beside the Kanchenjunga of
Hinduism. Nothing can alter its postion in the sight of God.

tWO

Lands of the Yellow
Robe

Jfft

ELEVEN

No Murders on Christmas Day

We joined the Worcestershire at Colombo after a Christmas holiday
in the hills of Ceylon.

The few days in Ceylon made an unexpectedly depressing introduc-
tion to the lands of the yellow robe where such is the cleverness of
Buddhist propaganda I had expected to find a contender for spirit-
ual supremacy of the religion of Christ but instead discovered an
island of economic, racial, and political strife apparently justifying
the casual insult of Bishop Heber when, in "From Greenland's icy
mountains," he wanted a rhyme to "spicy breezes blow soft o'er
Ceylon's isle, Though every prospect pleases, and only . . ."

The memory of those few days is of blue seas and waving palms,
shops stuffed with British goods, secondhand London buses which,
as you hear that unmistakable change of gear, exhort you still to go
to "Ireland Overnight" or learn at the British School of Motoring ; of
rain at Newara Eliya where arum lilies bloom all the year, cows
look English, cups of tea smell like tea factories and tea factories
like cups of tea, and among British businessmen on vacation and a
dash of American tourists a party of Russians, so unbelievably
bearish and shoddy that I wondered they had been let out of the cage.
And a wet Christmas night at Kandy, which still stinks as in 1945.

Strikes dockers' strikes, busmen's strikes, strikes of gasoline
workers, shop assistants and bank clerks, all in those brief ten days.
And murders. The Ceylon Daily News ou Tuesday, the 23rd, re-
ported the fiftieth homicide of December. No murders on Christmas
Day, bot before we sailed, on December 28th, the score had risen
81

82 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

by six to bring the year's total to 666. A prelude to the tragedy ten
months later, when the Prime Minister was murdered by a Buddhist
monk.

As I watched yellow-robed priests with shaved heads taking
their places of privilege in trains or buses I could not banish what I
had just heard from trustworthy authorities: how in the riots of
April and May, 1958, when Sinhalis tried to bludgeon Tamils and the
Tamils retaliated, some Buddhist priests pushed their way into a hos-
pital staffed by Roman Catholic nuns and inspected the riot casual-
ties : "That man is a Tamil let him die. And he, and he ; don't tend
them. This one is a Sinhali; save him." "The year 1958 ought to be
cut out of Ceylon's calendar/ 7 I heard in a Sinhali pastor's sermon.
"It is a year we should be ashamed of." An influential Ceylonese
whom I had met in London exclaimed : "Look at my country ! Twelve
killed in yesterday's papers, nine in today's, and twenty or thirty
last week. And the Buddhists think that their's is the way of peace
in contrast to the Christian West!" Not surprisingly, little is now
heard of the Buddhist Missionary Society to Darkest Europe which
was launched in Colombo with a flourish of notables a year or two
ago.

Buddhism and nationalism are intertwined. The Portuguese, first
colonial settlers, achieved genuine conversions among the fishers.
The Dutch who followed allowed only Christians to enter public
service or receive the advantages of registration: headmen would
line up whole villages and the predikant sprinkle the water of
baptism. The British when they came showed their customary
official aloofness from the beliefs of their subjects ; wholesale defec-
tions from skin-deep Christianity reduced the Christian percentage
(it is only 9 per cent now), though many from higher classes, anxious
to keep up with the "Burghers" of mixed European and Sinhali
blood, remained in the Church. Since Independence the pressure is
the other way. Without parading change of faith a man ceases to
attend church or call himself Christian, and registers his children as
Buddhist. The then Prime Minister and several of his colleagues in
Her Majesty's Government were born Christians. "They all were,"
said, with pardonable exaggeration, a Buddhist district officer who
gave us a lift, "but now a good politician has to be a good Buddhist.
And Buddhist priests are interfering in politics. In colonial times

Into Burma 83

they felt they were underdogs, so now they are pushing hard. They
forget that Ceylon is a secular state."

On the other hand a Christian leader claimed that the Buddhist
resurgence was not so marked as propagandists suggest : in a recent
census his own church learned that it had five thousand more ad-
herents than were listed, people who could have lapsed with ease
had they wished. This was Jacob Lakdasa de Mel, Anglican Bishop
of Karunegula, a scintillating personality who lunched with us at
Kandy.

The bishop had told me of the negotiations soon to lead to the
union of churches in Ceylon. Over the turkey or was it roast lamb ?
he made a remark so close to a conviction I had already formed
that over coffee I asked him to expand and clarify and let me write it
down. He did, pausing now and again to give ecclesiastical grins to
numerous acquaintances who passed close to where we sat in Queen's
Hotel.

The statement of this Ceylonese churchman provides a counter-
point to the unfolding melody of our experience eastward across
Asia: "The small Christian churches in Asia have a great part to
play in these days of strong nationalism. First, in showing that in
the last instance we must obey God rather than man. And secondly
that in spite our very real loyalty to our own land and culture we
can allow nothing to break our fellowship with Christians in other
lands in other words we stand for Religious Liberty, and Inter-
nationalism."

TWELVE Jf* Into Burma

The Worcestershire moved slowly up the Rangoon River. The fresh
green countryside, wooded here and there, seemed through a lifting
mist like those translucent landscapes of the lower Thames before
the days of steam. The comparison was spoiled, but the picture en-
hanced, by glittering pagodas stabbing gold fingers to the sky.

The Union of Burma had lately been handed to the military ad-
ministration of General Ne Win. Former Prime Minister U Nu, to

84 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

his credit, had recognized that government had, as an English busi-
nessman put it, "reached a point where inefficiency could go no
farther" and that the only men in Burma with real skill in manage-
ment, as contrasted with politics, were senior officers of the army.
So, with a small cabinet of nonpoliticals, General Ne Win was clean-
ing up the country, physically and morally, through a team of
colonels. It was not dictatorship but superbureaucracy, and though
half the time had passed, its extension into semipermanence was
ardently hoped for.

The new broom was evident: teams of "volunteers" on Sunday
mornings scouring garbage from roads which had been too offensive
to walk down ; army engineers widening streets, surfacing a particu-
larly slushy market, building public conveniences (but because these
were not to be free, probably no one has used them) and planning
the rehousing of squatters. They were also repairing the pavements,
but not fast enough : I walked across to tea at the bishop's in my best
pair of shoes. . . .

Rangoon is steamy, smelly, and dreary with decay and a black
preservative to prevent decay which gives the houses funereal shut-
ters and verandas. It had washed its face somewhat for Independence
Day, January 4th, and at night the floodlit Shwe Dagon pagoda,
over three hundred feet high, and the fairy lights in the trees made
a charming prelude to the remarkably smart parade of troops with
Japanese war-reparation helmets and small arms. The B.A.F. Dako-
tas droning overhead suggested a last-war air raid; they had four
jets too or eight? It depends upon whether they flew round twice.

On the same Sunday evening we went to the cathedral. Fans
whirred, city noises came in at the open windows, and a mangy
black dog in the aisle gave tongue at the precise moment that the
choir began the anthem. Later, rather tactlessly for Independence
Day, we sang Chesterton's "Our Earthly Rulers Falter."

In Burma we were guests of the Bible Churchmen's Missionary
Society. The oldest, most extensive mission is the American Baptist,
beginning with the gueat Adoniram Judson in the early nineteenth
century before any part of the land came under the British flag. I
met several of their missionaries and national workers, saw much of
their influence and had time and money permitted should have

UPPER BURMA
Demon altars in a Jinghpaw village

THAILAND

Literature from the launch
(Author on left, John Casto on right)

Into Burma 83

visited upcountry Baptist centers. An invitation had come from
Anglicans. In view of the generosity of their committee in London
and the patient chaperonage and the superlative warmth of the hos-
pitality of their people in Burma I have no regrets ; very much the
reverse.

The whole episode made a study of some of the tensions on the
mission field today.

At the Bible Churchmen's Deaf School we stayed in Rangoon as
the guests of Miss Winifred Lemon, a senior missionary and a born
hostess. She came from the West Country and had our local paper :
I took impish pleasure in reading how the most eminent of my former
parishioners had been fined for speeding when late for royalty. John
Hobson, the medical superintendent of the B.C.M.S. mission hos-
pital at Mohnyin in the Kachin State, our first destination, had re-
turned from furlough on the Worcestershire. We traveled north to-
gether. John is a tall, quiet doctor of about my age who had served
as M.O. in my own regiment, which accounts for his exquisite Cold-
streamer manners.

The express to Upper Burma now ran again at night; ours was
the fifth night express since 1948. And nearly the last. While we
were sleeping peacefully in the maroon-and-cream German upper-
class carriage (foam-rubber seats, but several light bulbs missing or
broken, and inner doors difficult to slide back), with a pilot train
of guns and soldiers a mile or so ahead, an armed guard in the first
carriage, and patrols along the line, a goods train far behind was
attacked by rebels who damaged a bridge, so that though we drew
into Mandalay, from Rangoon the exact distance from London to
Glasgow, dead on time at 8 :2o A.M. after a seventeen-hour run, the
next night's express was nine hours late.

Mandalay had always fascinated me since an uncle had been
stationed there when I had a boy's delight in Kipling. It disappoints.
King Thebaw's wooden palace, together with everything in the fort
behind its square mile of thick moated walls, had been destroyed
in the war, and the streets, laid out symmetrically like an American
township, and the famous covered bazaar where birds of prey sat on
the roof were pocked with bullet marks. Burma was the one
country in which the war seemed only the day before yesterday : the
stark, derelict tank in the middle of a paddy field was symbolic.

86 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

Many of the twisted girders in river bottoms by railway bridges and
the burned-out carriages chucked beside the line were probably relics
of more recent scraps.

Pagoda Hill had been restored. We took off our shoes, passed in
by the protective chinthes, mythical beasts sitting like confident
chows to ward off evil spirits, and climbed the hundreds of steps
past gold-leafed Buddhas, some sitting, some standing, one of them
huge with finger outstretched toward the site of the palace. Here
yellow-robed priests and faithful laity knelt to pay their respects
while a man tolled a bell to spread the merit to all in earshot, A
notice gave the cost of the lamps which every night make a pagoda
a fairy palace ; merit is gained according to the length of time and
the number of lamps paid for. From under the golden "umbrella"
which, like an outsized papal triple crown is placed with much cere-
mony on the top of these characteristic memorials of Buddhist piety,
we had a magnificent view of the winding Irrawaddy, the barrier of
the Shan Plateau, and the hills to the north.

Pagoda Hill is over five hundred feet, and can be climbed up and
down in half an hour in a hurry in bare feet : I know, because after
a leisurely descent I found I had left my pen on the seat at the
very top.

The exigencies of what is left of the rebellion determine the times
of train departures. It was before dawn that John Hobson and we
were inserted into the northbound train after a day and three-
quarters of a night at Mandalay. I say "inserted," for advance book-
ing is a lottery in Burma the army has a habit of requiring your
seat. We were over the famous Ava Bridge at first light, and ambled,
as the day grew, past a large lake in which cranes waded, and up
into a more hilly and empty countryside of thickening jungle, some-
times bamboo, sometimes the smooth-trunked broad-leaved teak. At
a long halt for lunch beside an alfresco station replacing one burned
by Japs or rebels, passengers bought curry and rice which they ate
squatting, hand to mouth with concentrated, noisy speed under the
gaze of country people in wide hats of straw or sweet-smelling cane,
and all the pye-dogs of the district.

Bonchaung Gorge, famous from Bernard Fergusson's Beyond
the Chindwin, we crossed In the afternoon and soon left Burma

Into Burma 8?

proper for the Kachin State, one of the most loyal in British days,
and free of insurgents despite Kachin repugnance to the establish-
ment of Burmese rule. Mohnyin is 634 miles from Rangoon. From
Colombo we had doubled back from latitude 6 to the 23rd parallel,
the latitude of Karachi, Medina, Nassau in the Bahamas, and the
Florida Keys.

Mohnyin is a few hundred feet above sea level, I do not think I
had ever realized how cold the East can be until we alighted there
that January night, wearing woollies and met by our hosts, Dr. Peter
Thompson and his wife, Rachel, wrapped in scarves, gloves, and
tweed.

The little town of Mohnyin is connected to the outside world by the
thin artery of the railway, hemmed in to left and right by the
contour and color of the Kachin hill tracts. It straddles a modest
river, and the bazaar displays the mingling of races in Burma. A
dull town of timber or bamboo weave, a symphony of brown, but
the people wear bright, distinctive clothes. The Burman townsfolk
are in skirt-like longyis, the women in transparent nylon blouses
over white bodices, and hatless, the men in shirt and collarless cut-
away jacket. Tribal Jinghpaws from the hills are in dark blue or
purple, Shans from the valley villages wear loose trousers, almost
bell-bottomed, and bath towels -round their heads. Many of the shop-
keepers are Chinese.

These meet in the bazaar but lead separate lives in separate
areas, speaking their own tongues and seldom intermarrying.

The majority in the Kachin State are the Jinghpaws, not Budd-
hist but animist, the first animists we had been among ; and many
of them have become Christians in the past quarter of a century.
Every four years they and the other Kachin tribes get together in a
Grand Manau at Myitkyina, to sacrifice to the nats or spirits, per-
form ritual dances, meet their sisters and their cousins and their
aunts, and generally have a good time as guests of government. Such
a Manau coincided with our visit, and our hosts packed us off there
in company with Mr. Gushing Hla, a middle-aged schoolmaster train-
ing for ordination.

The northbound train arrived an hour late. We squeezed in to
iHake<twerity-OBe in a lower-class compartment designed for seven-

88 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

teen. I spent the five hours of the sixty-mile journey through the
small hours sitting on a bedroll surrounded by dusky film stars and
technicians in various stages of sleepiness. One of them offered me
hot toddy. Another, who had annexed the luggage rack to sleep on, I
took for the funny man, as he looked like the comedian George
Formby, and cracked jokes.

Mr. Gushing Hla is a Karen, of the race which counts the most
Christians in Burma though 50 per cent are Buddhists. He was
named for a famous American missionary. When the American
Baptists turned to the animist Karens in the last century, they dis-
covered a tradition that a white man with a book would come from
across the seas to teach the truth, and they had phenomenal success,
so that you do not need to scratch a Karen to find a vigorous, hymn-
singing Christian, generally Baptist. Many Karen soldiers in the war
put to shame the religion of their brothers-in-arms of the West. Mr.
Gushing Hla had arranged for us to stay with his cousin Mr. Saw
Rainbow (called after the bow of the Covenant in Genesis), Public
Works engineer of Myitkyina, whose wife was a niece of the Presi-
dent of the Union of Burma, who is a Karen and once nominally
Christian. The President must by law be Buddhist.

When Mr. Rainbow's driver brought us to his house at 3 145 A.M.
two or three Poor Relations were asleep on stagskins on the floor
of the living room by a burned-out brazier. Saw Rainbow gave Poor
Relations a home in return for housework. In the evenings they sat
round the brazier in company of a tame pigeon, making desultory
conversation and occasionally using the spittoon. Upstairs was a
room occupied by two wooden bedsteads waiting for our bedrolls,
which we had brought as normal among Burmese; a large table, a
chair, and a drying line. Two film stars, a family group with Uncle
President, and a text, "Take Your Troubles All to Jesus," graced the
walls. Beyond a curtain was another room in which snored the
parents-in-law. The Rainbows' room opened out of that. There were
no doors, and when, in the succeeding days, a Poor Relation needed
to come through when Anne was changing and had no clothes on, he
just came.

Mr. Rainbow, who had very kindly taken us at short notice, was
a large, jovial man. He had spent a year in England and had a
hearty Manchester laugh. He bounced in next morning to greet us

Into Burma 89

while Anne was still in bed. Over breakfast he regaled us with ex-
citing stories of the wartime Resistance. We were manfully putting
down lukewarm, sugary, milky tea (neither of us normally takes
much milk or any sugar, and we like tea to be hot). Another pot
came in. "Ah," said Mr. Rainbow, "this is for Gushing and me.
Really milky and really sugary."

After that he drove us to the Manau ground where were drawn up
the tribes in their finery: Jinghpaw women in crimson skirts with
yellow woven design, and dark blue blouses decorated with rows of
silver discs and bangles ; the blue trousers and long dahs of the Zi,
the green and red stripes of the Lisu, all the local organizations in
distinctive dress or uniform, waiting for the President.

I shall not weary you with processions and ceremonies. In some
ways the Manau ground reminded me of an agricultural show except
that in the ring men and women dancing formally took the place of
livestock. The only outside evidence of animist origins, since the
sacrifices took place in the early morning, were totem poles round
which the dancers jogged, the men with long, sharp Kachin dahs in
their hands, the women with waving handkerchiefs, led by animist
priests in feathered headdress. Some of the steps were complicated
but most of the dances were slow "crocodiles" to a monotonous,
haunting rhythm of drum, cymbal, and gong. At the end the Presi-
dent and his party were invited to join, and he circled round, dah in
hand, a half-smile on his round face, looking sheepish. Behind was
a backcloth of hills, the frontier between the Union of Burma and
Communist China.

The Manau provided a colorful and entertaining introduction to
the Jinghpaws. After return to Mohnyin, more comfortably but
again in the small hours, we were able to stay in their villages and,
through David Darlington, one of the Mohnyin missionaries, learn
something of animism and of the grip of the nats, and why they lose
ground to Christianity.

David Darlington has a remarkable history. He had come out
to the B.C.M.S. shortly before the war. When the Japs invaded
Burma he had been on leave walking to India with the party sur-
veying the future Ledo Road. They all returned to help luckless
civilians in their ghastly trek through the passes. Darlington was

po EARTH'S REMOTEST END

asked to remain as a political officer guarding the open frontier and,
after General Slim's army had swept back to Myitkyina, helping
the Jinghpaw tribesmen in the remote "Triangle" to the north. He
had left the mission. The war over, he went back, courageously, in-
dependent of mission or other support, to the area which had known
him as a political officer and not, he felt, as an unequivocal Chris-
tian. His success as an evangelist had been remarkable, but it stirred
the jealousy of certain Baptist Jinghpaws who lacked the charity of
the American missionaries. He was in country technically theirs but
untouched. He had promised to teach nothing not common to all
Christians, yet they reported him as a troublemaker to the Burmese
Government, which expelled him from the hill tracts. He can now
work only in the valley where, once again a member of B.CJMS., he
lives with his Jinghpaw wife.

Darlington sent us in company with two Christian Jinghpaw high-
school boys one of whom drove a local cart carrying our bedroll and
bag, drawn by two oxen, one gray, one brown. It had well con-
structed steel-rimmed wheels and was lighter and more finished in
style than an Indian oxcart. A walk of eight miles along sandy tracks
through thick bamboo jungle and across watercourses brought us to
a clearing where were scattered rough long huts of thatched roof
and bamboo walls, on ,stilts three or four feet high, Dogs, puppies,
pigs, goats, chickens, and children ran under and around. The
longest and most substantial house had a thatched roof projecting
some distance forward to give shade. At each side hung a decoration
of suspended bamboos like some jungle chandelier, and the main
crossbeam was painted with wavy lines and figures of a man and a
cockerel, the sign of a chief's house.

A young woman, fresh and pretty, dressed in a dark blue skirt with
broad mauve stripes, a blue blouse with red facings decorated with
silver rupees, an everyday version of the Manau ornaments, and a
dark turban, came down the notched tree trunk and took my hand
in hers. We were not expected, but no Jinghpaw will turn away a
traveler. He may stay two days without payment and without ques-
tion.

Jinghpaw Jangle pi

THIRTEEN J?f* Jinghpaw Jangle

She led us up the tree trunk, which had an even number of notches
as the nats like, past animal skulls and horns from former sacrifices,
and into the house, dark although it was only late afternoon.

Taking care not to step over anything, since this would "degrade"
the owner and upset his nat, we walked along the bamboo floor,
past the first fireplace, for women, and past doors leading to little
rooms, and sat down at the second fire, for men and men guests (a
European woman seemed to count as a man). The fire was formed
of three large logs pointing inwards like spokes of a wheel with
smaller logs and bamboos in the center. A draft came up from below,
smoke curled into the rafters and sometimes our eyes, and round
the four sides were deerskins and reed mats on which to squat or
sprawl and take one's ease.

Behind us stood the demon shelf : a wooden contraption, shoulder-
high, cluttered with the remains of offerings.

The nats, evil spirits or demons, must be constantly bribed and
appeased by offerings. The heavenly nats, such as the sun and moon,
will have no truck with anyone but a chief, who is priest as well, so
that the ordinary household is mainly concerned with its domestic
nats or the many other lesser ones. To these are sacrificed buffalos
and pigs, and the offerings placed on tall bamboo altars, platforms
some eight or nine feet high with what looks like an upturned broom
at each corner. Several were in front of the house, others in the
village and out at the paddy clearings. "They haven't any real
dread of the nats" David Darlington had said. "It's more like a very
superstitious Englishman's fears. For instance, if a guest when leav-
ing doesn't go out of the front door, the domestic nat will get into
a whirl and "bite" someone cause sickness. And this religion hasn't
anything to do with morals. That's a matter of tribal custom. If you
commit adultery you must pay a heavy recompense, not because of
religion but because you have broken tribal custom. Religion is all
a matter of physical health and well-being."

A* T* Hougjbton, founder of the Mohnyin mission, ^ho but for the

9 2 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

war would have been consecrated Assistant Bishop of Rangoon and
who is now General Secretary of B.C.M.S., challenged the view that
"they haven't any real dread of the nats." "David Darlington ought
to know/ 5 he wrote to me from London, "but it is clean contrary to
my own experience. We have known a great many, men and women,
boys and girls who have literally lived in fear of the nats. 'Why
do you give to the nats?' we used to ask. The almost invariable
answer, c Because we are afraid. 3 " The factor reconciling the two
views, as both men admit, is that the Jinghpaws we were visiting
were in the foothills and affected by the town, education, and com-
parative wealth. Far up in the mountains the nats hold unquestioned
sway. Darlington once arrived at a Jinghpaw house late ; the guests'
fireplace being full, he was put a little farther off, and when he had
unrolled his bedding he knelt to pray. "I found I just couldn't. Some-
thing seemed to be dragging me away as I tried." Three times he
failed, and so went to sleep. Next morning he saw, immediately
above, a demon shelf piled with an immense offering, as the chief's
mother had died. I asked him his theological conclusion, if he be-
lieved the nats to be "evil spirits" in the New Testament sense
personal evil powers. "Yes, I do," he replied; "up there where they
have a real hold, I think that demons in our Lord's sense really are
at work." I have not yet met a Western Christian living among
primitive animists, as contrasted with some who study the matter
from university chairs, who seriously doubts the reality of spirit
possession.

Anne and I sat on the floor by the fire. The sun set in a blaze of
red behind the hills, darkness crept down, and they shut the door
to keep out the cold which at that time of year is in such contrast
to the midday heat, and we wrapped ourselves in blankets. Farther
from the door, the other side of the fire was warm enough ; one man
took off his shirt.

They handed us rice beer in strong bamboo containers. To sip it
is to show that you do not come on a feud. The chicken we had
specially asked for was carried squawking to the other fire to be
killed, plucked and popped in, probably to a separate pot. In the
other might be anything, vegetables, leaves, bamboo shoots, or on a
big day some pig or buffalo. They abstain from cats and rats and
boldly assert that, unlike the Nagas, no Jinghpaw has ever eaten

Jinghpaw Jangle 93

bits of another. Everything is so overloaded with chilies that it is
tasteless and too "hot," at least for us. Currying here is a sign of
poverty, to hide the inadequacy of the diet.

Each dish came wrapped neatly in large fresh leaves, placed to-
gether in a basket, one per person, with the usual enormous heap of
boiled rice, and mustard water in a cunningly contrived banana-leaf
holder which I spilled ; it went through the floor to the ground below
like the men's spit. The chicken, broken up in little pieces, seemed
mostly bones. We were given spoons, but it was easier to eat with
fingers in their normal way. Guests are fed first. As we ate, the
men prepared opium to smoke in heavy wooden pipes, using a metal
spoon over the fire, boiling extra strong bitter tea to counteract the
intense dryness of mouth.

We slept on the floor of a little square house across the village, for
in the main house men guests sleep at one end and women at the
other. The back stairs collapsed next morning under our breakfast.
We slept well, for we had brought mattresses. Not being fully inured,
we would, I think, have been surprised had we known how many
nights we would sleep soundly enough direct on hard floors before
leaving the East. The worst of that village was its paucity of water
for washing, a mere trickle from a spring or mountain brook chan-
neled into a bamboo pipe, the briefest splash until the Philippines.

This household was prosperous. The chief had sugar cane and a
fish pond and an orange grove. One of his men wore a wrist watch ;
another had a bicycle. But the time might be when a nat bit the
family into sickness. A diviner must then be called who "pops"
bamboo over a fire or unravels fiber to read the signs. They showed
us how, and fortunately announced that the signs were good. When
the nat is biting, these signs indicate what sacrifice should be made
to appease it, or how to bribe another to go to the sun country for
medicine.

Only an accredited religious butcher may kill, cut up, and cook the
sacrifice and place the nat's portion on the bamboo altar. A dumsa,
or intercessor, sitting on a tall bamboo platform calls temdly to the
nats, and intones incantations in ancient Jinghpaw. Diviner, butcher,
intercessor must be paid, usually in opium. If the patient gets worse,
the process is repeated with higher fees and more expensive offerings.

$4 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

Death involves costly redemptions depending, not on the character
of the dead nor may he pile up merit as the Buddhists believe
but solely on how death came. Death in childbirth requires one of the
heaviest redemptions, and those who die mad are enslaved un-
redeemedly to the terrible mad nat. We saw the strange structures
in the jungle where the final feast takes place to send the minla, or
immortal human spirit, on its long, dangerous journey through the
northern mountains to join his ancestors in Katsan Ga, the distant
land. And we saw the scattered graves, half smothered by creeper.

When sickness and deaths assault a prosperous family, payments
to the nats and their "clergy" may induce poverty. Then, today,
they turn to Christianity. I had hoped that while we were at
Mohnyin a call might come, as it often does, for an evangelist or
catechist to hold a service during which the family pull up the
altars, cut down the demon shelf and its offerings, and burn the lot
in front of their house.

Not only poverty but education turns them, for many of the
younger men are ashamed to be animists, and seek baptism. Broken
with animism and its expensive demands, they begin to prosper once
more. Relatives see this, and they too turn. Darlington told me that
"large numbers who have received practically no Christian teaching
have given up animism and become Christians in order to be better
off materially. Their motives may be wrong but they come under in-
struction if there are sufficient clergy and evangelists." And now and
again some fine genuine Christians result.

The houses in a Jinghpaw Christian village are square-built. First
impressions of the village we visited were not favorable except for
the government school and dispensary, run by Christians for the
whole area. The older people seemed as dirty as the animists, and I
saw two betel-nut chewers, their teeth rotted and red. The houses
did not look so substantial, though the women had an improved way
of pounding rice and there was a wooden pram or two. But the
atmosphere grew on us. The headman's house where we stayed stood
in a little enclosure fringed with small banana trees. In a byre by the
ladder (not a notched trunk a distinction between animists and
Christians that I met niowhere else in Asia) to the front door was a
cow and its calf, and upstairs beside the fire a large pile of un-

Jinghpaw Jangle 95

pounded rice, haunt of fleas, close to where we slept. Our hostess was
elderly, beaming, and grubby. After dinner, similar in style and serv-
ing to the animists', placed on a low table with a guttering oil lamp,
the younger of the two village schoolmasters, a neatly dressed man
who leads the services on Sunday, brought the young people to sing
hymns.

They squatted round a lamp, hymnbooks open, on the bamboo
floor and sang in part song, some of the men indulging in a strange
falsetto. Listening near me was a piratical old fellow with what ap-
peared to be burned-cork side whiskers. The Lord has some strange
sheep. The Jinghpaw hymn tunes are all adaptations of English or
American, but I wouldn't have known. As one of the B.C.M.S. said
afterward, "They get it wrong, and the wrong sticks.' 7 A drum and a
cymbal were heard outside, and they asked if we would come to see
the old Kachin dances. A little later a fire had been lit in the court-
yard, two old deck chairs were brought out, and while we sat under
the starlight in blankets the village "crocodiled" round us, first the
men and then the women, in slow steps to the rhythm, as at Myit-
kyina, of a long drum slung under the arm, cymbals, and a little gong.

I had seen that opium, that character-deforming drug, and rice
beer were cut out ; that was negative. Here was positive friendship,
as they laughed and chattered making the steps, a few of them with
skill but most in just an amble.

When it was over they walked into the night, some with electric
torches, others with flaming sticks from the fire, except several of
the younger who came back for a last sing upstairs. Then we prayed
the Lord's Prayer, each in his own tongue.

The background to our time around Mohnyin may be summed up
in the two words Hospitality and Hospital. In conditions that would
make suburbia wince, John Hobson and Peter and Rachel Thomp-
son laid themselves out to entertain us royally in their houses of
bamboo weave plastered with whitewashed cow dung. The compara-
tive comfort of India and its well trained servants had been left
behind. There was a refreshing amount, not too much, of your own
chores, though they had brought in a Chinese cook and bad a Bur-
mese boy, hunched with cold morning and evening despite several
pullovers. You bathed in Indian style, pouring water over yourself

p6 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

from a bucket, and at that time of year needed, and obtained, ample
hot water heated on an open fire in a shed beside the kitchen.

Meals by Western standards were at odd hours, which scarcely
surprised us, since on the tour we had already experienced evening
mealtimes ranging from 5 :oo P.M. (Tansen Hospital) to 10:00 P.M.
(a dinner party at Kanpur). Our digestions survive. At Mohnyin the
dinner was a normal 7 130 P.M., but after an early breakfast of por-
ridge, fruit, toast, and at least for us an egg, the main meal, called
breakfast or lunch or "brunch," as you felt inclined, was served at
10:30 or 11:00 A.M., generally a substantial curry. The time is sup-
posed to originate in the habits of the pioneers who would march
from dawn through the cool until about ten-thirty, as we were to do
in Laos, and then lie up and eat.

The Mohnyin staff had the same difficulty in obtaining meat that
we had met in India. They were careful to have a diet as balanced
as circumstances allowed, recognizing that lack of protein is as dan-
gerous as lack of vitamins. One of their colleagues away up in the
Hukawng Valley not only lived entirely on the country when he was
on tour but preferred native food in his home ; however, he spent
part of each year teaching at the Bible School in Mohnyin with its
more normal diet. He seemed to thrive. A missionary doctor in an-
other part expressed himself vehemently on those who run them-
selves down by bad feeding : "And then we have to waste time nurs-
ing them. If you don't feed properly you get weary and then you
can't work well."

The hospital at Mohnyin was far removed from the Ludhiana
style: no Shan or Jinghpaw would venture near a strictly regimented,
highly polished institution where his relatives could not squat out-
side and sleep nearby. A nursing sister who tried to polish the Jingh-
paw nurses to the methodical efficiency of a British teaching hos-
pital returned to Europe in despair. This rougher style is natural
to an upcountry missionary hospital, as also a home-trained nursing
staff, limited equipment, uncertain supplies, the need to turn a hand
to any ache or pain, surgical or medical, in an astonishingly varied
succession of cases. They say it is most satisfying medically, and I
used to notice the gleam in John's eye as he returned from extracting
bits from one patient, sewing up another, or treating a third.

Jinghpaw Jangle g?

When I asked Peter what direct spiritual result there was, he
said, "Practically none."

In old days many of the patients were animist Jinghpaws (Kach-
ins), often coming great distances, and A. T. Houghton has since told
me that "before the war, when there had been near eight hundred
adult baptisms in the mission, the vast majority being among the
Kachins in the north, a very large number were converts directly
through the medical work, and the policy of 'medical evangelism 5
which we pursued both on an amateur and professional scale was pro-
ducing notable results. I could point to scores of cases where the
first contact with the Gospel was through medical treatment in hos-
pital or dispensary." Today the patients are mostly Shan or Bur-
mese Buddhists. Therefore it is not too surprising that Peter should
say "Practically none."

"The hospital gives the mission a good name," he then said. "We
have a name for honesty which is a big example to the civil hospital ;
here you get hospital treatment with just that difference. We are
well known for eyes too. People come hundreds of miles for eye treat-
ment. And Christians are helped and encouraged by having us here,
and nurses get medical and spiritual training. Many of them know
nothing spiritually, though baptized, when they come. We aim to get
them to know the Bible, know the Lord."

Peter said that the attitude of local Jinghpaw church leaders to
the hospital was not right. "They want to use the hospital to finance
the church. That's all wrong; we mustn't bleed the hospital. The
church members won't rally round to do jobs for the hospital either.
They look on it as their special rest home. If we tell them there isn't
a bed free when they come with a tummy ache, they say: 'No bed?
But I'm a Christian! Isn't this my hospital?' "

Apparently there were too few leaders of sharp spiritual insight
too few leaders of any sort. This seemed puzzling also, for I knew
that the prewar mission had aimed at building a self-governing, self-
propagating, self-supporting church. What had gone wrong? "The
war caught us before we were ready," one of the senior missionaries
in the neighborhood said. The younger members of the mission lay
blame on lack of schools : the mission had been so concerned to avoid
spending money and time in mere educational uplift that they
failed to produce educated leaders. This is too facile. Though re-

p8 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

acting from the contemporary (1920*3) doctrine of "Christianizing
through education/ 7 they planned to make schools as soon as there
should be sufficient Christians to benefit: when they began work
there were no Christians. Houghton at first could not even take one
on his strenuous treks in the hills ; he had to make do with a pagan.
By 1939 they had founded a school at Mohnyin; they had, Hough-
ton has told me, "the beginnings of an indigenous ministry and were
about to embark on a larger program to ensure that the church was
literate and able to benefit from education."

The year 1942 swept it away. The Japanese fell hard on the
Kachins for their loyalty to the British, as the main source of re-
cruitment for the Burma Rifles. Jinghpaw leaders were scattered
and killed, and no missionaries were seen in Mohnyin until May
Stileman came down the line on a road-rail jeep in 1945 in the guise
of a Red Cross nurse.

And whereas the Church in Lower Burma had the start of a hun-
dred years, and survived better, in this area all had to be begun
again. Not, at first, entirely wisely, for the place was flooded with
missionaries waiting for their own stations to be rebuilt.

Except that both have dark hair and are much of an age, John
and Peter are entirely different. John is tall, quiet, gentle, a man of
few words and an unpretensious, deep sense of humor. Peter is short
and slight, volatile and expressive ; his words tumble out ; he knows
his mind and lets you know it.

One evening this couple, contrasting but close-knit, opened their
minds as we sat in John's living room. I had asked them to define
their purpose. Why were they there? "To give all I can give at
every possible moment/ 7 said Peter, who answered first. "To reflect
as much as possible of the character of God with the gifts He has
given me/' said John. This was rather general. I wanted their de-
tailed intentions. Peter had already said, when showing me over the
hospital : "We are aiming to get out of here as soon as possible. As
soon as we could get a Burmese Christian doctor I would go," He
% wanted to see Burmese Christians take over the hospital and free
Mm for what he calkd Minical evangelism" in the hill tracts. I
mentioned this, and John said : "Until recently my aim, too, was to
make myself redundant. But now I am not so sure. I have been

Jinghpaw Jangle pp

reading Stephen NeilPs The Unfinished Task, especially his piece
about the Oneness of the Body of Christ and the artificiality of any
distinction between missionary and national. I'm not so keen to go.
I want to carry on just as a Christian."

"That distinction/ 7 said Peter, "is one of our great troubles." With
this we went to the heart of the difficulties in the Jinghpaw church,
and I was brought against problems of relationship between foreign
missionaries and national Christians. "Until missionaries," Peter
continued, "are considered on an equality with nationals they can-
not do all they might." At Mohnyin the old inequality, by which mis-
sionaries were considered, by themselves as much as by anyone else,
superior persons, had been reversed. John and Peter felt regarded
as flies in the ointment, foreigners to be mistrusted and hindered lest
they should dominate; whose duty it was to pay the piper but be
pecked at and harried lest they should call the tune. "They resent
us. They won't take us as we are, Christians who have certain gifts ;
and we wouldn't have come all this way if we had not and want
only to use them to the full."

The trouble focused on a Jinghpaw layman who had been trained
as a political agitator, and reflected a trend too prevalent in the
Christianity of Burma a desire to extend the Church numerically
as an organization rather than as a Kingdom "not of this world."
A church should not withdraw from its social or political environ-
ment into narrow otherwordliness ; but to desire extension at the
expense of spiritual depth is a false desire, if understandable in
Burma, where the Buddhists pick the political plums and Christians
are tempted to seek safety in numbers.

Eight months later the situation much improved on the setting up
of a Deanery Council under the Burmese Assistant Bishop^ thus
breaking the dominance of the layman. That particular tension be-
tween foreigners and nationals has receded into history. It is one
which may arise in the transitional stage wherever missionaries are
genuinely anxious to see (in that hackneyed phrase) a "self-govern-
ing, self -propagating, self-supporting church." John and Peter
stressed that the Mohnyin situation was not typical of all their mis-
sion's operations in Burma, mentioning another place where the
taissionaries were still in close control. "At least it means they are

ioo EARTH'S REMOTEST END

appreciated father and mother of all, and so on. Everyone may be
happier, but they haven't advanced so far."

These two English doctors in their unobtrusive way were cutting
as strenuous a trail as those pioneers in the actual jungle whom we
met later in less developed lands.

FOURTEEN ^F Shans, Irish, and Sawbwas

A little stream barred the approach. We had begun to jump or
wade it when a young Shan woman appeared and led us to a plank
specially put down. "Her husband has just started at the Bible
School," remarked May Stileman, "but she is a Buddhist. It's a pity,
but what can you do ? There are no Christian girls around. It may be
a bar to his ordination, though."

At Mohnyin, as usual, Anne and I walked considerable distances,
out through the teak forest on the western edge of the valley to the
Christian village below the hill, where we were entertained with
oranges by the headman ; up on to the eastern ridge, where you are
supposed to be able to glimpse the distant Irrawaddy; and now
today we had walked out a brisk five miles before the morning mist
had lifted, and the dogs were still curled on the ashes of last night's
fires, along the northwest track fringed with a flowered weed, like
Michaelmas daisy, called Germany Plant because it first spread in
the 1914 war. At the end, now under a strong sun, stood an ancient
temple: a monastery and school connected by a covered way to a
pagoda tipped with tarnished gold, beautiful against the nearby hill.

At a bungalow in the village beyond, we collected the veteran May
Stileman, an admiral's daughter and for over thirty years missionary
to the Shans. She was to take us to "breakfast" with two of the very
few Shan converts (they were first) in the area. Shans are Buddhists,
and those of this neighborhood were of a strict sect; the Shan-Bur-
mese were Buddhists of a more usual sort. For both, the impersonal,
rarefied philosophy of Buddhism had been diluted so that they called
the little alabaster Buddha in their family shrines "the god."

We continued a further mile through paddy fields to the hamlet

j Irish, and Sawbwas 101

of which U Aw, the convert, was headman. It was his daughter-in-
law who had come to meet us. Over the stream we came to Aw's
house, the most substantial in the hamlet, though he was once des-
perately poor. It stood on low stilts. Strong wooden steps led to
a veranda where mustard was drying on the rail, and pots and pans,
a fly-blown pile of rice, vegetables and a relation queer in the head
were on the floor, she vigorously eating her rice. U Aw's wife, Daw
Ee, an elderly woman with the usual Shan headgear of a bathtowel,
gave us water to pour over dusty feet before entering the living
room of bamboo-strip walls with reed mats. Facing me were an as-
sortment of family photographs, pictures of all the royal family back
to George V and Queen Mary in coronation robes, a large array of
prewar cigarette cards, and certificates of proficiency in Bible
courses. An old deck chair, two uprights, a low round table, a Singer
treadle sewing machine and, suspended from the roof, a cradle
chockablock with materials showed it was the house of a prosperous
man.

U Aw sat in a denim suit on a mattress in the corner, one knee
up and the other tucked under, an old face well-chiseled below gray
hair, and a mustache bushing out like a Victorian colonel's.

Guests are served separately before the hosts eat. A bowl of
vegetable soup with floating mustard leaves held the center of the
table, and round it were bowls of curried fish, chicken, and vege-
tables. The daughter-in-law placed an enormous pile of rice on each
guest's plate, and on to this you spooned soup and a little of what
you fancied, enough for a few mouthfuls at a time. To stretch was
good manners, and as for using licked spoons in common dishes Sir
Alexander Fleming is said to have pronounced that women gossip-
ing over teacups are in more danger of germs.

U Aw while we ate told .his story through Miss Stileman's inter-
pretation. He had first heard the Christian Gospel at the hospital in
the early thirties. "I heard, but I did not understand." Meanwhile
his wife, doubly bereaved of small sons, had poured out her troubles
to Miss Stileman, had believed, renounced Buddhism and been
baptized. Shans are highly group-minded. It required not only deep
conviction to abandon Buddhism in the face of overwhelming public
opinion but strong courage. It was a trifle easier when the missionary
was, as then, of the ruling race, but the few baptisms and the many

102 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

deathbed confessions of hidden faith which Miss Stileman could
recall point to the contrary. And Ee (though Aw did not tell us) felt
the force of her Buddhist husband's wrath. He beat her, taunted her,
tried to make her recant until her indomitable patience wore him
down. He began to wonder whether Christ might be the only true
Saviour of the world.

Curious incidents, he said, undermined his faith in Buddha. Once
he was taking down pails of water to "wash the god" in an annual
ceremony at the temple; the strong yoke over his shoulder un-
kccountably broke and spilled the water. Taking food to offer to the
god, it disappeared as he walked. Probably a bird stole it, but in both
instances he said to himself : "If the god can't take care of his own
things, things I'm bringing for his own use, he cannot be much of a
god." Aw's Buddhist theology was awry, typical of folk belief in
Burma.

He was baptized two years after his wife. Immediately trials as-
sailed. His neighbors ostracized him: "I was not physically mal-
treated, but they sought to hurt me in every way they could." The
social life of a Shan centers upon religious ceremonies, and thus he
had cut himself off from normal intercourse with his fellows. Further-
more those were lean years; he mortgaged his rice before it was
harvested, as most of them did, and could not free himself of debt.

Persecution continued but he never retaliated. The war came, and
general poverty and distress brought Aw opportunities to help his
neighbors. To strangers fleeing from other parts of Burma he gave
livelihood ; he organized his village so that the best should be made
of the little they had. Those who had railed at him were now paid
back in practical love. He said also that several Japanese soldiers
privately made themselves known to him as Christians, though con-
cealing their faith from their unit.

The war wiped out debts. After it, Aw began to prosper, and as
principal farmer and the most trusted of the place was elected head-
man. Those who once abused him say you won't find a man like him
for hundreds of miles. I asked whether any neighbors had accepted
Christ too. "No," he said. "Many have heard, and may respect the
Christian way, but cannot bring themselves to make the break."

I liked the Aw household. Aw was as genuine as his oranges, some
of the sweetest, juiciest I have tasted.

Shans, Irish, and Sawbwas ioj

Aw and Ee were a prelude to life among the Shans. Placed like a
question mark round Burma proper are the other components of the
Union. The Southern Shan States form the eastward bulge.

Our destination was the B.C.M.S. hospital at Panglong, the burned-
out site of which was used for the postwar conferences between the
British, the Burmans, and the minorities to settle the future of the
country. We spent forty-three hours on the journey : the southbound
mail from Mohnyin at 2 .-30 A.M V all day, and for a short distance
with soldiers in battle order who stopped the train out in the jungle
near the area of anti-insurgent operations; across Ava Bridge
"When the mist was on the rice-fields an' the sun was droppin' slow" ;
a night at Mandalay, again with the Dennis Reeds of the English
Methodists, whose fine work is principally on the Upper Chindwin ;
a long, hungry wait for an overdue plane made more tedious because
I had been told, wrongly, that it would be unsafe to drive through
dacoit-infested hills after dark and I foresaw having to lie up over-
night; a flight, fortunately short, in a cheerless Dakota over a
browned-off countryside, paddy stubble in the Irrawaddy Valley and
the forbidding trackless edge of the Shan Plateau, as an alternative
to a day-long roundabout journey on indifferent roads. And finally
ninety miles by Land-Rover with our new hosts, Dr. and Mrs. Walter
Barr Johnston. A journey memorable for their flow of talk (the
Johnston brothers have an international reputation for quantity,
speed, and quality of talk) and for the beauty of wild hills in last
light, a pastel-blue western sky, the black silhouette of hilltops edged
with pink, and Venus solitary above. Far ahead in the darkness were
controlled jungle fires in a great square of twinkling points, as if
Napoleon's Grand Army lay in camp.

When a travel-worn couple, after a hot bath, and dinner eaten in
their hosts 7 thick winter dressing gowns by a fire, were sent to bed
with blankets and hot water bottles it was none too soon.

The Barr Johnstons, who opened the Panglong Hospital in 1938
and had the buildings completed in time for the Japanese to burn,
are Irish and their fathers were both regular army colonels.

The atmosphere was that of an Irish country house. At meals,
which were at European times and had no shortage of meat, con-
versation sparkled with good stories, though inclined to relapse into

io 4 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

a duet until Mrs. J. would rap the table and say, "Walter, you're
talking too much. Get on with your food," in a way that took me
straight back to my own home. Intimate details of gory medical
cases were related with unselfconscious relish* Twice after dinner
they went off to emergency operations, with hurricane lamps because
the town electricity, Irish fashion, did not come till ten, Burma, after
all, is called the Ireland of the East. Once the doctor brought back
the proceeds to display the wonders of creation in a three-month
miscarriage. The hot bath was Irish too. A relic of British days, a
little chipped but a long bath still, it had been picked up for a song
and attached by a short narrow pipe from the hot tap to a tar or
kerosene barrel outside, built into an earth oven. Fill the barrel by
hose, light the fire, and in due time your guests could wallow most
welcome when we came back covered in red dust from Mong Hsu
or in red mud from Wan Yung, The water was running red too by
then, after the storm.

The bungalow is of timber, unplastered inside or out. Not having
then been in Borneo, I thought it rather primitive for a British-style
house. Because rats made their home in the rafters, these were taken
down and now you look straight up to the aluminum roof, the whole
effect being that of a mountain chalet. During the storm the noise
of rain upon roof, accompanied by thunder, was deafening, but a
more gentle rain later percolated through my dreams like the falling
brook in the mountain village of Nepal. The bungalow, on a steep
hillside, stood in a small garden with rose trees, coffee bushes, straw-
berries just coming on, and across the hedge and the tops of trees
immediately below lay the red-brown valley, a dash of blue water,
and the more distant green hills.

The hospital was a glorious improvisation which the Johnstons
ran singlehanded except for indigenous subordinate staff, mostly
home trained. The nurses and all Shan women carry themselves well
but have "either bun faces or horse faces," in Mrs. Johnston's phrase.
The more elderly looked like dowager duchesses, but as Mrs. Johns-
ton talked like an English duchess this was appropriate. The place
was littered with patients 7 relatives. "The government hospital won't
allow them," said Mrs. J., "so people won't go. We even let them
have beds if any are free. If not, they sleep on the floor. You have to
let them come, or the patients won't either, and anyway it means

Shans, Irish, and Sawbwas 105

they hear the Gospel too. In the Hukawng Valley before the war we
used to allow dogs and hens, which they brought in at night. But I
drew the line at goats or pigs." Taking us round, she broke off twice
to separate fighting geese, her own.

We passed a convalescent, a man attacked in the hills by bandits
who had sliced off his left hand at the wrist, three fingers off his
right hand, and severely gashed his head. He was sitting in the sun,
and at our approach he put on the expression used by village widows
in England when they see the parson come. Mrs. Johnston said : "He
is very near the Kingdom now, if not already there. What can we
do with him ? We can't just turn him out like that. That's our prob-
lem." I was also interested in an opium case in the men's ward. He
was a Chinese Christian in his early forties who had recently con-
fessed to having been an addict for twenty years, smoking heavily.
"It requires great courage to ask us to cure him at that stage," Dr.
Johnston told me. "He thought he would die if he gave it up. The
course takes ten to fourteen days, and is agony. You stop the
opium at once and put them on Largactil and bromides, increasing
the dose till you get over the maximum sufferings, and then tailing
it off."

My eye caught a Chinese notice outside a little hut on the path
back to the bungalow : "Anybody can sleep here provided they join
in prayer and read the Bible." Apparently an opium addict's story
lay behind. The hut belonged to Simon, an old Chinese whom I had
seen at Mohnyin poring over his books at the Bible School. Simon
had been brought in unconscious from opium. He had gone home be-
lieving himself cured, but lacked moral strength to resist the habit
and before long was again carried in unconscious. This time he re-
ceived and read a Chinese New Testament. The effect was electric.
"Why, this is just what I need," he said. "I've never heard this
before. I want to be baptized." He soon had other patients aware of
his discovery, inviting new arrivals to his bedside to be told the
Gospel story. Three months after his baptism, in September, 1954,
he saw his first convert baptized, and when he was confirmed by the
Bishop of Rangoon a year later no less than eighteen of his converts
were confirmed with him. His son, Hla Aung, a young man in his
early twenties, had come to the Johnstons saying that he wanted to
be a Christian. "My father was a bad man. Now he is a good man.

io6 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

This must be for me too." Later he left a secure job to work as hos-
pital dispenser at a far lower salary, and is ambitious to follow his
father to Bible School.

A trip from Panglong showed how thinly Christianity is spread
in the Southern Shan States and what immense areas of responsi-
bility may fall to the individual missionary.

At Mong Hsu, no miles northeast, the Johnstons had an outsta-
tion, not so much medical as pastoral, though the Karen Christian
male nurse, the government's provision for the health of the place,
whom Dr. Johnston had discovered there depressed, isolated, and
discouraged, was now the mainspring of the local church.

We drove through an autumn parkland splattered incongruously
with cherry blossom on trees large as oaks, and wild wood apple
trees as spreading as chestnuts, and clumps of planted bamboo. In
the back of the Land-Rover were a retired Shan schoolmaster then
engaged on the translation of the New Testament into a local tribal
tongue; his wife, a senior nurse; a returning Shan patient (and
small son) who, the wife of a Chinese Christian at Mong Hsu,
hoped to be baptized when we arrived ; and one duck. A trailer con-
taining bedrolls and luggage bumped and rattled behind as we ran
steadily down twin strips of tarmac (nobody bothered to tar the
crown of the road) until at a small city we turned on to an untarred
metaled road and were soon covered in a red sand which plastered
hair, got into ears and eyes, and down inside clothing.

Mong Nawng, the next place, was also by courtesy a city because
the seat of a sawbwa, hereditary prince of a Shan State the South-
ern Shan States being a checkerboard of these minute principalities ;
in this journey we were in four. Here we had a puncture, and a late
lunch at a Chinese cookshop : our first attempt at chopsticks. We
took a road more wooded, more hilly, more dusty. Occasionally I saw
Shans in bullock carts or on foot in baggy ankle-length trousers and
straw coolie hats perched OB bathtowel turbans, but their habit of
building villages away from a road gave the country a deserted air.
We crossed the turquoise Nam Pang, a tributary of the Upper
Salween, and as the day faded drew into the yard of Chinese Chris-
tiaJis who run a trading combine at Mong Hsu, sending strings of
mules into the mountains to sell goods from Mandalay and fetch

Shans, Irish, and Sawbwas 107

back the small farmers 7 tea crop. The Land-Rover promptly got a
punctured tire again. And again before starting next morning.

Dr. Johnston held a baptismal instruction in the combine ware-
house by the light of a pressure lamp. On the bamboo-weave walls
were a white cross, a decorated notice in Shan and another in Eng-
lish: HAPPY CHRRST (sic) MONO Hsu. From one of the timber sup-
port posts hung shoulder bags and an umbrella upside down sus-
pended by a nail through its point and a Burmese gong. In the
rafters lay brooms past which the smoke curled up from a brazier
on the floor.

Next to the doctor on the low platform intended for sacks sat the
old schoolmaster, his kind, wrinkled smiling rnustached face sand-
wiched between a bathtowel and a thick blue jacket. Beyond him
was Hla Aung, the young hospital dispenser, Simon's son. The
journey had dirtied his smart red-and-yellow shirt under a corduroy
windbreaker, but his face was alert and quick to smile. The Shans
being of western Chinese origin, there seemed little facial difference
between the races.

A middle-aged Chinese whom the local church leader reported as
a recent arrival, three years a Christian but without opportunity of
baptism, passed his catechumen's test. The Shan woman from hos-
pital failed. Her husband was away in the mountains, as he had had
no means of knowing when she would return. To baptize her without
him was unsatisfactory and so were her answers. The question "Why
do you want to be baptized?" produced the reply, "Because my hus-
band is a Christian." "Suppose he died tomorrow, would you still
want to be?" "Oh, yes," she said vaguely. Dr. Johnston examined
her on doctrine. When he asked, to lead her to some expression of
man's need of redemption, "Have you any sin?" she replied brightly,
"Oh, no, I've got no sin." Thinking his mind was on the red-light
district, she relapsed into bashful giggles.

Dinner was announced. We sat round a table in the shop. When the
schoolmaster had finished a long Shan grace which appeared to in-
clude much of his evening devotions, we assaulted bowls placed on
the center of the table : rice as a basis, pork and cauliflower, chicken,
mutton, potatoes, biscuits of dried milk, plying chopsticks in con-
versational silence but a lip-smacking determination which properly
showed your appreciation, until a glow of satisfaction began to steal

io8 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

over you and pair by pair chopsticks were laid down as each guest
felt he could eat no more : a pleasing sensation which, owing to the
Western custom of separate courses, I had scarcely had since the
jam tarts of school days.

The dozen Christians of the sawbwa city of Mong Hsu had now
gathered, mostly Chinese. We held a meeting.

Early next morning a baptismal service took place behind the
shop. The font was the millstream, for they prefer to dip, as the rub-
ric allows, rather than pour water upon the candidate, to make a
more emphatic witness. Though at that hour the water was cruel to
a middle-aged Chinese, his baptism was open and obvious to passers-
by or curious neighbors, some of them bleary eyed from all-night
gambling in the big fair. I picked out a woman stooping from the
weight of a three-year-old child on her back, his nose running ; two
women smoking cheroots; a policeman in gray with a slouch hat,
and a man, across the road, stock still in a white blanket.

After the baptism and a score of medical cases we drove back to
Mong Nawng and arrived at midday, three hours late and ravenous,
for breakfast with the sawbwa. Instantly his staff produced a superb
English breakfast which showed no trace of having been kept so
long.

The "Lord of the Heavens" was a charming small man with tattoos
on forearms and ankles, which showed beneath a green check longyi.
His black hair was close-cropped. He wore glasses. His lower teeth
were complete ; he had three uppers, two on the left front and one
at the back. His house had been burned down not long before, and
he was in a modest temporary dwelling, the recent fire giving point
to buckets of water perched comically on the roof of this and every
other place by government order, and long poles to pull down burn-
ing thatch before flames could spread.

There was poignancy in our visit, for the sawbwas were about to
lose the last of their powers after a thousand years. They had ceded
paramountcy to the British in 1885. The Union Government had
taken over, and after prolonged negotiations had at last set a date
when the sawbwas should surrender their offices and receive a
pension. The Sawbwa of Mong Nawng was sending his son to

Jungle Dodg'ems 109

Australia "to get wisdom" and a profession, since now he would not
inherit.

I should like to have seen a sawbwa funeral. When a sawbwa
dies his body is embalmed in a great bath of honey until the family
can afford a sufficiently sumptuous ceremony. The honey is then
sold. . . . The funeral is Buddhist with undertones of animism. Three
coffins are carried in the great procession, the first being highly or-
nate and the last plain, for in it lies the body, thereby foxing the
Devil. A man dressed as the Devil walks last in the funeral, and at
the burning place he must hammer the coffin well down and run
for his life into the jungle, chased by a crowd of roughs. He throws
off his Devil's clothes and joins in his own chase. The man who
acts the Devil is highly paid. But it is not a post much sought after.
Always within two years, mysteriously its holder is dead.

FIFTEEN JP 6 - Jungle 'Dodg'ems

We conceived a warm affection and admiration for the Barr Johns-
tons. Yet I could not banish from my mind the words of the French
general as he watched the Light Brigade using the methods of Water-
loo against the guns of Balaclava : "Cest magnifique mais ce n'est
pas la gtierre"

The whole mission revolved around the Johnstons, who ran the
place with loquacious gusto and an energy and devotion almost
overpowering. The one was full-time doctor, and the other, matron,
anesthetist, and hospital sister. Both were also in effect pastors to
the Shan Church and, in intention, evangelists to the surrounding
hill tribes.

Ecclesiastically the situation was Gilbertian. Many thousands of
square miles had been ceded by the American Baptists in 1937
when, having translated the Bible and a hymnbook into Shan, they
found it necessary to shorten their front and invited the B.CM.S.
into the Southern Shan States. The B.C.M.S. started two medical
centers where no mission previously existed. At Panglong a small
nucleus of baptized Shans formed, by 1941, a church which the

no EARTH'S REMOTEST END

Japanese destroyed as completely as the buildings destroyed it by
slaughter and exile. Not one believer remained when the Johnstons
returned. Certain Baptists volunteered to come up from their own
area farther south to help the Anglicans, including an excellent
pastor called Aaron whose father was the first Karen to enter the
Southern Shan States with the Americans. Aaron in 1949-1952,
when imprisoned in Mandalay jail with other Karens at the time of
the Karen Rebellion, was one of those responsible for no less than
137 jailbird baptisms (they used the criminals' washtub) and a situ-
ation which caused the deputy commissioner to exclaim: "What's
come over the prison? It is like a chapel singing all day." Pastor
Aaron takes the Anglican services, ranking as a lay reader. His son,
at present a Baptist, is likely to be ordained the first Anglican parson.

A Baptist in Anglican clothing metaphorically, for he does not
wear robes is an example of the close unity that prevails. This
circumstance, however, increases the dependence of the local church
upon the Johnstons. "Fm trying to do the work of three people,"
said Dr. Johnston one night as we sat by the light of a kerosene lamp
(the electricity gave up all pretense for twenty-four hours after a
heavy storm). "I'm turning fifty and I find I just cannot do it and
must revert to one person." He cannot be doctor, parson, and
itinerant evangelist at once; because of medical responsibilities he
certainly cannot tour the hills, and though there is a vigorous youth
group the people do not seem to venture out as they might. An
American told me that in default, rather to the Johnstons' distress,
Shan Baptists are fishing in Anglican waters and that their leaders
can hardly be expected to stop them.

The Panglong people do not evangelize widely because initiative
is unwittingly smothered; it lies squarely with the missionaries
despite their expressed conviction that indigenization is essential.
The intention is to prod the church into action. "We are Deborah to
their Barak," said Mrs. Johnston, but the people display less energy
than Barak in the Book of Judges and make decisions as they think
the Johnstons wish, although some resent the leading strings more
than would appear.

The supreme difficulty is of personality. Two older missionaries
who have founded and built a work, are loved and appreciated, vigors
<HIS and almost untiring, canmot easily let converts make their own

Jungle Dodgems in

mistakes. "After all," Mrs. Johnston said, "we brought most of them
into the work and many of the younger into the world." Dr.
Johnston felt that there would be "a place for the missionary in
Burma for a long time, provided we take the position of the father
of a man of twenty-three or twenty-four. In other words, to say:
'You're an adult now. You just need a senior person to guide.' " Per-
haps Panglong Christians are treated more like children.

The Johnstons are imbued with a prewar paternalism, and it is
magnificent. Paternalism still exists widely on the mission field, and
much is deplorable. Not that of the Johnstons. I salute them as the
finest of the old guard. And when I asked a man who knew them
well whether Panglong would collapse on their departure, he said,
"No, they have worked too deep." Their personal popularity in the
Southern Shan States is tremendous. Bandits who held up the Land-
Rover in broad daylight not long before our visit let it pass un-
scathed the instant they recognized the Johnstons, and local opinion
was so furious at their being stopped that the authorities were
forced to liquidate the gang.

Nor is the problem of Panglong straightforward. "Look at some
of the difficulties," said Dr. Johnston. "Take finance. The local
church has only twenty-five or thirty households to raise funds. If
they support the pastor only, I think they have done well. In fact
the B.C.M.S. now pays half the pastor's salary. Then there is the
question of getting indigenous doctors. It's almost impossible. I
went down to Rangoon for a conference of Christian medicos, and
found that almost all were under obligation to serve the govern-
ment or whoever paid for their training. Or they must get a good
job to pay back their parents. Of the few free ones you must find a
very deep Christian who will be ready to come at the salary we can
offer. Medicine in this country is not a vocation but a lucrative busi-
ness. The only way is for us to pay for a man to be trained, and
that means for ten years the three last years at school and seven
at college."

Rain had fallen all night. The village of Wan Yung where two
members of the Panglong Church, a former hospital nurse and her
former policeman husband, kept a small school and dispensary, de-
pending on the village people for support and not on the mission, was

ii2 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

a mere twenty-five miles away, twelve miles up the same main road
we had taken for Mong Hsu and thirteen along a jungle track.

Six of us made this comic expedition which, though we spent only
two and a quarter hours at Wan Yung, took no less than eleven
hours. Dr. Johnston drove. With him in front sat Mrs. Johnston and
I. In the back with Anne were old Moung Moung, the retired school-
master, as a substitute for Pastor Aaron, who was not available, and
Moung Tai, the Johnstons' mali, taking a day off digging borders to
dig out the Land-Rover.

Leaving the main road, we stopped to lower pressure in the tires.
Around was a Buddhist holy place, a forest of flags on the skyline
and scores of little beehive piles of white stones that commemorated
money paid in the belief that the donors at death would go straight
to heaven. A holy man had lived here not long since, attracting
crowds of disciples. Mrs. Johnston said : "People used to tell us with
awe, 'He is so holy he hasn't passed urine or opened his bowels for
months.' "

Almost at once we began a steep, winding descent. The rain had
stopped at last, and the sun shone fitfully on a bright red new track
of loose sticky mud which Dr. Johnston negotiated with the four-
wheel drive, trying to balance the Land-Rover by ordering us as if
in a speedboat : "Lean to the left ! Lean to the right ! Lean to the
right again." The new track was abominable. We got out and the doc-
tor tried the old track, with his wife ahead to guide him like the
proverbial taxicab passenger walking in front through a London
peasouper. The Land-Rover began to slither. Yells came from inside.
"Look out ! Get out of the way, Kitty ! Kitty, I shall run you down,
I shall run you down!"

The hill was mercifully short when you were descending. At
the bottom we piled in and made reasonable progress for about a
mile to a stream. The new track sheering away to the right looked
treacherous, and we tried a rickety old bridge, unshipping both our-
selves and everything heavy. The ladies and the old schoolmaster
walked on. The bridge was easy it groaned a little but beyond
rose a sharp bank which the Land-Rover refused. The mali and I
pushed; wheels whirred, the engine whined, mud flew. We put
brushwood under the wheels without effect. I ran down the stream
and thought I had found a ford when the Land-Rover appeared

Jungle Dodg'ems 113

through the scrub to my right, cutting across to the new track.
When I was in again we drove a quarter of a mile, still on the same
side of the stream, until the track cut into a hillside and we found
ourselves perched over a minor precipice, the surface becoming so
loose that a slight skid would bring the Land-Rover on to the edge
which, after the rain, would cave in ; and though a Land-Rover keeps
balance where a jeep turns turtle, nothing then could have saved us.
Dr. Johnston reversed gingerly to safety by my shouted directions
from behind. We found a way below, and emerged beside a ford
which brought the old track back the same side, so that crossing the
stream was unnecessary. Here the ladies were waiting, and we had
coffee at 11:50 A.M., an hour and a half since we had turned off
the road three miles back.

After that it was a simple slither. Once we even touched eighteen
miles an hour. The woodland on either side was splashed with pink
and mauve cherry blossom, and here and there trees were losing
their leaves or turning golden brown. There were barking deer about,
shy little creatures we failed to sight. The sun had surrendered to
clouds and occasional bursts of rain, so that the driving reduced the
doctor almost to silence and left the field clear for Mrs. Johnston,
who kept us in fits of laughter. "We took the Land-Rover to a
bazaar three miles beyond where we are going now. There were
Tunghtu tribespeople down from the hills who had never seen a car
before. They crowded round and I heard a woman exclaim to her
neighbors : 'Look, they just sit in it and it walks.' Walter tooted to
get them out of the way. And one of them said, 'Why, doesn't it call
nicely! 7 "

With a thunderstorm we reached the village at i :is P.M., three
and a half hours for the twenty-five miles from Panglong, and went
to the little raised bamboo house of the teacher-nurse. She was a shy,
small woman of worried expression in a maroon skirt and a thick
brown cardigan, buttoned so close that only the brooch on her
blouse showed below. Her husband, who taught the school drill and
did odd jobs about the house, had on a red check longyi and a blue
jacket over a faded red shirt and thick woolen vest. He had a strong,
kindly face. Mrs. Johnston unpacked the cooking things and food,
sitting on the skins and watched by a puppy beside the fire in the
center of the main room ; the other was bedroom and dispensary. We

ii4 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

walked through the rain to the square schoolhouse, a bamboo hut
only forty feet by twenty-five, containing nearly sixty solemn girls
and boys ranging from five to sixteen, erect on the most uncomfort-
able circular bamboos I have ever tried. In front of each boy lay a
minute trilby hat, the latest rage. The uprights of the room were
festooned with black umbrellas.

The children, coming from several villages, were Buddhists but
sang a Christmas hymn, recited the verse "God so loved the
world . . ." in Shan, displayed their progress in Burmese, which the
government insists they should learn, and answered simple ques-
tions. I was not allowed to ask who the Prime Minister of Burma
was: "Much too difficult."

Squelching back to the house, we ate lunch and went into con-
ference with the teacher-nurse. She had cause to be gloomy. The
people, glad enough to send their children to school and receive
medical aid, declined to pay or even give rice. They promised, then
heard that the government planned schools, a plan which in present
circumstances hardly could be carried out, and so said they would
not, because soon school would be free. Meanwhile the couple had
not enough to live on. Dr. Johnston said the hospital would tide her
over until the people realized that no government school could come,
and Moung Moung strengthened her oratorically with the reminder
that Satan was trying to wreck her service but that Christ was
stronger. She smiled wanly. Her position was further embarrassed
because the military had announced that government-appointed
nurses only might practice, yet sent no nurse or doctor. Dr. Johns-
ton wrote a certificate saying that she was his authorized representa-
tive.

They had been talking in Shan. As he put away his notebook he
said in English : "It takes a Christian motive to stay in this place.
The government cannot get people to teach or nurse; it's lonely;
and there are dacoits about." Before we left we prayed with the
couple. Two months or more might pass before the Johnstons could
visit them again, and they had no Christian companionship.

At 3 130 P.M. we came down the steps of the cottage. Cows splashed
through a ford beyond a dump of bamboo. Rain blotted out the
wide paddy plain that begins here, and the hills beyond. Irish
weather.

Jungle Dodg'ems

The homeward track was hard to trace from the outskirts of the
village, and the mali's jungle sense temporarily deserted him ; he got
us lost in the wood. "Everyone watch out for daws" shouted Dr.
Johnston, fearful of those unyielding stumps, camouflaged by under-
growth, which work havoc on a Land-Rover's bottom. After a hun-
dred yards of indifferent progress the Land-Rover took control out
of the doctor's hands, wove a drunken pattern across the mud, and
buried its nose in a bank. We put brushwood under the wheels, dug
away the earth, and eventually reached the main track, which no
longer deserved the name, for cows, carts, and the rain had carved
alternative channels to an extent that made necessary not only a
driver, glued to a wheel now thoroughly insubordinate, but a
navigator. Mrs. Johnston and I, noses to the glass, would call out,
not always in unison : "Keep to the right ! Left here ! Make for that
puddle ! " Following a specially bad bog-down and dig, we all walked
and watched the Land-Rover waltz down the track. We overtook
it hesitating before a shallow gorge, tested the bridge by jumping,
and waved the Land-Rover on.

Only an hour of daylight was left. We voted against stopping
overnight in the halfway village, and hardened our hearts as the in-
habitants came out for treatment. The Johnstons said that they
could always go to the dispensary we had left or come into the
hospital.

We pushed on, sometimes literally, and when the going was good
enough for speech Mrs. Johnston kept our spirits high by her com-
ments: "Just like a caterpillar, first one end then the other. . . .
Wish the committee could see this. . . , Isn't it amazing what a
Land-Rover can do?" Four potholes in a row played ball with us be-
tween the roof and the seat. "Are the 'ooks of your 'eart and liver
giving way yet? It's like that sideshow at the Wembley Exhibition
of 1924," she remarked when the Land-Rover was sliding from side
to side, " Witching waves,' it was then. What do you call them
now?"

" 'Dodg'ems'," we said.

"Then that's what it is," we agreed in chorus "Jungle Dodg'ems."

Just before the final hill, in thick darkness and a light rain, after
crossing the ford to avoid the precipice and more or less manhandling
the car i^p the slope, we bogged down fair and square. "It's the

n6 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

tenth," murmured the mali as he jumped out. He was a splendid
fellow, short, with a mustache, and his trousers, rolled up to the
knee, displayed football-stocking tops of tattooing above legs red
with mud. As a child, bereft of his parents through cholera, he had
been adopted by a Christian and was now as fine a lay preacher as
he was gardener and handyman. He dug, and I cut brushwood with
his dah, and we were out in twenty minutes. The hill itself took three-
quarters of an hour. The lights of the Buddhist holy place twinkled
comfortingly above as the Land-Rover roared for a few yards, stuck,
was given a jungle carpet and a push until it made another thirty or
forty yards, stuck, was given a jungle carpet and a push . . .

We reached the top four hours after leaving Wan Yung. The rain
suddenly cascaded into a storm which would have made the hill
impassable. We drove across a field between the stone "beehives."
We hit something. "Is that a daw?" cried Dr. Johnston in an
agonized voice. "No," shouted his wife above the storm, "only a bit
of somebody's way to heaven ! "

SIXTEEN Jf* Pooh-bah and U Nu

There was an Irish touch in getting away from Panglong. By six-
fifteen on a misty morning we were motoring south. At Taunggyi,
the capital of the Southern Shan States, where we stopped for some
household shopping, I was walking alone through the bazaar when
I was greeted by a polite man in Western clothes who in conversation
cleverly extracted considerable information about my comings and
goings before I realized he was a detective. His job was to check
up on foreigners, and he shadowed me to the cookshop to prove that
I was really in the hands of the Johnstons. Had he not seen them,
Anne and I would have been held there, the enforced guests of an
English spinster missionary, until Rangoon vouched for us. These
precautions were for our safety, not because we might be spies.

We drove onward to reach the airport at eleven-thirty. The ex-
perience at Mandalay had led me to suppose that if you speak of
"catching" a plane in Burma you are thinking in terms of catching

Pooh-bah and U Nu 117

fish rather than trains. This was one that got away half an hour
before the time given by the agent in Taunggyi.

The Johnstons took us a further twenty-four miles to Kalaw, and
dropped us on the headmistress of the American Methodist Girls
School, Miss Cavett from Iowa, who received us for the night with-
out turning a hair even the spare-room beds were already made up.
British officials used to retire to Ealaw. The houses are pure Esher
or Cheam, small suburban pseudo-Tudor, and as the trees are fir I
had to pinch myself on waking that I was not in the Surrey Hills.
Miss Cavett had sixteen elephants of graded sizes, each of a dif-
ferent wood, and, if I may be so indelicate as to mention it, bright
pink toilet paper.

The heat in Rangoon was not so trying as I had feared after the
cool air of the hills, and worth while for the conversations with lead-
ers in Church and State.

I asked one of the American Baptist missionaries why the A.B.M.
work among the Karens of Burma, as also in Assam, should be un-
doubtedly some of the most evidently successful in the world.

He stressed as a very important factor the animism of the people
the mission had no Great Religion contending. Next was the
emphasis from first days on education. The Baptists erected a
school system from primary to theological, and thus bred leaders.
Another American, one of several who followed their fathers in
Burma, admitted that for a period between the wars education
suffered from the disease to which every missionary institution is
liable of becoming an end in itself ; it was particularly noticeable,
he said, when nationals first became headmasters. Even then there
was a credit side, for the multitude of prominent Burmese who re-
ceived their education at Baptist schools retain, though Buddhists,
an affectionate respect for missions and for Christian ethics which
has had effect on the policies of independent Burma.

Adoniram Judson commissioned his earliest converts to go out on
their own. Ever since, the Baptists had worked for an indigenous
church. "We were prepared," said my informant, "to put nationals
into positions at the price of second-rate leadership for a while,
when other missions waited until their Christians were more
polished." This long and admirable tradition of indigenous leader-
ship means that for over twenty years the Burma Baptist Conven-

u8 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

tion, and not the mission, has ruled the roost outwardly. The con-
vention negotiates with the government, invites and posts the sixty
or so Americans, and in one instance refused to have back a mis-
sionary in whom the A.B.M. had not lost confidence ; it was rumored
that he was too frank in his opinions. Yet certain non-Baptists are
convinced that indigenization is more theory than fact, since the bulk
of the money comes from America; and although the convention
settles its use, the power behind the throne, I was assured, was an
American. He was away from Rangoon. His colleagues, maintaining
that indigenization is as real as it appears, admit that he is a strong
personality with an able brain who speaks only when he has mastered
his facts.

The Anglican Church is an undoubted asset in Burma, though
Church Union such as grows in India is remote, hankered for neither
by Baptists nor diocesan authorities. I have always been catholic in
sympathies: many of my friends are not Anglican, I owe much to
inspiration from non-Anglican sources, and anyone who after travel-
ing the mission field continues .to assume that Anglicanism has a
monopoly of the good things of God must have a small mind indeed.
It was not mere loyalty that made me a better Anglican the farther
our tour continued. As never before I appreciated the way of the
Church of England when faithful to itself in the spirit of the Ref-
ormation: truly biblical, evangelical, and pastoral.

Its liturgy: I have yet to find a more thoroughly congregational
service. I will admit that Mattins in Shan sounded rather comic.
Shan is such a long-winded language that we using English had
finished the Lord's Prayer while they were still forgiving trespasses,
and as for setting the Venite in Shan to an English chant, you have
to rattle off ten or a dozen words to every note to fit a twofold chant
to each two verses, I shall treasure the memory of their reading
aloud the Apostles' Creed from an immense wall roller unfolded
clause by clause. An Anglican congregation has a full part in the
service, not only in the singing.

Its balance : The Baptists in Burma have a high code of Christian
behavior but are prone to legalism, erecting secondary matters into
primary, as in the Baptist "Ten Commandments" ("Thou shalt not
smoke tobacco, Thou shalt not smoke opium," and so on), which if
a man keep he may be honored in certain Baptist circles even if

Pooh-bah and U Nu ng

judgment, mercy, and faith are lacking. The Panglong bungalow
has no hot water on Sundays because local Christians think it
wicked. The Johnstons refused to accept the ban on a hot Sunday
lunch. Incidentally, as we were excused early prayers in Shan, our
breakfast was sent to our room, and since the mornings were cold we
generally ate it in bed. After a few days a servant (whose matri-
monial morals left much to be desired) voiced her disapproval to
our hostess. Mrs. Johnston on our behalf gallantly sacrificed the
British Empire. "Don't you know," she said, "that all English people
who are not missionaries have breakfast in bed?"

Its interdependency : Each local Baptist church is a law to itself
and esteems very highly its independency. A leading Anglican said
that as far as he could see the Baptists had little sense of a wide
church structure, though they might deny it, pointing to their con-
vention, and lacked that vivid sense of belonging to a world-wide
body which is one of Anglicanism's greatest treasures.

Another Anglican of long experience said to me : "Any organiza-
tion when it is old and successful is in danger of patting itself on the
back. The Baptists are resting on their oars. They are the big organi-
zation. In my part of the country they have a very good missionary
inheritance all the ones we have known have been first class. But
the nationals pat themselves on the back. Therefore it is good for
them to have the Church of England come in, younger and fresher
so far as the Burma mission field is concerned."

The Deputy Prime Minister of the Union of Burma, the Foreign
Minister, the Minister for Religious Affairs, the President of the
Buddha Sasana Council and the former Chief Justice sat in an office
at the Secretariat so small as scarcely to have space for a desk and
two chairs. There was room for me, however, because all these ex-
alted persons were one kindly Pooh-Bah, the Honorable U Their*
Maung. Like each member of General Ne Win's caretaker cabinet,
U Thein Maung was not a politician but a very distinguished public
man, and he was renowned also for his Buddhist piety.

He looked younger than I expected. He wore the traditional
Burmese silk headdress called a gaung baung, which fits closely on
the head like a snood, with a large bow over the right ear. Beneath

i 2 o EARTH'S REMOTEST END

a black silk blouse peeped the narrow collar of his white shirt.
He was very friendly, had a ready smile and a quick laugh.

In answer to my first question he said: "No problem at all.
Relations between the government and the missions are excellent."
{A leading Christian how I wish discretion permitted the use of
names snorted when I retailed that.) "We are very grateful for
all they have done for us." He spoke of educational work especially,
and mentioned that in certain instances subventions were made to
missionary educational institutions.

"But what about conversions ? How do you, as a convinced Bud-
<ihist, feel about people trying to convert your countrymen to another
faith?"

He laughed. "Ah, to be frank with you, no, I don't like that. I
think my religion a very good one and of course I don't like losing
people. But Government does not interfere." He referred to a con-
science clause regarding education, but it dated from British times.
He stressed that there was no deliberate anticonversion policy, for
freedom of religion was enshrined in the Constitution.

Soon we were talking of the Karens. "They had no real religion,"

he said. "You always get successes where there is no real religion

The Karen Rebellion? There were American missionaries involved,
a few black sheep. We did not think it was general. Yes, they have
gone now. They were not the best, not typical." From other sources
I was led to doubt whether Americans had any part in encouraging
rebellion. The editor of the Nation, Rangoon's leading English
daily, a Roman Catholic of mixed Kachin and Chinese parentage,
said that some American missionaries spread the legend that it was
a Christian movement although as many Buddhist Karens as Bap-
tists were fighting. The only missionary actively involved was an
Englishman, Baldwin, who has since disappeared and may be dead.

On my referring to the Kachins and mentioning that missionaries
seem to be admitted freely to frontier areas in contrast to Indian
policy, the Minister for Religious Affairs simply said: "In British
days British missionaries were allowed into the hill tracts. We were
not. Now we go, and are doing very well. Well catch up." This is
optimistic. The Kachins do not favor Buddhism partly because it is
brought by Burmese, mainly because^ as they know it, Buddhism
is too streaked with the animism from which they are turning.

Pooh-bah and U Nu 121

I brought up one of the thorniest problems of missions in Burma
the strangulating slowness with which the government grants visas
for residence. A mission was permitted to bring replacements to the
scale of prewar figures, a rule which bore more hardly on Roman
Catholics than on Protestants, but the years which might pass be-
tween an application and the granting of a visa made nonsense of
the ruling, and caused intense difficulties. U Thein Maung said:
"To be frank, I have not been in office long and have not been able
to get right down to the question. I can tell you this. When China
expelled missionaries we did not wish to do that. But what with
the rebellion and other complications we have to make many in-
quiries about each applicant. It takes a long time. We have to be
very careful. I assure you, there is no deliberate policy to keep people
out by holding up their visas."

When I passed this on to someone who is at the receiving end
of that particular stick, he let out a long, low whistle. The situation
has since slightly improved. The matter was transferred from the
Foreign Office to the Controller of Immigration. Missionaries are
to be admitted only for philanthropic work or to train indigenous
leaders to replace them in the churches, but visas, though uncertain,
have been granted a little faster. The government refused to permit,
as contrary to the Constitution, discussion of a measure to expel
foreign missionaries ; in the newspapers Buddhists as well as Chris-
tians sprang to the defense of missions.

At my request as we talked, the Foreign Minister having disposed
of the visa question, the President of the Buddhist Sasana Council
told me of the council's activities. Formed in 1951, it has worked on
the revision of the Buddhist Scriptures, pruning them of many
noncanonical accretions with help from Ceylon, Thailand, Laos,
and Cambodia, and on translation into Burmese. It has sent mis-
sionaries to Assam and arranged exchanges with Japan, Thailand,
and other Buddhist countries. They did not join in Ceylon's vaunted
Mission to Europe : "We did not think it was quite what it should
be."

The Minister's time was precious, and I did not stay to dig with
him in Buddhist theology. A day or so later I was privileged to have
a leisured talk with the most famous man in Burma, and one of the
most devout, former and future Prime Minister U Nu.

122 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

I was to meet him at the headquarters of the Anti-Fascist People's
Freedom League (Clean), some way out from the center of Rangoon.
I telephoned for a taxi. Telephoning was pain and grief in Burma.
You twirled a little handle in the instrument, and if you were
lucky a voice said, "Number, please," in English. You gave the name
of the exchange and waited. More often than not that exchange
was engaged. If it was free you asked for the number (hoping it was
correct; the latest telephone book was two years old) and if the
lines were not crossed and the exchange did not cut you off before
your call was answered, a distant furry voice replied.

In New Delhi or Singapore a taxi comes to the door within a few
moments of your dialing. In Bangkok you seldom walk ten yards
without a gray taxi positively hooting to be hired. In Kuala Lumpur,
a friendly place, any European will offer you a lift. The only taxi
company in Rangoon, whose small fleet was a recent addition to the
amenities, declined to book in advance, and when I telephoned
they had, as I feared, none available. It was possible to obtain a
jeep, but they were too oily for a best suit. I went out hoping to
find a tri-shaw, which is Rangoon's version of the bicycle rickshaw
and has narrow back-to-back seats in what looks suspiciously like
a soapbox attached, combination fashion, to the rear wheel with a
third to balance it. Tri-shaw coolies are shaky in their geography,
so it would be a risk. I saw no tri-shaw in the quarter of a mile down
to the main road. Hot, sticky, and already nearly late, I stood at
the junction where old-fashioned buses rattled by, and with the
help of a young Burmese succeeded at last in hailing a passing taxi
driver who shouted that he would come back when he had dropped
his fare. By now I was not entirely unflustered.

The taxi returned. Soon it was wedged in a huge traffic jam.
At my insistence the driver tried another route and drove fast
toward the outskirts. I knew the map sufficiently to become uneasy
and then quite certain he was taking me wrong. When I discovered
he was aiming at U Nu's residence, not his office, as I had ordered,
I am sorry to say that I flared up like a Guy Fawkes rocket. It
was most un-Christian, and the heat no excuse.

U Nu received me in a comfortable room where we sat side by
side on a sofa. His head was wrapped in a yellow gaung baung\

Pooh-bah and U Nu 123

a gray silk blouse, the gold stud on his white shirt, and a smart
yellow and black check longyi made him extremely handsome.
American magazines have called him moonfaced, for the Burmese
face is round and smooth. His expression was meek, like an elderly
high church bishop's. With us sat his secretary, a man older and
more distinguished than he looked, U Ohn, formerly a minister,
and ambassador to the United States, who joined in the discussion
and took copious notes.

The first part of our talk, covering formal topics such as the
relationship between missionaries and government, was interesting
because of U Nu's years as Prime Minister and the personal affec-
tion and respect in which he is held, but not significant. Before
long we were at the root of the matter, and U Nu was explaining
Buddhism with the fervor of an evangelist.

"The supreme merit of Buddhism/' he said, "is that Christianity
tells you how to overcome the mind, Hinduism how to overcome
the body, but Buddhism is the only religion which tells you how to
overcome all matter." I let pass his misinterpretation of Christianity,
for I was not there to argue. He enlarged on the transmigration of
souls and how your status in this life depended on what you had
done in the last (Buddhism is derived from Hinduism), and at
length I was able to put the question I most wished : Did he ascribe
divinity to Buddha? I mentioned the alabaster "gods" of Shan
Buddhists, and said that a friend of mine claimed to have heard
him, II Nu, in a speech ascribe godhead to Buddha. U Nu denied
vehemently: "The Buddha never ascribed to himself godhead.
Buddha cannot save he cannot save. He is a teacher who shows us
the way."

I asked about the animism that underlies Buddhism in Burma.
I suggested that whereas the simplest peasant may be as true to
the intrinsic spirit of New Testament Christianity as may the clever-
est theologian, sometimes truer, Buddhism seems so esoteric that or-
dinary people require a leaven of former beliefs to make their
Buddhism palatable. U Nu showed surprise. Then he admitted that
when centuries ago Burma was converted to Buddhism (he told the
story quite fully), much was left of the old religion. He went on:
"It ia not forbidden to Buddhists to worship the gods. Such worship
is not essential, but they may give it if they also pay respect to the

124 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

Buddha." I asked if he believed the gods to be real. He shook his
head vigorously.

U Nu, I had been told, had an interest in all religions, especially
since coming in touch with Dr. Buchman's Moral Rearmament
movement. He corrected me. He had not mastered the Bible. I had
misunderstood. "I find Buddhism sufficient, but as a leader I am
interested in the harmony of all religions all faiths living together
in peace. M.R.A. accept all religions. It was as a Buddhist that I
went. They ask Islamics as well. Buddhism has nothing to learn
from other religions. Life is all a matter of behavior. Indeed, Science
has come round now, after 2,500 years, to what Buddha taught:
there is no material, only behavior."

Here certainly we come to the crossroads. To the Buddhist : "Life
is all a matter of behavior. . . . Your status in this life depends on
what you did in the last." To the Christian: "By grace are ye
saved through faith, and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of
God. Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his work-
manship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works. . . ."

I sought the former Prime Minister's views on Christ: "Do you
think of him merely as a great Teacher, or as more?" U Nu, with
U Ohn in support, asked me to make my meaning clearer. They
were both very quiet but then hedged the question, I think in respect
for my feelings.

Toward the end of our talk, when we had reverted to the current
situation and U Nu had been assuring me that the coming proclama-
tion of Burma as a Buddhist state "is a sop to popular clamor, it
will mean nothing," I asked whether Christianity might have made
more progress in British days if, among British administrators,
business, and military men there had been more Christian living,
more genuine faith. It was, perhaps, a question somewhat prim. He
said, "Burma has been very blessed, very blessed." And he went on
to eulogize the spirit of the men who had come out to administer.

Nor do I feel he was just praising to my face with his courtly
Burmese grace. Remembered of British rule in a country such as
Burma are not the political mistakes, nor the plentiful instances of
arrogance or imperial bad manners of planter, merchant, soldier, or
official ; not the brandy and the whoring, such as it was, but peace
and just government, respect for minorities in a multiracial land,

Bangkok to the Back of Beyond 125

high standards of administration, justice for which a long purse was
not required. These are recalled, nostalgically, and these are Christian
virtues. If this fact be doubted, English public life in the eighteenth
century, its nepotism and bribery, provides a reminder as to how
much present standards owe to the Christian revivals of the late
eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries.

The day before we left Rangoon, Anne and I wanted a color
photograph of typical dress. In Commissioner Road we asked an
elderly gentleman whether we might take him. Afterward he asked
where we came from. When we said "England," he drew himself
up. "British good," he proclaimed, "their rule best."

SEVENTEEN Jf* Bangkok to the Back of

Beyond

The B.O.A.C. Britannia from Rangoon to Bangkok, one and a half
hours during the night of February ist and 2nd was a contrast to
Union of Burma Dakotas, but a crush, with a sleeping Sikh beside
us. I enjoyed the London papers. When we took off they were still
yesterday's, a reminder that the jumping-off place for earth's remot-
est end is round the corner. For after a few days we were really going
to the back of beyond little known tribal Laos.

Bangkok, the most extensive city of Southeast Asia with its fine
buildings, well stocked shops, and clanging street cars made Rangoon
in retrospect a sleepy country town and us, gingerly negotiating the
dangerously roaring traffic, country cousins. From Bangkok forward
much of our tour had the very considerable benefit of chaperonage
and hospitality from the Overseas Missionary Fellowship.

In the mid-nineteenth century when China beyond the Treaty
Ports was officially and dangerously closed to Europeans, a York-
shire doctor, James Hudson Taylor, had penetrated inland with such
faith, courage, and persistence that the China Inland Mission which
he founded became the largest Protestant missionary group in the
land until after the Communist "liberation" of 1949, when with all
other foreign missions it had to withdraw. Becoming the Overseas

126 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

Missionary Fellowship, it then opened up untouched areas or spheres
of activity in nine countries of East Asia. The Overseas Missionary
Fellowship is interdenominational and international, with British,
Commonwealth, and Americans more or less equally represented
among the 650 or so members, and some thirty Continentals.

The wide geographical distribution of the O.M.F., the knowledge
and experience of its directors and superintendents, the regard in
which they are held by governments and other missions, and their
generous understanding that my task involved far more than a look
at their own work, gave me in each of their countries the benefit
of, as it were, a courier and consultant service where otherwise I
should have had to negotiate directly with a long list of organiza-
tions or persons.

Without the generosity of this and other missions and dioceses
the tour would have been impossible, financially or otherwise.

As I lay in the sleeper of the Royal Siamese Railway carrying us
eastward from Bangkok, I checked over in my mind what I knew
of Laos where we were to visit the early stages of an entirely new
evangelistic advance.

The Kingdom of Laos (pronounced "Louse"), one of the four
countries once French Indochina and now free, is an inland state,
with river plains on the west and highlands in north and east. Its
economy had been so upset that until recently Laotian businessmen
had accumulated easy fortunes by importing American wirelesses,
motorcars, and refrigerators at one rate of exchange and reexporting
them at another. Politics were equally haphazard. Before we left
England the insurance people declined to cover our baggage in Laos
because it was reckoned Communist. By now a different Prince had
control, and the country considered itself aligned to the West. Six
months later it was clamoring for United Nations intervention to
suppress the rebellion aided from Communist North Vietnam.

In the plains live the dominant Lao, a race which is closely related
to the Thai and spills across the border into Thailand: Buddhist
almost to a man. The Roman Catholics, who had support from the
French colonial government, made little headway except among
Vietnamese immigrants, A small Swiss Brethren Mission had also
worked valiantly for fifty years.

Bangkok to the Back of Beyond 127

The highlands (I find after the Himalayas that the word "moun-
tains" rather sticks in the throat) are peopled by primitive animist
tribes, and round them the French drew a cordon which effectually
excluded Roman and Protestant. In southern, or lower, Laos, the
province where we went, Attopeu, was banned to foreigners except
officials until Independence, and some of its more remote parts had
still not seen a Westerner.

When the Viet-Minh war which followed Independence ended, the
farthest corner of the land was opened to missionaries if any would
come. The Swiss Brethren made occasional tours in the tribal areas
and had a work among the Ngahaun tribe on the Bolovens Plateau ;
but, unable to expand through lack of personnel, they invited the
Overseas Missionary Fellowship to make a survey. "We are ex-
pected," ran the subsequent O.M.F. report of March, 1957, "to
accept responsibility for the evangelization of a third of a million
people, some of them insular, rebellious, savage and even cannibal,
scattered over an area equal to that of Scotland, but without Scot-
land's communication system."

On October 21, 1957, a small group of men and women assembled
in Savannakhet, a lowland center on the border river which had
been selected as base : a young international team led by an older
American, John Kuhn, whose work in Southwest China and Northern
Thailand makes him one of the most experienced of leaders in
tribal evangelism.

At Ubon, the Thai railhead, next morning, no Mr. Kuhn. After-
ward we learned that a telegram asking somebody to meet and hold
us until he came took four days to cover eighty miles, arriving a day
behind us. In Bangkok I had been given alternative instructions,
unfortunately wrong, and told that the stationmaster spoke English,
probably because he had once said "Good morning" before being
answered in his own tongue.

I was passed like a rugger ball from Thai to Thai until gathered
up by a doctor who tried a flood of French, switched to English, and
dispatched us to our supposed destination, Savannakhet, by bus.
Thie Ms had a Chevrolet chassis and a Thai wooden body: smart
lines, tail fins, a flat overhanging roof to hold luggage

123 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

and to shade the unglazed windows, which admitted plenty of cool
air but were too low to give a view unless you ducked your head.
The hard seats for three aside, with a three-inch aisle down the
center, were so narrow and each so close to the back of the next that
a European, even a skinny one like me, needed a dose of the bottle
which Alice found labeled "Drink Me." Fortunately the Thais are a
clean race in India such conditions would have been insufferable
and the young man in American cotton and kepi did not, as a Lao
in a later bus, start eating dried fish.

The countryside was out of season, arid and dull. The road was
wide but not tarmac, so that the vibration unscrewed a jar in our
basket and mixed sugar with ubiquitous dust. At intervals the bus
took flying leaps over wooden bridges or stopped for twenty minutes
while fried chickens on spits, rice wrapped in leaves, and meat
steamed with rice in bamboo were sold through th windows.

Four hours and 125 miles from Ubon we reached the frontier and
crossed by motorboat the wide Mekong River, lovely in the evening
light. I brushed up my schoolboy French. The Laos were impreg-
nated with the traditions of their former masters: a slouching cus-
toms officer up the riverbank yawned and waved us through; the
immigration official with slovenly uniform but excellent French
sleepily wrote our outlandish names, with my assistance, in his
book. We climbed into samlors, yet another kind of bicycle rickshaw,
and with some difficulty found Le Mission Evangelique, the house
belonging to the Swiss Mission placed at the disposal of the O.M.F.

"Oh dear," said a girl with beautiful hands and a gay little laugh,
"what can have happened? Uncle John was certainly going to meet
you." "Uncle John?" "Oh, we all call Mr. Kuhn that." The two
girls at the base, one English, the other American, cosseted us during
our brief stay, and not even the night-long firecrackers and blaring
gramophones of the Chinese New Year could keep us awake. The
next day was Ash Wednesday. I should have liked to have given
up Oriental buses for Lent. We discovered that Uncle John expected
us at Pakse, nearly five hours southeast of Savannakhet though only
four from the railhead at Ubon, and into another bus at midday
the girls bundled us, with instructions in case of a holdup by bandits.

Pakse, where that evening we found Uncle John in what he des-
cribed as a "hot little place," is also on the Mekong River but deeper

Bangkok to the Back of Beyond 129

into Laos. John Kuhn has a square-built figure and a square face,
close-cropped graying hair and rimless glasses. He comes from the
Eastern states, is Pennsylvania Dutch, and his speech has a strong
whiff of the Pilgrim Fathers. His young team would follow him to the
ends of the earth, and they say that in the hills he outwalks them
yet. His first wife, Isobel Kuhn, author of notable books such as
Ascent to the Tribes, died of cancer. He had recently married again,
and we were still drinking Mrs. Kuhn's iced lime juice and unen-
tangling our misadventures when in walked John Davis who had
come down from Attopeu in an army lorry sitting on a pile of rifles.

That night we held a council of war, poring over such maps as
existed. I was shown the strategy of their campaign, which had
been worked out almost like a military operation. I was impressed
most with their determination not to make hit-and-run evangelistic
raids but to look to the founding of a church able to stand on its own
feet.

First, at the Savannakhet base the team had accustomed them-
selves to Laos and had improved their Lao. Two further supply
bases were then set up at towns on the Mekong River to north and
south. From these lowland centers, as the next phase, a three-pronged
drive took them to advanced positions on the edge of tribal ter-
ritory, Nomarat, Tchepone, and Attopeu. John Davis had gone to
Attopeu in April, 1958, working alone until joined by another young
American, David Henriksen, a few weeks before we came. During
one month of the rains he had been cut off from all communication
with the outside world.

"Attopeu Province is shaped like a frying pan." said John Davis,
drawing me a sketch. "Here is the flat circular valley with the
capital Moung Mai, where I live, roughly in the center. The people
there are Lao they are educated, civilized, and Buddhist. Here is
the rim of hills where the tribes live. The Oi, who have more contact
with the Lao than most; the Soo, the Laveh, the Salang, and four
others, all speaking different languages. And the Kasseng, farther
away, right up in the mountains. A tricky people. We discovered the
other day that in the fourth month of the year they occasionally
make human sacrifices. Coolies who disappeared off the trail weren't
taken by tigers after all. . . ."

I3 o EARTH'S REMOTEST END

Throughout the next day we were on the road, Anne, John Davis,
and I. And this time we really traveled. From Pakse to Attopeu as
the crow flies is not much, but as the lie of the land allows, nearly 150
miles, and required eleven hours. The first section was a swift hard-
top road up to Paksong on the Plateau of Bolovens. From then
onward the Chevrolet truck driven by a Lao in French ouvrier blue
overalls and cap churned along a loose dusty track which at times
reduced speed to a lurching crawl.

We .made languid halts. At a Chinese cookshop; at a long rickety
unf enced bridge which the truck crossed unloaded ; and at a ferry
where, after the driver and several of the passengers had had a
swim, we were pulled across escorted by a duck that dived for

scraps. ...

Acquaintanceship with John soon ripened into friendship. John
Davis comes from Washington State in the Far West where his
father is an electrician and his parents had also kept a farm. This
might account for the practical aptitude with which he could turn
his hand from mending a refrigerator or wiring a house to butchering
and cooking, and for his fine physique. As I remember him in Laos
when he was not yet twenty-five, he was touching six feet, with
broad shoulders and strong chest. His wavy dark hair was thinning
at the top and growing back. His eyes were brown and large, his chin
firm, good for thrusting forward in the Lao manner of emphasis,
while his lips were a trifle thick and prominent so that he could
push them out, when talking with tribesmen, as they do to make a
point. John has a great sense of fun and when relaxed would chatter
happily about America, his early life, his parents, work, and the girl
he was to marry. She was stationed at one of the other advanced
bases with a Swiss couple and an English woman doctor. They had
postponed their marriage three years in order to widen their experi-
ences as missionaries.

As the interminable journey wore on, John made no bones about
where we were going. "It's real frontier," he warned us, using the
word in the American sense. "The Swiss missionaries have been a
wonderful help but they think I live at the end of the world. One
said I couldn't do it. And if I tried to reach the tribes there, condi-
tions were so bad I would be dead in a year."

As night fell, the truck was making better speed through the

Forest Trail in Laos 131

forest below the escarpment of the Bolovens Plateau southward
toward Attopeu. Once the driver saw a rabbit in the beam of his
headlights, stopped, got out and ran back to try and catch it. At
length the road suddenly improved for half a mile, having become,
in fact, the military airstrip. A few minutes more and we had en-
tered Moung Mai, the newer of the three so-called cities known
collectively as Attopeu to the world, and were unloading at John's
home.

A most extraordinary sound came over the partition from the
house next door. A series of groans descending and ascending as if
a performing dog practiced scales : the schoolboy son at his home-
work, reciting Lao vocabulary in the correct tones.

EIGHTEEN Jf* Forest Trail in Laos

I awoke about seven next morning to see from the upstairs window
no less than fifteen yellow-robed shaven-headed monks filing across
the green, bowls in hand, to collect rice from the faithful. The small
covered market was just dosing down. John and Dave had already
done their shopping.

I went downstairs and had a bath. Beside a tar barrel filled with
water John had scooped a drain in the brick floor. You stood on a
board over the drain and used a small tin (or can, as he would say)
perforated at the base. This "shower" impressed me then; later I
preferred the large Indonesian or Borneo scoop with which you can
really douche yourself, but at Moung Mai water had to be carried
some distance from the river at so much a bucket, and the per-
forated tin was more economical.

The house had six rooms, two up and four down, a barn-like
ladder leading to the upper floor. The roof was aluminum, walls
timber, partitions bamboo weave, and the street-side lower wall
folded back as a garage door does. On the walls of the living room
were posters of the parable of the Good Shepherd in a Lao-Thai
setting, colored photographs of Swiss lakes, and snapshots of the
lady who three months later became Mrs. John Davis. The back

i 3 2 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

room was kitchen and scullery. The recipe in Lao for pancakes,
pinned beside the shelf containing American cookery books, was a
reminder that John had had a tribal servant for a month, who had
been paid off yesterday to return to his village for the paddy plant-
ing. When without a servant John and David Henriksen, who was
slim, of medium height, with fair hair and glasses, took the cooking
in turns. It was John's day. For breakfast he gave us scrambled
eggs, fried glutinous rice biscuits from a shop (pink; with jam to
taste), pineapple, coffee, and a vitamin pill.

The bathroom, with lines for towels and clothes, and a general
dump and bicycle store made up the rest of the ground floor ; when
the personnel of the Attopeu Mission increased, these rooms could
be used more fully. The latrine was in a hut in the garden merely
a deep hole without box or seat ; much the most convenient of that
sort. Garbage went into a pit in the next garden, by kind permission,
anything edible being disposed of by the neighbor's dog and its
friends, the rest burnt.

After breakfast John set about getting porter-guides for the trek
into the hills. Porters are not easy to find because local tribesmen
have no tradition of professional carrying as have the Nepalese, and
although by government order each village is obliged to produce two
men for an official or for an accredited traveler the scheme is empty
until you reach the first village. The only way is to find tribesmen
going in the required direction, and our first intention was thwarted
because none was. It was therefore agreed we should go with the
former servant and his party to an area John had previously visited,
where six men had "called on the name of the Lord," and we would
be able to see how they had stood as Christians with no Bible,
pastor, or further teaching. A starting time was set, and Anne and I
wandered about exploring the tiny provincial capital, a half-horse
town if ever there was one. We met John on his bicycle. "The out-
look's grim," he said. "Those fellows cried off when they saw the
loads. I am going to dig up some other tribesmen ; I think I know
where they hide out."

In due course two little men in G strings came to the door of the
house. They saw the loads and wished to cry off, so we settled that
the three of us men would carry also, heat notwithstanding. We cut

Forest Trail in Laos 133

down as far as we could, redistributed the loads, and after an ex-
pertly cooked lunch made our way to the river.

The trip would be to an unvisited area. Maps were so vague none
of us knew quite what we should find except that we went to the
Laveh tribe who can speak Lao as well as their own tongue, thus
making communication easier. With at least half a dozen languages
in the province, the trade language has to be used until sufficient
response indicates in which tribe a settlement may be made. Even
then the missionaries will face a conundrum : the Lao Government
forbids tribal languages to be reduced to writing, being determined,
rather optimistically, to replace them by Lao,

On the bank of the substantial Sekong River, a tributary of the
Mekong, the tribal party gathered, short men and slender women,
skins a darker brown that those of the Lao. One of our porters was
naked except for his G string ; the other had a little coat or portion
of a shirt to keep the load from his back. He had teeth filed short
(it is done when they are drunk) ; the lobes of his ears were
stretched round heavy ivory ear-bobs, and he carried a beautiful
knife with a tiger-tooth handle and smoked a stubby brass pipe.
The two tribesmen had our heaviest things, in narrow baskets on
the back. John had a big pack with aluminum frame, Dave and I
each two sleeping bags, Anne two shoulder bags, two cameras, and
a pineapple.

We crossed the river at about ten past three in a dugout. Eight
people were in it. We had to sit very tight. Other canoes were
crossing back and forth higher up; the plateau to our right was
shadowy in the afternoon light, emphasizing our remoteness and the
uncertainty of where we should be or what we should find next
day.

Across the river, in a suburb of Moung Mai, the tribespeople said
they must cook their rice at once rather than in the forest ; we had
to hang around again. They stuffed the rice into a bamboo, topped
it with river water, and placed it on a fire. Lao gathered around,
amused that we should be bothering to go to these "sinners,"
"sinners" because they kill animals and must have gained little
merit in the last life to be born so lowly in this. They will be reborn
as sand or mud, anyway. The Lao fear the tribes. "Going out there,"
one shouted. "Don't you know there's no water out that way?"

i 34 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

With two hours of daylight we set off at last through paddy
stubble into the forest, a party of about fifteen tribespeople, men,
women, and children. The men were in G strings, some with tat-
tooing on their brown bodies ; my favorite was a young man in a
floppy blue sun hat on top of very long hair, ivory ear-bobs, a blue
bead necklace which clashed with his hat, and a brass pipe; they
were all great smokers, even small boys. One woman with a four-
month-old baby in a shawl on her back carried a blue sunshade.
Another young woman had a fetching blouse above her Lao skirt,
which is longer than the tribal : the best dressed as well as the most
dressed. Some tribes eat dogs. On the way up from Pakse, John had
noticed two men strangling a dog, trussing and carrying it off for the
pot. The Laveh are dog lovers. In this party were a full-grown
terrier, smooth-haired, fawn, long in the head, and three puppies-
Major, Minor and Minimus. Major walked all the way, Minor some
of the way, Minimus none of the way.

We heard the distant chant of monks working in the woods.
After an hour we stopped briefly in a clearing where the Lao use
little huts during paddy times, and three trees in scarlet flower
relieved the brown stubble. We went on. John gave a cry: "I've
left the pork chops behind. There goes our dinner ! " The sun dropped
and darkness fell swiftly. We walked in single file through the
forest by moonlight and by the glare of a far-off blaze, probably
one of the frequent controlled fires of that season. At about 7 :oo P.M.
we came to a pool, and beyond the pool a sala, or enclosure, for
travelers which was protected by bamboo stakes and brush fence
from wild animals. We lit a fire. The tribespeople went straight
inside, but we stayed out for a meal that was little more than soup.
John very properly decided that we should go hungry rather than
eat into tinned supplies, not knowing how long we might be away.
After a wash in the pool, we unrolled sleeping bags. Anne and I
had a mosquito net over our heads, but the boys did not bother.
Our spot was quite soft. As I drifted into sleep I heard a trumpeting
from the forest ; next morning one of the porters said that it had
been a wild elephant, and we passed fresh droppings on the trail.

A cup of coffee a special concession before we walked on at
break of dawn gave the tribesmen the start on us, but we caught up
at the first halt when the forest in the early morning as the sun

Forest Trail in Laos 135

rose through the trees was unforgettable. Our carriers by now were
friendly. At first they had been afraid. One had asked for wages
in advance, and when John declined, the man said, with bitter
memories of the Lao, "We shall carry all day and then you will
not pay us." "You'll see," said John. The trek proceeded; they
saw that we did not shout at them, recognized when they got tired,
did not mind sleeping in the sola or eating their poor sort of rice,
and they realized that we were different. A special brand of Far
Western smile did the rest.

At the second halt John disappeared, then emerged from a bush
wearing, as I had been doing all along, a pair of shorts. "In deference
to you," he said as he packed away his trousers. "They may not be
beautiful but they are very useful." "Not beautiful? Haven't you
seen immaculate British in white shorts and stockings and white
shirt?" David, who comes from near Chicago, doggedly Yankee,
wore "pants" throughout.

After four stages at an easy pace for the women and children,
we made the main halt to cook and eat rice near a rather unsatis-
factory piece of water. Another crowd of tribesmen were there. They
dropped their work and thronged round, attracted partly by seeing
a white woman in Western clothes : men's clothes excite no comment,
since the Lao wear the same. John produced what looked like a large
red camera, a foot long, four inches wide, one and a half deep. He
opened it, extracted a handle with which he wound it up, set in place
the arm and head, brought out from his pack a small record labeled
"Buenos Nuevas: Words about Heaven (Laveh)," and in a few
moments the tribespeople were gaping. With close attention they
heard a message in their own tongue from one of their own race.

Gospel Recordings : I had come across them again and again, but
Laos was the first place where I could watch their full effect.
Gospel Recordings, one of the most significant and revolutionary
developments in the modern mission field, grew from the idea of an
American woman, Miss Joy Ridderhof, formerly a missionary in
Honduras/Miss Ridderhof recognized not only that many hundreds
of tribal languages were still unknown and unwritten but that a
message heard in a mother tongue is worth a dozen in a trade
language, especially if spoken by one for. whom it is mother tongue.
Without *any powerful organzation behind her she began in the

i 3 6 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

1940*5 to penetrate tribal areas, first in Mexico, Central America,
and Alaska, then in the Philippines, Southeast Asia, and Africa.
She and her helpers, American and national, often with great diffi-
culty and not without danger, found people who could be persuaded
to record in their own words simple talks previously prepared.

From small beginnings Gospel Recordings has grown to include
most of the major languages of the world, and its greatest impact
is felt among illiterate tribes. By 1959 Gospel Recordings were
nearing their 2,oooth language, and over 2,000,000 records had been
distributed free in more than 150 countries. "My motive for starting
this work,". Miss Ridderhof wrote to me, "was simply that I desired
to give the Gospel to the unreached souls of Honduras where I had
ministered personally for six years. While a missionary in Honduras
I was constantly burdened with the realization that even with all
my efforts and those of my national helpers I could not begin to
reach all the isolated people of the outlying villages. I prayed for a
way to multiply the Gospel message. Then, when detained at home
in Los Angeles by a serious illness, I looked for a way to supplement
the efforts of the all too few Christian workers I had left. When the
thought of records came to my mind as a means of publishing the
Gospel, I saw in it a means for attracting people to the Gospel
through singing, and clear teaching through much repetition so that
those who heard could not only believe but transmit the message to
others."

In 1955 Vaughn Collins of Gospel Recordings working through
Laos came to Moung Mai. The Laveh messages were done by an
educated tribesman in government service, and today, deep in the
forest, were sounding out clear from the little Swiss gramophone, to
the intense amazement of forty or fifty people hearing for the first
time "in our own tongue, wherein we were born, the wonderful
works of God."

John had noticed a man's eyes badly swollen, and said : "We are
not paid by the government, so we cannot give free medicine. If
you would like to give me a little rice I have some ointment which
would ease that swelling." He explained to me that they establish
immediately the indigenous principle of not giving medicine, to dis-
courage "rice Christians" or "medicine Christians" who in the old
days, before such a principle was recognized on the mission field

Forest Trail in Laos 137

as widely as now, swelled statistics and grievously damaged quality.
On the other hand, as John Kuhn once wrote, "Remembering the
command and compassion of the Lord Jesus towards the sick, we
should extend as much medical aid as is consistent with our primary
objective of preaching the Gospel."

A woman smoking a short bamboo pipe brought a girl of eight or
nine with a large splinter embedded in her foot. After sterilizing
tweezers while we ate the rice, to which we had added a tin of
corned beef, John approached the girl, who screamed. Held down
by her parents, who alternately coaxed and slapped her, the girl,
screaming to the end, was relieved of the splinter. The march re-
sumed, I now carrying the heavy pack. At twelve-thirty we reached a
fine pool. The tribesmen removed G strings and plunged in naked ;
with the modesty of their kind they were careful to cover them-
selves with their hands when out of the water. John gave me a
length of wide cloth, called a pha, which I had difficulty in tying so
that it should not fall off in the water, a weakness which persisted
in Laos and Thailand.

During the afternoon march the tribesmen heard and saw a wild
elephant over to the left through the undergrowth ; they shouted to
scare it, and quickened their pace. Dave caught a sight of the ele-
phant. Whether I really did I shall never know. The trail was
leading slightly upward through a narrow valley into hills which in
this sector were not, as we had been told in Moung Mai, steep or
high. Had we gone the route originally expected we should have had
a long walk in the open sun, a stiff climb, and scarcely any water.

The next halt was in less than an hour because some of the men
had caught frogs and decided to fry and eat them, shoving them in
by great mouthfuls and sucking the grease off their fingers. We
relieved Anne of her pineapple and decided on cocoa. Before the
kettle boiled, John took a lick of the mix of condensed milk and
cocoa in the bottom of his mug. "Um, this is good. Just like fudge/'
and took another. We followed suit. John announced that we might
eat all that and mix another to drink. The Kuhn tribe are brought
up on Winnie the Pooh; already, therefore, this was the "Expotition
to the North Pole." As I scooped up the fudge I called out that here
surely was Pooh and the Heffalump trap honey.

At a waterhole only a mile and a half from the village a tribes-

I3 8 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

man chased a large tree lizard, killed it and tied it to his load : one
more for the evening pot. A river came in from the right, about forty
yards wide. We passed a small army post, recently built, crossed a
pontoon bridge, and at ten to six entered the village of Ban Kong
Mi.

Quite a surprise. It was larger and more substantial than any of
us had expected. The wide "street" was lined with kapoks, sure sign
of civilization, short trees with policemen-like arms, the product
of which provides padding for the chairs of London clubs. Two tim-
ber houses had been built for Lao officials, and a timber school. The
other houses, bamboo and somewhat similar to those of the Jinghpaw,
were scattered about with no sense of overcrowding, the whole
scene being backed by a circle of hills. The tribal areas had been
lately reorganized into counties, one for each tribe. This place had
been chosen as capital of the Laveh and a young Lao stationed as
tribal chief; John had known the man without realizing where he
lived and had already mentioned him. "A twirp of twenty-two,"
he had said with the superiority of twenty-four. The Twirp was
amused that we should refuse quarters in the sola (the word is used
for any sort of building set aside for travelers) and prefer the
hospitality of a tribesman. He thought it more comic that we should
accept our hosts 7 glutinous rice, cooked and eaten in the tribal
way, instead of bringing the higher quality Lao rice and demanding
that it be served the refined Lao way. His whole attitude was of
contempt for his subjects: colonialism at its most arrogant.

"This is much the most civilized place I've seen," John said as
we went for a wonderfully refreshing bathe from the pontoon, where
as the light faded we soaped away the journey and splashed and
swam in waters cool but not too cold. There would have been more
romance in a huddle of huts, but the reality stressed the urgency
of the evangelistic task. These tribes are coming into civilization,
forced out of their isolation by the insistence of the Lao that they
must be assimilated. Part of the process is to turn them into the Lao
version of Buddhists, and apart from theological convictions I had
seen enough of Lao Buddhism to know whether the tribespeople
would be losers.

Back at the house a chieken nestling in the hand of its donor was
presented for inspection- good-sized as they go in these parts, just

Forest Trail in Laos

plump enough for four. Anne screwed up her eyes, having heard
they slaughter their gifts in front of their guests, but they took
it away and we saw it next plucked, drawn, and spitted over
the slow, open wood fire. When, after the meeting, we ate it with
our fingers, dropping the bones between the bamboos in the approved
manner, no chef at the Ritz could have produced a more succulently
grilled, tender bird. If you want chicken barbecue as it should be,
go to tribal Laos.

John had set up gramophone and posters. The schoolmaster
brought a pressure lamp to give unexpected light, and the village
father shouted to the people to come and hear what we had to say.
They clambered up the bamboo ladder to the raised floor of the
house, some seventy increasing before the end to a hundred, men,
women, and children, including our friends of the trek. Several
women had fresh colored blouses, but old Grandma had nothing over
her shriveled breasts but rows of beads. The Laveh schoolmaster,
neat in Western shirt and trousers, secure in his Lao education,
smoked a cigarette with the expression of a Fellow of the Royal
Society attending a lecture by another scientist. The Twirp had a
towel round his neck. His white shirt, fine set of teeth, and generally
well-fed appearance contrasting with the drabness of most of his
subjects, he displayed amused tolerance. The tribesmen listened,
some with interest, others with amazement, all with attention, to the
records in Laveh, followed by an explanation, from John speaking
in Lao, of the cleverly drawn posters, a series illustrating an allegory
of the Gospel in terms they could understand. Occasionally a puppy
squealed. I sat in the shadows, a bed bag and a blanket wrapped
round my knees. As I watched this first meeting ever to be held,
as far as we knew, in Ban Kong Mi, I wondered whether around
were some future believers, fine standing Christians on fire for the
Christ Who had liberated them from fear of evil spirits and fear
of man, from the spiritual squalor of their present existence. One
impression was strong ; that once you get right in amongst these so-
called primitive peoples they lose their primitiveness ; those who
seemed curious, even laughable, in the context of their more advanced
lowland neighbors, in their own homes are ordinary people with the
nateatajess and self-respect of ordinary people. The impression
little blunted here because of the Twirp, but it struck me

140 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

forcibly whenever I got away to similar societies, the next day
deeper into the hills; in Borneo, in the Phillipines. Dave said,
"They seem 'simple' only because we don't understand them."

When John gave out tracts the response was gratifying. "Best I've
ever had. I've carried this bundle two trips." He had no illusion that
the demand sprang from the higher level of literacy in this village
which had had forty-five students the last year, and a school for
eight or nine years past. Direct interest in the subject was shallow ;
there were some questions and answers but no desire for further
explanation, no sense of direct impact. The Twirp saw to that.

That night, after they had all gone, and thfe chicken and rice had
been eaten and sticky fingers washed under a bamboo pitcher, we
read together the tenth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. ("I'm
glad it mentions feetl" said John ruefully). St. Paul's words took on
a new appositeness far away in the forest surrounded by men and
women who had never before had the opportunity to hear "the
gospel of peace . . . glad tidings of good things."

We marveled at the simple assurance, "If thou shalt confess with
thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that
God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." We knew
that the word "saved" implied not only spiritual birth into the life
of Christ but growth into the whole inheritance of the love of God.
We read that "the same Lord is rich unto all that call upon him,"
and we took heart from the obvious fact that the promise, "whoso-
ever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved," included
these men and women in their unlovely ways and their fears
fears to be brought forcibly before me the next day.

We looked again at the forthright questions, "How then shall
they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how
shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall
they hear without a preacher ?" Because of the few national Chris-
tians, because of the scattered grouping of tribes in a rough, roadless
country there was need undoubtedly for Western men and women,
young, with as much physical stamina and endurance as any
of the pioneers of the church in Africa in the nineteenth century :
only a fortnight before, seven days out from Moung Mai, John had
gone down with malaria. They had reached a place where there was
BO short way back. "Without Dave, I should never have made
home," John said.

Fear Beside the River 141

Such missionaries need to be spiritually mature if a thriving
church is to rise here, in the heart of Buddhist lands threatened by
communists, among a people not yet committed to Buddhism or
submerged by communism. The Nagas in Assam, the Karen in
Burma, the Lisu in China show how the spirit of God has moved
among pagan tribes. If we doubted lest these people, some snoring
peacefully, others merrymaking outside, could stand firm for Christ
once brought into His fold, we had the promise before us: "the
scripture saith, whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed."

The party which had returned were celebrating on the grass round
a fire a few feet from the steps, over rice wine sucked up by thin
bamboos from a large earthenware pot. As we crawled into our sleep-
ing bags laid in a row on a platform of bamboos above the floor,
their shrill laughter and the flickering of the fire on their bodies
was Dantesque.

NINETEEN JJf* Fear Beside the River

The trek and subsequent days gave ample opportunity to learn
John Davis' story.

To see John into Attopeu, Mr. Kuhn had sent up his Lao Chris-
tian servant for a month. As the month drew to an end John felt an
increasing isolation, centering partly on homesickness, partly on the
fact that for the first time in his life he had no one with whom to
speak English ; the Filipino doctor was away and the governor's only
European language was French. Forlorn in an alien land he found
himself unable to tolerate the thought of losing the one Christian in
the place, the Lao servant. So intense became the nervous strain
that in the house he could not trust himself out of the servant's sight;
he would break down and cry. At length he went upstairs to have
the matter out. He prayed but his oppression did not shift. Suddenly
the thought came :

You haven't sung a hymn in English for a long time. (He has a
fine baritone, professionally trained.)

I don't want to sing.

Whether you want to or not, go on, sing !

142 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

He opened his hymnbook at Bishop Bickersteth's "Peace, Perfect
Peace." He reached the third and fourth verses, "Peace, perfect
peace, with sorrows surging round? . . . with loved ones far away?
In Jesus' keeping we are safe, and they." He told me : "That broke
the ice. Then I sang Montgomery's 'Prayer Is the SouPs Sincere
Desire. 7 Once started, I couldn't stop. I sang hymn after hymn.
Victory was won, I came downstairs perfectly all right. When the
Lao boy went home, leaving me all alone, I could see him off with
an unforced smile."

When he had settled in and had begun to make friends with tribes-
men who came to town, playing them the records, he was ready to
trek into their territory. The governor said he must take a police
escort. This did not suit John's book. The governor refused him
leave to go without. To a subsequent request he replied, "If you
want to die, you may go," but still withheld permission.

Some Laveh tribesmen had heard the records on several occasions.
Their headman said: "We do wish our women and children could
hear these good words." "I would like to come home with you." John
went, saying nothing to the governor. It was at their village,
away to the east of Laveh territory, that six people said they would
believe on the Lord, and turned to Him; among them was the
headman, who publicly burned his demon altar. That night the vil-
lage had a drinking bout. Drinking is bound up with the heathen
worship; they will drink, eating nothing, for three days and three
nights, and then sacrifice. The headman who had recently professed
faith joined the drinking, and John was so distressed that in his
praying, strong man that he was, he gave way to tears. Several
times in the night he rose and prayed.

The next morning the whole village was drunk, a place of the
dead. Suddenly John saw the headman, perfectly sober, the only
man who had slept in his own home that night. Said the headman:
"I came away quite soon. Funny thing, but the wine didn't taste as
good last night, so I left!"

Back at Moung Mai, John confessed to the governor, who was
amazed that he should be still alive, and thenceforth allowed him
to go where he wished, provided he gave notice and took an official
letter as passport; soon the letter was not required, only word of
his route.

Fear Beside the River 143

Subsequent exploratory and evangelistic treks, generally carry-
ing his pack and sometimes alone, did not yield such easy fruit until,
a few weeks before we came, at a village of the Jehe tribe near
Moung Mai twenty knelt in the paddy one morning after John
had taken them once and again through the essential meaning of
repentance and faith lest they choose unwittingly. They called on
the name of the Lord.

I once asked John what were his strongest temptations. He said
that one was to fritter time in the mere business of living ; his mar-
riage stopped that. Another, to lack Christian love for the Lao, as
distinct from the tribes. "You may be surprised, but I think the
chief temptation is to be ashamed of the Gospel. When I have been
worsted in argument with these Lao Buddhists with their nicely
ordered scheme of making merit, I have been ashamed to go out
of my house for days on end. To them the 'preaching of the cross
is foolishness! But when I saw those men kneel down in the paddy
field and pray, that wonderful verse in the same chapter of Corin-
thians just came over me: 'It pleased God by the foolishness of
preaching to save them that believe.' "

Cockcrow, a yelping dog, the steady blow of wood upon wood
as the women of the house pounded rice below at dawn ; there were
four of them pounding in swift rotation, and the tops of their
long, slender poles were cut from my sight by the lintel. They gave
me the illusion, half awake on that first Sunday in Lent, of the
change ringers in my old church at home.

The schoolmaster had told us of a village which he said was
three hours deeper into the hills. Normally John and Dave would
stay in one place for a night and a day, or possibly two, traveling to
reach the next by evening, the whole trek extending about ten days.
To fit our schedule they were foreshortening, and we planned to
visit this next village In the course of the day. As we finished a
rather dreary rice breakfast the Twirp turned up, asking to see the
governor's letter.

"I'm afraid I haven't got one," said John.

The Twirp bridled. "You do not respect my position. I am here
to see people's letters and you have not got one?"

John explained that he did not now carry oiie for himself, and

144 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

the rush of getting away had prevented him taking us to call. The
Twirp looked cross. Without his permission we could not go far-
ther into his territory. John talked away in Lao, and even I could
see the sun coming out again as the Twirp realized there had been
no intentional belittling of his brittle majesty. He told John that
he ought to have a letter, and could get one valid for a year. He
would overlook the lapse and provide his secretary (who could
neither read nor write) as porter-guide to the next village.

The governor when at length we called was graciousness itself,
and brushed away the Twirp's objections. "You can have a letter
if you like," he said, as if it were quite immaterial.

Dave stayed at Ban Kong Mi, where he was able to copy a
detailed map against later expeditions. Freed from load carrying,
we had a delightful walk in the morning sun, not more than two
hours over into the next valley and along a river, probably about
seven miles. Once we saw a strange pattern of twigs. A bird had
called on the wrong side of the trail. Frightened tribesmen had
hastily erected a charm to propitiate such a sign of ill luck. Our
destination proved to be called Ekcampoohkaniang, promptly and
inevitably dubbed Pooh Village.

Outside the gate we paused while John offered prayer. We were
welcomed by the headman or village father who wore a G string, a
set of light blue beads, and a worried expression ; the lobes of his
ears were stretched yet empty, probably because he had sold his
ivory. He took us to his house where we rested, and drank from our
water bottles in the porch which smelled of rancid meat and was
decorated by a poster of the aged King of Laos, now deceased.

The village beside the little river was a miniature version of the
tribal capital, bamboo houses clustering together with thatched or
bamboo roofs. The site had recently been changed. Not all the
houses were complete, nor had they held their opening sacrifice. We
were right in the heart of the Laveh. No Lao lived here, though they
passed through : the customary carving in the sala was not to be an
elephant but a Lao soldier. "They come and play loose with our
women/ 7 chuckled the village father; "we thought that would be
appropriate/' White officials had passed through in old days, but
never, at this site or its predecessor, had the village ever before
entertained a "Frenchwoman." Anne was their first.

Fear Beside the River 145

The men were for the most part small with long forehead, deeply
bridged nose and rather splayed nostrils. One or two wore rough
shirts or sack waistcoats over their cafe au lait bodies, more caji
than lait; for most, G strings, tattooing, and blue beads were
enough. Some of the women had wide elaborate necklaces, red,
yellow, and blue, and nothing else but a vertically striped skirt ex-
cept that girls between puberty and first baby wore a bodice. One
mature, handsome woman had a great number of gay beads reaching
down to her waist, three brass neck rings, fifteen brass rings on her
left wrist, five or six on her right and, like several of her neighbors,
large brass anklets carrying little bells. She carried off first prize.
Close second was a naked little boy in a long bead chain of star-
tlingly beautiful blue.

The place was alive with dogs and puppies. John saw a woman
suckle her baby and then give suck to a puppy.

Tribal hospitality will always produce rice and a chicken for the
first day of your stay, generally as a gift. During cooking several
sick were brought. One had a septic vaccination wound, a girl
had fever, a rash, and repulsive sores on her arms. Several com-
plained of their eyes, and showed a rash. John thought it either
smallpox or measles, but when on our return we described the symp-
toms the Filipino doctor diagnosed chicken pox. John did what
he could, explaining his position but offering medical help free since
they were entertaining us to chicken and rice.

The gramophone was set up after lunch outside the house opposite
the father's. Low cane stools with skin tops were placed for us. The
whole village, some fifty, squeezed round to listen. On my left squat-
ted a man, his head slightly to one side, with a pleasant smile, too
absorbed to notice that he was blowing smoke into my eyes from
his short pipe ; beyond him were a mother holding a four-year-old,
a young man of typical Laveh good looks listening with a slight grin,
an old man concentrating hard. A tiny puppy was asleep behind
John and, as always, - proceedings were occasionally disturbed by
canine tiffs. Flies, midges, pecking chickens completed the setting.

Two or three Laveh records were played: "Words About Heaven,"
"Love," "Fear Not": "Do you fear sickness? Do you fear death? Do
you fear the spirits? I will tell you of One who can remove these
fears " The sun moving round, the father suggested going into the

i 4 6 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

house where men and women, half listening, drank from a big rice-
wine pot. They steam rice and husks until soft, put it in the jar, and
seal it with clay or ashes until it ferments. When wanted it is un-
sealed, filled to the brim with water, and sucked through long bamboo
"straws," more water added as required until the brew is too weak.
John said that records could not play during a drinking. Good hu-
moredly, a last pull was taken and the "straws" stacked.

John next brought out the Wordless Book. This old friend of
evangelists to illiterates teaches by a series of colored pages : black
stands for man's sin and for judgment ; red shows the sacrifice of
Christ; white, the heart purified by faith in the blood of Christ;
the last page is gold, for heaven. He took them through and asked
them to explain it back. They were dumb. Expecting this, he ex-
plained again, and they could remember the lesson of each page.
Those who had not left when the gramophone stopped displayed
close interest which the Wordless Book had clinched.

After a pause John turned to the headman. "How about the vil-
lage father?" he asked. "Do you want to go to hell or to heaven?"

"I want to go to heaven," the father replied ; "I want to escape
from sin."

"There's only one way you can get to heaven, and that's by
having Jesus wash away your sins. Would you like Him to do that?"

"Yes!"

"How many would?"

The headman said : "I don't know ; I can't speak for the village
but only for myself."

John glanced at the spirit altar just to my right, an affair similar
to those in Burma. "Do you realize what this means?" he said
slowly to the father. "You cannot walk two trails at once."

The father saw the point, and spoke to his neighbors in Laveh
and then, in Lao, to John : "I want to go the Jesus trail, only one
trail."

"That means you'll have to leave the old trail."

"I don't understand," said the headman, backing a bit and bring-
ing up a little Buddhism. "What kind of work do you have to
do?"

"You don't have to do anything," replied John, "to have Jesus.
You do not need to avert His wrath all the time. Jesus loves you

Fear Beside the River 147

and died to free you. When you want to know where to make your
rice fields, you don't kill a chicken and ask the spirits; you ask
Jesus to lead you. Jesus doesn't eat chickens and pigs and buffalo.
When you're sick, don't kill sacrifices, just pray. When you go into
the forest or into the Lao country, you needn't propitiate the spirits
with a pig so that you should be safe ; just ask Jesus to keep you
safe."

The headman said, "Why, if this is true it is the best thing in
all the world ! " He paused, and in his turn looked at the spirit altar.
"But we don't quite understand." Another long pause.

John prompted: "What do you think?"

"I think we'll go on as before, but when we sacrifice, instead of
calling on the spirits we will call on Jesus."

"That will never do," said John. "They are enemies. Jesus would
not be pleased. If you want to believe in Jesus you will have to
throw over the spirits and burn all this junk," waving his hand at
the altar.

A long silence. There were beads of sweat on the village father's
forehead as he thought of the awful risk. Even I who was unable
to follow the conversation until John translated it afterward realized
what was happening, could sense the conflict. There was the very
smell of primitive fear in the room. If ever I had dismissed as allegor-
ical St. Paul's reference to "principalities . . . powers . . . the rulers
of the darkness of this world," such easy belief could not survive this
incident. The spirits. All his life the man had dreaded them. Today
he had heard "the best thing in all the world," yet dare he break
loose from his masters, the dominant factor in his life as in the lives
of numberless forebears back into the mists of time?

The handsome young man of the pleasant grin stretched out
toward the wine jar, clutched a "straw" and took a long pull. "We
don't know these words yet," he temporized.

"You don't need to study first," urged John. He asked for one
of their pipes. "If I give you this pipe, my giving is no use unless you
grab it" (In Lao: "reach out and take hold of it"). "God offers you
a home in heaven, but His offering is no use unless you reach out
and take hold of it." They began to chatter in Laveh. John sensed
that they had gone off at a tangent. They turned to hw "We hear
you saw a, wild elephant on the trail yesterday "

148 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

Back at Ban Kong Mi after a bathe, we sat in the dark in the
house. I asked John to sing.

As that rich, perfectly modulated voice echoed out across this
pagan village, singing his favorites and mine, such as "Crimond,"
"And Can It Be," "0 for a Thousand Tongues," "To God Be the
Glory," and one I shall always recall in that setting, "Praise the
Saviour, Ye Know Him," I looked to the day when Laveh should
be singing their own Christian hymns in this place, when the ex-
ploratory period be over and response in the villages, together with
increased manpower, had enabled missionaries to come out to their
own little houses in the hills to spend periods teaching between
spells at the Moung Mai base ; when the tribesmen themselves be-
came their own foremost evangelists and pastors, as I was to see
in Borneo.

Next morning only two porters offered. We were entitled to eight
and required four, having no wish to carry loads ourselves, as we
aimed to cover the whole distance back to Moung Mai in one day.
John went to the Twirp. "Look here," he said. "These two have come
all the way from England to write about Laos. What sort of report
will they put in their book? People say the Lao are lazy. Here is
your chance to prove them wrong."

"These people are not Lao."

"Well, they are not American ! "

"Oh, they haven't been assimilated yet. They don't count." John's
remarks shamed the Twirp into producing a third porter, leaving
John's pack and one bedroll to be carried by ourselves. We crossed
the pontoon at 7:15 A.M., with twenty-eight miles to go.

A brisk pace covered the first stage in twenty minutes; we
stopped at the Heffalump trap at the first hour, and by 9:45, al-
ready hot and covered with sweat, plunged into the big pool. The
carriers when they caught up announced they would cook here. We
added tinned meat to the rice, and I would have eaten much more
had I known what lay ahead.

We had salt tablets to offset the loss by sweat. Take Awful Warn-
ing never use hot coffee to wash down salt tablets; there were
terrible moments of suspense in the bushes.

We divided forces. Keeping the carriers' pace would have pre-
vented us reaching the river until well after dark, with no certainty

Fear Beside the River 14$

of a canoe. John was anxious to call on the governor before he should
hear of our expedition. Dave therefore would bring up the carriers,
if necessary spending the night the wrong side of the river, and Anne,
John, and I would press on by forced marches, he and I sharing his
pack in strict hourly rotation. No danger of getting lost because
all roads led to Rome.

The next stage in the heat and at the speed we marched made us
thirsty, only to realize too late that we had left Dave not only the
kettle but the chlorinating tablets, and since the occasional water on
the trail was not safe to drink we had to ration the two polythene
water bottles, which tasted of India rubber anyway. The forest
shade was blessed, and a stretch in the open showed what we would
have endured on the more easterly trails. In three hours we came
to a sola damaged by a wild elephant, and having sat on a log for
most of the ten-minute halt went to look, and remembering that a
sola means water, sought it and rinsed faces. The day resolved into
hourly stretches with that pack getting steadily heavier as the car-
rying hour seemed to lengthen. At first the chat went back and forth
merrily as we spanked along. Gradually conversation slackened, and
all energies were concentrated on getting there.

At 3 130 P.M. we reached where we had slept the first night. The
tribespeople to whom we had played records on the trail were
grouped around the pool. Leaving Anne dipping her legs in the
water, John and I went out of sight and had a veritable buffalo
wallow, lying in the water and going right under as long as breath
lasted. John went further : his face took on the unmistakable expres-
sion of contented water buffalo.

Had we now had a meal and unlimited liquid we should have
romped home. We had only five sweets between the three of us,
having voluntarily outwalked our supplies, and a mouthful of water
each. On the trail again just after four we scarcely slackened pace,
but when the evening sun slanted through a part of the forest where
a fire had burned most of the leaves off the trees, the pack, which
I then had, took on alarming weight and proportions.

Our feet in gym shoes were exquisitely tender, our tongues cleaved
to the roof of our mouths as we struck through the paddy stubble
and could see the plateau beyond the town and river, sharp in the

150 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

setting sun. We were racing the night; whacked, moving like auto-
matons.

At 6 :ro we staggered into the suburb beside the river. Clambering
painfully up into a pop shop, we each downed two bottles of orange
fizz (un-iced). Mercifully a man agreed to paddle us over, and I
was so desiccated that just the touch of water refreshed as I held
my hands over the side. The canoe landed at the governor's beach.
Summoning the shreds of our courtesy we called on him. He was
delighted to know we had been "& la Laveh," and his servant
brought us iced tea. Tactfully and of necessity tying a woolly round
the seat of my old shorts, I followed John and Anne down the
stairs.

We went to another pop shop and had another two bottles each of
orange (iced) one was quite fizzy. We entered the local eating
place, and ordered a Chinese meal from the shopkeeper. His wife,
holding her baby, murmured: "Look, little one, Frenchmen I Take
care, little one, take care; they'll get you, they'll get you! 5 ' A white
man is to mothers in Laos what Boney used to be to nannies of the
Napoleonic Wars.

There was a pot of Chinese tea on the table, unfortunately luke-
warm. I drank a glass and a half, too fast. On top of iced tea and
four bottles of pop in an exhausted, empty stomach, the effect was
devastating. When the meal came, one spoonful and I had to rush
for the gutter.

"Ugh," said the disgusted shopkeeper in Lao to John, "He's
drunk!"

TWENTY *f* The Land of Never Mind

The Prince lit another cigarette. "If you prefer Kolynos and I pre-
fer Colgate," he said, ^why should I get upset? It's just preference.
It is all the same, really, all toothpaste. In the same way I am Bud-
dhist, you are Christian. What is the difference? It's all religion.
Why, I won the divinity prizes at Aldro school ! "
I was back in Bangkok. We tad eoime down to Paks6 in an over-

The Land of Never Mind 151

loaded bus-truck. Anne was squeezed into the cabin ; John Davis and
I sat on the roof, legs dangling over the side, a tribesman clinging
round my middle, whether for his protection or mine I never dis-
covered.* From Pakse next day Uncle John Kuhn had escorted us
across the Mekong River and over those awful roads to Ubon in a
jeep driven by Leslie Chophard, one of the two independent Ameri-
can Brethren who with the Swiss and the O.M.F. and six Japanese
complete the tally of missionaries to the tribes of Lower Laos.
Leslie had been a fighter pilot in the war, and drove his jeep ac-
cordingly.

Back in Bangkok ; big buildings and air-conditioned offices ; two-
carriage yellow streetcars with striped sun curtains, crowded noisy
main streets, Chinese food vendors hawking hot noodles at the curb-
side, hurrying coolies with loads swinging from bamboo poles over
the shoulder, garbage in the back streets ; stinking open ditches in
the new city and, beyond the river, wide canals where floating shops
ply in canoes with high prows curving inward: butcher, fruitseller,
hairdresser, dressmaker, lottery-ticket seller, and the coffin shop;
palaces and ill-kept parks, equestrian statues, officials all in similar
American-style uniform so that only by capband may a soldier be
distinguished from a streetcar conductor, a policeman from a rail-
wayman. And always that violent traffic and the heart-rending
squeals of the bicycle brakes of the samlors.

"Why should I get upset?" repeated the Prince. "Toleration is
the hallmark of Thai life." A secretary of the embassy had kindly
driven me out to my appointment with Prince Prem Purachatra at
his small modern house beyond the Royal Palace, and now we sat
on blue leather sofas beneath pictures and ornaments, a glass case
of orders and decorations, and a bust of the Prince's father, one
of the elder sons of King Chulalongkorn. Prince Prem, who after
Aldro preparatory school had gone to Harrow and New College,
Oxford, is a widely traveled man of literary attainments, a poet
and novelist, editor of the leading English-language weekly in Thai-
land. About forty, he is small and chubby and quite fair of skin ;
he wore glasses and talked volubly in a frank way that I liked.

* Over a year later I heard that the impromptu sacred concert with which
John and I passed the time had been a factor in the subsequent conversion of
this very

i 5 2 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

"Toleration is the hallmark of Thai life. Our history and our
nature dispose us to be friendly to foreigners. The character of
Buddhism is to show the way but not to compel anyone to follow
it. I myself accept Buddhism as a philosophy rather than a religion ;
I don't believe all of it. It does not make much difference what you
actually believe. Buddhism must not force. So it is against our faith
to persecute or to object to people changing religion. The King
is not only Head of the Buddhist faith but Protector of all reli-
gions. Therefore an offense against Christians for their religion, a
persecution, is an offense against the person of the King, and it is
so written in the Constitution. The King will subscribe to Christian
or other religious institutions. Do not forget that earlier Kings gave
land and money for churches and Christian institutions. Toleration
is the hallmark of Thai life," said Prince Prem again.

Thailand or Siam (Prince Prem and many others still prefer
Siam as the English name for the Land of the Thais), the real Thai-
land, away from the route of the globe-trot, is less familiar than
it should be. "Siamese cats, Siamese twins, and The King and I
that's all that anybody in the West seems to know about Thailand,"
said one missionary.

Thailand is underpopulated for the extent of arable land, a fortu-
nate fact marking it from the rest of Southeast Asia. No one need be
hungry; most are as prosperous as they wish. It has known no
modern war, and I used to wonder what that enormous Victory
Monument commemorated. Thailand never had a colonial master,
thanks to the astuteness and good government of its Kings, a wise
American adviser, and the desire of Britain and France to keep a
buffer between their colonies, and it is free of the self-conscious sen-
sitive nationalism that complicates most Asian countries.

"We have not had foreign domination. Therefore we are friendly
to foreigners and feel no antipathy to missionaries or others." This
was the first point made by the aged Prince Dhani Nivat (Prince
Bidyalabh Prutiyakorn), former Prince Regent and now President
of the Privy Council and of great influence with the young King.
Prince Dhani, grandson of the great King Mongkut, is an old Rug-
beian and an Oxford man. He was wearing the formal Thai dress
little seen today; his courtesy and charm were positively restful, his
comments shrewd and wide-ranging, as would be expected.

The Land of Never Mind 153

Old Siam had certain foreign benefits without foreign rule. On
the other hand the average road, a torment of stones, earth, and
clinker, shows what it missed. Modern Thailand is proud to be the
headquarters of SEATO, and America is the young Thai's idea of
heaven. Bangkok likes foreigners. In the countryside, as we found
for ourselves, they are as rare animals strayed from a zoo, to be
stared at with avid but friendly and smiling curiosity.

The Thai is fairly small but well built. His face is round with
somewhat puffy eyes, and he has a small mouth inclined to sag at
the corners, a broad forehead, black hair, and a skin surprisingly
light when not sunbrowned. He is cheerful, lovable, easygoing, and
rather childish. You get the impression that his motorcar or his radio
or the implements of his trade are toys, his fields a child's garden to
be played with when he feels inclined.

Thais are very polite, except when in control of a car. The head
is considered highest, the foot basest. It is impolite to point the
foot, and if you want to be thoroughly rude, waggle it. When you
pass someone sitting, bend the head to indicate no discourtesy, espec-
ially if he is your superior. The object is always to get lower than
the other; a European accustomed to standing until requested to
take a seat finds it strange that the Thai makes at once for the
nearest chair to stop his head dominating his host's. Another courtesy
is to place the left hand under the right arm when handing an ob-
ject or serving a dish. Politeness crops up unexpectedly. We were
walking along a river in Central Thailand when a row of school-
girls in their blue skirts and white blouses coming toward us
stopped, lined up and, though bursting with curiosity, bowed their
heads as we passed, folding their hands in the Wai, the same greet-
ing as the Indian's Namastay.

Thais are lazy. No one works harder than he must and no one
need work hard. Strong houses are not required, firewood is unneces-
sary, and so are thick clothes. The farmer harvests his rice and then
takes a long rest. We were there when the dried-up paddy fields
were brown with stubble or blackened where good straw had been
burned as an indolent way of clearing, and most of the country
people sat about in enormous sun hats or knotted around the radio
shops watching television. That the shopkeeper does not mind sel-

i 5 4 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

dom selling sets to regular viewers is an example of the Thais 7 easy-
going ways. They are mentally lazy, too, preferring magazines to
books, seldom engaging in serious talk.

Mai pen rai "Never mind" is always on Thai lips. Two bicycles
collide: "Never mind," they laugh. A man loses his watch. "Never
mind," he says cheerfully. A military coup took place shortly before
we arrived, and two others in recent years. No one noticed and no
blood was shed. This easygoing tolerance has its limits ; life is not
always a song : cases of gunshot and knife wounds after armed rob-
bery or drunken fights were regularly entering a Christian hospital
where we stayed. Yet compared with most parts of Southeast Asia,
the Thai lives one long beautiful morning.

An aspect of this merry country was a big surprise : the discovery
of what Buddhism really involves.

Thailand and Cambodia are held up to the world as the centers
of purest Buddhism. The temples of Bangkok, as every tourist knows,
are serene and beautiful. The Marble Temple, the Temple of the
Emerald Buddha, but not, I felt, Wat Amn, the Temple of Dawn,
rising like a cone from the riverside, encourage stillness of mind as
does no Chinese, Burmese, or Indian temple except possibly the
Golden Temple of the Sikhs at Amritsar.

The patient and scholarly may drink deep of Buddhist philosophy,
of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Noble Path, at the feet
of grave and reverend abbots. To the ordinary Thai, Buddhism
denotes sanug, or fun. The temple is the center of social life where
at community merit-makings or at family festivals neighbors and
relatives have a good time, despite primitive Buddhism's outlawing
of the pursuit of happiness. There is no regular congregational wor-
ship. The individual goes to the temple to offer flowers and in-
cense, or to listen with others to the Buddhist scriptures being read
in the ancient Pali language and expounded in Thai, but not for a
"church service."

Apart from fun, religion is primarily the means of making suffi-
cient merit to ensu salvation which^ to the Thai, signifies a better
life next time and, eternal bliss some time; trae Buddhism knows
neither a heaven of conscious Miss nor a soul to enjoy it For a
male the immemorial custom of HibmfttiBg^ if; oifly fon a short per-

The Land of Never Mind 155

iod in boyhood, to shaving of the head and donning of the yellow
robe and the discipline of the monastery goes a long way to meet
the demand of the cardinal tenet, "By one's own good deeds salvation
must be won." For a woman, feed the priest. There is much merit
in the spoonful of rice ladled into the bowl of the yellow robes as
they walk the streets or paddle the canals in the early mtfrning.
"Monk" would be a better translation of Phra than "priest," for
as Prince Prem said, "They are there primarily for their own salva-
tion rather than to help people, though they have a social value
in bringing up boys, teaching and so on, as well as officiating at
weddings and funerals."

Merit-making becomes more important in old age. The British
ambassador, from his long experience in the Consular Service in
Siam, put it rather nicely: "You get cracking when old, doing
enough to make enough merit to be sure not to be reborn as a carp
or a snake. But not too much in case you go straight to Nirvana
and have no more fun on earth ! "

The gap between primitive Buddhism and the Thai version is fur-
ther evidenced by the spirit houses. These little constructions like
dovecotes are everywhere, outside peasant cottages, outside the
homes of businessmen and diplomats, and even in temple courts.
The householder will never go away without telling his particular
spirit, and will thank him on return for guarding the place. And
the less-educated Thai has firmly deified Buddha and prays to him.
"As they get education they know better," Prince Dhani said.
"Buddha is not God. Buddhism directs you in the right way but
does not take you there. That is left to you." For the common man,
that is not enough.

Few get agitated. Mai pen rai. Never mind.

In this tolerant country it is a surprise that only a fraction are
Christian: of a population of 23,000,000 some 30,000 are Protestants,

The Roman Catholic Church, as often in Asia, began centuries
before the Protestants, but work is largely among Chinese and other
non-Thais. Two Protestant missionaries, Europeans, entered in 1828.
In 1831 the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions
sesQt tlbeir fest representatives, and it is the American Presbyterian
Gtarelt which & fee greatest name.

I5 6 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

The effect of the early Americans was soon felt ; they introduced
printing, surgery, vaccination, schools, winning the confidence of the
Crown. F. B. Sayer, whose wisdom helped Thai foreign policy, was
an American missionary. A few Chinese were baptized. The mis-
sionaries were men of that courage, sterling character, and deep faith
which has characterized their mission ever since. It was not until
1859, thirty-one years after the Protestants had come, that the first
person of full Thai blood was baptized. Only when they shifted their
main effort to the north, where animism is stronger than Buddhism,
did the Presbyterians see the birth of a church of appreciable size.

Today the Church of Christ in Thailand, the indigenous body
which grew from the Presbyterians, has high prestige, and controls
renowned institutions such as the Leprosy Colony at Chiengmai and
the Chritian Hospital at Bangkok. Relations seem excellent be-
tween Thai Christian leaders and those foreigners that the American
Presbyterians prefer to call "fraternal workers" rather than mis-
sionaries. When after the Second World War a number of other
missions at last approached Thailand, the C.C.T., far from being
jealous of possible poaching on their preserves, sponsored them and
did their utmost to smooth the way, knowing that geographically as
well as numerically they themselves had been able to cultivate merely
a few small corners.

Entry of missionaries is unrestricted. A Christian may preach on
the streets, build churches, hold conferences, do anything reasonable
he wishes. I found it refreshing to be in a country where no one
need look over his shoulder, where names may be freely quoted,
where the suave assurances of official spokesmen did not provoke
long low whistles from those who knew the facts. The only intoler-
ant time in modern Thai history was during the war when under
Japanese influence Field Marshal Pibul Songgram, now safely out at
grass in California, ordered all men to be Buddhists. "He did not
like to do things by halves/' said Prince Dhani. "He thought all in a
Buddhist country ought to be Buddhists, and he tried to get Chris-
tians to change back." Christian government officials were forced
to study Buddhism. Open pressure was slight

Thailand is not quite so tolerant as Thais would like you to
believe. By an unwritten rule an army officer must be Buddhist.
"To be a Thai is to be a Buddhist and to be a Buddhist is to be a

Bread upon the Waters 157

Thai" is much quoted; family pressure can be strong even if no
father would beat or disinherit his son for turning Christian, as in
India. Compared with most other parts of Asia, Thailand stands for
tolerance.

Why then so few Christians?

"Tolerance is like a wet blanket over the country," said an English
missionary. "Tolerance" is probably the wrong word: indifference
would be better. When talking with educated Thais I met the feel-
ing that the contrast between Buddhism and Christianity was so
slight that why should anyone change? "I'm a good Buddhist but
I am Christian too," was their refrain, and always a little discreet
questioning revealed that the speaker had no knowledge of the dis-
tinctive message of Christianity perhaps because his ideas were
based on misty memories of chapel and divinity at English public
school. As for the ordinary people, Mai pen rai. It is the land of the
Big Yawn a cheerful yawn, comfortable, under the trees, out of the
sun.

Nevertheless I began to share the feelings of those working there
that Thailand may be the Cinderella of the Asian Church.

TWENTY-ONE & Bread upon the Waters

It was Roy Ferguson, an Australian, who told me of Mr. Samyorng.
Samyorng Saelim's father was Thai and his mother Chinese, mixed
marriage being frequent in Thailand. He was about twenty-six.

"When he was just leaving school," Roy Ferguson said, "Sam-
yorng saw an acting troupe, and was fascinated. The old Thai
dramas are very immoral, actors generally drug addicts, and looked
down on. When his father, who was a respectable carpenter, refused
to let him be an actor, Samyorng ran away. During the next nine
years he gradually rose to be leading man.

"In September, 1956, the troupe was in the market town where
we were stationed. Apparently he was very attracted by my little
girl, who was then nearly three. Samyorng hadn't the courage to
make contact with us, being very conscious of Ms low dass as an

i 5 8 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

actor, and because foreigners were unusual. His younger brother
had joined him and was coming to our house every day, attracted
by the Thai children who came to sing. He urged his brother to
come and sing too.

"One night the electricity failed and they were unable to act.
Samyorng and the joker of the troupe then came across to our
house. I sang them a simple song dealing with the elements of the
faith. Because of the Thai tune both of them were impressed. For
three hours they listened and I played Gospel records, read Scrip-
ture portions, and explained them. Samyorng had never heard any-
thing like it. It went like an arrow to his heart. He had no conscious-
ness of sin, but in the course of this night and the next it was
aroused.

"The next night the electricity was still off and we were using a
little oil lamp during the playing of a record he suddenly jumped
up and cried out : 'I can see it I I can see it I The light is shining
into my heart.' His friend also jumped up. c Where is it? I can't
see the light ! ' I said, *Sit down again and we will talk more until
you see the light too.' After about half an hour they both said almost
at once, 'How can we accept this Lord Jesus ?' They were obviously
sincere. I warned them that they might get persecuted by the
troupe. They said : 'It doesn't matter what it may cost us. We must
become Christians. This is the truth.' "

At this point in the narrative Samyorng himself came into the
room where Ferguson and I were sitting in the Christian Hospital
at Manoram, 125 miles north of Bangkok. He came by chance to give
Ferguson a note on the way to church but stayed to talk to me,
Roy Ferguson interpreting. Samyorng was slight, with a face well
formed and a nose less squat than that of a full-blooded Thai, and
hair well back from his forehead.

I asked Mm what difference Christ had made. After thinking a
few moments, rubbing his hands up and down the bottle of water
on the table, he said very quietly : "Joy and peace and light. This is
obvious to all Christians. There is no need to speak about those
things. ... I had always had a fear of judgment and hell and a
desire for heaven. By heaven I meaat a place of blessedness. I knew
BotMng about the Buddhist Nirvana. Before I was a Christian
tibere was one sin I WBS absolutely towel to, and that was hemp. I
used to take it many times a day. The night when I confessed my sins

Bread upon the Waters 159

and truly trusted Christ, I returned to my companions and the
hemp, but behold! I was tired of it and did not want it any more.
And I haven't smoked it since. The pipe belonged to the troupe or
I would have broken it.

"There are many other sins which actors fall into easily, and I
was no exception. We were afraid of the truth and told lies very
easily but from the time when I became a Christian I have striven
only to tell the truth. Women these fellows were at it every night,
including myself. When I became a Christian I made a clean break.
I wanted to give up the acting profession, but it was eleven months
before a way opened up." He said that the troupe did not per-
secute him. "In the acting profession we are very close friends and
depend on one another for our livelihood. There was never any at-
tempt to get me back into Buddhism. There were arguments, of
course. Because of the big change in me some of them were in-
terested, and said it is good. While nobody believed, nobody
hindered."

Samyorng speaks beautifully, every word enunciated clearly, a
smile lighting his face as he lifts his eyebrows and his hands to make
a point.

He had, he continued, no other means of support, and would
be obliged to leave his possessions with the troupe. The break came
when he entered the Christian Hospital for the kidney trouble which,
as he knows, will shorten his life. A Thai connected with the hospi-
tal supported him for a month and thereafter offered him a post
as night cleaner. The manual labor and the humiliation of going
down on the floor foot level nearly broke his heart. He itched to
return to acting. At his most discouraged he had an overwhelmingly
vivid sense of the presence of God: "You had no time to talk
to Me when you were acting. Now you have. Is it not worth it?"
Out of that experience he wrote a fine hymn which he set to one
of the old tunes of the classic Thai drama. Since then he has written
hymn after hymn. He sang two for me in his full tenor : a paraphrase
of the Twenty-third Psalm and a song on the Wounds of the Cross.
"The tune is the one sung by the King in the old dramas as he
is bring deposed. The verse is plaintive and the chorus stronger,
to encourage; himself. In my hymn the verses meditate xm Christ's
sufferings; the chorus is of thanksgiving and dedication,"

Mr. Samyorng is now hospital evangelist and secretary of the

160 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

Thai governing body of the Central Thailand Church. His hymns
are widely used. I asked him before he left, "What is the cause
of the lack of response to Christ in Thailand?" He thought carefully
and smiled, and thought more and looked solemn, and said: "I
think it is because the Thai people are free and easy in their own
national religion. They are most concerned about things of the world :
to become a Christian there is the possibility of having to give up
the things of the world and become devoted in their religion.
When they have a merit-making they all flock to it, but their religion
is entirely outward. When they become Christians it touches their
lives it is difficult to be a sincere Christian."

Mr. Arphorn had been a monk at Bangkok, six years in the novi-
tiate and nine years a fully fledged priest. He was in his mid-thirties.

The temple had a library and he was thirsty for knowledge. In
the course of his browsing he became interested in descriptions of
various institutions connected with Christianity, such as hospitals
and leprosy colonies. "The Buddhists have nothing like that of
their own," he said, "though the influence of the Presbyterian Mis-
sion has made them start one or two hospitals." He could have stayed
in the priesthood but, unusually for a monk, he felt a hypocrite.
"I was sincere but conscious that I could not keep up to standard.
I knew that as the rules increased in stiffness I would break them.
Rather than do that I decided to come out." Furthermore, a thinker,
he was worrying about problems to which he could find no answer,
and saw that the theory and the practice of Buddhism are "poles
apart," as he expressed it. He has now some pungent comments on
temple leadership. "The leaders of the monks are greatly respected
and worshiped. The more they are, the more proud they become. In-
stead of making them humble. In Christianity pride is a sin, and a
big one at that. Christ was humble, so His followers should be. The
more Christ comes in, the more humble you become, And instead of
all your service being done for yourself, as the Buddhist monk's is,
it is done for Him."

Coming out of the priesthood, Arphorn lived in Bangkok, then
at Paknampho, about a hundred miles north, where he worked as
storekeeper in an electricity works. At Paknampho, still interested
in accumulating knowledge, he bought a set of Scripture portions

Bread upon the Waters 161

from a missionary. "I wanted to go and study about the Christian
religion but was embarrassed and backward about going there. It
was a year before I had courage to go. A friend in Shell Oil intro-
duced me."

He attended regularly at the missionary's Bible studies. Slowly he
came to full belief. "What really made me believe was the realization
that in Christ you actually meet the object of your faith. In Bud-
dhism you have to acquire knowledge in order to obtain faith ; your
faith can never outrun your intellectual grasp. Faith in Christ
actually brings you His life, and with His life comes the truth. In
Him you have the fountainhead of wisdom which to the Buddhist is
something remote, to be striven toward by long years of hard learn-
ing and good works."

When I put my question to Mr. Arphorn, why there was such
small response to Christ in Thailand, part of his answer was most
illuminating. "The Thai people follow what they hear about. The
more they hear, the more they will believe. The more they hear
about Christianity, the less they will regard with suspicion. They
are suspicious of anything new. When this hospital opened two
and a half years ago, they used to tear up the little tracts they were
given, not out of hostility but because they knew nothing about the
teaching inside them. Now they respect them because they know
something of what it all stands for. Until the past few years this
part of Thailand had no Christian work at all except for an oc-
casional colporteur or a missionary passing through, or a Thai Chris-
tian moving in from elsewhere. They have hardly begun to hear.
Custom is stronger than religion. Once we get them accustomed
to the facts of Christianity, we shall get people. Once we get a lot
of people following Christianity, we shall get others following."

"You are, then, expressing strong hopefulness?" I asked. "Granted
that only the grace of God can win, you are saying that if we pump
in knowledge of Christianity there should be one day a strong turn-
ing?"

"Yes. Definitely."

The river Suphan wound muddily but was beautiful within its
verges of trees masking the dried-up acres. Birds were calling in the
early sun. A kingfisher, deep red and blue, darted from a branch

162 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

and curved close to the water. Now and again a timber house on
stilts could be seen through the trees.

We were on Santisuk, the Gospel launch. Central Thailand is a
maze of waterways, thousands of miles of connecting rivers and
canals. Some are big, like the Chao Phya River we had left the pre-
vious afternoon, in dry weather flowing clear and full because of
the new Chainat dam. The small serpentine Suphan would be un-
navigable in February were it not for another dam built with Amer-
ican aid.

Water is both road and village street. In 1955 a British missionary,
a former naval man, had the idea of using a launch as a means of
itinerant evangelism. A somewhat unsatisfactory boat was bought
secondhand and fitted out, to be replaced a year later by Santisuk.
(The name means "Peace/ 7 literally : "Quietness of heart and hap-
piness of mind.") Designed by the naval man and built at Paknam-
pho at the cost of about 1,400, the gross weight of the Santisuk is
3 tons; it is 32 feet long, 10 feet wide, has a draught of 2 foot 6
inches, and is powered by an 1 8 h.p. Enfield Diesel engine made
in England. In the dry season Santisuk is confined to conventional
channels, but in the wet can career across the countryside almost
at will.

The Gospel launch often carries as crew a married couple and a
single man: the resultant squash and lack of privacy, admirably
designed as the boat is, may be imagined. The present complement
was two, an American, John Casto, doing a temporary spell before
getting married, and a black-haired Swiss called Armin Staub, who
holds Thai engineer's and navigator's licenses. For Armin Staub
Santisuk is the dearest thing on earth.

We had been chugging downstream some minutes from the dam,
John Casto at the wheel, when we saw a temple and beyond the
temple a hamlet. "There is a family of believers there," said Armin.
"I'll put on a record to let them know that we are about and will
call on our way back. They will be in the fields behind the trees."
Sousa's Washington Post march blared over the loudspeaker.
Armin next put on a Gospel Record and continued to play Gospel
Records interspersed with stirring music. We were mating for a mar-
tat some miles away but could play as we passed : merely a scatter-
ing of seed, for those IB ^@uses or fields or washing themselves or

Bread upon the Waters 163

their clothes or their buffaloes would not hear more than a little. In
a fortnight the launch was to return and spend several days.

I was surprised to hear that no missionary had been stationed
in this part of Central Thailand until the IQSO'S. No one would
quarrel with the decision of the American Presbyterians to settle in
the North, in view of their limited manpower and the opportunity.
Where, until so recently, were others, especially from Britain? The
Churches of the West still do not take Thailand seriously.

At a turn of the river we came on temple school at the midmorning
break. About a hundred children excitedly flocked to the landing
stage. The little launch tied up. Armin plugged in the microphone
and spoke to them, after which John Casto stepped ashore with
bundles of brightly colored tracts. When there is a crowd of children
tracts are not given away but sold, else they would not be valued,
and one costs about the sum a schoolchild carries for sweets at
midday; to buy means no sweets; fourteen packets were snapped
up. "A Christian used to live just opposite, so these children would
have heard before," said Armin as we backed into midstream, the
PA. system carrying a spirited record about the lame man let down
through the roof to the feet of Jesus.

We overtook a rice convoy that had passed through the water gate
with us, a slow, close-packed proceeding. The heavy barges have
a long hold covered by a tin roof, and at the back the family quar-
ters, some smart with polished wood, others a jumble of kerosene
tins, hencoops, branches of bananas, cooking pots, perhaps a baby
swinging in a shawl. Most have the typical dun-colored waterbutt
decorated with yellow dragons ; rudders and the high curving tillers
would be painted blue or red. The barge people had asked for
literature. "They probably have not traveled with us before," Armin
had said, "but word has got round of a foreign boat on the water-
ways, a good boat which has not caused an accident, and what it's
doing." The name is often remarked on, and the texts printed on
boaids port and starboard. As we went by, several waved and others
were reading.

At a second, smaller temple school on the left bank we again
tied up. Village men clad only in cotton trousers joined the chil-
dren to Hsten. At the invitation to take a gift tract adults are some-
tinies bashful, but here a young man made the move. Everybody

i6 4 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

followed. Toward the end a gaffer with gray mustache and a fringe
of beard and swept-back graying hair, and on his bare chest and
arms elaborate tattoos, came running through the trees to get one.
Finally a youthful monk bought a pile of the larger booklets.

We cruised on, then tied up to a tree stump in the mud. While
Armin and John prepared a meal on the kerosene stove, I had a
bathe. After stew on rice and bamboo shoots, followed by papaya,
we took a snooze on the roof during the hour when not even a
buffalo will stir in Central Thailand.

When Santisuk was under way again/ the afternoon resolved into
a zigzag from landing stage to little landing stage to satisfy the de-
mand for literature from people attracted by broadcasting. Out of
sight behind the trees were an astonishing number of homes. Even
when we could see no one we were heard. I was equally astonished
by the appetite for Christian books. At a stage on the left bank
waited men in straw hats and blue cotton, their women with gray
hair done in the typical "urchin cut," and their dog exceedingly
puzzled. On the right bank was a granny whose teeth were rotted
with betel chewing. She had amulets round her neck, and one
shoulder bare, a triangle of white cotton loosely over her breasts,
and a blue skirt. She was joined by a podgy youth with a hairlip
so wide you could see his misshapen upper teeth.

A man in red-checked pha, his torso a mass of tattooing, beckoned
us back to the left bank. A woman at the next landing stage ran
away when she heard the price of the better booklets and returned
with money, spitting out a sluice of betel juice, A woman just
home from market set down two large baskets to receive a tract.
Her small child had had her head newly shaved except for a long
lock at the back, and silver ear-bobs, after a Buddhist ceremony.

Sometimes we stopped only long enough to give literature ; some-
times Armin talked over the P.A. system or played a complete rec-
ord, generally of an incident in the life of our Lord. "There ! " he
said, brushing sweat from his eyes as the launch reversed from yet
another stage: "Only one incident of the life of Christ, but they
know it now. Know something about Him. And they will read those
tracts at night by the light of their little primitive oil lamps just
a wick in a tin with a little kerosene. Did you see those old Christ-
mas cards from England wMch have had Thai texts written in?
They love those."

"And Put Forth His Hand" 165

We had to disappoint people waiting on the bank or be late for
the meeting we had planned. Thao Keo (Glass Harbor), the market,
was nothing but a bamboo jetty, a heap of garbage, a rice mill with
tall chimney, a street with shops and timber houses, and a gate at
the end leading straight into the fields no road; the river is the
road. The street had a cinema screen across it, for a white medical
boat was in ; they were going to give a film show ; having got every-
body to town, they would inject them against cholera. A man up-
river had already told us. "They will always tell us where to find
a crowd," said Armin.

Our program of records and talk did not, I thought, excite much
interest, certainly not so much as that of another night at a different
market, where Anne and I sat behind a substantial crowd on the
bank watching colored slides thrown on a screen Armin had erected
on Santisu&s roof. The pictures of the life of Christ were accompa-
nied by a taped commentary by a Thai, and the most impressive elec-
trical storm I have seen. Here at Glass Harbor the crowd was thin
(it included a rarity, a Thai albino) and not attentive. A record
which cleverly compared Christianity with Buddhism rather as a
political pamphlet will quote points from the opposing party to
prove its own provoked animated discussion in a teashop between a
man in a pink shirt, rather amused, another bare to the waist with a
teapot in front of him, and a man of more educated appearance.

A passenger launch disgorged its passengers. A big barge tied up
next to us. It had a treadle sewing machine and shining cooking pots.
The man went ashore ; the woman in skirt and bodice ate her evening
rice, swilled the bowl in the turbid river, and drank.

TWENTY-TWO *$* "And Put Forth His

Hand 3 '

The meeting over, John cooked supper. We cast off and crossed back
in the darkness to a point a half-mile upstream and ate pork chops
in the living space over the engine, throwing the bones to the water.
A Thai hailed us from the shore : "Why do you tie up in the wilds
like this? Why don't you go to the market?"

266 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

"We're all right, thank you."

"I'd go to the headman's. It's safer."

The plan was to find a Christian's house, call on him, and spend
the night tied up to his jetty. Anne and I washed up in the tiny
galley, Armin took the wheel, and John handled the searchlight. We
failed to find the place before Armin said: "It is getting too late,
and they will have gone to sleep. Life closes down early because they
get up at dawn. Well stop here." Two heavy poles were worried into
the mud, and the launch was lashed fore and aft.

You could wash in the smart little lavatory or on the narrow stern
deck with pails of river water, jumping down for a swim in the
warm night; clambering back was more difficult. Because the two
screened two-berth cabins were stuffy and cramped, the men nobly
rigged us a mosquito net on the roof. A strong wind made it un-
necessary at first. Bites awoke me at 1:00 A.M. The wind had
dropped, so I dropped the net too.

As the river emerged into clear daylight, every scent and sound
sharp, the freshness of morning made a memorable background to
one's devotions. By the time we had taken down the net, dismantled
the poles, stowed mattresses and bedding in the cabin, the others had
prepared a breakfast of porridge, scrambled eggs, toast, coffee or
postum, banana and pomalo, that outsize citrus fruit which is one
of the best in the tropics. This very area produced the most famous
variety in Thailand, exceptionally juicy, and with a taste more of
grapefruit than of orange. We bought more from a floating market
which paddled by, tooting the appropriate sound. The coffee man
honks an old-fashioned car horn. The ice-cream man rings a bell,
The butcher blows a ram's horn.

Inevitably, considerable time was spent on interior economy. We
washed up again, Armin cleaned the engine, and John, donning a
pha, washed down the deck and went overboard to scrub the sides,
diving under to dean the propeller.

"What real exercise do you get?" I said.

"Getting the poles out. You try."

I did. I took off my sfakt, and sweated at those poles. It is partly
a knack but mainly stxepgtk Once each pole is out and floating, it
can be pulled in easily. On a later occasion I loosed them, without
orders, when no one was at the wheel, and I am not dear why, being

"And Put Forth His Hand" 167

a landlubber, but the second pole promptly made off downstream
and had to be retrieved by Annin. We were in a sluggish stretch
or my zeal might have lost it.

On the last day of our trip, when Santisuk was anchored among
the reeds in a back water of the big river, Armin and I discussed the
aims of this enterprise. "We are definitely working on a long-term
strategy," he said. "The scheme has been to spread a basic knowl-
edge of the Gospel, mainly by literature there's a high standard of
literacy all along the waterways ; in other words, throughout Cen-
tral Thailand. For the first two or three years we did the markets and
big settlements. More recently, we have been working from house
to house. The main aim is to do the areas still to be done, but we
have in some places gone over a second time."

"Why do you cover so wide an area?" I asked. "Wouldn't it be
better to concentrate?"

"You have to choose one method, and we chose the other. As a
matter of fact, the earlier boat did spend a long time in one neigh-
borhood, without any result so far as is known. Actually, I would
say that when we see interest we do try to concentrate and give
basic teaching. In January, 1957, we moved through another water
gate off this river where we are now. The village beyond had been
visited by some of our missionaries from Chainat giving out tracts.
When the launch was there a small boy came up and showed a cer-
tificate from a Bible School and said half the temple school, about
120, were doing the correspondence course. The postmaster was al-
ways sold out of stamps. So we went to the temple teacher and got
permission to have a Gospel meeting in the school grounds, and he
let us have one on the Sunday when the school was closed. After that
meeting two or three boys professed to have believed already. We in-
vited them to the boat for further teaching. We decided to stay one
week, and every evening eight or ten boys paddled across the river
to the launch for teaching. Same definitely decided for Christ But
next Sunday no one turned up, probably owing to pressure from
priests. Since then, missionaries have opened a station in the place,
in a rented house. They did not find those students again, either
because of pressure or because they had moved away."

At first I had been skeptical of promiscuous itinerating, the broad-
casting) erf seed over so vast a field, Mr. Arphom's words and my

i68 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

own observations convinced me that the Gospel launch, as well as a
Land-Rover working on a similar pattern in the less watered area to
the east, holds one of the keys to the evangelization of this strangely
neglected countryside. It would be meaningless except as part of an
over-all strategy which includes the Christian Hospital and mis-
sionaries living in the district centers, but it is going far to meet the
special need, to "pump in knowledge."

Direct result may be smalL Armin Staub says : "We are inclined to
think of 'fruit' only as baptism or church membership. I believe that
there must be many along the rivers who believe in their own
hearts without anyone knowing it. Besides, I believe that our own
contribution is to spread the basic knowledge of the history and
teaching of Christ. There is absolutely no background. Why, when
you speak of God pra the same word is used for Buddha, the
King, and for a priest."

If Armin Staub had his way, and funds permitted, a second Gospel
launch would specialize in reaping where the first had sown. Indeed,
Central Thailand offers scope for a fleet.

I was interested to learn, considering the circumstances, that on
that one stretch of river we should pass several Christian homes.
"How did that happen?" I asked.

"Leprosy!"

Some mornings later I went out to a particularly lovely reach of
the Chao Phya on its majestic way down to Bangkok and the sea, to
a little sola. Waiting patients sat on bamboo benches. An English
leprosy specialist on the staff of Manoram Christian Hospital, Dr.
June Morgan, was examining a man with a beautifully tattooed
chest. She took him into the bright sunshine, thereby practically
eliminating risk of infection. Two American nurses put pills into
envelopes.

The next patient, a man in a blue-and-white shirt, had sores. He
told the doctor that he had not used his ointment because it fell off
his bicycle and he lost it. He took off shirt and vest and they went
into the sunshine. There was a roughness of skin round the waist
and on one arm. "Some of those sores on his legs are certainly not
leprosy," Dr. Morgan said to me. "In the tropics you get such a
mixture of skin diseases it is difficult to sort them out. I shall treat

"And Put Forth His Hand" i6p

him for a month and hope to clean the other things up, and then
we can see if there is any leprosy."

Another Englishwoman, Miss Harris, began the midmorning
preach. Gospel posters had been hung on the supports of the sola.
Using an enormous hymnbook held up by one of the Americans, the
Englishwoman took the waiting patients through a Thai hymn ; the
doctor and the other American continued examining and making
up prescriptions. The clinic opened once a week, the patients at-
tending once a month, and was one of a widely dispersed dozen
superintended by Dr. Morgan, through which three thousand men,
women, and children were receiving treatment or preventive treat-
ment. When the informal service was finished, Miss Harris took
two of the listeners away under a tree, and soon they were deep in
talk, a Bible open.

A man in khaki and a small bush hat paid his fee, making a most
respectful wai, pocketed his medicine, and went to the riverbank
where he hailed and boarded a passing passenger launch. Medicine
used by the clinics is given by the Mission to Lepers, but the work
is not self-supporting, even apart from missionary salaries.

An infected mother, who had a bunch of keys on a brass belt
peeping from under her blouse, brought her son because she was
worried that he might have leprosy. He looked ten or twelve, and
was actually seventeen. The doctor examined him but was not cer-
tain. She sat him down, blindfolded him, and touched him lightly
with a piece of paper. He was to point to wherever he had feeling.
Leprosy, being a disease of nerves and skin, may numb a hand or
foot or other extremity. It appeared that the boy was numb in the
left foot.

The next patient had lost his card and had to be traced through
the register. When he was examined Dr. Morgan pronounced, "An
active case, in the early stages. Look at that long red sore called
a macule." The sore stretched round from his right breast down to
the waist. It was worse when Kay Griffin, one of the American nurses,
first saw him three months earlier. "He has been having a small
dosage, as it is an early case. These sulphone drugs are very strong
and effective," said the doctor.

I was introduced to a woman in a blue skirt and raspberry-colored
blouse. She had lost her eyebrows and the bridge of her nose, and

i 7 o EARTH'S REMOTEST END

was numb from the elbow down, so that she constantly burned her
fingers when cooking. A sore spot on her upper right arm showed
that the leprosy was still active. This woman, a believer, was shortly
going to the Leprosy Believers' Conference where some ninety people
would be meeting at a market town up the river.

This use of leprosy clinics to spearhead evangelism was modeled
on the scheme pioneered by Dr. Buker, working with the American
Presbyterians at Chiengmai. Through the clinics flows a steady
trickle of believers into the Christian Church. Leprosy is the soft
underbelly of the yellow robe. Lepers in Thailand, not normally cast
out by their families but considered by public opinion sinners, since
Buddhists teach leprosy to be the result of sin, not only feel that
they are unwanted by their own religion but are among the few
Buddhists with a sense of sin, perverted though it may be. There-
fore they show interest in the theme of redemption. Secondly, the
continuous monthly treatment at the clinics brings them regular
Christian teaching. They become familiar with the facts. Knowl-
edge is "pumped in." And the practical love of Christian nurses
and doctors directs their own sense of need to the place where ac-
ceptance of Christ is no longer a remote possibility.

By the leper his family and his friends may be reached. With Dr.
Morgan and one of the clinic staff we went by road to a patient too
serious to travel to treatment. He was a thirty-three-year-old school-
master and lived near a temple. We climbed the steep steps of his
house, took off our shoes, and entered the clean main room, open-
ing on to a veranda and a pleasant view of palms, kapoks, bananas,
and bamboo. He was sitting in a pha, cheerful. His body was covered
with bits of plaster and open sores oozing pus. Dr. Morgan sat in
the manner of a well-bred Thai woman, feet tucked back to one side,
and prepared penicillin. Virginia Mullin administered it in his upper
backside and began to lance and clean his sores. He took the pain
well and smiled at the jumble of inquisitive children.

As soon as we came, the neighbors and their children came too.
One man importantly showed Dr. Morgan a torso covered with a
skin disease he believed must be leprosy : it was shingles. The neigh-
bors showed no revulsion from the leper. They watched sympatheti-
cally, received the tracts offered, and settled down expectantly for
the preachment which Is alwasre given during a home visit. In one
more way is the Christian Gospel made known.

"And Put Forth His Hand" 171

"The general public at home still thinks a leprosy worker is head-
ing for a martyr's crown.

"In actual fact there is little risk of contagion if you are sensible.
To touch a leper is not the brave or the dangerous thing it used to be
thought. The past fifteen years have revolutionized leprosy treat-
ment. Those sulphone drugs [D.D.S. and Sulphatrone] are widely
used, and for most cases are very effective, and D.D.S. can be given
to children and to contacts in prophylactic doses. In the realm of
surgery much can now be done for injured hands and feet, in some
cases for eyes, and even noses can be remodeled and lost eyebrows
replaced. Education is an important factor in the control of leprosy.
The patients can be taught that they can live normal lives, and many
of them are not infective and therefore of no danger to the com-
munity."

Dr. Morgan told me these facts and of her hopes of a treatment
center attached to the Christian Hospital at Manoram, one Sunday
as we went by motorboat to a service at a little hamlet where a
leper lived. She also gave more details of the spiritual fruit of this
work of compassion, the important factor being that the leper gen-
erally was only the beginning of a church. I had already visited, from
the Gospel launch, the headman of a village who was not a leper
but was a Christian a new, shaky, but undoubtedly sincere Chris-
tian of definite spiritual experience ; and it had all sprung from the
life and words of a leper who had moved to his village.

This process was being repeated at the church near Wat Sing
where we went that Sunday morning. "Church," in an architectural
sense, is a misnomer: it was simply the ground underneath Tong
Chai's house. His large-wheeled narrow country cart stood at the
back. The space was well swept and benches and a table arranged ;
the Thai countryman normally sits on the floor, but Tong Chai
wanted his church to look like a church. A middle-aged man, he
was a leprosy patient without outward marks of the disease. He was
wearing an old thick khaki shirt with black cotton working-class
trousers round which was a thick leather belt with a brass bucMe
suggestive of an English gardener. His face was browned with the
sim; he had a squat nose, protruding lips, and little horn-rimmed
glasses. He looked solemn as he began the service, but when we
talked afterward he sparkled merrily. He had been a believer two
years.

172 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

The congregation apart from our party were his wife and three
young men of the village, two of whom we saw baptized by Tong
Chai in the river after the morning service.
"How did your first convert come?" I asked.
He laughed. "Ask my wife. She was my first convert."
A little apart was another, rather better dressed man, an interested
listener but not yet a believer ; two or three others dropped in and
out during service, and local children wandered around inspecting
us or playing with puppies or being ticked off by the preacher for
making a noise.

Tong Chai alone was a leprosy patient. The others were won by
him ; in this way the church is growing. I asked him, Dr. Morgan
interpreting, how he had become a Christian. "I had been attending
leprosy clinic," he said. "I was given tracts, then I bought a New
Testament. First I came to realize that the Bible was different, was
God's book. As I read, I realized that men really are sinners, and
that Christ had died for sinners. I was afraid I would go to hell,
and wanted to go to heaven." Very gradually he came into the light.
"My great day was when I realized that I would not have to go to
hell because Christ had died for me."

Yes, he said in answer to a further question, he had had many
temptations at first. "The neighbors taunted me that I was not a true
Thai; I replied that it was better to believe God than the neighbors.
Also, it was difficult that I was the only Christian in the district."
As he said this he began to laugh, and chuckled away happily, per-
haps because there were now at least four believers in the area, and
all under God, through him. I asked him what difference Christ had
made in his life. "I was so afraid of hell before. And I couldn't
do good Now I am no longer afraid, and I can do good because of
the Holy Spirit. Also, I used to get so worried about things. Now I
don't"

A Thai Prince once said to a friend of mine, "Do you really think
that with this little Christian church you are going to pull down this
great mountain of Buddhism?"

I think I know the answer, though I may not live to see it.

three

Isles of the Southern Sea

TWENTY-THREE

After the Shooting

In the early hours of Friday, March i3th, the International Express
was slowing down to Tapah Road Station in Perak, North Malaya.

It was the second night from Bangkok. Opposite Penang that eve-
ning we had changed carriages from Thai to Malay. There had been
a sumptuous Malayan coach right through; the windows were sealed
for air conditioning which the Thais will not switch on. We preferred
cool air to comfort and cleanliness. Since Penang the express had cut
through the night at a pace that would have left an Indian mail
panting.

Not long since all trains had been restricted to fifteen miles an
hour and given armed escort. They were still made up with first class
at the rear, second class next, and third in front, as if to take the
brunt of being blown up and derailment.

Sleepily putting together our things, checking that no hand-
kerchief lay forgotten under the pillows of the most comfortable
sleepers in Asia, we were resigned to waiting on the station until
curfew lifted at dawn and our hosts could drive in. There they were,
at 3 :3o AM. Curfew had recently been abolished. We could drive
with safety down the excellent road, headlights blazing, no telegraph
lines sagging, no rifle fire to be feared round a corner. When .we
went for a pre-Easter holiday up at Cameron Highlands, declared
White only a few days earlier, we could carry on walks what food
we liked. Formerly, not even a cracker had been permitted, the idea
being that if five men each carried one cracker, a terrorist robbing
them oouW stave off hunger another day.

*75

176 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

Except for a small area in the North, the shooting was over. Po-
litical danger remained, for the Communists had turned to sub-
version.

Malaya repelled me. It was not so hot as Bangkok, but it was
more humid, so that you sweated when sitting still. The way to keep
cool is to take proper exercise once a day. I never suffered from
Malayan Foot (symptoms : inability to move more than a few yards
except by car), I confess to attacks of Malayan Head (disinclination
to work, inability to concentrate) .

Roads fast and smooth made possible in a day an itinerary that
in Thailand would have taken half a week. It was nice to find English
widely spoken in shops and offices, to see English cars, and buses
that ran to English and not Oriental schedules: they made con-
nections. It was good to eat New Zealand lamb and drink water
from the tap. That took some getting used to.

Nevertheless Malaya repelled. The four-fifths of jungle is drearily
uniform green. The other fifth looks exactly what it is artificial,
cleared from virgin jungle for the purposes of gain by a population
of immigrants, European, Chinese, Indian.

I am not so stupid as to deny the importance to world economy of
those unending rubber trees, the tea bushes in the highlands, the
messy tin mines ; or not to admire the courage of those who faced
death through the Emergency to keep them going. But the Federa-
tion of Malaya, of all the countries we visited, attracted the least.

The Emergency developed an outstanding example of cooperation
between government and missionaries. The large population of Chi-
nese, from which almost all the terrorists were drawn, had lived
scattered in the jungle, market-gardening each in his own little clear-
ing. At the height of the Emergency the government decided to
uproot the jungle Chinese and resettle them in new communities near
the roads so that the law-abiding would no longer be compelled to
feed terrorists, and terrorists, who until then could combine market-
gardening with murder, would be weeded out. Thus began the New
Villages.

Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer, who when High Commissioner
and Commander in Chief of, Malaya brought the churches into the

After the Shooting 177

New Village scheme, very kindly wrote to me, in a letter of April
23, 1959, an account of what happened:

"When my wife and I arrived in Malaya in February, 1952," wrote
Sir Gerald, "the resettlement scheme worked out by General Sir
Harold Briggs was to some considerable extent completed in so far
as the physical move of a very large number of people was concerned.
Later on it was found necessary to deal with very appreciable ad-
ditional numbers. But what had not been done, mainly because there
had been no time to do it, or insufficient money, was to take all the
many steps necessary to make the people feel that they had joined
a community in which they could expect a higher standard of living
and of amenities than in the isolated life from which they had been
compulsorily ejected by Government. And naturally because of the
compulsion, many of them had a chip on their shoulders for that
reason alone, whatever their views might or might not be on Com-
munism.

"It was a very great experiment indeed, for which General Briggs
deserved the greatest credit. Like so many men and women who
initiate an entirely new conception, he never got it. It was in fact
one of the biggest mass moves of families that had ever been planned
and carried out by any Government, certainly in the Colonial
Empire or dependent territories.

"When we got out there, General Briggs had left the country.
He was to die soon afterwards in Cyprus.

"The people in the New Villages or the resettled labor lines
were apathetic in every case. Many of them were working against
Government whether or not as a part of the organized Min Yuen.
They were a safe bet for food supplies from the terrorist point of
view. And so we attempted to harness to our side every activity of
human life and endeavour that we could manage. And managing
meant money. By and large the Malayan Government of the day
poured money into the business. It worked to a very satisfactory
degree. The official appointment of Village Committees, much on
the lines of Rural District Councils in this country ; the improve-
ment of their standard type new houses ; the provision of piped water
(something quite new to most of them) ; the installation wherever
possible of electric light which many had never seen before; the
making of gardens and playing fields ; the finding and allotment of

EARTH'S REMOTEST END

enough agricultural land to enable them at least to keep themselves
in vegetables and to own their own pigs ; the building and running of
Village Community Centres; the installation of communal loud
speaker radio sets ; the building and staffing of clinics whether sta-
tionary or traveling, in which the British Red Cross played a most
noble part by sending out a large number of volunteers from the
United Kingdom; the building of village schools with its con-
sequential problem of finding suitable teachers; the formation of
village troops of Boy Scouts and Girl Guides ; the start of Women's
Institutes (though this applied more to Malay and Indian com-
munities of which there were many in the whole resettlement pic-
ture) ; the 'adoption' of New Villages by the nearest Army unit;
citizenship courses to try to teach the elements of understanding
in how Government, whether central or local, worked; and armed
village Home Guard detachments "perish the thought" many people
said. This list by no means includes all the endeavors that were set
in motion to try to get these people on to the side of Government.

"And what more natural than that the churches should lend a
hand? Unfortunately the large supply of British China-trained mis-
sionaries who had been forced to leave that country had to a con-
siderable extent been dispersed world-wide and in positions from
which it was difficult to extract them quickly. And speed was the
essence of my problem. However, in spite of that, very considerable
results were achieved, and it would not be proper if I did not pay
my tribute in particular to the Roman Catholic Church who pro-
duced truly miraculous results very quickly, particularly I think
on the nursing and maternity side, I say that as a Protestant.

"It was indeed an inspiring experience to meet Christian men and
women of all denominations living and working in these isolated
communities under relatively primitive conditions, and often in
situations which the ordinary person would have considered danger-
ous in the extreme. They thought nothing of those things.

"All this was not done without arousing very considerable criti-
cism, and criticism of a kind whose validity one was forced to admit
to some extent. Why indeed people asked, and in particular the
Malays, should all this money be poured out to help people who
had to be compulsorly faeided together because they were so much
under the thumb of tfe terrorists if they were left alone in their

After the Shooting

isolation? And goodness knows the Malay kampongs wanted great
things done for them. And they were mostly doing their very best
to support Government.

"It was all so exciting, and so very worth while. It was certainly
one of the most inspiring tasks which I have ever helped to tackle.

"It's hard to isolate the missionary effort in the whole of this en-
deavour and to assess exactly its value. If one believes that Com-
munism is an evil thing, as I do, and if one believes that human free-
dom from oppression and from the fear of the gun is one of the
basic beliefs for which we are prepared to fight, then I have no
hesitation in saying that the presence of considerable numbers of
missionaries men and women of all denominations, played a very
considerable part in the settlement of the minds of these people, a
people who were rootless. They required to feel some spiritual in-
fluence. This was given to them by many devoted persons. And that
is quite apart from the direct evangelizing work which they most
certainly achieved. The hearts and minds of men, women and chil-
dren were what we were all striving for."

New Villages have come to stay. By the terms of the old Pro-
tectorate and the interpretation of the new Constitution of the Mus-
lim Federation, evangelization among Malays is virtually impossible.
Only a quarter of the New Villages are Malay. Three-quarters are
Chinese, either completely or with a proportion of Indians. At Kuala
Lumpur I received the impression that Malay officialdom could not
care less about the religion of any but Malays. Christian work is
therefore unrestricted.

I was taken on a whirlwind tour of New Villages in South Perak
and around Kuala Lumpur, a dozen out of the Federation's four
hundred or more. Most of those I saw were worked by Anglicans,
whether parsons, doctors, or nurses of the Diocese of Singapore, those
in South Perak being connected with the Overseas Missionary Fel-
lowship, those around Kuala Lumpur with the Church Missionary
Society. I visited non-Anglican members of the O.M.F. in Selangor,
and also talked with the bishop of the American Methodists who
were almost the only missionaries in Malaya before the war.

General Secretary of the Church Missionary Society Dr. Max
Warren had made a remark in England which I mow recalled:

i8o EARTH'S REMOTEST END

"Don't forget that pioneering may be just as real and just as tough
in a city as hiving off into the jungle." A New Village today has most
of the amenities of a city; many of the people possess fans and re-
frigerators, and therefore the missionary may possess them too.
Communications are quick, shops are near. Another compensation
was charming to watch. Most of the senior workers were old China
hands. Those in South Perak came from a remote part of West
China where mission stations had been isolated by hundreds of miles
of roadless and mountainous province. A married couple was lucky if
a European colleague came along once in three months. Now, after
years of loneliness, they could drop in on one another for quick
cups of tea an Ex-China Old Folks' Club.

But the work is unromantic, slow. "Discouragement is the great
difficulty," they said. The population is so mobile that when con-
verts emerge after years of dry endeavor they may be gone within
months. The nervous strain and the physical risks of the Emergency
have gone. The spiritual strain remains.

We stayed with an Australian clergyman and his wife, China
veterans, in a New Village in the Kinta Valley, one of the worst
terrorist areas. The wire fence still ran round the village but the gate
never shut ; the Home Guard post was deserted and the wide ditch
filled in or used as gardens. The tin roofs of the shack-like houses
were dreary, but trees had grown in the main street.

That evening from the doorway of the little house, merely the
end one of a row of shops in the village center, the activity outside
appeared to differ little from that of a large English village. The
house opposite certainly belonged to a necromancer and another was
a gambling hell, docile enough to look at, and most families had an
idol shelf where red paper represented the temple idols and incense
was lit each day. The smart Chinese girls walking up and down, who
had come in that morning from rubber tapping as tramps, who had
bathed, and who were now filmstars, might have been English fac-
tory girls on the spree. A crowd streamed from the cinema ; a shop-
keeper drove up in an Austin car ; bicycles sped by, and the air was
noisy with wireless music, gramophones and gossip. The walls of
the house are thin and its position central ; noise is inescapable from
dawn to midnight. You get used to it, as to a railway line below a
bedroom window.

After the Shooting 181

The next morning, a Sunday, I attended Mattins in the village
church, simply the tiny front room of the house. The service was
timed for ten o'clock. By ten minutes past, enough of the congrega-
tion had wandered in to enable Mr. Robert to start. A few more
came, and the total of Chinese was eleven. Three older men were all
baptized. One young man, little more than a boy, had been "received"
as a catechumen. Another, a visitor in the village, had been contacted
the night before and listened carefully, but his sincerity became sus-
pect when he proved to be an insurance agent. Four women were
in old-fashioned Chinese cotton tunic and trousers, dark blue and
rather close fitting, and two working girls had smart nylon blouses
and tight flowered skirts.

This represented the Christian congregation of a settlement of
several thousands. One or two others were absent, but after years
of work a church of this size, all but one being converts, was
typical of a New Village in South Perak.

Different approaches to the problem find favor. The Church Mis-
sionary Society depends on Chinese pastors and evangelists, and has
advanced quicker. Near Kuala Lumpur, where on Easter Day I was
invited to celebrate Holy Communion and later to preach at St.
Mary's, which certainly had big congregations at both English and
Chinese services, I visited Jin Jang New Village and met the Rev-
erend Lee Ling-Kwong, a charming and handsome young man born
and converted in Formosa, educated in Hong Kong, and trained for
the ministry in Singapore.

His stipend was paid from diocesan funds; Christ Church had
been built by money from England. The work had been founded by
an Englishman, and Lee came there six months before I met him. Jin
Jang had a clinic, with a resident English C.M.S. nurse, two Chinese
nurse-evangelists from Hong Kong, and European part-time volun-
teers from Kuala Lumpur. Those baptized numbered over a hundred.
Jin Jang for various reasons was a star place, not typical, a promise
of things to come. Lee was convinced that a "Chinese worker gets
nearer the people." The O.M.F. on the other hand, both in its Angli-
can field and elsewhere, is at present against the paid employment
of Asians in a spiritual capacity. It depends on the Western mis-
sionary until converts are ready to start a church on their own.
Service must be on a voluntary basis unless the congregation is will-

i8a EARTH'S REMOTEST END

ing and able to support a pastor. In Selangor I went to a New Vil-
lage where a church building has been raised by the efforts of the
people ; two men had taken responsibility, and the missionaries were
withdrawn. What the building lacked in decorum it made up by
signs of the enthusiasm and determination of the people even if, in
that odd Chinese way, a pin-up girl calendar appeared on the wall
beside Gospel posters, Bible pictures, and a roller of choruses printed
in large characters and turned by a cunning wheel made of a Kiwi
boot polish tin.

Opinion is also divided between town and country. Some believe
that with the ending of the Emergency a more excellent way is to
work the villages through strong congregations built up in towns,
such as Teluk Anson on the Perak River, where we lunched in a
parsonage newly built and so cleverly decorated that it made you
cool just to look around. The strong congregation at St. Luke's,
Teluk Anson was composed almost entirely of comparatively recent
converts, and was already influencing its surrounding rural neigh-
borhood.

Whatever the best strategy may be, the New Village field is one
of the hardest in Asia.

At Bidor on the main north-south trunk road I discussed this with
another former China parson, Don Temple, a slight gray haired man
in the customary white shorts, stockings, open-neck shirt. His small
house was well fitted because he runs the government Red Cross
clinic. He was not like the Parson of Hogglestock, a gloomy man.
In fact he listed encouragements: "There is always something to
encourage."

Yet he faced facts. In an area of twenty thousand people scattered
over several New Villages and a town his church consists of : three
who had been baptized in China and who when the work opened
were discovered, derelict Christians; a first convert baptized, now
backsliding; a mother and daughter baptized later; four people
professing to believe but not yet baptized; and three church mem-
bers who had moved inio the district from another part of Malaya.
Conversely, one further convert h,ad moved and joined the church
near his new home. , '

*<)ne of the factors why sp) few have believed," said Temple, "is

After the Shooting 183

undoubtedly political. Just talking to a missionary means that the
Communist cell will accuse you of being a Christian and hence
anti-Communist. During the height of the Emergency you really did
risk getting your throat cut. It's not so bad now, no physical danger
now, but the feeling dies hard and the Reds are still very strong in
the villages. Then, again, Communist indoctrination is all over the
place, especially in the schools."

A third factor, he said, was the hold of idolatry. My mind switched
to the temples of a religion which is Buddhist yet different from
the Thai or Burmese ; to the idols Buddha and the old gods and
the red Ancestor Tablets before which incense burns to show respect
and to give aid to the departed ; to the paper cars and houses and
furnishings burned at funerals to provide transport and ease in the
next world ; and to the Hell Bank Notes. Almost the only time I have
seen a missionary shocked was when I walked through Sunday school
carrying a Hell Bank Note. "Put it away at once," she cried. "They
know what it means. Most improper 1 "

"Ancestor worship by its very nature is a barrier to Christianity/''
said Temple. "You've got to help your ancestors and you have got to
appease them ; if you become a Christian you are both leaving them
in the lurch and annoying them. Oddly enough, the people are more
idolatrous here than in West China, despite higher standards of life.
And idolatry works. People go to a medium to find out which number
to back in the state lottery. The local medium predicted that three
here would win, and they did ! Think of the hold of that."

He told me that Europeans speaking Chinese and visiting poor
Chinese homes seemed utterly strange in a country where they had
been known only as the rulers and the rich; at first the villagers
could not believe they were anything but secret government agents.
"We were taken as spies. We had to beat down this suspicion."

Above all, the Christian missionary in a New Village of Malaya
confronts a blatant materialism. "The immense indifference of the
Chinese!" exclaimed Temple. "Their real god is money, money,
money. All they ask is what material advantages Christianity would
bring. And they look around and conclude that it would bring
ostracism and suspicion and offend their ancestors and the evil
spirits. So what's the point? On top of that there is the strong in-
amusements, radio, cinema, cars, buses ; there is so much

i84 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

to do and buy, and they all work so hard to get money that they
have no time to think."

TWENTY-FOUR *$* Last Days of a

Colony

Government House, Singapore, stands on a slight hill in a wide
demesne, palatial, not ostentatious. There was poignancy in the
marks of royalty in the anteroom : the statue of Queen Victoria, the
rather faded Edward VII and George V; the postwar portrait of
George VI in naval uniform. Within a year they would be gone. The
Elections were a few weeks ahead. The city was already splashed
with slogans and symbols, the forked lightning of People's Action
Party predominating, and Bullingdon Place echoed to speeches.
After the elections the governor, Sir William Goode, for six months
would become a sort of portmanteau or tandem two persons in
one : Yang di-Pertuan Negara, or Head of State, and United King-
dom Commissioner. Then, with the installation of a Malayan-born
Head of State the royal portraits would go. Rajah Brooke dancing
his hornpipe over the dining-room table might be permitted to stay.

Throughout the tour we received kindness from British representa-
tives. Sir William Goode at Singapore, now Governor of North
Borneo, especially went out of his way to welcome us and give me
the benefit of his wisdom and experience.

And so the day after our arrival in Singapore we sat at lunch. A
cat may look at a king, and even on His Excellency's table the
little ants scurried ; they are tasteless and harmless.

"This is a free-for-all," said the governor, referring to religion in
Singapore, "Whatever you are, you find something here: Muslim,
Hindu, Bahai, Methodist, Seventh-day Adventist, anything."

"Like London or any big city in the West?"

"Yes, with this one difference: The great menace here and in
Southeast Asia is Communism. It has been more and more felt that
the only answer is religion. So whereas any religious teaching of any
kind in government schools used to be taboo, it has been gradually

Last Days of a Colony 185

felt that you can't turn out youth in a vacuum. So now the schools
give religious teaching. It is at parents 7 decision. Muslim children go
off to the mosque. Christian children have Christian teaching, and
so on. If they have no religion they are taught ethics. Two hundred
teachers have just graduated in ethics, whatever that may mean."
There was some anxiety among Christians that P.A.P. when they
came to power would attack religious education. The governor did
not think they would with deliberate intent. "On the other hand,
they will do things the Chinese way. If anyone falls by the wayside
they will just be left. If the steam roller rolls over anyone in its
progress, just too bad. It can't stop. This is quite different from the
British way, which is that if a child falls out of the train we pull
the communication cord however much hurry we are in."

Singapore grows on you. It has neither the beauty of Hong Kong
nor the vistas of New Delhi, and the rain comes almost every day.
By the time we left we ranked it higher than any city, a position
retained throughout the tour. We had no regrets when at the end of
our second visit following return from Java the ship for Sarawak
was delayed a day, and we lay at anchor within the mole. Between
us and the islands to seaward were the aircraft carrier Albion, the
pathetic Dutch mothball fleet fled from Indonesia in 1957, and some
fifty freighters. The liners were out of sight in Keppel Harbour be-
hind the hill. To landward, a quarter of a mile or less, a panorama
of commercial might: Crosby House, the Asian Insurance (a sky-
scraper which New York would look down on), the new Shell build-
ing, still in honeycomb stage ; the red roof of the G.P.O., its Union
Jack half-mast for the Sultan of Johore, a glimpse of the City Hall
where Mountbatten took the surrender, the trees which hid St.
Andrew's Cathedral.

In churches, chapels, mission halls, and Christian schools Asian
pastors and teachers predominate Chinese for the Chinese, In-
dians for the Indians. On a larger view the significance of Singapore
depends on what is accomplished for all Southeast Asia. It is a center
of training not only of Asians but of Western missionaries ; when we
were staying at the compound of the O.M.F. a shipload of forty-one
recruits arrived at the language school, British, Commonwealth, and
American, twenty-nine women and only twelve men, a proportion

186 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

*mfortunately now common to societies and church mission boards.
The recruits came to the headquarters for designations to the differ-
ent fields, and sat around on best behavior. They were to spend four
to six months in language study at Singapore before sailing on to
their countries where study must continue : a reminder of the time
required on the production belt before the product can be put on
the road for breaking in.

Much administration is done from Singapore. As to the O.M.F.,
the compound opposite the Botanical Gardens is actually world
headquarters, on their principle that the leaders must be missionaries
on the field, that the supreme direction is best not by remote control
from a home country but the other way round. Singapore, a hub of
air lines, is the obvious center. The offices were adequate, but I
coveted for them the air conditioning without which no businessman
in Singapore would function. Air conditioning has become as normal
an aid to efficiency there as a typewriter, however much out of place
in forward stations where missionaries seek to live close to the
people, and even that good principle needs marking. "What, no
washing machine like we have?" says a neighbor in Japan. And
then there was the couple from Formosa who had sweltered without
electric fans. Rather guiltily they bought one. The Chinese girl who
did for them exclaimed: "Why did you get such a small one? We've
got a f ourteen-inch ! "

Air conditioning means money. Money is the thorn of these
modern St. Pauls. I was impressed by the O.MJF/s method of al-
location. Most societies give their members a personal allowance.
(They shy off the word "stipend" or "salary" for the same reason,
perhaps, that when I edited a religious journal I called the fee I
paid an honorarium : the sum was so small.) The personal allowance,
however, is generally some points behind the rising cost of living.
As a result I have seen a man's job being done on a diet fit for an
old maid. The O.M.F. works differently. Its members do not have a
fixed salary, and according to the principle of their society they
must "look to the Lord and not to the mission to supply their needs"
in other words they* have no claim, as of right, on the mission. In
practice their daSy brfead is assured. They submit cost-of-living ac-
counts which are a fir^ tfhlairge OH the f tods allocated for the sup-
port of missionaries, after ifenls and other slieh outside obligations

Last Days of a Colony 187

have been met. Education and board of the children is also a mis-
sion liability. The residue is distributed equally to each member ; in
some quarters he receives the figure agreed as normal; usually he
receives less, occasionally more, once nothing. He does not have to
live day by day on that ; he is free from the temptation to save on
food to pay for clothes or holidays or his son's schooling. As the
general director said, "He has no personal gain in starving himself."
As a member said, "It is like being in a 100 per cent welfare state."

Missionaries do not come abroad for financial profit. But they have
the right to expect the tools to finish the job and the wherewithal to
live. Theologically and practically there is the positive factor of faith,
of our Lord's words, "Your heavenly Father knoweth ye have need
of these things." From an accountant's view missionaries are not
adequately supported, certainly not from Britain.

America has learned to give. The giving of a tenth of an income is
as frequent in the United States as it is rare in Britain. American
missions therefore have bigger funds even if the most affluent are not
always the wisest or the most orthodox: the Seventh-day Adventists
possess some of the largest resources.

The American likes to see his money tick, bringing quick and
tangible results, and to point to a project expanding, a person strid-
ing through the wilds because of his gifts. Do not ask him to drop
dollars into the dull ditch of mission administration. Despite recent
changes United States tax laws strongly encourage charity. Fund
raising by churches rather than by appeal to individuals is wide-
spread and produces higher yield. And, obviously, there are more
Americans.

Yet all this is as nothing beside the lamentable fact that Britain
does not know how to give. I shall always remember the incredulous
laugh of a young American in the Philippines when I remarked, and
felt foolish as I did so, that if an Englishman gives $5 a year to a
mission he thinks he is generous.

Transplanted Wimbledon. The accumulation of Westerners in
Singapore brought to a head thoughts which had gathered all the way
rottad, ion those who go abroad professionally or on business ; their
relatiQBsMp with missionaries ; the influence for good oar for ill of
their persoiM characters.

i88 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

Wherever I came among a business or professional community I
met kindness. Singapore was no exception : at Bangkok an air-con-
ditioned office was at our disposal, and honorary membership of the
British Club so that we could play tennis. And there were always a
few whose Christianity was far more than nominal, though their
interest might be limited to the chaplaincy church ; the congregation
of Christ Church, Bangkok, seemed quite surprised to learn about
Laos, although it is their back yard. They resolved to do something
about it.

Only in a few areas of Asia do the paths cross in the big cities,
in plantation districts, around engineering projects. Relations are
not cordial. As a young professional man in Hong Kong said, "There
is every sort of attitude from incomprehension, through indifference,
to contempt." Missionaries on their part feel that businessmen and
their wives, all "Christians" to their neighbors, let the side down by
endless drinking and smoking, card playing, and gossip. Each side
has a caricatured image of the other. A missionary certainly has less
time for gossip, the primary relaxation of expatriates after a hard
day's work. Where available, an occasional game of golf or tennis or
a friendship outside his colleagues may do much. It is often edged off
by absorption in the job, and owing to the contrast in incomes the
businessman must make the approach. Sometimes he does, with
mutual benefit.

It is doubtful if the character of a businessman has much effect
negatively on non-Christians around. There may be Brahmans who
continue to believe that the Bible, as the Christian's book, is a guide
to choosing wine or cigars. Christmas may be called "the Big Day
when even the best Christians get drunk," but no Muslim, Hindu,
or Buddhist expects every adherent of a religion to be the perfect
exemplar.

Positively, a Christian who is really a Christian can do much : for
his national employees and associates by personal qualities and
spoken convictions ; for local mission work by financial support and
giving service in his leisure should opportunity offer. At home, which
he visits more frequently, he can inform circles untouched by mis-
sion literature of the needs social and spiritual of non-Christian
coifntries. This applies also to the Armed Forces, with one qualifica-
tion. At Kuala Lumpur and at Singapore we were royally entertained

South to Java x8p

to dinner by members of the Officers' Christian Union, and it was
clear that those present considered the primary mission field of an
officer to be among his own men.

Civilians or servicemen, the heart of the matter lies in the home
churches. Expatriates are the normal run of Englishmen.

The "colonial 77 attitude of Westerners in personal dealings with
Easterners used to appear in the missionary as much as in the mer-
chant, planter, or administrator. With few exceptions it is gone.

The change was discussed by the Governor of Singapore in a
further talk at Government House. He pointed out that in the old
days there was clearly a sense of being superior because, after all,
these men were making Asia work. Without them railways would
come to a standstill, ports silt up, political chaos break out. He com-
pared their attitude with that of an English squire of the old days.
"Most of the people out here were imbued with the public-school
spirit. They may have been superior in their ways, but they, had the
squire's strong sense of responsibility for their dependents. If any
one for whom they felt responsibility was in need, they saw him
through."

At the end of our talk, when he was showing me to the door of
his office, Sir William said : "This is the end of an era. You see the
end of a chapter. All this" waving his hand around at marks of
British sovereignty "is going out. We have done our bit, and now
they are being left to carry on. It is rather as if school is over and
they are all being let out into the playground."

TWENTY-FIVE Jf* South to Java

"You tourists? Whatever do you want to come to this country for?"
We had crossed the equator huddled in blankets at nine thousand
feet, and now at Djakarta airport waited interminably for Immigra-
tion. The Englishwoman who spoke, and her husband, an oil execu-
tive, had been through it often. They warned us that this was a fore-
taste of Indonesian officialdom. They were right.

ipo EARTH'S REMOTEST END

The customs man was surly and opened every piece. We had al-
ready been in the country over an hour and a quarter when we
climbed into our host's car. His house was within walking distance,
yet owing to the contortions of the one-way system it was quite a
drive, for most of the main streets of Djakarta are, in Dutch fashion,
beside canals, and the Indonesians like to send the traffic down one
side and up the other. If your particular turn is just the wrong
side of a junction, you may go an extra mile at least half a mile
down, over a bridge, half a mile back. To offset this and ensure that
Djakarta traffic shall be the most constipated in Asia, the police in
long narrow two-way streets order No Parking at one end but at
the other parking on both sides; if a vehicle is parking, certainly
if two are trying, one at each curb, every other driver might as
well go to sleep.

Djakarta, like a decayed gentlewoman, by reason of past beauty
and prosperity is dowdy without being squalid. A little imagination
and the acres of untidy grass are again close-trimmed, flower-
splashed, and very Dutch. The principal shops fretfully displaying
a thin windowful of foreign goods at exorbitant prices have names
eloquent of the days when Batavia was a queen in the East. A
lick of paint could transform unkempt houses into those gay imita-
tions of Delft or Amsterdam wherein the Dutch, preferring home-
like atmosphere to a bodily discomfort which must have been appal-
ling, squeezed themselves, their large wives, and large families. The
original Batavia is so close a reproduction of Dutch cities built
for comfort in cold as to be almost unbelievable in the tropics.
The Dutch had moved out of that area in the past century. It was
now typical Chinese slum. And gloom, if that were possible in a
Chinese community, was settling in because of government economic
policy. Foreign businessmen had coined a joke: "Indonesia is like
an egg. They have eaten the white. Now they are attacking the
yellow. Soon there will be only Shell."

We planned to go straight to East Java, about four hundred miles
from Djakarta. I had been warned that the railway to Surabaya
was slow^ no less than seventeen hours, six hours longer than three
years earlier because roHmg stock and track had deteriorated; and
crowded, because a railway ticket was omeof the few cheap things

South to Java ipi

left. The government had chosen the month of the Muslim fast ta
assault a practice whereby tickets bought in bulk at the agencies
were sold outside at black-market prices. No agency might sell,
every traveler must go the day previous to the station whence he
intended to travel, and should he, after queueing five hours, find
every ticket sold too bad.

The holidays for the end of the fast and the Muslim New Year
increased demand. Two days before we wanted to travel it was
ordered that a ticket could be bought only immediately prior to
boarding the train. The chaos may be imagined., A child was killed
and three hundred extra police were out. Anne and I would need to
start queueing at 6:00 P.M., wait all night, buy the tickets, board
the train which was due to start at 6 :oo A.M., and travel all day.
About midnight, if the train was not too unpunctual, we should
reach Surabaya and there wait for the connection next morning.

Fortunately, in our ignorance, I had written from Malaya that we
preferred to go by air.

I had not realized what that request would mean to our host.
George Steed, a Canadian, is a most patient man, and in his task
of mission organization in Indonesia he needed to be as patient
as Job. And to walk as delicately as Agag ; I might add that in some
of my Java account I have had to use pseudonyms. One man, a
Chinese, whom I expected to meet studiously ignored me for fear
of indiscretions in print. An episode specially enjoyed receives na
mention because its leading figure, a Javanese, subsequently suffered
an acute attack of cold feet. That George Steed his real name is
not in a madhouse shows him to be the sanest of men. That his
sympathy is still foursquare with the Indonesians shows that under
irritating absurdities of officialdom there beats a national heart
which is fundamentally sound and a national character which, the
more you explore it, is attractive.

George Steed got air tickets for us. A common mortal cannot
walk into the office of Garuda Indonesian Airways and order a
ticket, except for the tourist flight to Bali. He must have a priority.
For some weeks Steed had been inquiring, only to be told that the
Surabaya runway was under repair and no Convair could land. He
knew that a: Dakota got in on certain days, but the clerk denied it.
Tfoe4ay before we arrived, Steed addressed an application direct to

ip 2 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

the head of the Department of Travel in which he shot a line in
outrageously flattering terms. After four separate trips (you never
can tell what documents they will require) he emerged for the first
time in his career with a Priority One, went at once to the air
office, and received tickets. It had taken him four hours. "That was
nothing," he said. "Quite common. Often I have been kept waiting
in outer offices for ages, only to find that the man inside was reading
the newspaper."

Before dawn next morning we were at the airport. Domestic
flights throughout this far-flung pattern of islands begin at first
light from Djakarta, so that every plane may be back by nightfall,
safe from rebels or other calamities. The flight was scheduled for
6 :2o A.M. ; we had to be there at 5 :i$ or risk our seats.

The Dakota was bare of interior decoration, the seats mere
canvas chairs, the service good. As the plane began to lose height
nearing Surabaya, the principal naval base of Indonesia, passengers
read or dozed. The stewardess woke them up by pasting brown
paper over the windows. "Military installations," she said. The
brown papers were not quite large enough. As we swept in over the
harbor, every window had a face glued to the cracks.

Java, I had been told, is one of the loveliest of countries.

It is, with loveliness all its own which the sun, the mountains, and
man have conspired to form. Paddy fields of every stage, so kind is
the climate, provide brown and yellow, shades of green, strips of
blue water all in one glance. Beyond, a grove of coconut palms. The
white of a house may peep here and there, but it is hard to realize
from the camouflage dictated by desire for shade that parts of Java
are among the most densely populated of the world and that the
long lines of woodland are unending villages. As background, the
smooth slopes of volcanoes, mostly inactive, not harsh and ashen as
in Japan, but soft green to the summit. Occasionally, to bring you
to reality, there is the shell of a Dutch mansion burned in the War
of Independence.

I knew that East Java possessed a body of ex-Muslim Christians.

Muslim areas of the world flaunt the power of Islam, its appar-
ently impregnable strength impervious to the Christian message.
Pakistan a fleeting glance on this tour but I possess earlier mem-
ories of majestic mosques, proud jealous tribesmen of the North-

South to Java 193

west Frontier, the faithful saying prayers at sunset on a wayside
platform in the Bolan Pass. True, there is a substantial church in
Pakistan, almost all derived from the non-Muslim sweeper caste and
the outcastes. Malaya a few weeks back Tuan Hassan, the most
brilliant Malay in the Civil Service until his retirement, a kindly,
broad-minded man, was saying: "We have nothing to learn from
Christianity. Indeed, we look on ourselves as the religion that re-
formed Christianity."

In Java this body of ex-Muslims would be small, struggling, of
recent growth.

I am ashamed of my ignorance.

The story of the origin of the East Java Church was told me by
Dr. Phillip Van Akkeren at the Theological School Balewyoto at
Malang, fifty-five miles south of Surabaya. Dr. Van Akkeren is one
of the comparatively few Dutch missionaries retained by Indonesian
churches, a tribute to his personal qualities. A spare man of medium
height whose thin silver hair testifies to three years in a Japanese
concentration camp, and not to age, like most of the missionaries
of the Dutch Reformed Church he is learned. He wears his learning
lightly. Blue eyes twinkle behind glasses.

The Van Akkerens received us at short notice with utmost kind-
ness. An expert on Javanese history and lore, he conducted us over
ruins of thirteenth century Hindu temples in the Malang neighbor-
hood and explained the important position of the ancient Hindu
culture, coming after the Buddhism which finds expression in the
wonders of Borobudur, and before Islam. Mingling with them all is
age-old Javanese philosophy.

This, very briefly, is the story he told.

In the late eighteenth century a German sailor called Johannes
Emde joined a ship for the East Indies to prove the absurdity of a
tale he had heard that no winter came there. On retiring from the
sea he took up watchmaking in Surabaya, and married a Javanese.
He was a man of genuine if overpietistic faith, and drew around him
a little group of Christians, mainly Eurasian. When Stamford Raffles
ruled Java for Britain in the later Napoleonic Wars, a Dutchman
of the London Missionary Society helped Emde to such effect that
on the missionary sailing farther east Emde had a group of over a
hundred, including some Javanese.

The Dutch returned and reimposed their ban on missionary work ;

jg4 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

like the British East India Company, but for forty years longer,
they regarded it as a menace to commercial profits.

To Dr. Van Akkeren this policy of exclusion was not merely un-
Christian but tragic. Around 1830 Muslims in Java began to respond
in numbers to Christianity for the first time. Historians wonder why.
Van Akkeren believes the explanation to be that the fall of the old
Javanese kingdom in 1825 after a bitter war produced widespread
expectation of a new era, a Christian era under a Christian King.
Traditionally Java took the religion of its monarch, and now the
monarch was William of the Netherlands. A jihad, or holy war, had
failed. Men recalled that Islam was only three hundred years old,
and foreign; songs were sung of the prophecy of the last Hindu
King that a true religion of the spirit would arise, ushering in a
golden age. "In short/ 7 said Van Akkeren, "expectations made it
easy for Christian preaching, although done in a very primitive way,
to be heard and accepted as the new promised religion. But as the
Netherlands Government stopped everything furthering the Gospel,
this movement at last more or less died out."

An Eurasian of Emde's group, in his own odd way, became the
leader of a group of ex-Muslims.

Coenrad Laurens Coolen had been born in 1774 of a Russian
father and a Javanese princess. He grew up an eccentric, a dreamer
of dreams. While serving in the artillery at Surabaya he joined
Emde, until, being unhappily married, he deserted wife and children
and went inland where he took a Javanese woman who bore him six
children. In 1829 he turned to reclaiming jungle, making a rice farm
at a place called Ngoro. As this remote settlement grew, country
people joined him, including fugitives from justice.

Coolen taught them a mixture of Javanese lore and Christianity.
No plowing or reaping or building of houses might begin until he had
uttered a blessing. Some of his prayers were to God the Father or
to Christ, some to "Highest Smeru, mount in Java's land." It was a
religious life essentially Christian but too heavily veiled in Javanese
terms and ways. Undoubtedly he evangelized and obtained converts
from Islam. He refused to send them for baptism because the Dutch
minister in Surabaya declined to baptize his bastards.

In the late 1830*3 one? of *tis cppverts was- a modin, a Muslim sum-
moner to prayer called Paq Dasimah,, who formed a little group of

South to Java 19$

Christians at his village of Wiung, for if Coolen taught odd doc-
trines he imbued his followers with evangelistic zeal. About 1840
Dasimah met Emde and discovered the deficiencies of Coolen's
Christianity. He learned of baptism and the Holy Communion and in
1843 he and thirty-five others were baptized by the Dutch chaplain
on terms that they crop their hair and abandon sarong for trousers ;
small wonder they were dubbed by neighbors "Dutchmen without
hats."

Many of Coolen's settlement, against his wishes, went down to
Surabaya for baptism. By 1845 ^ e baptized, over two hundred, split
away and after wanderings made a new clearing in the jungle. They
called it Modjowarno and it became the Jerusalem of East Java.

For in 1848 the Netherlands Missionary Society sent out a Dutch
missionary who became the third founder of the East Java Church,
the Reverend J. E. Jellesma. When the ban was lifted in 1851 and
he could begin work beyond Surabaya, Jellesma decided to throw in
his lot neither with Emde nor Coolen but with the new settlement of
Modjowarno. Emde identified Christianity too much with elements
European; Coolen overlaid it with ideas Javanese.

Jellesma was before his time. His thesis was: "Javanese are the
bridge through which to reach the Javanese." Emde died, over eighty,
in 1859, Coolen, just missing his century, in 1874. Jellesma and his
Dutch colleagues and successors absorbed and developed their move-
ments and corrected their course into the channel of regular Chris-
tianity. In their hands, and springing from such sources, the East
Java Church became what it has remained: a farmers' church, not
in the least urban; basically indigenous, depending much on care-
fully trained lay readers; parochial in form, no wild stream but
linked with world Christianity through the Dutch Reformed Church.
There were quarrels aaid setbacks but the movement spread.

East Java Muslims, unlike those of Madura island nearby, are not
fanatics. Nevertheless, social pressure prevented Christians settling
among Muslims. By the turn of the century Modjowarno was over-
crowded. Young men pushed out to the only land which remained
underdeveloped, on the hilly south coast. Christian villages sprung
tip and thrived. They were Caves of Adullum Muslims who were
in dMress * in debt or discontented gathered themselves unto

jp<5 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

them, and became Christians, The weight of the movement gradually
shifted beyond the Southern Mountains.

The Geredja Kristen Djawa Wetan (Christian Church of East
Java), one of the thirty-one churches who are members of the
National Council of Churches in Indonesia, now numbers about
65,000, more than twice the Protestant strength of Thailand. What-
ever its sources or its present position, to the Dutch belongs the
honor of making the largest ex-Muslim church in the world. In 1931
it became independent in name if virtually controlled by the mis-
sionaries until they were interned by the Japanese, when the church
did not suffer, nor did it suffer in spirit during a persecution in
1944.

To the eyes of the Muslim majority it was still tarred with a
Dutch brush. In the War of Independence its members showed con-
clusively where their loyalty lay. Even the people of Modjowarno
burned their Dutch-built institutions.

TWENTY-SIX 3P The Edge of the Volcano

The Southern Mountains : neither high nor extensive, dwarfed on the
north by Smeru, which celebrates its twelve thousand feet by a
supercilious spiral of smoke. The Southern Mountains guard the
Indian Ocean, and now, the sun behind us, we looked on distant
waves beating around offshore rocks. The next landfall would be
Antarctica. If you turned southwest, Australia lay the distance
we had come from Singapore, 850 miles.

We began the descent, an adequate road but rough for Peter's
car. Peter, an Englishman, was driving us, his wife, his small son,
his small son's Teddy bear, and a Javanese friend to one of the
Christian villages. The mountains brought no sense of desolation.
We continued to pass strings of small white houses, furnished with
table and chairs, since the Javanese do not sit on the floor, and above
each, in a cage attached by rope and pulleys to a tall pole, sat a
parrot. The jungle thickened slightly; the road twisted down, and
at the head of a valley we found ourselves under the palms in sight

The Edge of the Volcano 197

of a white rectangular church severe of line but imposing in size
and position.

Peter interpreting, we chatted in the pastor's house and walked
across to the- church. The interior was austere in the Dutch tradi-
tion, relieved by a little colored glass in the upper windows. Be-
hind the preaching desk in the center hung a cross and a face of
Christ and the text John 15:3 in Javanese, "Now ye are clean
through the Word that I have spoken unto you." On the desk the
phrase "God so loved the world" was inscribed in the old Javanese
script. I turned round and looked the length of the church. As the
eye took in rows and rows of benches it was an effort to remember
that we were in a village, and in the heart of a Muslim country.
The pastor counted 600 adults as an average congregation, out of
the 1,500 in the village. Peter said that on his first visit the place
was packed for a baptism service : in front sat thirty mothers hold-
ing thirty babies with thirty fathers standing behind, and thirty
grandmothers waiting to take the babies when the parents submitted
to long exhortation.

The pastor conducted us out of the church, down steps, over a
footbridge, and along a neat street. After a hundred yards we turned
by the Independence monument on to a parade fronting placid
waves of rice backed by a craggy sandstone ridge where are tigers.
The mountains behind and the Indian Ocean two hours' trek beyond,
the whole place suggested a tropical Shangri-La. The more sub-
stantial houses faced this open view, and we came to the pleasant
home of the head of the village. Dutch missionaries had created this
community. They had gone but their work remained.

The head was a remarkable young man, ruling the whole settle-
ment. He had been a theological student at Malang. When the Gov-
ernment gave autonomy to the group of villages, the inhabitants
asked him to sacrifice his plans of ordination to be their head. He was
vigorous in manner, with a quick, genuine smile ; his skin was fairly
dark, lips typically prominent, his high forehead sloped to black
hair en brosse, and spectacles covered a slight squint. We sat on
comfortable chairs and sofas. The coat of arms of Indonesia over an
inner door was flanked by indifferent portraits of his parents. The
walls had garish Java landscapes.

The head said that he worked closely with the pastor. He ap-

ig8 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

proached the job as a Christian service. "When I came," he said,
"few of the village leaders attended church. Now they all do, and
after service they come back here with me and sit in that big meeting
veranda over there and all the needs of the village are prayed for.
Especially we remember those in trouble and difficulty. I do not say
this to boast but that you should know. Spiritual and secular work
is all one as far as my job is concerned. Sunday is kept as a day of
rest. Even the few Muslims in the village keep it." In Java on a
Sunday the fields are usually full of workers.

Thick sweet black coffee came, cakes of fried rice and coconut,
and bananas. Good manners prevent anyone touching plate or cup
until the coffee is even colder than when it is brought. Admittedly hot
drinks are not the fashion, but I do like my coffee hot.

Pastor and head sketched in for me the background of Islam in
Java, for the pastor had been born a Muslim, converted through a
Dutch mission school. Except in certain areas Muslim teaching had
never gone deep. Men were Javanese first and Muslims second.
Peter's Javanese friend Muljono demonstrated this by seizing a
banana and pulling at the skin. "This represents Islam," he said,
"just a skin. This," jabbing at the flesh, "is the old Javanese lore."

"And what about the early Hinduism and Buddhism?"

"That's there too, deep down inside."

The Christian villages have been nurseries of pastors. They have
also produced, for a wide area of Java, schoolmasters, male nurses
who are usually the only medical men of a place, and midwives. In
Madura almost the only Christians are the local "doctors." It has
been said that such went to extend the faith. In fact they lie low,
even when absolved by their neighbors from being pro-Dutch. They
would show their Christianity by ordered, monogamous lives, upright
characters, a&d good deeds but they kept their mouths shut.

Now they are coming alive. A new spirit is abroad. Many of them
have met a man who has shaken them from their lethargy.

It was the same m the village. The pastor had met this man and
his ministry had been revolutionized. Neither the pastor nor the head
mentioned him when they spoke of the new spirit. "Since the past
two years people have fc^en wanting to evangelize," said the head.

"Why? How has it happened?" I asked.
Holy Spirit, the Lfird mdTimg them."

The Edge of the Volcano igg

A good Calvinist reply. I could find no other answer adequate to
explain the influence of Pastor Markus, round whom the* movement
centers, an insignificant little man neither eloquent nor clever.

We spent several days in Pastor Markus 7 district. If it had not
been for Peter, I should not have got near him.

In no place in Asia has the white man lost his status as in
Indonesia. All over Java we felt pent as never elsewhere except in
the Shan States, where we could not be let off the lead for fear we
should be picked off by bandits or picked up by police. A white
stranger in the Java countryside is assumed to be Dutch. "Why is he
here?" they mutter. "To spy!" Not as a military spy, but to examine
land which since Independence has been occupied without title.

The West New Guinea (West Irian) question has kept alive
detestation for the former rulers. The Dutch colonial empire was
efficient, and Java owed it much: jungle almost entirely cleared,
roads and railways built, medical services, peace and prosperity
maintained. Indonesians felt that this was done for Holland, that
their proper station in life was to work for the ruling race. Educa-
tion throughout the Dutch East Indies was grievously restricted;
efforts to promote a single language were frustrated. When finally
Holland failed to defend its possessions -against the Japanese, the
Indonesians threw off the mask of docility. After the war a com-
promise might have been effected. In that the Indonesians consider
the Dutch to have double-crossed and broken word, their great
contribution to the welfare of the East Indies, Java especially, is
forgotten. "The Dutch got what they deserved," is the attitude,
"and not all they deserved."

Once a "Dutchman" proves to be an Englishman, once you have
smiled at a man planting rice or trotting by in a dogkar or walking
beside a heavy, decorated shaded oxcart, and have raised your hand
and called "Tabehf" in the customary greeting, he smiles back,
courteous rather than friendly, a little surprised at a white man's
attention. Follow Tabeh with "Ingresi!" smiles broaden, words of
Welcome flow. Once in West Java we were accosted by a man on a
country road running through a rubber estate. Production of a
British, passport, of necessity carried everywhere in Java, did not
sooth ibecatise he coidd not read and as robbers were in the district

200 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

we beat a retreat, he and his gang at our heels, in the direction of
the nearest military post. One of the men cut across country, and I
expected to find v the way barred by roughs. We walked them so fast
that the gang leader stripped. At the village he spoke to a man of
more important appearance who roughly waved us to the guard post.
They believed they had caught spies. The soldiers, better informed,
were courteous. On seeing the passport they were all smiles but
nearly fell through the floor when they heard how far we had walked.
I said, "But we are English, not Dutch." This naughty remark was
a huge success.

Javanese have an instinct for hospitality. Peter's car broke down
in a village. An elderly gentleman in the Sukarno black velvet cap,
a red-brown sarong and an ordinary coat, his wife in blouse and
striped brown sarong, came out and invited us to rest in their
house and they did not know we were not Dutch. Bottles of orange
fizz and coffee mocha and excellent chocolate biscuits were laid
before us. Their son came in, a lawyer on holiday. He spoke English.
The formal atmosphere evaporated. When the car was ready, the
old man said, through his son, "We are so very pleased to be able
to entertain strangers respected strangers."

Christians in East Java are afraid of dealings with the Dutch. A
Dutch missionary who visited the villages was asked by the synod to
stay in the town. Several of our calls were made after dark lest a
Christian should be embarrassed by the appearance of an unknown
"Dutchman." And a European who asks questions makes them
afraid that in some way they will be suspected of liaison with Hol-
land: Only because they knew and trusted Peter were they prepared
to talk more than Peter expected. A happier legacy of Holland is
their high regard for order and dignity in worship and church
government; this begets an enormous regard for red tape. It was
lucky that I could be introduced as (in their terms) "a pastor of
the English state church" and that though a delegate of nobody I
carried impeccable Episcopal credentials.

Through Peter I began to discover what had been happening in
these villages in the foothills of Mount Smeru where until recently
Christians were a tiny, dumb minority.

We called one night on a farmer called Sihardjo. His room and
dbthes were shabby. His numerous children ought to have been in

The Edge oj the Volcano 20 r

bed. His wife, small and shapely as are East Javanese women,
suckled a two-year-old.

"All the difference in the world," said Sihardjo smiling at my
question, "all the difference. The heart is happy" thumping it. "As
a boy I greatly desired to meet the Lord, and therefore this room you
are now in was filled with people studying Arabic to try and under-
stand the Koran better." This did not satisfy. He turned to the old
Javanese lore with no better result. Years passed. In 1952 a Batak
Christian from Sumatra stayed a week and taught him much. In
1956 Muljono, the Javanese who went with us to the Christian vil-
lage, helped him.

"It was Pastor Markus who helped most," remarked Peter in an
aside. "That's the extraordinary part. He never obtrudes, and people
forget how much he has done for them."

Muljono and Sihardjo lost small boys at the same period, and in
their grief discovered Christ as never before, and threw off hesita-
tions. "There are many difficulties," he concluded, "but the heart
is happy. The heart is happy. I'm like Daniel in the lions 7 den."
Roars of laughter all round.

Muljono entered. He has a trace of Arab blood which gives him
height and a strong-boned angular face and a restless energy lacking
in a Javanese. He dominated the room, extinguishing his friend
Sihardjo, and talked excitably, screwing up his eyes, never looking
straight at you, never keeping still.

He is in government service. His father had been a teacher of
Javanese lore, his father-in-law a strong Muslim with a mosque in
his own grounds. Muljono had been set searching for knowledge
through the influence of a Dutch schoolmaster in his boyhood and
at one time attended mosque on Friday and church on Sunday.
With his father-in-law he had "great argument about it and about."

Once again it was Pastor Markus who brought him a clear grasp
of Christian truth, and once again he received no mention. Muljono
is now a fiery apostle whose zeal inclines to outrun his discretion.

They sang a paraphrase and Muljono prayed. We rose to leave.
Muljono lit a cigarette, for in the tradition of the Dutch mission-
aries nearly every Christian is a heavy smoker. Grandpop toddled
inj grinning from ear to ear, dressed in the old Javanese style,
sarong^ white jacket and turban. "Oh," they said, "Grandpop be-

202 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

lieved when we all stood round his deathbed as we thought and
prayed, nearly two years ago. His way of spreading the Gospel is to
go into a neighbor's house with a Bible or New Testament under his
arm, sit down, and ask one of the children to open and read it. He
then expounds."

"Probably very unsoundly," said Peter afterward. "He can't read
the Scriptures himself ! "

I learned more about the shadowy Pastor Markus.

In his south-coast parish after the war he became involved in an
unfortunate dispute and went to prison. Until then he had been a
typical Dutch-derived pastor: product of long training, dependent
for his effect on such learning as he could muster, long words, a
strict orthodoxy, afraid of anything unseemly.

In prison he rethought his message. His sorrows, the unjust ac-
cusation under which he lay forced him to reconsider the Gospel he
preached. When he came out of prison and was put into another
parish, he proved so zealous and effective that the synod recognized
in him a special gift for reaching beyond the church. Early in 1956
they freed him of pastoral responsibility, took him from a Christian
village, and placed him in a Muslim area where there was no church.
Such a step was highly unusual. Markus and two others appointed
at the same time elsewhere are paid indirectly from Dutch sources.

At first Markus was a little bewildered and lonely. Within two
months he had results.

As Peter said: "He is a child of the East Java Church. He did
not do as a Western missionary might do giving tracts, having
meetings. He went about in a very soft-slippered way. He sought out
the nominal Christians such as the schoolmaster, or those who had
some contact, went to their houses and talked."

One by one scattered Christians took their candles from under
bushels and let their light shine before men. One by one Muslims
entered Markus' flock. By February, 1958, two years after he had
arrived, there were so many converts that a new parish of the East
Java Church was inaugurated, extensive, expanding, with a young
pastor so that Markkas juight remain free to evangelize. Converts
continued to enter, an Joaportaait feature being that the typical one
was a family man who brought in -bis wife and children. Often he

The Edge of the Volcano 203

would be prominent already in his village and thus, almost without
effort, a new group had respect.

Several causes of the movement may be listed. National inde-
pendence and the troubles that have followed rebellion, economic
upsets, roads going to ruin have produced a widespread hunger
for divine help and light. Many older converts were strong Muslims
but not well taught or fanatical, and the chairman of the East Java
Church said : "Most of the new generation of Muslims are not satis-
fied with their Holy Book. They do not understand Arabic, They
are interested in finding a Saviour, which Islam does not offer. A
church that holds a strong belief in Christ as world Saviour is
bound to create a strong impression." They seek truth. In conversa-
tion converts referred to St. John's Gospel with its emphasis on
light. "There is a lot of indifference," said one of them ; "there is a
lot of searching too."

Christianity is no longer closely identified with the Dutch. Yet
I heard of a convert whose daughter announced, "Daddy has become
a Dutchman."

Another factor : Markus is an ordinary son of the soil, a complete
peasant, and the presentation of the Gospel is Javanese. An evan-
gelistic meeting takes place in a home, not in a European-style
church, and is carried on in a way that makes a man feel at ease:
it does not begin on time ; it goes on to any hour, i :oo A.M. or 2 :oo
A.M. or dawn. At full moon the Javanese like to gossip the whole
night through.

"Last Christmas at one village," said Peter, "they had a meeting
with a very wonderful symbolism which just about sums it all up.
The lamps in the room were all turned out. Markus lit a candle and
came forward. The doctor, who had been only a nominal Christian
not long since came forward with an unlighted candle and lit it from
Markus 7 . The schoolmaster did the same from the doctor's. The
village head, a former Muslim, lit his from the schoolmaster's. The
four of them holding their candles circled a Christmas tree and lit
forty candles on it to symbolize the forty converts in the village."

There is nothing to stop the movement. They all hope that more
of the Christian villages will catch the spark, with effects through-
out Java. "We are trying to light a trail," said one of them, "that
leads back; to barrels of gunpowder."

204 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

Whatever the factors, they would not have coalesced without
Markus, a man, as they say, on whom the Spirit rests.

At last I met him. He was not much to look at. You did not feel a
tingle of personality.

Scarcely were introductions over when he was telling Peter the
latest news in a matter-of-fact voice. "The Muslim headman of a
village thirty kilometers away came in yesterday," he said. "I re-
member he had called about two months ago when I was to take a
wedding of one of his relatives. We had chatted and he took away
a Gospel. Now he tells me he has been over since then to a
church a little nearer his place but on the far side, but he hasn't
found the teaching very clear. He's come back here. He wants to be
baptized right away ! I have put him off for a bit but have promised
to have a meeting in his house when we are next over."

He jumped up to consult a wall calendar. "He'll get everybody in
he can, you know. Now let me see, could we go over this Saturday
fortnight?" He turned to me. "It's like the Acts of the Apostles," he
said. "The Gospel is proclaimed, people believe, and then temporary
leaders are chosen from among the people,"

TWENTY-SEVEN *!F Indonesian Look-

Around

"I hope you are prepared to be uncomfortable," a man who knew
Indonesia had said in London. As we drove up to the imposing
facade of a hotel in mid- Java, I wondered what he had meant.

Our sitting room most hotels in the tropics give three rooms
was small and extremely public. The cheerless bedroom had two
hospital beds end to end, covered by dirty mosquito nets. In the
bathroom the water closet had no chain, the basin, its glaze mostly
chipped away, no plug. The bath, as expected, was the usual cold
refreshing scoop-and-splash. There was a shower: it did not work.
The wall socket for my electric razor did not work. At least we
were a married couple; a single man is expected to share, and in

Indonesian Look-Around 205

Djakarta hotel booking is almost impossible owing to permanent
residents, mostly diplomats or businessmen who can find no private
accommodation. At dinner the meat of indefinite origin was tough,
the potatoes cold. The waiter, a charming man, announced, "The
sweet is always a banana but tonight we have no bananas."

The lights went out. That was not surprising, as they failed for
a shorter or longer time every night throughout our visit to Java.

Next afternoon when we returned to the hotel our beds had not
been made; this merely involved placing together two sheets, one
pillow and one Dutch wife, a horrible bolster which always spent the
night on the floor. The cheerful room boy was very willing to make
them when called, and the same next day. He could not see the
hurry; it was not bedtime. I tried to be stern but it was difficult.
Dinner was precisely as before, a banana included ; the third and last
night it was garnished with fried potatoes and thunderstorm. The
final joke came with the bill, made out to a nice long Indonesian
name : Mr. J. C. Pthereverend.

Having toured mid- Java, including Borobudur, we took train from
Semarang all day, partly beside the sea, partly through great sugar
estates with factories and light railways, or rice fields where neigh-
bors in groups of up to fifty or sixty worked together, the women in
cartwheel straw hats having conical crowns As backdrop, always
pleasing, the volcanoes shaped like the hats.

First and second class are air-conditioned. I had never thought of
air conditioning as an instrument of torture. Indonesian railways
have perfected it. Their air conditioning works only when the train
is running, and at the long halts you descend slowly into inferno,
rescued just in time by the train restarting. Later it was inferno
throughout. A coachful in Java is given just enough conditioned air
to keep alive. As the day grew hotter and the train more packed,
the third class, loads and all, spilled down the aisle of the first-class
coach, sucking up our miserable ration of refrigeration. Amused
though I was to watch merry little boys with chocolate-drop eyes, I
found it hard in that atmosphere to endure a brace of peasants blow-
ing hot down my neck. It was necessary to keep an arm firmly on the
armrest, or one of them sat down and blocked what little air was
left ; after all, I had paid for the seat.

Anjie got out at one station to photograph the scrimmage, and

2 o6 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

there she would be now had not a young Dutchman kindly pushed
her from behind.

In the suburbs of Djakarta after dark the air conditioning was
summarily turned off. Officials forced their way through the aisles to
remove the dust covers from the seats. I say nothing of the state
of the lavatory. On the credit side : the train arrived on time.

On a four-week tourist visa it was impracticable to go beyond
Java, for Indonesia extends across a distance almost that from Los
Angeles to New York, and communications are poor. Nor is that
all. I made plans to visit the famous Batak Church in Central
Sumatra. The first missionaries, Americans, to the Bataks were
eaten. Before the Dutch occupied the area toward the end of the
nineteenth century, German Lutherans began a work so thorough
that the Batak is numerically the largest missionary church in the
world. I had heard strong criticisms, heard also that over one hun-
dred Bataks were evangelists among other peoples. I made inquiries
about the route. I could have reached the edge of Batakland. And
there the military would have stopped me.

I had to be content with studying the general Indonesian situa-
tion from Java. This was not easy. Making appointments with
official or public figures in Djakarta is like biting at toffee apples on
a string with your hands tied. It was the one capital where the em-
bassy was unable to secure a single interview. The embassy at least
could telephone, but the wanted man was always out, away, or busy,
every specious promise made came to naught. For private persons
the telephone was a mocker. The only way to see anyone was to
drive across the city and call, preferably before breakfast, make the
appointment, and return at the agreed time. Taxis were rare as gold.
The usual public transport was by opolettes, jeeps or station wagons
plying for hire along fixed routes, which you had to know. There
were a few creaky three-car trams and former Australian buses and
38,000 betjas, a fresh variety of gaudy pedicab or bicycle-rickshaw
pedaled from behind, as in Malaya. If a betja boy annoys a police-
man, the policeman removes Ms tire valves.

Fortunately I had George Steed. He was able to introduce me to
those who mattered. And he nobly gave hows to drive me back and

'

Indonesian Look-Around 207

Christians in Indonesia number over 3^ million out of 85 million.
Of these about 2,237,000 are Protestants. The largest Christian
groups are in Sumatra, where they total 7.1 per cent of the popula-
tion, and in the thinly populated Celebes, 14.27 per cent. In Java,
predominantly Muslim, they are only 0.7 per cent.

The weight of Christian influence on the central government and
administration is considerable. I was unable to meet Dr. Leimena,
one of the senior members of the government who had been in
sixteen out of the eighteen cabinets up to that time, but another
prominent Christian layman, Dr. Tambunan, a Batak, received me
twice at his home in Djakarta. Dr. Tambunan had been Deputy
Speaker but resigned to be Vice Chairman of Parkindo, the Chris-
tian Party. He is held in highest regard by the state and the churches
and has a most engaging modesty and friendliness.

Indonesia is the only Asian state with a Christian Party. "In
1945," said Dr. Tambunan, "when it was decided there must be
political parties, a number of Christians met together I could not
be there as I was a judge at Cheribon to decide whether there
should be a specifically Christian Party or whether we should work
through others. There were arguments for and against, as at all
meetings. The decision was to have one." It had been of considerable
effect, he said. Every cabinet had had one or two Christians ; it had
kept the extreme Muslims from making Islam the state religion ; and
although in practice the President would always need to be a Muslim
the Christian Party prevented the Constituent Assembly inserting
a clause that it must be so by law: "This seemed to suggest that
there were first- and second-class citizens."

As we were talking on the veranda of Dr. Tambunan's little house
on April 22, 1959, President Sukarno was beginning his long speech
at Bandung in which he appealed for a return to the "1945 Consti-
tution," a speech which led to the abolition of the Constituent
Assembly and to the establishment of direct presidential rule. In his
analysis of the national troubles, Sukarno pointed to the continua-
tion of corruption and dishonesty.

Christians owe most of their political influence to their UIHIB-
pekrhable integrity. "As to Christian influence on the government,"
said Dr. Tambunan, "it is not exactly the Christian churches but
incividtMs; such as Dr. Leimena, who are greatly trusted. You can-

2 o8 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

not find corruption in Christian officials, Members of Parliament
or teachers. We are a group that do not ask so much for favors
but do our duty. We have no corruptness." The evidence is that he
was not exaggerating.

All Asia is concerned in the future of Indonesia. "A strong Indo-
nesia is good for her neighbors/' I was told in Singapore. That she
could be strong is plain from her present achievement in lifting
literacy from 7 per cent to 60 per cent. The dangers of weakness are
obvious to any man walking through the Java countryside where
every village has a house with the bright red P.K.I, sign of the
Communist Party of Indonesia.

"Practically speaking, there is no anti-Dutch feeling in church
circles." These words of Dr. Tambunan were borne out by other
men.

Christians of Indonesia owe too much to Holland to allow politics
to obscure gratitude, however they may wish to disassociate them-
selves from the charge of having been tools of the colonial power.
Conversely, government circles recall that churches and the mis-
sionaries did much for the independence movement by creating
self-governing churches when political autonomy was a slender hope*
Dr. Hendrik Kraemer is regarded as one of the forefathers of In-
dependence.

Dutch ways have not been removed from the services of the major
churches ; in the circumstances it would be an unfortunate invasion
of political animosities if they had. A service transports you to
Holland closed windows and alL Hymns are slow, prayer is long,
the sermon read. An Indonesian way of worship will develop, but
must develop naturally. Certain funds still come from Holland,
although the former state churches in the Outer Islands, and the
chaplaincies, have nothing more from government. The National
Council of Churches is rather proud that Dutch missionaries are
still among them. A secretary who was instructing me in his own
church, the Batak, listed their twenty foreigners, Germans, Scan-
dinavians, Americans and, very coyly, "we have three Dutch."
Christian leaders say, "We are open enough and unbigoted enough to
want them still."

Compared with old days they are few. Tbfose who go home are

Indonesian Look-Around 209

not always able to return. New Dutch missionaries can scarcely
hope for a visa. Those who have remained are men who have adapted
themselves to the new order. In personal relationships, oddly, many
of them in Indonesia seem to have retained a starkly colonial at-
titude. An American, certainly not uncharitable, narrow-minded,
or ill-informed, said: "Most American missionaries who come here
very soon become anti-Dutch. ... I never realized before what the
term 'Dutch uncle 7 really means, or 'blockheaded Dutchman 5 !"
Emotionally the Dutch regard Indonesian Christians as children,
rather stupid children, and they maintain the attitude of a school-
ma'am. It appears to be instinctive. This factor alone increases the
pleasure of Indonesians in the friendship of non-Dutch Christians.
One Australian girl completely won the hearts of her local church
because she helped to wash up after a social. "We have never had
a European do that before," said the people.

My experiences with Dutch missionaries were of the happiest, both
in Java and elsewhere, and some I met evoked profound admiration.
I recall a talk in Djakarta with Dr. J. Verkuyl of the Re-Reformed
Church. His house is on a corner, and our conversation was punc-
tuated by the loud clappers of intinerant vendors drawing attention
of householders to the shops carried in heavy boxes on poles across
their shoulders.

Dr. Verkuyl came to the East Indies in 1940. To a remarkable
degree he holds the confidence of the Indonesian Government. "I am
working very hard," he said, "to -make peace between Indonesia and
the Netherlands. If West Irian is settled, I am absolutely sure the
door would open again." When on furlough he had addressed a
meeting of the Netherlands Cabinet. His plan, to which he says the
Indonesians are amenable, is for a condominium in which Indonesia
should have the sovereignty while the management shall be vested
in herself, Holland, and Australia.

It is most unlikely, as I soon realized on leaving Java, that
Australia or the United States would permit sovereignty of any part
of New Guinea to be in the hands of an unstable Indonesia which is
inclined to lean toward Russia. It is unfortunate that Indonesia
should allow this blunt fact to sour her.

To offset the difficulty of getting in Dutchmen, Verkuyl said they
must concentrate on strengthening Indonesian Christian leaders and

2io EARTH'S REMOTEST END

on obtaining missionaries from other countries : "We have got to be
ecumenical.' 3 As far as the churches are concerned, Indonesia wel-
comes men and women, especially those bred in a Presbyterian
tradition, who have gifts and are willing to work under nationals.
Government, unfortunately, is not so welcoming.

To get a recruit into Indonesia may take years, certainly very
many months. The Chief of the Protestant Section of the Ministry
of Religion was good enough to say he would see me, and introduce
me to the Minister, a Muslim. The appointment evaporated as
official Djakarta appointments do, and thus I was unable to discuss
the question. The Chief of the Protestant Section, a Sundanese
pastor who has held the post since Dutch and Japanese days, very
faithfully upholds the government's strict immigration laws, but
there is a feeling that the Roman Catholics, whose priesthood is
heavily weighted with foreigners, bring pressure to bear in this and
other matters and get more than do Protestants.

A decisive voice in all matters is that of the National Council of
Churches. Partly to strengthen opposition to the forces working to-
ward making the state officially Muslim, partly because the existence
of at least thirty separate churches of different languages over more
than a million square miles cried aloud for unity, the Council was
formed in 1950. It has not achieved unity such as in South India,
but it is of outstanding importance.

The value of national Christian councils in non-Christian lands
is obvious. They negotiate with governments, act as fact-finding
bureaus, as organs for the distribution of relief from overseas ; the
list could be lengthened. They are linked to regional councils and
to the World Council of Churches.

It would be folly to deny that the World Council is viewed with
uneasiness in certain quarters. Apart from those who draw the mar-
gin of cooperation so narrow that they reckon the ecumenical move-
ment a work of the Devil, many moderates and men highly regarded
do not subscribe fully to the ideas behind it, especially since the
decision to merge the International Missionary Council with the
World Council.

There is fear that the World Council wishes to be boss, and this
fear persists despite the oft-avowed disclaimer that the W.C.C is

Indonesian Look-Around 211

or ever ought to be a superchurch. To a lesser extent is the fear that
the ecumenical movement promotes hotch-potch theology. And there
is the feeling that too many conferences at distant centers deflect
desperately needed funds. "Such a waste of money/ 7 said an Anglican
bishop, in other respects a supporter of the movement. "All that hot
air too 1 Think of what we could do with the money they spend get-
ting delegates to these conferences."

The World Council is as permanent as the United Nations. A
strong evangelical in Malaya said, "These national councils and the
World Council are a picture of things as they are. We have got to
accept that and work through them. If we do not we cannot com-
plain at unwelcome decisions made in our absence." The World
Council organization at Geneva and its chief supporters have a slight
tendency to treat themselves as sacrosanct, like the Vatican, and to
dismiss as "sects" those who will not go along with them.

In Indonesia, discounting pentecostalists, Seventh-day Adventists
and the like, several excellent groups are not members of the Na-
tional Council of Churches. The Southern Baptists could not be ex-
pected to join. For them it is too broad a union. "Our emphasis is,"
said a pleasant young man from Texas, "that you should only co-
operate where you can go the whole way spiritually." They do not
keep mission comity, preferring to open Baptist churches in the big
centers, spreading outward. Wherever there are no Baptists is con-
sidered free. The Southern Baptists are one of the wealthiest mis-
sions. "Our people at home are blessed with this world's goods. They
ought to give. Tithing is the basis of our giving." The Christian and
Missionary Alliance operates in isolated parts of Borneo (Kali-
mantan) and the Outer Islands. Mr, Rudes, the field chairman,
whose guests we were at Bandung, pointed out that membership
would bring little obvious gain to either side. It would, I suppose, be
a piece of tidying, but that is not sufficient cause.

Those who do not support the World Council or its local unit may
be in danger of making isolated pocket churches each in its small
corner. Yet many who are wary of the ecumenical movement have as
strong a sense of the universal church, the Body of Christ. One
man on virgin soil of another country said: "From a very early
stage the doctrine of the church should be taught, to show that a
saving faith is not just for personal enjoyment but brings them

sis EARTH'S REMOTEST END

into a Body, We must teach corporate worship. We must teach them
their relationship to another ; that because they are related to Christ
they are related to the whole Body of Christ. The third stage is
to teach the doctrine of the universal church. We don't want to
confuse the ecumenical movement with the universal church, the
Body of Christ."

Before flying back to Singapore we stopped for three days in the
mountains. We had hoped to visit the most famous active volcano
in Java, close to Bandung, from where a motor road leads up to
the crater. But in the previous week bandits opened fire on the
leading cars of an escorted convoy of sightseers and killed six people.
A Chinese Christian couple, personal friends of George Steed, saw
their two eldest children killed.

TWENTY-EIGHT $$* No Gaiters in a

Canoe

Borneo from a distance seems a steamy, unattractive place. I could
never understand why those who worked there should rave about
it. Now I know.

From the moment I awoke among the mangroves in S.S. Auby at
anchor in the Sarawak River before she continued with the tide up
to Kuching, Borneo cast its spell.

The Bishop of Borneo was leaving next day on an episcopal tour
in the Second Division and invited us to join. Breakfast was served
before sunrise, and sharp at 7 :oo A.M. the government-survey launch
L'Aubaine was away downriver. On the left bank stood the Astana,
residence formerly of the white rajahs, the Brookes, now of the gov-
ernor, a country house rather than a palace. To the right on a slight
hill was the Bishop's iio-year-old house, and beyo&d it the tower
of the fine new cathedral.

The launch was fourteen registered tons, screw-propelled, Diesel-
engined. The foredeck, roomy under an awning, had a survey table,
and below was a cabin with bunks, a table, a sink, a kerosene cook-

No Gaiters in a Canoe 213

ing stove and a refrigerator. Off the cabin was a small bathroom
the state of which would have greatly distressed Armin Staub. The
crew were Malay a young captain and four others. The bishop nor-
mally used Chinese passenger boats, crowded, ugly, slow, airless,
on which no European other than a missionary will travel, but as
he had guests he wished them to have comparative comfort. There
were four of us Canon Oliver Brady, an elderly Australian who
had been Archdeacon of New Guinea ; ourselves, and John Crowe,
the bishop's young secretary who was out for a year between school
and university. The "Year Between" scheme was a brainchild of the
bishop which had been taken up by British colonies in Asia and
Africa to enable boys waiting for university places to do social
or educational work in underdeveloped areas. There were eight or
nine boys in Sarawak. "From our point of view an unqualified suc-
cess," said the governor, "though they probably get more out of it
than we do."

After we had settled our things, the bishop read Mattins on the
foredeck. When the service was finished, L'Aubaine, at 7% knots,
was well down the twenty-eight miles to the sea. The bishop spread
out a map and explained the origin and extent of his diocese.

In 1848 Rajah James Brooke, who had been invited to the
throne by its then suzerain, the Sultan of Brunei, obtained for Sara-
wak a man who was both parson and doctor, Macdougall, the first
missionary and later first bishop. The Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel had built up the mission and diocese. The diocese was
now independent and the S.P.G.'s part was limited to finding person-
nel a sort of missionary broker and contributing funds, as does also
the Protestant Episcopal Church of America. The bishop thought in
terms of Ecclesia Borneo, not of this or that mission. There was
nothing he disliked more than to hear his clergy referred to as
"S.P.G. priests," especially since the Australian Church Missionary
Society had recently sent men. The diocese was conterminous with
Borneo, the third largest island of the world, but no Anglican work
existed in Indonesian territory. In Sarawak, under an allocation made
by the rajahs, to practical intents its mission was limited to the
First Division where the Land Dayaks live, and the Second Division
home of the Sea Dayaks or Ibans, a different race with a different
language, tn North Borneo, apart from the big towns, operations

2i 4 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

were those of the Australian C.M.S. at Tawau, mostly among
Chinese, and the new Dayak Mission of the Epiphany in the remote
interior.

Nigel Cornwall, Bishop of Borneo, is an athletic man in his fifties.
He has a square face with Churchillian curves, a strong but not
prominent chin, a small mouth, wiry black hair going gray. A face
you can trust. He was wearing white shirt and gold pectoral cross
and chain, blue shorts, fawn stockings and sandals. His episcopal
ring had belonged to the first bishop, given by a descendant.

The bishop was reputed impervious to heat, cold, wet, hunger, and
fatigue, and throughout the days to come I scarcely saw a yawn. His
unostentatious piety was infectious. He was a most thoughtful host
and organizer, just the companion for an expedition such as this.

A few days after our return to Kuching he would be leaving to
be married in Colombo. His bride was on her way from England.

The South China Sea was choppy, and John Crowe and the Land
Dayak boy whom the bishop had brought as servant, felt it. The
Land Dayak, Rabat, sat below with an expression of deepest woe.

The bishop put on a kettle, opened a tin of Macvita and, to my
joy, Oxford marmalade, an extravagance explained by the excellent
uses of those distinctive jars. The coffee had been left behind
shades of pork chops in Laos. We had tea instead, and watched
the lovely deep green coast line and the hills behind. We were cutting
across the wide curve where Sarawak turns north. The whole dis-
tance from Kuching to Saratok, our nightstop, being ninety-seven
miles.

The bishop and I washed up, and as Rabat was now in piteous
state the bishop peeled and put on the potatoes. He is a most prac-
tical man but he did burn those potatoes. The rest of us sat reading
on the deck. The bishop put his head through the hatch. "What
would you like for lunch? Cold ham, luncheon meat, a sort of meat
roll, fried sausages?" "No," said Canon Brady firmly, "not fried
sausages."

Canon Brady, Father, as we all called him, was one of those
churchmen of stanchest views who yet hold the utter respect and
affection of their opposites. Father was an Anglo-Catholic who had
been chaplain and confidential friend to an evangelical Archbishpp

No Gaiters in a Canoe 215

of Melbourne. He had a profound sympathy with the late Arch-
bishop of Sydney, Dr. Mowll. "An uncompromising evangelical," he
would say, "but but Christ came first!" I can imagine that the
saintly Dr. Mowll used a similar expression about Canon Brady.
Father had been twenty years in Melbourne churches when a visit
to New Guinea led to an unmistakable missionary call. "It was like
Francis Thompson's the Hound of Heaven." He responded in
1940, and for nineteen years had been principal of a teacher-
evangelist training college : "All our teachers had to be evangelists
too."

In early afternoon UAubaine entered a most beautiful estuary
and called at a contrastingly ugly confusion of gray huts of dried
nipa palm: Kabong. The crew said we must wait until the river
filled. The bishop said : "What they really want is to buy fish. A very
good place for fish." The native officer, a Dayak, led us over a
rickety landing stage across a mud flat where little sand crabs bur-
row, through one of the shops on to a red-brick narrow causeway in
the grass, up to the District Office. This green timber affair was
called, in echo of stern days of head hunting and piracy, Fort
Charles*

The native officer was a Christian. It was good to be in one of
the few territories where the word "native" has not lost its dignity ;
the Malays and more recent immigrants, Indians and Chinese, are
known as Asiatics, The indigenous tribespeople, pagan or ex-pagan,
are still native in name as well as in origin.

Said Evensong marked the continuation of the journey up the
Krian. Under a sun still strong in a clear sky all faces were scarlet
after exposure to refraction at sea, even the brown torso of the
muscular Malay cross-legged at the wheel was patched in red. Com-
pared with Thailand these waters are uncrowded. Sarawak is an
empty country, and the distances between settlements increased by
the twisting of the rivers, the only alternative to slippery trails. How
the Krian wound I realized when I flew over it. Tides were impor-
tant factors in the bishop's life. The three books always with him
were the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Sarawak
Gazette Tide Table.

At dusk 6 :oo P.M., we reached Saratok, tiny capital of a district
and center of a vast parish. The parish priest, Father Basil Temeng-

216 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

gong, accompanied by a crowd of Ms congregation, escorted us to
the mission house close by St. Peter's School Here we had splash
baths and dinner. With his white cassock Father Basil shed a slight
solemnity. He was a most intelligent man, a Sea Dayak who had
been trained at Bishop's College, Calcutta and in England at Mir-
field and an East End parish. He spoke excellent English with a
Mirfield accent, that slight drawl combined with a clipped enunci-'
ation which seems characteristic of a certain sort of English clergy-
man.

The bishop thoughtfully had arranged that Anne and I should
sleep on the launch, where we made ourselves comfortable on the
deck, John Crowe slept at a teacher's house, Father and the bishop
at Basil's.

The bishop had already traveled twelve hours and was not at his
destination.

Water Rat in The Wind in the Willows would love Sarawak
it is all messing about in boats.

Two canoes with outboard motors roared away up the Krian, bows
out of the water, a man standing at the prow to signal a rock
or obstruction, another at the motor in the stern. We sat in the
bottom, the bishop, Father, and we two in one, John Crowe and
two Dayaks in the other driven by Basil, for clergy and mission-
aries in Sarawak require to be expert at outboard motors.

In twenty minutes, at 8 -.35 A.M., on a curve past a longhouse of
impressive length, we disembarked at stairs up a steep bank. At a
little house standing by itself the bishop confirmed a young blind
woman. We knelt in a room lumbered with water jars, mattresses,
bright red rugs, two gongs and a banjo, family snapshots, and
magazine pictures royal and ancient. Basil prayed, and the bishop
read the service in Sea Dayak ; he cannot speak the language but
has taught himself to read the services of the church. Irreverent
geese and cocks cackled and crowed beyond the thin partition, and
mosquitoes, which evidently do not bite bishops, for me made the
service a trial. My neighbor obligingly squashed a few on my
ankles.

i At Kaki Wong (Feot of the Rapids) we spread into a third
canoe and the crewmen cfagmged from shorts to bathing trunks. The

No Gaiters in a Canoe 217

river narrowed, came flowing faster, tunneled under more forbidding
trees. The jungle looked thick but was only secondary, and now and
again a rubber plantation came to the water's edge. No estate is
owned by a European: the rajahs would not allow it. They ruled
the country for its people. Since a rubber boom the natives had
made money hence all the outboard motors. Obstructions increased ;
we turned a corner and took the first rapids.

Rapids are fun, especially these puny ones. High up on the bigger
rivers they can drown the rash or the inexperienced. At the first
proper rapid we were told to get out on a midstream rock, and the
canoe shot the rapid at a roar and a bound. After that, rapids came
frequently. Some were small enough to take in our stride with one
tremendous splash, the man in the prow expertly using a pole and
driver lifting the motor at the critical moment. At others the canoe
had to be manhandled, and at shallows, where we walked in the
water, the driver kept the engine turning and the prowman hauled.
He would not permit me to help.

Hungry and thirsty we came to Kabo. A discreet pause at the
landing stage for the reception committee's benefit, and with cym-
bals and gong, Chinese firecrackers, and the lay reader in white
cassock leading the procession we were escorted through a short
path in the undergrowth, past a nefarious open latrine which had
been placed there at the instance of the Community Development
officer and up the steps to the entrance of the longhouse.

Kabo was a barrack of a longhouse, the most substantial though
not the longest I saw, and had been Christian for two or three
generations. In Sarawak the native village is the longhouse. Each
family has a private home, but instead of opening on to a street its
door opens on to a covered communal space the length of the long-
house, Size is reckoned by the number of "doors." Built entirely of
timber, Kabo had floor boards with measurements putting to shame
the finest Elizabethan gallery. The more prosperous "doors" had ex-
cellent paneling, and one or two not only possessed portable wire-
lesses and pressure lamps but had built an upper story. Through
most houses, but not Kabo, runs a strip which is the trail. A way-
farer must pass that way, and if he wants refreshment he sits dowrt
and will receive it,

Ateost always everybody is related, and affairs of life $re done

2iS EARTH'S REMOTEST END

together. Friendships and feuds ripen fast. Conspicuous by his
absence from the festivities at Kabo was the Tuai Rumah, the head-
man. He had fallen out with the lay reader, who was not blameless
in the dispute, had ceased to come to church, and would have noth-
ing to do with the bishop's visit. The bishop spent a long hour at-
tempting to mediate, suggesting that bygones be bygones, but the
man was obdurate. He had been wronged by the "parson," and was
through with the church. It might have been an English country
parish.

We mounted the steps, took off our shoes, and entered. Eyes
glistened at the array of bottles on the table, but we had to proc-
ess right round, the lay reader and Basil, the bishop, ourselves,
most of the villagers, singing an Iban hymn. At each door the bishop
blessed the home, making the sign of the cross. When we reached the
entrance again, all knelt for a final prayer.

Then we set to. Every family had bought or made something:
bottles of still orange and lager beer, rice cakes, and a fried rice
biscuit sticky as it was succulent. We washed and swam in the swift
narrow river and next were treated to an enormous lunch. Most
"doors" had one or two chairs and some had tables ; these had been
placed so that we could eat in Western style, forks and spoons com-
plete. The lay reader had killed a pig in our honor. On to rice we
ladled pork and venison and lightly boiled eggs, as much as we
could eat. There is no hunger in Borneo, or poverty in the Indian
sense, and these Sea Dayaks near the coast were among the most
prosperous natives of Sarawak. They did not celebrate like this
except on great occasions, and the late nights we had on this ex-
pedition were not normal, for they rise early and go early to bed.
Those who work there are critical of books which imply that Sara-
wak life is one long feast. All the same, I enjoyed being in the
tail of a V.I.P.

We were resting on the sleeping mats laid as beds on the floor
upstairs when a storm began, so heavy and prolonged that Evensong
and Confirmation did not take place in the church but in the long-
house. The one sheet in the party (brought for Father) made a fair
linen cloth across a table for the cross and two candlesticks brought
from the church. Candidates and congregation squatted on mats;
we were given benches behind. Some children made a row down at

Sarawak Storm and Sunshine 219

the far end until told off by the lay reader. In England my late dio-
cesan recently had stated that he had no authority to prevent a
rector bringing his dogs to the parish church. No Bishop of Borneo
could hope to keep dogs out of a service in a longhouse.

English hymns translated into Iban were sung loudly ; it reminded
me of a garrison parade service. The bishop in red cope and miter
confirmed eleven candidates, mostly boys, and gave through Basil's
interpretation a simple address.

I noticed men down in the semidarkness at the back. Were they
backsliders or under discipline? I asked the bishop afterward.
"They are from another longhouse/' he said. "They are pagans. That
is one way the Gospel spreads."

TWENTY-NINE #F Sarawak Storm and

Sunshine

It was astonishing how much time the bishop had to spend in
travel. The next morning after early service in the church, a huge
breakfast and a call at the school, we were on the way to Ensawa.
It could be reached by a twenty-mile canoe trip back downriver and
up a tributary, or a five-mile struggle overland. Sending Father
and the luggage by canoe, the bishop decided to show us a trek
such as he often made in the First Division.

Quite different from Nepal or Laos, a Sarawak trail was all ups
and downs little ups and little downs, but so slippery that even with
sticks we were on our bottoms now and again. Two girls going to
Ensawa, in sarongs, blouses, and men's brown trilby hats laughed
at our antics and were so surefooted that they could give helping
hands. I lost count of the brooks we forded, the bamboos we bal-
anced on across mud or marsh ; some treks include miles of marsh.
The jungle, nearly all secondary, shaded us most of the time. Once
we came at a rise on a fine view of blue hills far away.

We were not more than one and a half hours before the trail
reached a small longhouse, pagan. A branch lay across the entrance.
*It is taboo," said Basil. "We cannot go through." A woman came to

220 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

the door. "Only a child's play," she said in Sea Dayak. We entered,
On a pole in the center was a bunch of heads hanging by the hair,
the skulls black with probably a hundred years. "In the first bishop's
time they would have been dripping blood," said the bishop. The last
recorded headhunting in peacetime had been in 1935, and rare for
many years before. In war it was different. The governor has a story
of the head of a Japanese education officer whose gold-rimmed
spectacles are taken off each day and polished. At Ensawa I asked
what happened to a collection when its owners turned Christian.
A man replied, "When my grandfather and father became Christians,
they had pity on the heads and buried them with prayer."

We came to the tributary, running full after the storm. Almost
at once a canoe whined from round a bend, loaded us, and careered
back, the gunwale so low that no one dared move a muscle. Ensawa
was a smaller longhouse than Kabo, only four families. We were
greeted in Sunday best : men in fresh-laundered shirts and shorts ;
the women in Dayak blouse and sarong, hunched and grinning little
balls of grandmothers, gums blackened by betel, young mothers self-
assured, all of them wearing what looked like sovereigns. They were
engraved with the head of Queen Victoria and the words "Gold
medal for jewelry."

Father and the luggage arrived. We were given refreshment and
left for another house, scarcely a longhouse, some miles up the
tributary where the bishop was to baptize and confirm an adult.
The bishop, Anne, and I were in one canoe, the rest in another. It
came on to rain. It rained hard. All the Chinese umbrellas were in
the other canoe and, looking back, we saw a row of green or black
paper circles moving on the water, a curious sight. We caught our
cotter pin on a hidden rock and had to stop for repair in the rain.
The other canoe broke a propeller blade and arrived long after.

The rain soaked us through and was cold. Greetings at the house
had therefore to include the provision of dry clothes, and after
some difficulty owing to the un-European dimensions of Dayak
women, Anne emerged in a long sleeved muslin blouse and sarong,
an outfit which she reported hot. The bishop amd I sat in sarongs,
naked to the waist untS the other canoe arrived and the bishop
could put on his white cassock with ptirple dncture. For our
strong thirst these peopte had only bottled Beer. Neither Anne ixor

Sarawak Storm and Sunshine 221

I likes bee'r ; odd to come all the way to Borneo to drink Scottish
lager from Glasgow.

Before a lunch of rice, fried eggs, meat, and chicken the bishop
was invited to bless the house in a short service. He said that sev-
eral such services had been worked out by the diocese. "The pagans
have so many ceremonies connected with the farming year that the
Christians want something to replace them." The customary snooze
took place in a line on mats on the floor, and then the bishop blessed
a graveyard, and proceeded to the baptism and confirmation in the
diminutive church high on its stilts, very simply furnished, not }
even a cross, merely a religious picture. I entered toward the close.
The bishop was delivering his sermon, a dog was asleep behind the
congregation, and beside the font full length lay a man. "He had a
fit during the baptism," said the bishop afterward, "and then was
violently sick, so they laid him there."

"I did wonder what he was up to." "I expect you thought it was
another of those terrible high church practices," laughed the bishop.

The Sea Dayaks, who number over a third of the Sarawak popula-
tion, and the other indigenous tribes have a surprisingly fair skin
where not exposed to sun it is little darker than a tanned European.
They are small but well formed. Their bodies are not hairy like
Indians, and their faces give a rather flat effect, possibly because
their mouths, which are large, do not have prominent lips like the
Malays and their noses are splayed. The forehead goes sharply back
to thick black hair which is sometimes kinky. These we were visiting
had advanced farther than those in the interior, and the men wore
Western clothes. Even when working in the sun they had shorts or
bathing trunks, not a loincloth. Nearly every man at Ensawa had
a wrist watch. They are easygoing, lighthearted. "The real masters
of the longhouses are the children. There is no discipline." To
Europeans the adults, like the old English countryman to his squire,
combined complete respect with unconscious personal dignity and
friendliness.

Back at Ensawa that evening we were given a welcome such as the
bishop from his ten years in the diocese could not recall. ,

Following a bath in the river we assembled for dinner. "What
wouldn't you give now for a nice plate of roast beef?" murmured
Father to ; Anne as they looked at piles of rice. The Tuai Rumah,

222 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

complete with pencil, board, timetable, and lists, dashed about as
if a military staff officer. In the communal part each of the four
"doors" entertained one of us, Anne and I very properly counting
as one, and an interpreter (in intention at least) was provided. We
sat at tables loaded with food, rice, eggs, liver, bits of chicken, soup,
more than we could possibly eat ; no matter : our hosts, sitting with
us, would eat afterward and on the floor were scores of friends from
other longhouses. Our interpreter was a middle-aged man who had
been to a catechists 7 school twenty years ago. During the war he
had been taken by the Japanese to Kuching for forced, unpaid labor.
Like all the men in these longhouses, he was a heavy smoker. Neither
of us found the other's English easy.

He talked of the rajahs. "The rajahs were very popular. But
we felt we had to be modern and keep abreast of the times. We are
glad to be a Colony." I asked whether Christianity was spreading
among the Sea Dayaks. He said, "They go to mission schools and
hear the way of religion and want to be Christians." He told me
that he would say to a pagan, "It is the will of God that you should
have the way of religion."

We all withdrew to the new church built on their own initiative
with their own hands. The bishop dedicated it next morning before
Holy Communion, a service to which all came, and the singing
was excellent, but the sandflies interfered with my concentration.

After Evensong the next item was listed as Chat. We sat at the
same table, three solemn young men at the other side. "They are
heathen," said the interpreter rather scathingly. They brightened
when I made him draw them into the conversation. One said, "I
am not a Christian yet." I tried a little evangelism, but the interpre-
tation was not adequate. The Tuai Rumah came up and said, "Fa-
ther Pollock, the bishop wants everyone up at the other end." By
the Tuai's scheme the six of us went together to each table in turn,
the bishop blessed the household who knelt before him; they
solemnly shook our hands and regaled us with orange, beer, rice
beer, cakes, and biscuits. The art was to eat sufficient to please
without getting indigestion.

Speeches, Basil interpreting. The Tuai made a speech of wel-
come, and the bishop's reply left no doubt how touched we were by
the hospitality. He continued with gracious reference to his "dis-

Sarawak Storm and Sunshine 223

tinguished guests/ 5 mentioning each of us until his minnows became
whales. "And all of them," he said, "are here because of the Gospel
of Jesus Christ." He concluded with words specially for the pagans :
"On the river today I counted no less than seventeen outboard
motors at one place. You would not have seen them ten years ago.
I have heard of the thousands of dollars passing through the Com-
munity Development shop, . . . When you die, will you be able to
take those outboard motors with you? All those dollars? Take
care of your souls. . . ."

When all matters had been discussed, it was midnight. Coffee,
biscuits, margarine, jam, marmalade, honey, and cornflakes were
produced. No one could eat any more. Narrow mattresses had been
laid at one end of the longhouse, and on one two pillows side by side.
The bishop was highly amused. "Look what's prepared for the
married!" Mercifully, another mattress came. While the bishop
and his companions knelt at their prayers, the chatter at the other
end continued, and far into the small hours, breaking into a sleep
otherwise luxurious; indeed, I believe some of them never went
to bed. Certainly we were all up before dawn, I for a bathe before
service, though the river had risen too high to risk swimming. When
the time came to leave, another canoe had to be brought into use to
keep the loads light.

The farewells were affectionate. The old women hugged Anne.
"Come again, come again," Basil translated ; "we have loved having
a white lady." The river back to Saratok was so full that rapids
and shallows passed unnoticed. Dangers came from flotsam, from
hidden rocks and the Tuai Rumah's improvidence. We were in his
boat, the extra one. He ran out of fuel and had to trust to the swift
current for the last mile to Kaki Wong.

Late on the afternoon of Whit Saturday Anne and I looked in on
the bishop at the Saratok mission house ; in his kindly way he had
given us L'Aubaine as home, and Rabat to look after us.

He had a pile of papers. "Adult Baptism applications," he said.
"You know the Prayer Book says 'timely notice shall be given to the
Bishop 7 before the baptism of those of riper years. I make the priests
send applications to me. It is a way of preventing unwise baptisms."
He looked at the next and scored it through. "No," he wrote across

224 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

it. "It is very dangerous to baptize a girl of eleven in a house where
there are no Christians."

In those days in the Second Division and afterward at Kuching
there were opportunities to discuss the general work of the diocese.
As the bishop said, "The Gospel is spreading faster than we can
keep up with it."

The church people of Borneo have a strong sense of their part in
historic Christianity. The stream which flowed from Galilee and
Jerusalem through Rome and Canterbury flows strong in the
tropical forests. The Anglican communion brings them awareness
of their place in the universal church, although I detected in some
of the clergy that tendency to assume that non-Anglicans receive
gifts of the Spirit only accidentally, sent to the wrong address.

The family feeling the Church begets, a settled church order
under a pastoral ministry, a consciousness of the Fatherhood of a
God of Love, a way of life which may not be unimpeachable but has
a foundation of purity and of compassion these signs mark Chris-
tians from pagans. The contrast between darkness and light is far
stronger than comparisons between different theologies within the
broad stream of catholic Christianity, however deep a man's convic-
tions lie. These signs also are a powerful draw to pagans.

One way the Gospel spreads, as the former catechist at Ensawa
said, is through mission schools. In the last century S.P.G. began the
only schools in the interior. Now the diocesan schools range jrom
those in villages to the famous foundations, of St. Thomas and St.
Margaret at Kuching, Engish-speaking secondary schools.

Much depends on the Asian ministry, Dayak and Chinese. I asked
the bishop about the strength of these men. "I can tell you where
their weaknesses lie more .easily," he replied. "Lacking in initiative
and enterprise, with the notable exception of Basil." They will not
plan ahea<J< They lean heavily on the bishop for anything, even
routine matteifs often being passed to him. Some of the recently
ordained have doae well, aid he hopes to be able to send more men
abroad for advanced trailing in England or Australia. "Our greatest
need is a better Mucaied jtninistry. I go back to that again and
again." r ( i

BFban.' Borneo is largely Chinese, Euching bazaar almost entirely
s@, The diocese h#s, five! CMnese iprifeste, and four of them are over

Sarawak Storm and Sunshine 225

sixty. The reasons so few volunteer for the Sacred Ministry from the
large Chinese congregations are revealing : they are not of the back-
ground from which priests and teachers come, the bishop said. Their
forefathers came to make money ; every possible avenue of employ-
ment is wide open and they do not consider that the Church provides
sufficiently favorable terms and conditions; the government offers
overseas scholarships which have the effect of deflecting possible
recruits; objection from parents, including Christian parents.

On the other hand the diocese is encouraged by the increase of
funds from within Borneo, over 500 per cent in nine years, yet not
enough. "Our aim is to become self-supporting, at least for our Asian
ministry."

The bishop said: "Frankly, I am a bit worried about the laity,
the laity out in the districts, I feel they are not being fed sufficiently.
The same in the towns where they are overwhelmed by the material-
istic atmosphere." One weakness inherited from former times is lack
of a Bible in vernaculars other than Chinese. The mission has been
in Sarawak no years, and apart from the passages in the Prayer
Book has nothing but the New Testament in Sea Dayak, reprinted in
1952 and widely used, and a Land Dayak New Testament being
polished preparatory to printing. In former days illiteracy in the
interior was almost complete because (the Sarawak official record
states) "it was the considered opinion of the rajahs and their prin-
cipal advisers that the Sea Dayaks and kindred tribes would be
happier and more contented without education as represented by
reading, writing and arithmetic."

In the neighborhood of every Christian longhouse are others
which are pagan. Father Basil mentioned two districts completely
unevangelized. "The priest has to confine himself to the evangelized
area."

"Could not teams of laymen go?"

"They could, but they don't."

There is a distinct fear of letting the laity loose. "If," said the
bishop, "we had lay teams going out to evangelize, we would have
to have the clergy coming in immediately after to give the con-
tinuing foundation."

The price of a strongly sacramental emphasis is often a laity which
leaves the initiative to the clergy, and clergy are few in Borneo. The

22 6 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

coming of the Australian C.M.S. is an encouragement to expansion,
as is also the diocese's new North Borneo Interior Mission. The
bishop is working toward schools of evangelism. Weekend schools
dear to an English diocese would be impossible: the people might
take a week to get there. He aims to appoint as canon missioner
a missionary of experience and ability who knows three languages ;
he would travel to centers, gather the laity of the district when
they can spare time from farming, and teach.

"But you see the Holy Spirit working, the Church growing/'
said the bishop. And we did.

After Whitsunday at the parish church at Saratok we went on the
Monday to Robon, a place marked quite large on the map. Getting
to Robon involved either an overland expedition with carriers, twelve
miles, or by river down the Krian to Kabong almost on the coast
and back up the smaller Seblak, a total distance of about fifty miles.
The launch could just make Robon on the tide but would be
grounded if it stayed. The bishop, uttering warnings that it was a
most grueling route, consented that Anne and I should walk, the rest
to come by launch, which would return at once to Kabong with
Father and us. The bishop, Basil, and John, their duty done, would
rejoin by canoe next morning.

The trail, almost level, had been made fit for jeeps, and the four-
hour walk was hot but not hard. It was memorable because of the
extreme friendliness of such people as we passed. Nearly everyone
insisted on shaking hands. Coming more or less directly from Java,
I found it a moving tribute to the popularity of the Brooke rajahs
and their successors, the British Colonial Government.

Robon was a delightful small timber-covered bazaar on the farther
bank of the little river and in a tropical way recalled a Constable
landscape of the Upper Thames. The reception committee was a little
dashed, as they expected the bishop; Basil's message had been
garbled. The afternoon journey downriver surpassed in beauty any
before enjoyed, and at Kabong we fortuitously coincided with the
regatta and next morning watched races between the traditional
Dayak war prahus, some twenty-four or twenty-eight paddles strong.
The winners were generally so excited that they sank.

We were all tired and should have been glad of immediate return
to Kuching. By next morning we were equally pleased not to have
missed St. Michael's, Plassu.

Sarawak Storm and Sunshine 227

Two and a half hours in the open sea brought L'Aubaine to the
mouth of another estuary, still part of Basil's parish, and up it with
the tide until we saw in the distance three canoes, and a waving,
and heard a Dayak band. As we closed with them, a young man
dressed, or undressed, rather, in traditional costume, red loincloth
draped fore and aft, a silver belt and bracelet, headdress of humming-
bird feathers, danced gingerly in one of the canoes. The bandsmen
thumped a long drum similar to those of the Burma Jinghpaws, beat
two gongs, and played on a sort of xylophone of circular brasses.

We transferred to the canoes, one with an awning of puas, those
beautiful red weave mats which are a speciality of the older Dayak
women, and turned up a narrow creek through forbidding mangrove
forest, the blue sky saving the scene from gloom.

The chief bandsman, the effect of whose red waistcoat and head-
dress was spoiled by spectacles and a toothbrush mustache, was the
key to St. Michael's, Plassu.

He had gone to live at Plassu in 1956, a middle-aged solitary
Christian. He persuaded his pagan neighbors to ask for a school, a
mission school. Four longhouses contributed money, cleared jungle,
built a school, houses for teachers and huts for children to sleep dur-
ing the week nights if their parents desired. St. Peter's, Saratok, pro-
vided teachers. The government had no part except to congratulate
and accept St. MichaePs as an unaided school. One longhouse had
already turned Christian, and now they had their own St. MichaePs
Church.

The creek narrowed so that you could almost touch the mangroves
on either side. We drew into a sidestream to let the band pass, the
"ancient" Dayak dancer busy with an outboard motor, his feathers
pushed back oil his head, and in due time we landed in the middle
of a vociferous greeting of music, firecrackers, and the discharge of
an ancient musket which knocked its firer back. From all four long-
houses they had lined up, the old men, the young, the boys, in order
of size : the old women, the younger and babies, the girls. We walked
through an arch marked "Welcome" and shook 144 hands.

The compound had been marked with English notices : "Exhibi-
tion Room," "Way to Bathing Place," "Bathing Place," "Urinal."
The blackboard in the schoolroom proclaimed "Welcome to His
Lordship the Lord Bishop of Borneo and His Company."

That evening in the church, which had the narrowest benches I

228 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

have ever had to perch upon, the bishop confirmed after Evensong.
Because the people could have their vicar to preach only once in a
while, to listen to the bishop on his first visit was epochal. And the
bishop cut through the barrier of interpretation, making his points
plain by actions. He spoke of the Heavenly Friend. "At the start of
each day kneel on your sleeping mat" (the bishop knelt on the
floor) "and place your hand on the shoulder of your Friend." (The
bishop stretched out his hand as if he could feel the shoulder.)

After dinner and the bishop's speech, Basil summed up in Eng-
lish the three Dayak replies. To the urgent plea, "Send us a European
to come and live here to teach us more," the bishop could only say
that it was "a good dream but dreams sometimes come true."

They danced, shyly. A man did a shadow dance, another a sword
dance, the effects rather spoiled by Western clothes. The young man
with traditional costume had a fit of giggles when his feather head-
dress fell off. And all the time the Dayak music, gongs and brass and
drum, clanged in a rhythm rather than a tune, a constantly repeated
theme like "Ole Man River."

Sleeping mats on a bamboo floor seemed no discomfort by now,
but absence of pillows made the night fretful. Next morning after
service we were given breakfast in the schoolmaster's house, the
biggest bowl of porridge being laid before the bishop : the school-
master evidently knew the story of the Three Bears.

The 144 hands having been shaken all over again, we reembarked.
The tide was low, and outboards could not be used. The day was
dark, the mangrove roots muddy and gnarled, and the whole scene
requires a heavy word like umbrageous.

Anne, Father, John, and I were in the canoe worked by Basil with,
#s prowman, the young man who had danced. We could not expect
L'Aubaine at the junction with the river; she would be coming up
&s far as the tide allowed. Storm clouds gathered. We had um-
Jbrellas and believed that the bishop had his. Rain. Umbrellas served
ior a bit, but we were soon drenched by hard, unyielding rain which
blacked out the scene* poured down our necks, and began to fill the
boat so that one of tis haid to be bailing. The engine ran dry and we
drifted inshore to refoeL ly now^ in this tropical country, teeth were
chattering. And no siga of; the launch. We sang to keep spirits up;
it seemed to make us waiter. At last, Bearing the fishing hamlet

In the Interior 229

near the estuary mouth, we saw the outline of the launch at anchor.
The crew, lazy Malays, stirred not a finger to help us clamber up.
The captain was hiding under an umbrella in a bath at the stern.

With an ill grace they consented to turn about upstream for the
bishop. We removed our soaking clothes, put towels round our
middles, and started a kettle. Ten minutes later we picked up a
frozen bishop. He had been reading theology when the rain came
and had no umbrella. He had paddled to keep warm. His fingers
were stiff, and when we gave him scalding coffee his lips were numb.
The Bishop of Borneo burned his throat.

THIRTY *F In the Interior

The red single-engined Piper Tri-Pacer on Sibu Airfield looked
minute from the Dakota as we came in to land on June 2nd. In that
frail craft we would be venturing into the interior.

After a fortnight writing at Bishop's House, Kuching, a capital
with such village atmosphere that it might be called the Lichtenstein
of the Far East, we were to join the Borneo Evangelical Mission.
There are five missions operating in the areas allocated by the rajahs :
the Anglicans, the American Methodists in the Third Division, whose
warm invitation we had no time to accept; Roman Catholics,
Seventh-day Adventists, and the Borneo Evangelical, originally and
predominantly Australian but now with several British members.

The Malayan Airways plane from Singapore had been delayed at
Kuching by radio trouble nearly three and a half hours, and the
time was 3 :4o P.M. The tiny Piper taxied onto the runway. Borneo
afternoons in the interior are notoriously bad for flying, worsening
with evening, and though the sun was strong at Sibu the B.E.M.
pilot, Captain Harold Parspns, a beefy Australian over forty, had
an eye on the clock.

Anne sat beside the pilot, I on the floor behind facing backwards,
the rear seats having been removed to allow us more weight for lug-
gage. Harold Parsons braked to a halt, engine ticking over* He went
through the pre-takeofi routine fuel gauges : checked. Fuel valve :

230 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

proper tank. Carburetor heat : off. Carburetor mixture : rich* Engine
gauges: checked. Flaps: up. Stabilizer: set. "Shall we pray? We
never fly without prayer. Lord, we commend ourselves into thine
everlasting arms. . . ." Harold in simple, humble words asked for
skill and safety. He pulled at the throttle, and we were climbing
steeply, not at the maximum angle lest Anne be nervous ; the plane
can rise almost like a lift. We headed for the coast.
' A Shell Oil man at Harold's "Shall we pray?" had said, "Is it as
bad as that?" Prayer is as routine to the B.E.M. pilots as any other
preflight check. I had heard a sneer that the B JE.M. took a slapdash
line, "Trust the Lord and let routine go hang." Nothing could be
further from fact. The pilots are skilled, very experienced, and their
attention to safety factors as close as that of B.OAC. And because
they do not maintain a schedule they need not and do not fly in
risky weather. I was nervous at first because of unfamiliarity with
light aircraft. My confidence increased rapidly. The dozen landings
I made in the next three weeks, several in difficult conditions, were
painted on with a brush, and if it were not insulting to the B.E.M. I
would say that I felt safer in their aircraft than in Tokyo taxis.

We touched the coast at five thousand feet where the beach is
used as a main motor road and came down to Bintulu, an airfield of
the Borneo Airways Twin Pioneer. Anne and I changed places
after refueling, and the Piper VR-WAY (Whisky Alpha Yankee)
headed inland toward the hills. Our trip from Sibu to Belaga, two
hours' flying, would otherwise have taken three days by outboard-
motor canoe up the Rajang River. Whisky Alpha Yankee used four-
teen gallons of fuel; the canoe would have taken forty. We were
right off any commercial air route. When the B.E.M. began to
fly in 1951, no official inland services then operating, the govern-
ment thought them mad to use single-engined aircraft in the inter-
ior, but officers soon asked for lifts.

The evening was perfect, so unwontedly perfect that Harold's esti-
mate of us shot high. It was certainly encouraging when time was
important. Without wishing to seem pretentious, for "providences"
surely are the birthright of a Christian, I recall on this tour of
Asia scores of apparently casual circumstances luck, if you will
which strengthened our sense that we were not planning or working
ujiaided.

In the Interior 231

Primary jungle lay unbroken below. Ahead, nothing but jungle-
covered mountain and, beyond, higher mountains away toward the
Indonesian border. Somewhere in between lay the Belaga River. The
world appeared desolate, forbidding as the evening light hardened
the beauty. A little plane in such a world could easily lose its way,
fail to strike the river, run out of fuel. Behind us was the coast line
where you could easily identify position, reach an airfield. We ap-
proached a mountain, climbed to eight thousand feet, crossed it.
Harold was looking at the map.

"Mount Lumid?" I asked loudly above the engine noise.

"Too high," he shouted back, pointing at the altimeter. "I don't
know quite where we are."

"Do you want to turn back before it is dark?" I asked nervously.

Harold laughed, and pointed at the compass. "I'm traveling on
course! I will never rely on sight rather than compass. We must
be a mile or two too far north."

Almost as he spoke, the mountains disclosed the Belaga. We
turned, followed its twists and lost height, crossing over the puny
town at the junction of the rivers and on down the broad Rajang
five miles toward the new airstrip just built by the government but
used until then only by the B.E.M.

Harold made his prelanding check: Brakes. Undercarriage. Mix-
ture : rich. Petrol : enough in tank in use to go round again. Radio
aerial in. We circled the airstrip which had been smoothed out of
bumpy ground in the one approximately flat place for miles, We flew
in, engine purring, across the river and between the trees.

We touched down, flashed by, and taxied back. A gentleman stood
there with hair cut straight round the front and done up in a bushy
pigtail at the back, and the lobes of his ears stretched into a long
ellipse with little brass earrings, holding a large straw hat edged with
brilliant red and black patchwork, a broad smile on his face a
Kenyah Christian, Tama Do. Behind were sundry men and women
from the longhouse where we would stay. And Ray Cunningham.
You could tell he was Australian by the cut of his jaw. He had
been mentioned warmly in government circles in Kuching, and I had
met him a few moments when he passed through after damaging
his leg. Harold switched off. "There's a pioneer missionary for you.
And what a missionary!"

232 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

Ten minutes in an outboard canoe, and we were balancing our-
selves across the mud on a treetrunk so long that I counted seventy-
five notches, up to a rough longhouse which stood in the under-
growth on strong timbers twenty feet high and stretched for about
three hundred yards. The people were Sekapans, a small tribe, and
the place was called Puso's after the old opium-loving chief who
lived there. Beside the great log stood the elaborate grave of his
father, and archaic guns given by the Sultan of Brunei to encourage
opposition to the Brookes.

We sat for the evening in the chief's room. They had recently
had a bumper harvest of illipe nuts the oil of which is used in the
best chocolate, and showed signs of wealth ; a marble-topped table,
chairs, a pressure lamp, Thermos bottles, despite the old man's
opium. Over one door hung a hornbill's skull and yellow beak tipped
with red, over another, antlers. Six months previously the human
heads had been thrown into the river. The longhouse had turned
Christian.

A Murut missionary pastor had been sent there when they turned.
"At first they weren't interested in throwing out the sins of the
heart," he said when I met him later, "but only in a more conven-
ient life by no longer needing to propitiate the spirits. No one came
to my first meeting. On the third night three came." When he left
after two months a hundred or more listened nightly, and now
we were there to pick up a man and his wife, who had tattooing all
up her arms like an old lady's black lace mittens, to be flown to
Bible School at Lawas. They would do a four-year course and come
back to be pastor and wife.

The Christians sat around smoking, chatting, and watching us.
Most were in singlet and shorts or just a sarong, with straggly hair
cut pudding basin in front. They served us on the floor a good dinner
of rice, fish, and pork, having already provided snacks. Owing to
our late arrival Ray Cunningham could not hold a big meeting;
just a few to sing and pray before bed. Our hostess led Anne and
me to the unexpected luxury of a double bed behind a curtain and a
mosquito net. Being wooden without a mattress it was by far the
hardest night of our entire tour ; a timber floor at lea^t gives a bit
And they put the puppy outside the door so that it should not disturb

In the Interior

us with the result that it murdered sleep until removed half an hour
later.

The next day as usual in a longhouse began noisily at dawn ; we
returned to the airstrip, waved goodbye to the trembling couple
making their first flight, and after the palaver without which these
natives can do nothing, took canoe for Belaga. Belaga consists of
the local government office, Fort Vyner, a school, and a covered
bazaar where the shops are stacked with tins, Australian fruit and
cheese, Japanese fish, Dutch and British biscuits, and also Indian
and Japanese cloth, Chinese Thermos bottles, Hong Kong umbrellas,
and all manner of local produce. And if you want to know where
Californian newspapers go when they die, get something wrapped
up in Belaga. A man clambered up an orange tree, and the fruit
Ray ordered dropped into pineapple plants like enormous thistles.
There were coffee bushes and banana plants, and bright sarongs
drying on the rails, and a man building a canoe fifty feet long.

We met some young men whose canoe had capsized in dangerous
rapids which, had Ray's damaged leg not changed his plans, we
should have ascended on our way to his place at Long Geng. The
men had lost thousands of dollars of equipment belonging to a
Chinese photographer who sat disconsolate in a pop shop, but no
lives. Recently they had nearly turned from paganism until thwarted
by a group of priests in an all-night discussion in the longhouse.
"These people want to become Christian," said Ray, "but lack per-
sonal conviction. They are afraid of the others. It's the communal
tie. They don't see that the Lord will undertake everything per-
sonally for them/'

That evening I saw what the communal tie may mean.

The native officer had passed on a request from Uma Kahei, a
Kayan longhouse upriver, for Ray to visit them. The whole area
was one of new advance Ray had entered in 1957. Some unfor-
tunately had adopted the comparatively new Bungan religion,, a
Kenyah cult spreading to other tribes which eliminates certain of
the terrors and discomforts of paganism without admitting truth,
lima Eahei had retained the old custom but now .wished to turn
Christian.

We arrived there, a fairly small longhouse of bamboo, and noticed

234 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

beside the log up from the river fetishes and sacrifices, including a
row of bamboos like organ pipes with eggs stuck in the splayed tops,
and bunches of dried grass hanging from the timber supports and,
in front of the priest's room, a gong and whole array of fetishes.

We came back from a river bath to find Tama Do holding forth
to a group of leading men. Neither the headman nor his son who
kept a shop in Belaga was present but had promised to come for
the decisive discussion. Tama Do spoke Kenyah but Kayans could
understand. "By this way," he was saying, "you can go direct to
God. Why should we have all these fetishes and things, and try to
reach God by the spirits? It's much better to be able to go straight
to God. The astonishing thing is we didn't think of it before. After
all," he said, his face wrinkling in laughter, "God made us and gave
us ears ! Don't say it's no good because you can't see God. Could
we see the spirits? Could we see . . ." and he ticked off the names
of the spirits.

This was not a first contact, as in Laos, but the deliberation of a
people. The growth of literacy, the steady opening of the interior
had made them ashamed of the old custom. The Bungan pseudo-cult
had unsettled them. A Christian from Indonesian Borneo who was
a schoolmaster at Belaga had taught the children hymns. The con-
clusive factor was the undoubted change in the other longhouse,
Puso's, formerly the most unsavory in the district.

"If we follow this way," said an old man in a loincloth with
scraggly hair and incongruous steel-rimmed glasses, "shall we have
any one to teach us till we understand?"

"Only yesterday," replied Ray in Kayan, "I had a letter from the
head of a Kenyah village away across country saying he feels the
Lord is calling him to preach to Kayans." He read out the letter:
the man's village was many days off but only an hour by air.

Everything depended on the headman and his son. "We can't do
anything without them," the people said. "What we decide on our
own doesn't matter. We can't just decide on our own." The headman
apparently was prevaricating.

"He wants to say farewell to the spirits slowly," complained a
man in bathing pants and a circlet of leopard skin decorated with
horabill feathers. "He wants to be able to call on them again. What's
the good of that?"

In the Interior 235

"If we are going to trust the new God, we must trust Him wholly,"
said another.

Tama Do said: "The truth is, once we trust the Lord Jesus the
others can't come back and interfere. They are afraid to come near
Jesus."

In the inner room over a poor dinner served by the head's women
assisted by a typical Sarawak cat which, Manx-like, has a stump for
a tail, Tama Do remarked : "This place seems all of one mind. There
seems no opposition at all. They said to me, 'We all want to go
ahead. If we can get the head's agreement tonight we will all become
Christians tomorrow/"

As at Puso's it would at first be more a turning away from the
old custom, with its attendant inconveniences, than deep faith. The
mission works on the belief that some will come to genuine personal
experience of the new life in Christ. "Whenever we go to a new
place, we are looking for the two or three to whom the gifts of the
Spirit are being given not the fruits of the Spirit; many should
show these but the gifts, so that they shall be 'able to teach others
also/"

The head's son, Nyipa, but not the head, came bustling in. Before
the meeting, cups of Lipton's tea were brought us from the family's
best china. The young head took off his shirt and made himself com-
fortable. Ray unfolded picture posters, and taught. Someone oc-
casionally smacked a midge, or a puppy gave a yelp. Ants scurried
along the windowledge. "If anyone has got a log stopping the river,"
he concluded, "do tell me now and we will talk until it is clear." The
situation was straightforward. Everyone wished to turn, but no
one might until the head gave the word. Before bed they decided to
beard him next morning.

We visited him ourselves in Belaga before they came. The old
man stood outside his shop in a thin white sarong over dark pants,
his bare trunk plump, his hair falling over his shoulder. He would
not look Ray in the face, and fingered his chin thoughtfully. Ray
appeared to bring him near decision, and the head said, "You go
to the airstrip to meet the plane, and when you are back we shall
have discussed it and will let you know the verdict."

By the afternoon when we had to fly away, the village was still
arguing with the old man, sitting and standing all over the shop.

236 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

"He was on the verge of getting angry," said Ray. "It was best for
me to leave."

All ended well. Months later in Japan I heard that the longhouse
had turned. "I believe the headman was persuaded only next day/'
wrote Ray. "His son and all the rest were so insistent that he agreed,
and Nyipa sent a telegram to Lawas. Before the telegram got
through, we had arranged for the two Kenyahs from the Baram,
Tama Pudun and a young companion, to be flown over. They taught
and prayed and went from room to room to clean out all the evil
stuff. Tama Pudun was amazed at the quantity of fetishes and re-
ligious trappings. . . . Their testimony before government and others
at Belaga seems to be good. It reflects the benefit of steady shepherd-
ing from the start."

Ray Cunningham, the same age as myself, had been serving in
the Royal Australian Engineers in New Guinea during the war when
the words and teaching of a Papuan Christian changed the course of
his life.

Ray's slight figure, well-brushed black hair, and his neatness do
not proclaim the pioneer, nor do his deep brown eyes and the wrinkle
which generally puckers his brow reveal the tremendous determina-
tion in his character. He takes no unnecessary risks, nor does he re-
fuse to carry comforts such as a stretcher to sleep in longhouses if
circumstances allow, thus showing himself a true pioneer, not an
adventurer. Ray and his wife, whose fair hair, blue eyes, and figure
make her seem frail for such assignments, speak three Borneo lan-
guages each and both are able translators. Ray had been a wool
grader, Evelyn before joining the B.E.M. a teacher with an eco-
nomics degree. Their little girl was nearly one when we were there.

In 1957 tk 6 Cunninghams were at Lio Matu further north, the
center of the Christian Kenyah area. They received a request from
the longhouse at Long Geng, and from the Indonesian Christian who
taught hymns to his pupils at Belaga, to come over and evangelize
this area which was untouched by any mission. Ray trekked from
Lio Matu across almost uncharted country. I did not learn from
him, but this was an ^epic feat of endurance, partly by canoe, partly
n foot, sixteen days. To arrive on schedule for an airdrop he and
Ms party of Kenyahs did the last days at such speed that they

In the Interior 237

reached Long Geng, on time, exhausted. They laid out the markers.
They saw the plane pass over and fly away. The pilot had an un-
suspected tailwind and thought he had ten miles farther, in a
country of few landmarks such an error being all too easy. He re-
turned, spotted the markers, and made the drop food, tools, medi-
cal supplies.

Ray had worked on his first Borneo airstrip as an Australian sap-
per. At Long Geng he surveyed and with the Kenyahs cleared the
jungle and built the strip. "It was a great time," he said, "a wonder-
ful way to get to know them all." And so Long Geng was opened,
duly approved by the Civil Aviation Department.

Twenty-four miles by air from Belaga, twenty minutes' flight,
"Lean over, Harold, so that John can see the rapids." Harold banked,
and there they were, far below, white water boiling through the
jungle. Two days by canoe, or it can be done in one at a stretch.
Away in the distance stood the jagged Hose Mountains. Harold
circled twice over Long Geng to lose height. Little figures ran to
the airstrip which lay by Ray's bamboo house like an extended
lawn at right angles to the river. On the second turn I could identify
Evelyn Cunningham carrying a colorful Kenyah hat, she and the
baby on her back the only white people, as Kenyahs lit a fire to
show the direction of wind. We lost sight of the house, entered a
shallow valley, emerged over the approach where the trees had been
felled, over the river too low, give her a little throttle cleared the
bank, touched down on the narrow strip, drew up with a few yards
to spare.

Long Geng. Certainly earth's remotest end. I cannot begin to con-
vey the sense of remoteness that pervaded the place, not isolation
but serenity. The clear blue river, shallow and not too swift and the
jolliest to bathe in since Laos; the variegated jungle and low hills
changing color with the sun ; the two rough longhouses a few hun-
dred yards upstream, the one on the near bank being Christian,
turned out of the other which follows the Bungan cult. The people
are more slit-eyed and round-faced than the Kayans or Sea Dayaks.
The women wore fez-like hats of straw weave and the married
walked bare-breasted. Richer girls and women carried in each
elongated ear up to twenty-five or thirty brass rings. Some had bone
bracelets r bead necklaces.

238 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

These cheerfully noisy but not very clean people (they bathe
daily but chew betel, spit, eat messily, and in the pagan longhouse
I counted no less than fifty dogs) were a most welcoming crowd even
if they took seats as for a play when we fed. The plane in its coming
and going brought them all to the airstrip, and naked boys danced
in the slipstream.

At the back of the Cunningham's cabin stood their latrine, and
beside the latrine a shed for the airstrip motor mower which when
not in use was attached by a belt to a generator. The cable from the
generator acted as Evelyn's washing line, and it powered the xo-watt
3 BZ transmitter.

Long Geng and all the B.E.M. stations are in radio touch with
mission headquarters at Lawas, using Australian war equipment.
Every morning at 6 30 A.M., before the daily prayer meeting, the
stations tune in briefly to Lawas; requests are made, weather in-
formation given if the plane is coming, news passed. "The radio and
the plane enable unmarried women, normally in pairs, as well as
married women or single men to work in the interior," say the mis-
sion. "The loneliness is offset, and though they may see the plane
seldom, if anyone is sick they can be got out."

The radio at Long Geng saved Ray's life.

In 1958 he was .on a prolonged trek. Evelyn was at Lawas. In a
distant longhouse he fell sick, vomiting, unable to keep down food :
typhoid fever, though he was within the inoculation period. After
three days' misery he faced the fact that unless he could be flown
out he would die, and the nearest transmitter was his own at Long
Geng two days' journey. In the bottom of a canoe clumsily navi-
gated by an inexperienced crew he lay racked with pain, constantly
vomiting his remaining strength. In one rapid they lost a traveling
tin, and for agonizing moments Ray believed the little receiver had
gone, and with it his hope of hearing what medicine would save his
life. At a worse rapid Ray had to force himself up, take charge, and
get them through before collapsing. Toward the end of the second
day he ceased vomiting, and when Tama Do's wife at Long Geng
gave him a raw egg he kept it down. His watch had stopped. He
would have to guess the time when Lawas would come on the air.

At Lawas the English medical officer and secretary of the mis-
sion, Dr. Bill Lees, went down to the radio room before time. "Gen-

In the Interior 239

erally I read, but that morning I happened to start twiddling. I
heard a very faint voice saying with terrific effort, 'Long Geng,
Long Geng testing' the station had not yet been officially approved
'Long Geng testing. Aircraft please/ " The aircraft was unservice-
able. The magneto had failed and the spare proved a dud. Replace-
ment had not come from Singapore. "We nearly lost Ray because
we then had only one aircraft. The first thing I had to do was to
boost his morale before breaking about the plane. I had to give him
a sense of 'we can control that, fix that/ to prepare him to wait. I
could tell at once what it was, but if he lost hope he would die."

The mission sent launches to Labuan, but the magneto did not
come until Shell flew it in by an air drop. Ray had now waited a
week. The weather was poor, but Captain Bruce Morton, the senior
pilot, a former R.A.A.F. fighter pilot who was on leave during our
visit, knew that this was an occasion for ri;sk, and with great skill
got Ray to the Shell Hospital at Brunei where he had an immediate
blood transfusion of two pints.

Earth's remotest end. Yet thanks to Harold and the Piper, Ma-
layan Airways and B.O.A.C. Comet, I could have been calling on the
Archbishop of Canterbury within three days. In fact, technically
(though ideal flight schedules are generally spoiled by weather in
Borneo) you could leave Long Geng by the Piper at 9 A.M., local time,
pick up the commercial flight at Sibu at 12 .-45, change at Singapore
and be at London Airport the following afternoon at 4:50 P.M.,
Greenwich Time.

The Air Department is essential to the Borneo Evangelical Mis-
sion. "God told us to evangelize the interior. We could do it only
by air."

Their transport system operates on a six-hundred-mile front along
the Indonesian border. No lengthwise surface communications exist
from one station to another the only land route is down to the
coast and back. They gave me a few examples. From Lawas to Ba
Kelalan carrying a payload of 540 pounds (that is, apart from the
weight of pilot and fuel) is 45 minutes by the Piper. The alternative
is to walk, seven days, with the weight distributed over at least six
native carriers: 42 carrier days for the one aircraft load. Two mis-
sionaries would probably have to go with them. From Lawas to Lio

240 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

Matu before the airstrip was made a missionary walked for 29 days.
His next trip took one hour and twenty minutes. From Marudi
near the border of Brunei to Long Geng is one hour by air, or nine-
teen days' surface, five by river, and fourteen on foot.

The planes are gifts, the new Piper from an English businessman,
the Auster, still in service, from Shell. Running costs are the chief
item of the mission's expenditure, though they buy less gas than
they would require for river transport. And it would not be feasible
to maintain such extensive operations except by air. The Piper,
manufactured by a leading American light-aircraft company, is
powered by 160 h.p. Lycoming engine and has a ground speed of 103
m.pJa. under still conditions from point to point ; the rate of climb
fully loaded in the tropics is 500 feet per minute. Weight empty
with 2-way 5-channel radio and battery is 1,118 pounds, and the
maximum allowable weight is 2,000 pounds. The engine's life is
800 hours.

B.E.M. pilots they have three require to be extremely experi-
enced. They are not accepted unless qualified commercial pilots with
over 300 hours, if possible more. Captain Parsons came out with 700
hours, was restricted to coast work until he had logged 1,000 and
now has over 1,200 hours. A B.O.A.C. pilot's log will be more im-
posing, but in a six- or eight-hour trip he may make one landing
under standard conditions at an international airport; the B.E.M.
pilot's single hour may involve two difficult landings on narrow air-
strips. He does his own loading and unloading. On the other hand he
flies less than does a commercial pilot. The B.E.M. argument is:
"Aircraft do not make mistakes only the pilot. Therefore keep your
pilot on top of his form, never let him fly when slightly unwell or
against his better judgment. Aircraft do not stop in the air except
through faulty maintenance. Therefore let your pilot do his own, but
not under pres&ure. We treat our pilots like artists ! "

The result is an exceptional safety record, higher than other op-
erators flying similar country backed by a more extensive organiza-
tion. In over eight years B.EJVL aircraft have had one crash, without
casualties; it occurred after rain on a soggy airstrip, and although
the pilot must accept responsibility he allowed his judgment to be
overruled by impatient ol operatives who were his passengers.

The interior of Borneo is a strain. The skill needed to fly the

In the Interior 241

first time into a new airstrip in hilly jungle country is obvious.
Routine flights are as taxing. Much of the country is featureless,
maps are inaccurate, and regaining course after alteration dictated
by local weather requires expert navigation. The only answer is per-
fect knowledge of the geography and meteorology. Flying blind,
though instruments are carried, is avoided on principle, and no air-
craft in Borneo, commercial or private, flies at night. In the interior,
weather, especially in the afternoon, is so changeable that a pilot is
continually faced with major decisions : a cloud bank is ahead ; he
sees a break. Is it a way out or a trap?

On treetops the survival margin of light aircraft is higher than that
of a parachute, and the Piper can stall down to as slow as 49 m.pJb.
A cutout is very remote, since both aircraft have two magnetos,
the Piper being fitted also with a special feed safety device invented
by Nate Saint, the young American missionary pilot who was killed
with his companions by the Auca Indians. Each plane carries sur-
vival kit, but should he be ferrying ladies the pilot has the additional
strain of knowing that in the event of forced landing he must get
them out of the jungle, and on some routes they might be days from
habitation.

Harold Parsons by vocation had been neither a missionary nor an
airman. He ran a small upholstery business. In his thirties he felt life
was becoming too prosperous and self-centered, and he and his wife
decided that they should offer for the mission field. He was past the
normal age ; he knew he could never learn a language ; his gifts lay in
the technical, not the intellectual sphere. He took flying lessons,
qualified, sold his business and found a job as pilot in an agricultural
spraying firm. He secured commercial licenses for flying, for aircraft-
engine and for airframe maintenance and, over forty, was accepted
for Borneo.

The takeoff at Long Geng appears to head straight for a hillside.
Climbing at maximum angle, banking to the right, we entered a hid-
den valley, rose above it, circled to gain height, and set off across
an uninhabited carpet of jungle to the Baram River. The Dulit range
to the left was attracting bad weather, and we sidestepped a rain-
storm^ Jq^ed over longhouses at a bend in the wide ;Baram, and

EARTH'S REMOTEST END

an hour after leaving Long Geng were eating rock cakes on the Long
Atip airstrip, fourteen days away by surface.

Again we had uninhabited country on a northeasterly course with
a fine view into gorges and caves as we passed beside Mount Mulu,
second highest mountain in Sarawak. Over the Limbang, Brunei
Bay was in sight, and the sun pinpointed the distant dome of the new
mosque. Over the Trusan, we noted the new jeep road looking better
than it is. And so to Lawas.

THIRTY-ONE & The Tribe That Nearly

Died

"Who is this white man who wants to see you, Panai Raub?"

"Perhaps it is one of the men I hid in the war."

From his home in British North Borneo, Panai Raub walked all
one day, three hours the next, took a canoe down the Lawas River,
and here he was, washed and refreshed in a white check shirt, khaki
shorts, and bare feet. He did not know his age but probably was in
the mid-fifties. He had a strong, squarish body and face, surprisingly
brown skin, a broad forehead topped by thinning black hair well
oiled. His ears each had a small hole. He had a slight growth of
beard, possibly by mistake.

Panai Raub, a Murut, played a leading part in the most astonish-
ing story I heard in Asia.

He spoke Murut in the accents of the complete backwoodsman.
Alan Belcher, Chairman of the B.E.M., translated for me as we sat
in the shade outside one of the houses of the Bible School before
church on Sunday morning. "I was then a young married man,"
Panai Raub began, "over twenty-five years ago in Dutch Borneo. I
was just the Same as all the others, loose morals, drinking, smoking,
and adultery."

The Muruts' homeland was over the border, but many had mi-
grated into Sarawak. They were Rajah Brooke's problem tribe.
Muruts were so steeped in animism that farming was almost im-
possible ; the start of the season would be endlessly delayed because

The Tribe That Nearly Died 243

no one had seen the omen bird ; a site cleared by burning the under-
growth and felling the trees would be abandoned unplanted at the
bark of a barking deer. A snake as the paddy ripened was a message
from the spirits to leave the fields unguarded; monkeys and deer
could ruin the crop, rather than have the spirits angered.

Life was devastatingly subject to the spirits. During pregnancy
neither a woman nor her husband might eat certain foods and
neither might sleep during rain this in Borneo. Worse, most of such
wretched rice as was harvested went into highly intoxicating rice
beer which was drunk in constant pagan feasts lasting up to five
days. Government officially estimated the whole community, except
the dogs, to be drunk a hundred days in a year.

Malnutrition, disease, high death and low birth rates: the rajah
decided that if the moral and physical bankruptcy of the Muruts
were not to infect other tribes the one course was to draw around
them a cordon sanitaire and leave them to die out.

As Panai Raub began his story, Muruts were streaming across
the wide airstrip to the church.

"We were clearing the undergrowth for the new season's farming
when we heard of a wonderful white man they called Tuan Change
because he changed wicked natives and said they could have a new
life. He was on an island off the coast. 'We will go down and get him
here/ said some. 'How can we go?' said others. 'That is where the
white men live/ Nothing was done."

Tuan Change was a young American called Prestwood, of the
Christian and Missionary Alliance, He must have been a remarkable
character to create this impression when a bare year out of the United
States before he had even grasped Malay. He died as the result of a
river accident shortly after release from Japanese internment.

"When," Panai Raub continued, "I heard 'way up in the hills, in
the midst of all that drinking and fear of the spirits, about change
and new life I just could not sleep at nights for desire. Two months
later when we were felling the big timber we heard that Tuan
Change was downstream. We all went to meet him, taking our sick.
On the way everyone squabbled as to who should be first to meet
him. I got in front. When we arrived we saw a big gathering of
Muruts, heads bowed. Prestwood was standing, eyes closed, arms
outstretched toward the sky. 'What is this? What are they doing?'

244 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

we said. The praying stopped. Prestwood greeted us. Of course, in
those days we were all just in loincloths. I sat down right at his feet.
It was already late, and Prestwood, who used one of the few educated
Muruts as interpreter, said, 'You all go and eat and we will have a
meeting this evening,' I said: 'I am not losing my place. I will eat
tomorrow. 7 " Panai Raub laughed loudly at the memory.

"The meeting began. Prestwood unfolded some pictures. We all
surged forward. I was right in front and could hear every word.
Some of the others could not. He preached on the Resurrection, with
amazing effect on the crowd. Right from the beginning it hit me"
and here he became excited as he told "I was just drinking it in.
When I first heard the Word I believed. I have believed from then
right until now.

"After that first night we went home. We were at the divide of a
river and we traveled one way, he the other. 3 ' Prestwood went to
the United States, married, returned to Borneo, and at Panai Raub's
invitation came up to visit them.

The next chapter was told me in a wide .canoe on the Trusan by
a lay deacon of the Murut Church.

Alan Belcher had taken us by launch in the cool of the morning
across the Lawas and by Land-Rover along the new road until it
disappeared in a welter of mud and stationary bulldozers ; we walked
the last two and a quarter miles. A short wait brought the deacon,
another deacon driving the outboard motor, his wife, a village head-
man and three other men, all Christians. They must needs entertain
us in a Chinese shop to cups of tea and rolls of minced venison and
rice, steamed in leaves, before taking to the river, arid the whole
expedition was punctuated by unbounded hospitality.

The deacon wore a trilby and a T-shirt, and his smile was golden
because his front teeth were plated with gold. He said, "When news
of a man preaching about new life filtered across from Dutch Borneo,
we had heard that another white man was preaching the same thing
on the Limbang River. And we heard that the Ibans he had settled
among were not interested. I was one of those who went to the
Limbang to beseech him to come to us."

The year was 1953 arid the white man Hudson Southwell. On
founding the Borneo Evangelical Mission in 1928, Southwell had

SARAWAK
The Bishop of Borneo and Father Basil

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PQ

SS
35

I

The Tribe That Nearly Died 245

received permission to settle with his few companions among the
Limbang Ibans and had achieved virtually no result.

"Mr. Southwell trekked back with us across the jungle to avoid
government officials." The deacon pointed out the spot where the
party emerged on to the Trusan. "He found us very willing to hear
and he promised to return to live amongst us. We asked him what
we should do about rice beer because it made us all so drunk. 'If
we don't drink/ we said, 'we can't endure the sun on the farms. 7 Mr.
Southwell suggested that we take a little in a kettle. We tried it but
soon turned to excess. After Mr. Southwell had gone we got together
and decided never to drink rice beer again. Not long after that, we
discovered how to grow coffee."

Southwell returned to the coast and asked permission to settle
among the Muruts. The Resident of the division and the district
officer were aghast. They refused. Government officials had visited
the Muruts once in two years and believed that no European pos-
sibly could be risked among such people. Indeed, as far as I could
discover the cordon sanitaire was officially imposed only after South-
well's visit. The Muruts were abandoned.

Our canoe speeding up the Trusan approached rapids. "The Lord
has been good to us," said one of the men. "There is more water
than when we came down." Rain in the headwaters the previous night
had been filling the river. We were now well into Murut country,
and every house was Christian ; they do not live in longhouses around
here but in small villages.

Panai Raub takes up the story.

"When Mr. Prestwood first preached the Gospel I was so pleased
to hear it that I felt I must go and tell relatives the other side of
the border. We had been just as big drunkards and as heavily in-
volved in the works of the Devil as they were. I asked Mr. Prest-
wood if I could go and preach. 'What will you preach?' 'What you
did.' He gave me some Sunday-school rolls."

Panai Raub's memory has contracted events. He must have been
referring to Prestwood's second, extended visit, nor were the first
Murut preaching trips across the border, but to nearby pagan
villages. At least two years passed before Panai Raub came into
Sarawak. Certainly Prestwood lay at the center of a phenomenal
turning among the Indonesian Muruts, and certainly he provoked in

246 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

them three characteristics which have stayed: an intense desire to
be complete, uncompromising Christians, an ability to make de-
cisions without being told, an urge to share their discoveries.
Muruts are never people to do things by halves whether drinking
or preaching.

In 1933 or 1934 Panai Raub crossed into Sarawak, one of several
native missionaries going in small parties through the Border Range.
"The first village I came to, just over the border, a big drinking
party was on. They gave me drink. I refused it. 'I do not drink now. 7
Why not? 5 'Because I follow the Lord Jesus Christ. 5 'Don't you
drink if you follow the Lord Jesus Christ? Where did you hear about
this Lord Jesus? 5 'From Tuan Change. 5 'Does he live near the Lord
Jesus ?' 'Oh, no, the Lord lives in the heavens.' They were very
pleased and very keen to hear. Even the old people who had been
heavily involved in headhunting and the old worship brought the
fetishes and burned them. 5 '

Panai Raub visited four or five villages and returned home. His
next tour covered a wider area. He went out regularly on trips last-
ing a month or five weeks.

"When I returned to the first village, they told me they turned
out the drink because of what I had told them. I taught as I had
been taught. Mr. Prestwood had said nothing about drinking and
smoking. I asked him. He said, 'Does evil come? 5 'When we drink,
we quarrel. When we smoke it leads to seduction. 5 'Then as Chris-
tians, do not drink or smoke. 5 Smoking and drinking and the old
custom went together you could not separate them. If a man
offered a woman tobacco and she took it, this was the giving and
accepting of an invitation to adultery. 55

When later we went among the Tagals, cousins of the Muruts,
Bill Lees was always careful at meals never to pass anything to
Anne ; in their eyes he would have been guilty of improper advances.

"There was not one house, 55 continued Panai Raub, "among the
Muruts which did not want to hear. * Where is this Lord Jesus? 5
they would ask. 'Where is His house? Where does He live? 5 The
Lord used the Bible pictures a great deal, of the birth, the cross,
the resurrection. I was not literate then, and no Scriptures had been
translated, only a few simple hymns. I preached from the pictures.
His birth for us, His cteah for us; He is risfen, we can be risen with

The Tribe That Nearly Died 247

Him and live evermore. 'Eternal life. That's what we want/ they
would say. We Muruts had thought that we died and were buried
and that was the end of us. When I returned home, those who showed
leadership became leaders of the church."

"Why was there such response, Panai Raub?"

"I do not know any reason other than the working of the Spirit
in their hearts."

In 1938 the rajah heard that something extraordinary had oc-
curred. He ordered an expedition of inquiry led by Mr. Banks,
curator of the Sarawak Museum, and a B.E.M. missionary, Stafford
Young. They were up the Trusan from December 12, 1938, to
February 4, 1939.

At Tang Lepadan on the Trusan I met Pastor Lawai, a Murut who
as a boy of fifteen was Stafford Young's servant and acted as in-
terpreter. "Mr. Banks was a day behind us," he told me. "Mr.
Young was surprised at what we discovered. Round here they were
not following the Lord fully, though very interested. In the interior
some were following fully but some still drinking. The people were
pressing to hear the Word of God. They were full of inquiries as to
how a Christian should behave, what should be done when they
planted and reaped and when there was a death. Those who had
broken with the old custom were telling others that there was no
need to leave a dead body for weeks in the house until the right
omen. Disregard omens. The Lord would undertake. Some had
given up adultery.

"At Long Semadoh at the headwaters of the Trusan we met Mr.
Banks. Mr. Young talked with him but I do not know what they
said."

Mr. Banks is reported to have told Kuching that he was not ac-
ceptable to the Muruts because he smoked, carried whisky, and did
not possess a Moody and Sankey hymnbook.

In 1939 Lawai came again, this time with two missionaries^
Davison of the B.E.M. and an American of the Christian and Mis-
sionary Alliance, In the few short months between the expeditions
the Muruts had progressed. More praying, less smoking, the end of
adultery. Now they were taught to build churches. Davison settled
on the Trusan, Lawai with him. "By the time the Japanese came,

248 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

every village had its church, and some had pastors brought over
from the Dutch side." In the early stages of the occupation Davison
and Southwell hid in the interior and continued to teach. After the
Battle of the Coral Sea the Japanese, less sure of themselves,
rounded up remaining Europeans, including Alan Belcher, and the
Muruts were threatened with punishment if Southwell and Davison
did not surrender. The Muruts besought them to stay and be hidden
deeper in the interior. They refused. Davison died during internment.

At one house on the Trusan where we fared sumptuously in a
merry atmosphere on biscuits and hot condensed milk followed by
rice, chicken, and delicious hot cucumber, our host mentioned that
recently the district officer, who must share the sentimental view
about old Sarawak customs, had suggested they take up dancing
again and the old pagan songs. "No," we said. "Don't you realize
these things are wrong? We are not in the headhunting days now!"

The Muruts are neither morose nor sanctimonious, but Chris-
tianity colors all their thinking. "God, God, God!" exclaimed a
.young district officer who had received a distinctly Fabian education,
"I want to get away from this Murut country. You hear about
nothing but God all day long ! "

At the end of the war the Murut church might have dried up
and died.

We were walking through the night. The truck to take us from
the river had its wheels off ; it would have bogged within a mile, as
rain had turned part of the road into a morass which continually
sucked off my gym shoes. As we trudged the fourteen miles back to
Lawas River, carrying our things and the gift of a load of rice, Alan
Belcher spoke of the immediate postwar years in the B.E.M.

The Bible School was founded in 1947 at Lawas. The Muruts were
past the first stage of recovery as a race but needed establishing.
The mission, however, developed factions, misunderstandings and a
knack of doing much to achieve little. A medical missionary from
China visited Lawas. I met him in Hong Kong, a large, jovial man.
He studied the ways of the B.E.M. and told them: "You are a lot of
wilderness Christians. The Holy Spirit has already done all that you
hre trying hard to fa" And* since they knew their Bibles they saw
what he meant. "Slowly' we began to draw on the power of the Holy

Spontaneous Expansion

Spirit," Belcher said, "to learn new ways. The Spirit penetrate<
our lives. And that made a difference to anything we .could do fo
the Muruts." Breaches in the mission were healed, not withou
resignations. Fresh standards emerged. Things began to happen.

As for the Muruts, the census shows them a growing people ; ii
British territory about five thousand. And of this total adult popula
tion of a tribe which less than thirty years ago was committing col
lective suicide, no less than one in every twenty is fully occupiec
in Christian service or training. Adding lay church officials and th<
like produces the surprising figure of one in every ten Murufc
an active Christian worker.

The most significant factor is that nearly half the Murut pastors
are missionaries to tribes of other tongues.

THIRTY-TWO Jf* Spontaneous Expansion

"We're a jungle outfit. We wouldn't be happy in a city." This remark
may indicate why the Borneo Evangelical Mission attracts criti-
cism; local public relations do not receive the attention a more
sophisticated mission might allot, and where facts are not given,
tales grow.

The mission is punctilious in liaison with government officials at
all levels. Dr. Bill Lees, the secretary, has such concern for the
tribal people of Borneo, goes for his objective straight as a die like
the road the Japs built across the plain from Keningau, has a forth-
right way of speaking emphasized by a hawk nose and piercing blue
eyes, that when we paid a courtesy call on the Chief Secretary of
North Borneo I had a slight feeling that the Chief Secretary was on
the mat. Mixed with admiration for devotion, hardihood and knowl-
edge of the country is a slight recoil, until officials come under the
spell of the charm and tact of Alan Belcher, who to Bill Lees 7 bull-
dozer wields a scalpel.

Because the B.E.M. uses planes it is supposed by some to be
wealthy. They ought to stay at Lawas. Every effort made for our
comfort by Bill and Shirley Lees did not eradicate the feeling that

25 o EARTH'S REMOTEST END

Lawas was a place to tighten belts. And the general wish to avoid
widening the gap between missionaries and tribespeople in the Bible
School leads as far as wearing unironed clothes in the compound.
Planes do not appear rich to natives ; no one in the interior has seen
a motorcar or has any standard by which to judge, but a mis-
sionary who has four clean shirts in his baggage is parading his
wealth.

A small mission working in one country has a limited constitu-
ency at home. "We have been through some lean times/ 7 they say,
"but it is wonderful how gifts arrive just as we need them."

The B.E.M. does not create or serve big institutions. Whatever
may be the role of institutions in forwarding missionary aims in the
modern world, this criticism springs from a misunderstanding of
the function of a missionary society : a mission is not in a country to
save taxpayers' money. A government, colonial or national, feels
soft toward missions with obvious social activities. And may forget
how much is done, especially in a developing country like Borneo,
incidental to the primary religious aim. The B.E.M. has a fair claim
to have introduced mechanical rice farming in Sarawak; the Bible
School abandons desks from July to September for the farm a few
miles off. "These are times of terrific change for the tribal people,"
said Alan Belcher. "If they get an idea a pastor is a 'white collar
worker 7 too dignified to work, it will be bad. Also, if a person is
always lazy on that job 77 (pointing to a group at the daily stint on
the vegetable plots), "you know he will be no good as a pastor. 77

And the Mission has played a notable part in opening up the
country. Its most enthusiastic allies in the governments of Sarawak
and North Borneo are the Directors of Civil Aviation.

The Great Tobacco Legend. Borneo suffers from lack of knowl-
edge in Britain; it is unfortunate that one of the most entertaining
writers about Sarawak is not the most accurate. While in the country
I read an article in the Sunday Times which in all good faith, fol-
lowing the book being reviewed, perpetrated statements about mis-
sions anyone on the spot could disprove with ease. But the Great
Tobacco Legend circulates in Kuching. "The B.E.M. has told the
Muruts, 77 I heard from several people as a recent piece of news,
""that they must stop growing tobacco. So now they no longer have
a cash crop and the Government is justifiably annoyed."

Spontaneous Expansion 251

The facts were different.

In 1957 the Resident was impressed from results in North Borneo
that the hilly Murut country would be highly suitable for planting
tobacco, which gives a good yield and is light for export. The Muruts
would thereby have a cash crop such as the Sea Dayaks' rubber. A
district officer was sent up the Trusan to tell the Muruts to start
growing tobacco. He met blank refusal : "Lead us not into tempta-
tion. If we grow it we shall soon smoke again and be back to our
old troubles. You are inviting us to adultery. Why not tell the Mus-
lims to raise pigs as a cash crop?"

The district officer, unsympathetic to missions, returned dis-
pleased. When the late Chief Secretary came to Lawas, he sent for
Alan Belcher. "I don't want you to fight government over this.
Please do not teach them tobacco is wrong." Belcher made plain that
smoking had stopped long before the B.E.M. influenced the Muruts.
The Chief Secretary asked Belcher to urge them to grow tobacco
for others. Belcher declined to attempt to overrule their own de-
cision. He made a countersuggestion. An Indian veterinary officer,
Christian, had told him that the Murut country was ideal for cattle.

"Government cannot understand that the Muruts never do things
by halves," Belcher comments. "For them it is all or nothing."

"Government cannot understand a Christian conscience," added
Bill Lees, "and says the Muruts are an obstinate people."

"It is a constant concern that we should leave behind a church."
The tribal churches, the Muruts the largest, have organized them-
selves on a presbyterian system fashioned on that of the parent
church over the border, itself derived from the Christian and Mis-
sionary Alliance, a presbyterian mission.

In place of the old drinking feasts annual tribal conferences take
place at different churches in rotation ; the people listen to conven-
tion addresses and the pastors and lay deacons settle affairs. For
a week or ten days in December the pastors of all the tribes, their
wives, and selected deacons gather at Lawas. They elect the execu-
tive and the Ketua, or Moderator. The same man has been elected
for several years. They discuss business and problems submitted by
the churches. During the year a small committee of the executive
functions, and only one missionary is on it.

252 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

The support of the pastors by the churches is impressive. Every
household tithes its rice and cash, and the annual conference has laid
down a stipend scale : "To the pastor we say, look to God. To the
church we say, it is your responsibility to support your pastor." The
pastors have no legal claim, and some go through hard times and
spend their holiday earning wages. If a church falls too far behind,
the conference sends a man to rebuke the people ; a threat to with-
draw the pastor is normally sufficient. "I guess a lot of this is due
to mission policy," Belcher remarked, "but a lot of it has been ham-
mered out among themselves." On Christmas Day the Muruts make
a collection to support pastors pioneering where no church exists ; as
soon as a church is formed, support is withdrawn.

Discipline in the tribal churches would delight a Scottish Cove-
nanter, though mixed with mercy. "And the amazing thing in this,"
I was told : "it all came up through translation." The Ketua and Mrs.
Belcher translating St. Matthew had reached our Lord's words on
discipline, "If thy brother trespass . , ." "Why don't we do that?"
asked the Ketua.

"I suppose because we never taught you."

"Why not?"

"I suppose because it is not done at home."

"It is clear enough." The missionaries were nervous, but the
churches having studied the whole of that eighteenth chapter saw
that God's judgment leads to God's mercy.

This is preeminently a teaching church. "To teach others also"
might be its motto. The Bible School is a cornerstone. Here Kayans
and Kenyahs and Dusans, and Kelabits with their distinctive hair-
cut, bright beads, and lobes so stretched that they wrap them round
their ears, and their wives go through a four-year course. Muruts
still form the bulk of the students yet are accepted only if they are
willing when required to go out as missionary pastors. About a
dozen couples graduate each year, the supply having at length
equaled the demand from churches.

This family concern where cooking, laundering, creches, and a
primary school may be as much a part of a student's life as learn-
ing, aims "to train the few rather than the many, that they may
teach others and to give them a missionary vision for surrounding
tribes. Every lecture is a sermon, every sermon a lecture. Most of

Spontaneous Expansion 253

the students have a spiritual awakening while they are here* We be-
lieve very vigorously that 'the letter killeth, the Spirit giveth life.' "

Into a vigorously expanding church the white missionaries fit
almost imperceptibly. One ,of their principal tasks is translation ac-
companied by the promotion of literacy, their village schools being
later handed on to government. From the moment an untouched
tribe is reached, the aim is to discover the language, reduce it to
writing, and translate the New Testament ; for a start, St. Mark or
St. Matthew followed by one or two "letters to young churches."
The time taken to complete a New Testament is about fifteen years,
and by then the mission reckons to have finished its direct task in
that tribe, leaving a responsible, well-taught church. The B.E.M.
thus has on hand a series of fifteen-year programs.

The level of a mission's devotional life must be reflected in the
quality of its influence. The dominant impression made on a visitor to
these tribal churches is not of the initiative of man but of the
sovereignty of God.

Adjoining the Murut country over the range dividing Sarawak
from North Borneo live the Tagals, their cousins and hereditary
headhunting enemies, I was anxious to see the extent of Murut mis-
sionary activity among them. Distances in North Borneo are ex-
tensive, and apart from one long jeep road down the edge Tagal ter-
ritory can be covered only on foot, often with three or four days
between villages, squelching uphill, slithering down with nothing to
see but interminable trees. Bill Lees made the novel suggestion that
we should survey from the air. In a flight of an hour and three-
quarters we covered two days' driving and seven days' walking.

The Tagals number 18,000. Confusingly, in North Borneo they
are known as Muruts and the Muruts as Lun Daye. For clarity I
retain the Sarawak terms.

Having had paradise weather when time was precious, I now had
to endure more normal uncertainties.

The first attempt was abortive. We waited an hour and a quarter
for improvement and took off one morning at 9 147. Eighteen minutes
later, from 2,800 feet, we saw the last Murut village, its church
and pastor's house, but the hills were angry with storm cloud. Harold
climbed to 6,000 feet, and still the cloud. We were above its level

2 54 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

at 7,000. It was spreading across the coastal lowlands and stretched
inland. "I couldn't get over it," Harold said. "Even if we got over we
wouldn't be able to get out of the valley." We took a last look from
another angle at 8,900 feet and spiraled quietly down through a hole
in the clouds, a delightful sensation, and headed home. Fifty minutes
and nothing to show.

We flew up the coast to Jesselton in the early afternoon for
courtesy calls on government. Returning we found an opening in the
weather, followed the railway through the Crocker Range, and
bumped in turbulent air to the Keningau plain and the government
airstrip.

Next morning we were flying up the narrow Padas Valley. "Aver-
age flying weather," said Bill; "you don't often get it better than
this. Shows how you need to know your way around." The valley
opened and we saw a few houses near an airstrip, Meligan, the
original Tagal missionary center.

I had met Amat Lasong, the first Murut pastor there, a middle-
aged broad-shouldered, deep-chested man, very much a peasant with
no obvious gifts. The Tagals scattered around had heard about Chris-
tianity from the Muruts on the trade route to the coast and as far
back as 1947 had asked for a missionary. In 1951 an airstrip was
made at Meligan by their labor that they might receive occasional
visits ; a year later Amat Lasong went as pastor. "To begin with, I
was homesick and very afraid. Fighting used to go on between the
tribes until the government stopped it. But they wanted me ! They
had been waiting five years.

"They turned from following omen birds and barking deer, They
asked at once to be taught to pray because they were afraid of the
spirits. There is a certain palm good for roofing. They believed to
cut it down brought death. Tlease don't cut it down. We don't want
you to die. We want you to preach us the Gospel ! ;

" 'God has given everything for use/ I replied, and cut it down.
For two months they waited for me or one of my family to fall sick.
We did not. The impression on their minds was so strong that, a
year after I came, they really did believe. It was then they built a
church."

I could see the church, a football field, a school. On the lower hill-
sides were swaths of lighter green marking the changing annual

Spontaneous Expansion 255

farms, the deeper the color the more years returned to jungle.
Jungle on the edge of the village had been burned off to encourage
deer into the grass, to be shot for the pot. Bill pointed to houses
away up the hill on the far side. "Do you see that farming area right
over there? They walk six hours for church each Sunday. And that
one ? They walk three. There are more houses here than there used
to be because people five to ten days away wanted to hear the Gospel,
and migrated here."

Bill had brought his family for two months in 1954 to make a
start on the language: Shirley is a linguistics specialist and both
have had training. I could see their house where they come back
regularly.

Harold flew southeast across a very rough tract of hill country. I
detected the line of another valley. "That's the Tomani," cried Bill,
"the first time I have seen both valleys at once." Meligan people
made visits telling about the Gospel; Tomani people came and
listened and asked for a pastor. We were covering in five minutes a
two- to three-day walk which involves crossing the Padas, Bill said,
"You can either go over on a bamboo raft which has a bore of up
to eight inches, because of interior rain. Or a bridge of saplings and
creeper between two overhanging trees sixty feet above the water.
Hair raising." Amat Lasong went all the way round by the coast.

Government allowed Tomani a pastor in 1956. As the Tagals re-
belled during the First World War and after the Second stopped
farming and expected the mountainside to open up and take them all
to heaven, they were reckoned unstable and their area closed to mis-
sions. Each step now must receive official approval.

We could now see Tomani's farming land and a rectangular slice
of shadow near the houses. "They don't think they get enough visits,"
said Bill, "so they have found a strip site. We'll survey it. ... I say,
they have shot ahead! I hadn't realized they had begun. Govern-
ment haven't sent permission yet. They would have forty fits if they
knew how far it had gone."

The new airstrip appeared less inviting from a lower height. "Looks
pretty close to this hill here," muttered Harold.

"Looks a bit like a one-way job," said Bill.

"How do I take off from there?" asked Harold.

"Do you want them to swing it a bit down the valley?"

256 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

"It's a one-way takeoff down that way. I couldn't get out of that
valley. . . . Those trees down there will have to come down."

Bill wrote a note to the pastor, who with his flock waved ex-
citedly. Harold went as low as the ground allowed, and Bill dropped
the weighted message through the door. Harold got the Civil Avia-
tion Department over the air.

We climbed again, and flew down the valley. A flame of the forest
(or some such tree) stood out, a single blaze of scarlet on the dense
green of the hillside. To the right lay very steep country over which
Tagals from the next main valley came to the Tomani to listen a
shattering walk, it looked. In a few minutes we were over the river's
junction with the Padas, two easy days from the half-built airstrip.

We flew on down the widening valley toward the railway. Three
times more I saw settlements where a church has sprung up in the
past two years. Bill said: "Notice how the Gospel has spread from
the interior toward the coast. Yet people ask what good can come
from the interior ! "

On that flight I had a distant sight of the mountainous area
stretching back into the interior. From Meligan and Tomani and the
Padas Valley the Gospel is penetrating far in among remote, back-
ward Tagals,

One Tagal village we did visit with the first European missionary
ever to go there.

We marched in by the tiny church beside a football field to the
village house. Watermelon and papaya, as much as we could eat,
disappeared in a welter of sucking and pips spat through the floor,
disgusting manners for an English country house but in keeping
here. They brought cups of coffee ; they brought a second round and
a third. Every family shared in the hospitality until we were em-
banked by twenty-seven cups and two large pots.

Bill had warned me that the Tagals generally fed him on little but
rice and a noisome substance called Tamba. "It's their specialty.
They do it perfectly. Other dishes may be spoiled. Rats cooked with
too much fur or python with too many scales." To make Tamba,
cut raw pig or fish? into small chunks, insert with a little cooked
rice and plenty of salt into 9, sealed bamboo, put in a hole and leave
for two months arid it is ready to eat. It tastes like gorgonzola stored
in mothballs. This village was celebrating the arrival of its first white

Spontaneous Expansion 25?

missionary. With Tamba there was wild pigeon, pork, boiled fish,
fried fish, an egg dish picked up from the Chinese as a special deli-
cacy for Europeans, and twenty-seven plates of rice.

They told us how a headman of a village on the Padas, an illiter-
ate, came to visit his married daughter. "He stayed a week and he
taught us this way. He had some pictures and he taught us hymns.
Now what was it he said?"

A young man in a green striped shirt entered and sat down. "He
told us Christ died on the cross and was raised again."

"That is right. And he made it very plain that we should not
have anything to do with sin. Specially drinking, smoking, and
adultery." (Bill added to the interpretation: "This makes sense
when you remember that these are the three great addictions of
these people, and lead to other sins.")

"Some of us immediately decided this was the right way. Others
wanted to weigh it a while. Some immediately stopped following
omens. Some still do/ 7 Deacons from another village succeeded the
headman. Three men from here went to the Padas and saw a church
in action. Then the headman came for two months, and went on
deeper into the interior.

It was odd to recall hearing a local government official discussing
whether this man should be banned from visiting his daughter. For
a year the people had been asking the government to allow them a
pastor. Permission was withheld. "Without a pastor we have not
always kept regular in holding services."

A Murut trader in our party rebuked them: "Do not rely on
earthly leadership. Keep it up whether a pastor or not."

"Would you support a pastor?' 7 asked Bill

They were insulted. "If we have been asking for one all this time,
do you think we do not want one?"

The formal question was put. "Do you want a pastor?" Every
hand shot up literally, two each.

They still wait. The complication is that the village is nomi-
nally in the Roman Catholic sphere. A Roman priest came for the
first time when the Padas headman's visit was known, and preached,
They were not interested. "We do not want a new custom/' they
told him, "but new life." Administratively the village is linked with
another settlement a mile or two away which has accepted Roman

258 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

ministrations. Despite the geographical separation, government
hesitates*

Government officers have undoubted concern for the well-being
of their areas, feeling a special responsibility for illiterates such as
the Tagals. Demarcations between missions were made to prevent
natives being swayed this way and that. The Chief Secretary at
Jesselton said, "As the country gets more civilized we realize we
cannot keep missions in separate pockets." It is a disturbing com-
ment on the liberty of the subject in a British colony that a request
for the pastor of their choice, made repeatedly before a missionary
had ever been seen, should not, at the time of writing, receive assent.

In their own context these people have the intelligence levels of
any civilized community. The gnome who carried my traveling tin
looked in his G string pathetically timid in the town ; in the pulpit
of his church, in a clean white shirt, he appeared competent and
decisive. Another, very much the primitive native when we started,
emerged among his own kind as a man whose face portrayed a
character of steady dependability. Our hostess was a veritable
princess.

And civilization with its materialism, perhaps its communism, is
tearing aside the jungle screen.

THIRTY-THREE & Through the Sulu

Sea

In talk about translation and linguistics I heard reference again and
again to the "Wycliffe method/ 7 Fifteen hundred miles away I saw
the Wycliffe method in action.

If Borneo had cast its spell, Borneo was most reluctant to let us go.

We were in the Dusan country below gaunt Mount Kinabalu, the
highest in Southeast Asia, at Ranau, where are a small bazaar, a
mission station, a rest house, and a government airstrip. Ranau lies
at twenty-five hundred feet, surrounded by mountains.

The agents suddenly armounced that the ship for the Philippines
would sail late on Monday afternoon, June 22. The BJE.M. do not

Through the Sulu Sea 259

fly on Sundays except for medical emergency. Ranau to Labuan is
only one and a quarter hours' flying time, though we planned to call
in at Lawas, and Lawas radio ordered us to be on the airstrip for
takeoff at 10:30 on Monday morning. The Piper, Whisky Alpha
Yankee, was unserviceable. Captain Cooper would come in the
Auster.

The hilltops were in cloud. At 10:15 the Asian radio operator
heard the Auster turn back : the pass from Jesselton had a danger-
ous downdraft and its less powerful engine needed higher clearance
than the cloud base allowed. The day worsened. At 4 :is the airstrip
closed down. "Ship now sails tomorrow," Ken Cooper's voice crackled
over the V.H.F. "Don't worry." He would stay overnight at Jessel-
Jon.

Tuesday made a brief, feeble attempt at a fine day. At 9:15
Cooper was expected any minute. "I think I shall get through," he
radioed as he flew up toward the pass. . . . "Can't make it. Returning
Jesselton. Returning Jesselton." The operator very kindly called
Lawas, who reported the ship not sailing until 5 :oo P.M. ; the Piper,
now serviceable, designated elsewhere ; weather bad all up the coast.

Lawas called back. "Whisky Alpha Yankee unable to go as desig-
nated. Standing by for Pollocks. What is the weather toward Ken-
ingau?"

"Totally overcast"

We sat listening to the traffic between the government V.HJF.
stations. A party of Dusans took up positions to watch if there
might be a landing, the neighborhood's entertainment. Turkeys
gobbled at my feet. "Ranau, Ranau, Jesselton, Ranau," came a voice.
The operator took up the handset. Jesselton reported the Auster
having one try more. Twenty minutes later Cooper announced
failure, but almost immediately, at 11:00, Keningau came up with
news that Captain Parsons was there in Whisky Alpha Yankee. We
fled for a hurried lunch, and at 12 :2o he landed,

We circled above the airfield but could not set course to Jesselton
over the mountains because thunderstorm cloud rose to 17,000 feet,
mixed with thick medium cloud to 25,000, "We shall have to go
round. I'll fly up the valley and try to get over. There are two gaps.
One may be open." Only part of the valley was clear of low cloud.
Harold caine down a few hundred feet nearly to the level of Dusan

2 6o EARTH'S REMOTEST END

villages perched on the hillsides hemming us in. The turn of the
valley showed a barrier of mountain and cloud. Harold was going
for the higher pass. As we approached, he could just see over, that
the valley on the other side, the Tuaran, was safe to enter, but the
gap between the clouds and the pass gave too narrow a margin for
the downdraft. The Piper would have been sucked onto the rocks.

Harold extricated himself, banking steeply to port, circled and
flew at the lower of the two passes, at 3,800 feet. "This is a very
tricky bit, this valley." One small hole invited us on. As the moun-
tain rushed to meet us, the plane bumped severely. We flew between
the clouds and the pass with 150 feet to spare, the downdraft pull-
ing hard. The Auster would not have had a chance. We shook in
turbulence, but the Lycoming engine lost us little height. "Really
dangerous/' said Harold as the mountain fell away again. "The most
hazardous thing, getting through that gap."

He dropped quickly, for the cloud base over the Tuaran was only
3,000 feet. As the valley widened we had to go down to under 1,600.
We were coming out of the mountains.

"There's the sea!" I cried.

"Yes/ 7 said Harold in his matter-of-fact Australian voice, "trou-
bles are over. The Lord has been very good to us."

"Superb flying I should say."

"No credit to me. Give Him all the praise."

We were inside the fine new airport building at Jesselton by
1 130 P.M. Calling at Lawas was out of the question, and Harold
flew us direct up the coast to Labuan and then ferried our luggage.
Weather in the interior looked its worst, and the Cathay Pacific
Skymaster from Hong Kong for Kuching, which touched down
majestically as Harold scuttled off the runway, was grounded over-
night.

Early next morning when the Ascanius sailed at last, the hills of
Borneo never were more perfect.

Ascanius, Blue^-Fiinnel freighter, Captain Laxman, was a dream
ship: the only passengers, sumptuous cabin, shown all over the
vessel, perfect weather ; and because she was not on a regular run
the cost almost nominal.

At Cebu in the southern Philippines, forty-eight hours after

Through the Sulu Sea 261

leaving Labuan, the master received agent's orders: contrary to
expectation he was to call at Manila, after other ports, in a week or
ten days. We were tempted to stay, having writing to do, but other
factors decided us, and with great reluctance we landed, took a
night tourist flight, and at sunrise, nearly an hour earlier than in
Borneo, circled over Manila and in across the bay.

If you asked a Filipino, "Are you a Christian?" he would be in-
sulted, 90 per cent of the population being nominally Roman Catho-
lic.

"What do you think I am," he would reply, "an aboriginal?"
For despite nearly 350 years of the Spanish church, nothing was
done for the tribal people in the mountains until the establishment
of American rule.

The Wycliffe Bible Translators' principal Philippine area lay far
down in Mindanao, and not knowing that we should be landed in
Cebu I had declined their invitation. We were, however, back in the
hands of the Overseas Missionary Fellowship, whose tribal workers
in Mindoro used this method, and who in Hazel Page, a Canadian,
had a highly trained linguist who had worked with Wycliffe in
Mexico when unable to go to China because of the war.

To reach Hazel Page involved travel by plane, pony cart, bus,
outrigger canoe, and foot. After a few days in Manila, that astonish-
ing city, we hopped from Luzon to Mindoro. The Philippines is a
scenic country. Lacking the loveliness of Java, it offers continual
picture-postcard scenes formed of volcanoes, lakes, and sea, but the
rainy season was beginning and the plane flew too low and the
weather was too poor for enjoyment. Seen off at Manila by a Cana-
dian and an Australian, we were met at Calapan by an English-
man, Dr. Jim Broomhall, and taken in a karitela, a high-wheeled
pony cart of obvious Spanish descent, to the mission house over-
looking a dazzling turquoise bay fringed with coconut palms.

At 3 .-40 A.M. next morning, accompanied by a Czech, we boarded
the one through bus of the day for Mansalay in the south of Oriental
Mindoro. I had proposed to travel in the best British Borneo manner,
in shorts. "You can't ! You must not ! This is a former American
area, and shorts are a sign of poverty. An Austrian who lived here
walked about in shorts, and they all said, 'He is so poor that he

2 62 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

can't afford trousers below his knees.' " Not until I was safe among
the tribes could the shorts emerge.

A Filipino bus, a long red thing, is designed to carry the greatest
number in the briefest space. Retiring age for a conductor must be
about twenty-five, for there is no corridor and he must clamber
athletically outside while the express bus roars along at fantastic
speed. In Luzon on the few main tarmac roads a bus will pass a
fast car, and my heart was in my mouth until I saw a Safety Award
displayed by the driver's seat. Then I recalled that in this country
such a certificate could easily be bought. A local bus in Mindoro
is at the other end of the scale. It will stop every few hundred
yards through the barrios to pick up bananas or pigs or people.
Early on our return journey from Mansalay the bus developed engine
trouble. The noise became violent when the driver engaged a rival
in a leap frog race for passengers. We fell far behind, and at a
shady bus station fifteen miles before Calapan the end obviously
was near. They must fill up with water, grind on half a mile, and
with an expiring groan deposit us on a shadeless, airless stretch of
road.

The outward journey was smoother. At Bongabon the Czech left
and a Swiss, Nick Wehren, joined us, seen off by a German. The
road degenerated after we had negotiated a series of river beds in
the rain. Six and a half hours later, ninety-two miles from Calapan,
we reached the little fishing village of Mansalay and at a tiny house
of nipa palm, right on the beach, were welcomed by a Dutch girl,
Elly van der Linden, Hazel Page's partner in translation.

Mindoro is shaped somewhat like a fried egg, the white the
coastal plain, home of the "Christianos," or lowlanders, the raised
yellow in the middle the mountainous home of the Mangyan or
animist tribes. Of the six main tribes of Mindoro, each with a
different language, we were to visit the Hanunoo, numbering some
five or six thousand, one of the more advanced. In certain tribes it
was impossible to bring in visitors such as ourselves. The people
would have fled. The lowlanders despise and exploit the Mangyan ;
the Mangyan hate and fear the "Christianos."

Next morning Elly van der Linden, Nick Wehren, Anne, and I
went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat, a typical Filipino canoe,
twenty feet long with outriggers, a frame of bamboos that ride the
waves. The blue of the coral sea blended with the mountains, but

In Search of Words 263

wind and approaching rain stirred the water to prevent us seeing
the underwater gardens.

We rounded a headland, crossed a bay, disembarked at a cluster
of fishing huts, and set off across muddy fields into the hills. My
pack was the heaviest of our tour. The path rose, and despite sticks
I slipped on a banana leaf and went down like any old gentleman.
We crossed a stream and in a shower ascended what can best be
described as a staircase without stairs. There were banisters of
creepers and roots.

As the gradient slackened we entered a clearing. Sitting on a fence
to see if the first shoots of newly planted rice had appeared was a
young woman in sleeveless, shapeless blouse of red and white over a
short tight dirty skirt, a headband of white and red beads and lips to
match not lipstick but betel juice; her teeth were blackened
stumps.

Hanging on to the hillside were the few bamboo huts of Tarubong.
A cleaner but scarcely larger hut stood to the left the missionaries'
own house. We turned the corner to the entrance. At that exact
moment, round the opposite corner, having come from a village
several hours off, walked Hazel Page.

THIRTY-FOUR *JF In Search of W ords

The first task was to fetch water from the trickle of a stream at the
bottom of a steep path, carrying it up in bamboos slung on our
backs with a strap round the forehead.

The village consists of six couples and their children, and most of
them were sitting on the porch when we returned. Elly, a delightful
companion on the trail, is never happier than when dangling grubby
tribal babies, attending sore eyes or listening to troubles. Immemo-
rial custom demands that if anyone eats all present must have a
share, and since tins of meat, fish, or cheese carried up on foot are
too precious to distribute in morsels lunch had to wait Gone was
the largesse of Borneo longhouses. These people exist on rice, roots,
and a sour banana boiled and eaten with salt.

I was prepared for hunger. Then we heard of the Providential

264 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

Cow. I am sorry that a poor tribal woman, and a Believer, should
lose her cow. If it must break a leg, it was providentially timed,

After lunch Elly took us down to the stream, up as steeply be-
yond and through the trees another two or three hundred feet to a
hamlet where dwelt a shaman, or witch doctor. He was out but we
called on friends. In a murky room twenty feet square, a fire at the
far end, were two men, a granny, a younger woman, seven children,
two skinny dogs, and three kittens. A meal was in progress. "Will
you eat?" they called. We declined. Later they brought a tray of
sour bananas. We ate little, knowing that between seasons food is
scarce. "I am hungry," one of the men said. "We have no rice left.
The new crop is just planted."

This man wore a G string, a torn blue shirt over a filthy vest,
and round his neck were cheap beads. We sat on the veranda over-
looking the distant sea and the headland, the steepness of these
hills above the plain, here very narrow, giving the villages the
effect of hanging over the sea. Granny pounded her betel, the
younger woman admired herself in a cracked mirror, and the man
brought out a small bamboo tobacco box and began to read aloud.

The Hanunoo and their neighbors are distinctive in having a
primitive script, a pre-Islamic Indie script, a mystery to savants,
which is a syllabary of forty-eight characters like shorthand signs,
incised on bamboo and rubbed with charcoal for clarity. Translation
into Hanunoo involves mastering and adapting this primitive script ;
an American scholar had made a beginning, but Hazel and Elly
have got further.

"It is a love song," the man said. "This is a very old language. I
learned it from my father. He learned it from his. . . . Will these
Americanos you have brought stay long enough to learn Hanunoo? I
could talk direct to them then." He asked Elly to take down the
song.

She was delighted and said to us : "It has given me several new
words. I am always listening for words I haven't heard to add to my
card index."

A nest of very small bees hung above the entrance. "And don't
they give good honey my!" said Elly. Pigs, chickens wandered
below, and the flies were a plague.

"I have accepted the Lord," said the man, "and my young sister

In Search of Words 265

has. We all have here. The shaman really believes, but he goes on
with his witchcraft. I have stopped. I could not make it work."

Elly said that she doubted any of them truly believed. They did
not show deep interest and had not discarded the chattels of witch-
craft. The trouble was that they had not the New Testament in
their tongue. "Very difficult for them to study the Word because
they haven't got it. I hope to start translating Mark before I go on
furlough next spring. We hope to get it finished in two years."

Back at Tarubong, while our share of the Providential Cow
stewed, I read in the latest copy of The Bible Translator, a journal
of the United Bible Societies, an article about Wydiffe by Kenneth
Pike, one of its leaders.

The Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of
Linguistics were founded as the result of the experiences of Cameron
Townsend, an American. As a young man he abandoned his work as
colporteur among the Indians of Central America when he discovered
that most of them could not speak the language of the Scriptures
he was selling. In the jungles of Guatemala, in addition to normal
mission work, he applied himself to learn, analyze, and reduce to
writing the local language without technical training a remarkable
achievement. Invalided home, he had an urgent concern for the
tribes of Central and South America whose languages no one knew.

In 1934 he and a friend founded a training school of linguistics in
Arkansas. Here missionaries pooled knowledge that recruits might
learn principles which their elders had laboriously discovered on the
field. Townsend's aim was nothing less than the Bible in every langu-
age, however few might speak it, "the small tribes hidden away, lost
to civilized view." Wycliffe believes that every man needs at least a
part of the Scriptures in his mother tongue, even when knowing a
trade language, if ie is to be a strong Christian. "The growing leader-
ship of a growing church needs the Epistles to give guidance as
they mold their culture to Christian basic truth." "Two thousand
tongues to go" became Wycliffe's slogan.

Wycliffe translators and literacy promoters work in remote parts
of North and South America, in New Guinea, in Vietnam. In
Manila the Secretary for Education had in his office a map of their
Philippines locations, and spoke of them warmly. Beyond this direct

266 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

activity is the far wider influence of their summer schools in the
United States, England, and Australia, to which numerous missions
send recruits to learn and missionaries to teach, under Wycliffe di-
rection.

My head swam at the technical details, but I absorbed enough to
realize that the approach is to get at the princples behind language
rather than to master any one language as a schoolboy learns Latin
or French.

Hazel Page said she had "tasted" twenty languages. In Min-
doro, Hanunoo is her third, for the O.M.F. operate . over the
whole island. "I want to go for details, details of sounds and so on.
To listen, and not just to be told what to learn. Wycliffe's strong
point is to listen to what is going on right now, what they say as
they cook and mend things and tell the children what to do. And
then use that, the everyday speech, as an instrument to get the mes-
sage of salvation across. People who are not Wycliffe-trained wait for
those who have learned long before to come and tell them the
grammar and syntax and give reasons. That's no good if it is an
unknown language. If you're Wycliffe trained you are more anxious
to figure it out yourself."

The whole village gathered that night in the headman's house,
the men against the far wall, the women nearer the door. The
matriarch leaned against a wooden pillar. "You must come into the
light," she called to youths. "We must be able to see you." Hurricane
lamps lit shadowy brown bodies and muddy feet, and touched a
red headband there, a red blouse here, and gold in the one safe
place their teeth. Baskets, red cloth, a large sheaf knife, a cradle
of creeper hung from the roof. A woman fed her baby; a black
cat washed its paws; dogs slept.

Hazel and Elly had notebooks at the ready. Hymns were sung
to chant-like tunes rather uncertainly, one after another. A woman
who swayed as they sung saw her child beat time. She remarked,
"He is bouncing" Instantly the word was in both notebooks.
The fifth or sixth hymn caused difficulty. "I cannot sing-the-tune"
grunted a toothless old man sitting hunched in a coat. Down went
the word. After hymns a tribesman prayed and Elly read a Scripture
portion in Tagalog, the trade language, and gave a quarter of an

In Search of Words 267

hour's talk in Hanunoo. Some discussion followed on whether a
Christian (or a Believer, as they say, to distinguish from "Christi-
anos," synonymous with lowlander) should chew betel. A woman,
fast asleep, woke up at the yap of a puppy playing with her baby.
The closing prayer, by another tribesman, continued at least four
minutes, and the two ladies, alert even when at prayer, noted new
words.

The next day I watched Hazel at work with an informant.

After a comfortable night on the floor of the hut which seemed
suspended between the stars and the twinkling lights of the fishing
boats, we had left Elly at Tarubong and trekked five hours up
and down until we reached Binli where Hazel had another little
house.

Hazel Page, whose home is in British Columbia, looks younger
than her years and taller than her inches, has fair hair and a fresh
complexion which the sun affected little. She is an untiring walker.
a She is very Spartan," we had been warned, but there was nothing
Spartan in her manner. She was, as Elly had said, "a good sport."

She sat on the veranda of a bamboo house a little way down the
hill from her own. The best informant was out of the village, and this
man was willing but unskillful. She read to him in Tagalog the
Feeding of the Five Thousand from Mark. "Now tell it back to
me in Hanunoo, freely in your own words." As she was still learn-
ing syntax, not translating, Hazel did not want word for word but
the gist. The informant was anxious to understand, and insisted on
rendering it verse by verse. Hazel scribbled in her orange notebook.
"No, No," she said at the end of the first verse, crossing out what
she had written, "it says, 'there were many coming and going and
they had no leisure to eat/ but you have said, 'there were no people
and no food.' " She explained it again, and he got it right.

They plodded on, a time-consuming process. He was clearly
enjoying it, absently stroking his little daughter's hair as she leaned
against him. Now and again Hazel questioned him on a word. If
it was new to her she added it to her list. With her usual informant
Hazel could go faster, and she has prepared and mimeographed a
Hanunoo version of the Parable of the Sower, using the ancient
script. When he is fully trained and Hazel and Elly feel that their
grasp of Hanunoo is firm, the exact translation will start. The

268 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

translator must make certain the informant understands the mean-
ing of each verse, and between them they decide on the best words
to use. "When a Gospel is roughed out I call in several people,
foreigners and local, to go through it together and discuss it with
me and the informant. The whole business is almost always a great
spiritual experience for the informant," she said as we climbed back
to her hut ; and she added with expressive mixed metaphor, "They
grow like a house on fire."

"Kanmi Ama, kami kanmu anak . . . Our Father, we your chil-
dren ask you to keep us on the way and safe from all evil. Bring
us safe today." Agin stood beside the doorway in the sunrise before
we set off on the longest leg of the trip, to SinarirL

Agin was fairly sure of the trail because he had gone part of
that way in search of a bride six years ago. His hair, piled on the
head in the fashion of a young lady of the Regency and tied with
a natty pink band which flopped over his forehead, could drop to bis
waist. He wore a pink T-shirt and bright pink flaps fore and aft.
He had been a believer two years.

Agin carried my pack, and the gradients made me glad to be free
at last. Hazel had things at Sinariri and could travel light too. Agin
yodeled with joie de vivre as we marched out through the under-
growth and climbed slowly to a high plateau of coggan grass, fresh
green on the distant hills but tall and coarse and inclined to make
a rash on arms and legs. We passed several small villages. We met
a man with a steel-tipped hunting spear. He gave Agin betel nut,
and next meeting Agin must make a present to him. Half an hour
later we reached this man's village which has a bad reputation.
The girls sleep in a little house on stilts. A man serenades with a
wooden guitar. If a suitor is favored, he comes and passes the
night. Marriage need not follow.

Agin checked the trail. We drank from our bottles, took salt
tablets, and walked on sucking malted milk, much to be recom-
mended. The path sometimes was marked by tribal signs such
as a stick stuck in the cleft of another for direction ; a rotted banana
leaf in a cleft stick meant: "Who is stealing my bananas? I'm keep-
ing a good lookout," And another sign,, "Please do not burn this
grass."

In Search of Words 269

Nearing a valley the path abandoned all pretense and we jumped
from rocks, slipped on mud, and clambered with close concentration
up and down precipitous slopes. Hazel found wild raspberries, and
tomatoes and we saw papayas, but the ripe ones had been eaten by
wasps. We reached a spring where a one-eyed Hanunoo gentleman
wearing a G string and a U.S. Army identification disk politely
stepped aside. The trail tumbled into the valley and at the bot-
tom flowed a river, though Borneo would have scorned it.

We splashed up it and forked on to one of the dry beds. A man
carrying bows and arrows and a fish basket, accompanied by two
women as nearly naked as himself, came from the opposite direction.
"Where are you all going?" asked the man.

"To Sinariri," said Agin. "I am accompanying them. Where have
you come from?" The questions went back and forth.

Hazel asked, "Have you ever heard of Jesus Christ ?"

"No."

"You tell them, Agin."

Agin launched a sermon, waggling his finger. "For example," he
began, "we have families and the father and mother look after the
children and the children call the father 'Father.' God is our Father
and wants to look after us but we can't call Him Father because our
hearts are black. So they must be washed." He spoke of Christ's
death. "Ever heard this before?" he concluded.

"Never. If it is so, it is good. How did you hear of this?"

"These people have lived with us and told us from God's book."

"Why cannot those two speak Hanunoo?" The conversation
drifted inevitably because we were strangers.

Before we left the river the ladies, hungry as they were, kindly
allowed me to go upstream to a place just deep enough for a quick
buffalo wallow, and after that we scrambled up a rock path and into
a forest, emerging, exactly at midday, beside a small house in a
clearing. A gruff old man crouched on the veranda pounding betel,
his pregnant daughter and a grandchild beside him. We squatted
down hopefully. The old man having concluded he had nothing good
enough for Americanos sat still. "They will pay," said Agin en-
couragingly. The old man spat juice, and the daughter brought water
in a coconut shell and a reed tray of sweet bananas, two kinds, a
pleasant relief, as I had feared tapioca roots. He refused payment

270 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

when he had done. Hazel gave him the mimeographed Parable of
the Sower, and he began to read to himself in audible voice, A bloated
leech fell out of my sock.

One steep valley more to be crossed, and seven hours after leaving
Binli we walked past the miserable spring that was Sinariri's water
supply and wash place ; when the villagers scratch too much they
journey to the river below. We entered the village to the delight
of those who were at home. A man climbed a palm and brought
us each a young green coconut. He made a hole and you drank the
milk. He cut it in half and handed you a piece of the husk as a
spoon ; the flesh was soft and delicious. They brought us sugar cane.
You cut sections, sucked out the sugar and dropped the cane through
the floor, where it was instantly eaten by pigs.

We hoped for rice, for they were busy round the fire in the other
room, as dirty as the one we sat in. After long delay the woman
appeared with fresh boiled sour bananas and salt. "We have run
out of rice and the pigs destroyed our root crop." Spoken with
smiles of hospitality, even this dismal speech yielded a word of
some new shade of meaning. Out came the notebook.

A pitch lamp guttered feebly in the doorway. The pitch from a
forest tree is dried in fiber, wrapped in banana leaf to lessen the
rate of burning, and placed in the cleft of a long stick supported by
two smaller ones in the manner of a primitive arquebus. One leaf
burns for about half an hour, and smells slightly of incense.

We were on the long windowledge, the only seat in the house. I
was munching sugar cane, thinking of the baby white elephant of
Myitkyina who had a similar partiality, and brushing away the
innumerable insects. Agin and Hazel chatted. "When I first be-
lieved," he said, "I was not afraid at all. Now I find I am. Afraid of
the lowlanders, afraid of people laughing at me, and getting angry
at them. I think it is because I am not feeding on God's Word
enough." As they had no Hanunoo Bible, Hazel had been giving
them a little teaching nightly. When work in the fields became heavy
they said they were too tired. "Now I am losing strength," said
Agin.

The elderly headman, li, entered and sat in the shadows against
a pillar. Hazel said : "li, I have told my friends you are a Believer."

In Search of Words 277

"Yes, I am." Turning to Agin, whom he had not met before, li
said, "Are you trusting the Lord too?"

"Yes."

"What good do you find comes from trusting the Lord?"

"People do not boast any more," replied Agin, "do not lie, do
not fool around with women."

"How about the Romanes, is it the same?"

"No," said Agin. "Romanes are allowed to swear, steal, lie, any-
thing so long as you go to church and tell the priest. The priest
wants your money. Now these people," pointing at Hazel, "they
have never asked for money. They don't tell lies about us. If they
promise something they do it. That's why we follow them. We
don't really follow them, it is Jesus we follow but they told us
about Him."

"What is this about Romanos? What do you say about them?"

"I do not want to seem to be dictating to you. You are my elder.
But I think Romanos chase after money. And they despise us Han-
unoos. No matter what we say, if we tell the truth or tell about
the Lord, Romanos ridicule us, say we are uncivilized. But I tell
them the Gospel anyway, even if when they hear the Word it
does not always enter their ears. Some listen and believe but not
all will believe."

Hazel said, "That's exactly what Jesus told us in the Bible, that
not all will believe."

"I never knew that," said li. "I knew I would go to heaven but
I never knew that."

Agin described film slides and posters he had seen at one of the
coastal bases of the mission. Most of the men of the village had
entered and sat along the far windowledge intently listening in the
dim light, as Anglo-Saxons in Augustine's day must have listened.

"Oh, I wish people could see these pictures," cried old li. "I am
sure they would believe."

Banyan, one of li's sons, a fine believer, a happy character who
had shown us how to use bow and arrow and how to wait for your
quarry with one leg resting on the other, asked Agin, "Is it true that
if a person whose heart is full of wild animals dies without trusting
the Lord, the Devil takes his soul?"

"Yes, there were pictures of a man like that."

272 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

"What did he look like, this man with a heart full of wild
animals ?"

"Like a lowlander! He wore trousers!"

This was rather below the belt. In another tribe an American mis-
sionary leaving for furlough was seriously told to ask the President
of the United States to send planes to bomb the lowlanders.

Banyan was concerned to learn that men could die without hope
of heaven: "There are many in the world that do not know about
this. They should know."

Agin replied: "We should show everybody this and many would
believe. If they could see these pictures they would know God's
grace. God is not partial"

And he used two Hanunoo words Hazel had never heard. For
grace she had always used pakuan, a gift. He had used pabur. Back
at Mansalay, in his smart town suit of short white collarless jacket
beautifully embroidered over a vest and G string spotlessly white,
Agin explained the difference. You used pakuan, he said, when the
gift could be seen and touched, when you actually handed it. But
pabur implied an attitude of grace and favor when the gift was not
visible. "I will give you a bag. I have not got it here."

"I have nothing to pay you for it."

"It is a gift to you pabur duy, yours because I feel friendly to
you, yours though it is not yet in your hands." Hazel looked up
pabur in the American scholar's proto-dictionary. It was Spanish
derived : the meaning he gave was no stronger than "favor." Before
accepting it as the best word for the "grace of God," Hazel would
need to test it on others, for Agin might have used pabur in a sense
not generally accepted by his people.

"God is not partial" he had also said. She had taken down his
word without knowing what he meant. "It is simple/' he explained.
"If I build myself a nice house and then build a rotten one for you,
that is being partial God is not partial He is not doing one thing to
the good and another to sinners. Salvation is a gift for all who will
take it."

Manila Calling 273

THIRTY-FIVE *f* Manila Calling

Agin's strictures on the Romanos in the Philippine lowlands were
only too accurate. Unbiased Roman Catholics share with Protestants
an unsavory opinion of the Christianos of the countryside, friendly
and cheerful as they are to meet. Compelled to become Christians
by the Spanish, their old animism is close under the surface. Every
cottage has a shrine to the Virgin or a saint ; the pagan spirit under
another name. "It is the idol that is everything, not the idea behind
it. Again and again we have been told that," said an Englishman. A
Jesuit, Father Bernard, readily admitted this animistic substratum.

The Filipino rustic is as terrified of the dark, of ghoulies and
ghosties and gibbety beasties and things that go bump in the night,
as any medieval Cornishman. Indeed, there is a close parallel with
the elfs and gnomes of pre-Reformation England; not until a
Christianized people has the Bible widely in the vernacular will
it say, "Farewell, rewards and fairies."

In the Philippines relationship between church and state is like
that of France, not Spain. The Spanish domination, the tyranny of
the friars, the moderate freethinking of Jose Ritzal, martyr of the
Revolution, cured Filipinos of subservience to the political control
of the Roman Church. Fifty years of American rule imbued them
with a tremendous sense of the rights of man freedom of worship,
thought and expression. This liberty sometimes produces odd results.
A fine new bridge in Manila is still unopened because the govern-
ment cannot remove slum dwellers squatting on land needed for
the approach.

Church and state are kept well separated. "Must the President
be a Roman Catholic?" I asked the Secretary of Education, Jose
Romero, former Ambassador in London, in his cramped office noisy
with typists.

"Why should he?" he replied. "We have no state religion. It
might, of course, be as difficult for a Protestant to be elected as for
a Roman Catholic to be elected President of the llnited States."
All good causes, such as the Bible Society, display presidential mes-
sages of congratulation or good wishes.

274 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

Unfortunately America was unable to transplant its high stan-
dards of public life. "Graft in my country is awful," said a leading
journalist entertaining us to breakfast at the Manila Hotel. "If
only President Magsaysay had not been killed. He was incorruptible.
He was leading the nation to honesty."

"Please leave your Firearms and other Deadly Weapons here"
the notice is at the entrance to public buildings, gas stations, fac-
tories. It is symbolic of an attitude. I doubt actual violence, apart
from election times, is normal except on the roads. Bangkok traffic
could not light a candle to Manila. To step off the sidewalk at a
major intersection, even at traffic lights, and dodge the jeepneys,
buses, and automobiles on the pavement might in sound and fury
be an exercise at a battle school. Hard to forgive is the persistent
honking in the early hours ; you do not "hoot" ; that is a word to
create merriment in a city where everyone speaks American.

Eight hundred thousand Protestants beside the fifteen millions, at
least, who are reckoned in the census as Roman Catholics may not
appear an impressive figure. Not one Filipino Protestant existed be-
fore the end of Spanish rule in 1898 ; and vast numbers of Romanos
make no pretense of personal religion beyond churchgoing. "There
is not much changing from one to the other," a prominent Catholic
layman said. "The attitude is, 'What was good enough for my
father is good enough for me. 7 " He may have been complacent.
Much dissatisfaction is felt at the preponderance of foreign priests,
including many Spanish, and the religion taught in most Filipino
churches and in all but the leading Catholic institutions grates on
the intelligence of modern youth. It is mechanical. It is morbid,
dwelling on sins rather than on salvation, on death rather than on
resurrection, on works more than on faith.

"Three different people," an American missionary told me, "two
Filipinos and a Chinese, said the very same words to me within a
week : 'I was brought up in a Catholic school but I couldn't swallow
that stuff.' "

The Filipino passion for liberty is a fertile field for every shade
of opinion, from pseudo-Christian cults such as Jehovah's Witnesses
to most of the major Protestant denominations, some of whom have
united. "Missions just fall over one another in this country/' said
a missionary leader. The Filipinos have developed several sects of

Manila Calling 275

their own. The Manalistas, claiming two million adherents, call
themselves "The Church of Christ" with effrontery, since they
deny His Divinity. They follow Felix Manalo, former Catholic, for-
mer Protestant, former Seventh-day Adventist. I tried to visit his
cathedral but was turned back by an armed sentry. His teachings
include the belief that he is the "angel ascending from the east"
in the Apocalypse, the other four angels being Lloyd George, Clem-
enceau, President Wilson, and Orlando of Italy. Their churches are
ornate outside, luxurious within. One is air-conditioned.

An Anglican is bound to be interested in the Philippine Indepen-
dent Church, known as the Aglipayans from their founder; for it
springs from a genuine attempt, following the Philippine Revolution,
to make a church which should be Catholic without being Roman.
"Bishop Aglipay 's great desire was to build a replica of the Church
of England," said the Supreme Bishop, His Eminence the Most Rev-
erend Isabelo de los Reyes, Jr., whom I went to see in his pocket
cathedral in a working-class district of Manila. "Our dream today
is to be a church of the Anglican Communion."

Proclamation of an Independent Church in 1902 brought enthu-
siastic support which failed to survive immediate difficulties. Roman
church buildings taken over on the claim that they had been erected
by forced labor and thus belonged to the people were lost after a
legal battle. Aglipay became politically suspect to the American
authorities. He was befriended by Governor Taft, but Taft was a
Unitarian and converted him; doctrinally the church split. Bishop
Aglipay died in 1940, and his successor, Fonacier, who collaborated
with the Japanese "while our children were still fighting in Bataan,"
was removed from office after the war and the resulting legal
wrangle was settled only in 1955.

"When I became head of the church," said the Supreme Bishop,
"I found a sort of haze. Some were Unitarian, some were Trinitarian,
some nothing at all, just Christians, and we were losing ground."
In Bishop Norman Binsted of the Episcopal Church, de los Reyes
found sympathy. Largely through Episcopal help the Philippine
Independent Church is on the road to recovery "smaller, but
united, and stronger."

Admiration for courage and faith cannot blind an observer to
the restricted limits of Aglipayan influence. They are more impres-

276 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

sive from a distance, or as a brave idea, despite forty bishops, twenty-
three dioceses, and a claim of three million members. The teaching
is symbolized by the contrasts I saw as I passed through the tiny
procathedral to the Supreme Council chamber : a large statue of the
cross-bearing Christ which had been dressed in a scarlet robe
and a wig; a plaster of Christ with the sacred heart exposed; an
image of the Virgin; a poster of the American Bible Society.

The car turned into Dewey Boulevard with its breeze and the
distant view of Corregidor and Bataan across the almost landlocked
bay, sped by the Ritzal Monument, the docks, the ruins of the old
Spanish city destroyed in the war, through a slum district and on
to the northern highway, as narrow and crowded as the Great North
Road at its worst. Ten miles out we took a rough lane to Christian
Radio City the Far Eastern Broadcasting Company, the famous
D.Z.A.S. whose trail I had been crossing all over Asia.

Christian Radio City was a small compound all set about with
antennae and wire. Robert A. Reynolds, the director, took me into
his modest but sensibly air-conditioned office, and sitting at a desk
in front of a large Trans World Airlines map of the world told me
of the founding of F.E.B.C. by three Americans in 1945 with total
assets of $1,000. Fortunately failing to get permission to build mis-
sionary radio stations in China, one of the three came to the Philip-
pines in July, 1946. "We went on the air in 1948 with one medium-
wave i 3 ooo-watt transmitter. Now we have eleven two medium-
and nine short-wave, an average of one transmitter added every
year." The cost of installation, organization, and maintenance of
equipment and program is met entirely by gifts, chiefly from North
America.

Reynolds, a small man with gray, thinning hair and a youngish
face, rather solemn in his manner, took me across to a National Geo-
graphic map of the Eastern Hemisphere dotted with colored pins.
"Last autumn we did a six-weeks test of our new so,ooo-watt short-
wave transmitter which is primarily intended for India. We were
on three hours every evening and had 600 letters as a result. The
pins show where it was heard." They were thick in Asia, sprinkled
fqpite widely in Africa^ and as far as the South Atlantic; two or
.itaee "were in England, Sweden, and Belgium, "South India reported

MINDORO
Hazel Page and an informant at Binli

MINDORO

Agin preaches the Good News to wayfarers

HONG KONG COLONY

Street Scene on Cheung Chau Island

HONG KONG COLONY

Temple on Cheung Chau Island

JAPAN

Torii to a Shinto shrine at Nikko

Manila Calling 277

reception clearer than Radio Ceylon, and Zanzibar said the signal
was louder than the local station. Since December, 1958, we have
broadcast a regular schedule for India, 2 hours and 45 minutes a
day, organized by the Evangelical Radio Fellowship of India." He
stubbed a finger on to Okinawa, midway between the Philippines
and Japan. "Here our new ioo,ooo-watt transmitter is being set up.
In Red China they are not allowed to have short-wave receivers, so
to reach them we had to have a really powerful medium wave."
.It came on the air three months later, in October, 1959. "It should
be heard clearly all over China and in parts of Russia. The Com-
munists will be hard put to prevent listening. The harassed Church
in China may soon look to Okinawa as a main source of inspiration."

Crossing to a big studio fitted up rather like a chapel, I was
shown a board giving the daily schedules. "The Call of the Orient"
is divided into three services the Philippine Service, Manila's Fine
Music Station, and the Overseas Service, the last being on the air
almost round the clock.

Dale Golding, General Program Director, explained that the
terms of license from the Philippine Government obliged F.E.B.C
to broadcast 50 per cent secular programs. "When we went on the
air in 1948 there were many commercial stations making a lot of
money but not serving the public. To get a license we had to agree
to put across public instruction, news, good music, and so on. We
feel it a tremendous advantage, as we gain many, many listeners."
The Overseas Service schedule had 75 per cent religious material,
the different language programs being organized by missionaries
working in the various countries. British missionaries were less adept
at producing programs than were Americans. "They do not get the
opportunities at home as we do."

None of the D,Z.A.S. staff is amateur. Dale Golding held a radio
degree from a university in Texas and had worked at a Christian
radio station in Iowa. "All my training was geared to coming here."
The chief announcer, from Seattle, who also covers local news, or-
ganizes and sings on musical programs, took five years of voice
training in London. "My aim was Christian service, but I wanted
to do something different from the usual run."

Dale Golding and I sat beside a baby grand in the studio of the
Manila Fine Music Station where the walls had prints of famous

278 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

composers and a chart of studio signals. On the highly sensitive
microphone by Phillips of Holland glowed a red light ; the Filipino
engineer at the controls across the glass partition was testing our
voices. Through another glass an engineer recorded a Russian on
holiday from Korea who, in the studio beyond, was making pro-
grams in Russian for later release.

Golding took me out past a Coca-Cola dispenser to the Traffic
Room. It looked like a paperback bookshop. "Over there are
Burmese tapes, Cambodian, and Chinese dialects. To the right are
Indian languages, Nepali, Tibetan."

"Roughly how many tapes are here?"

"I can tell you almost exactly: 11,567, 1 think, and 3,500 records.
That is, 5,500 hours. At present we are programing 32 different
languages, including 8 major Filipino dialects and 22 major languages
of the Orient."

Most of the Overseas Service was "canned," except for the
announcer who was "live." The work was done on a missionary
basis men on the spot recording their programs without charge to
B.Z.A.S., who broadcast without asking payment for time. My mind
switched to North India, to the Tibetan pastor who was supposed to
record tapes for Manila but was absorbed in the Nationalist Revolt ;
to Thailand, where the Manoram Christian Hospital and the Presby-
terian Hospital at Chiengmai used the Manila program as the prin-
cipal evangelistic service in the wards,

"The only way not to have the bulk 'canned/ " Golding continued,
"would be a team of nationals here. That would be limiting, and be-
sides, we feel the people who make the broadcasts need to be actually
involved in work in their countries. On the other hand, we had a
young Indonesian here for a year and three months, and he created
great interest back in his own country. Had 1,500 letters last Christ-
inas and New Year when he offered a Gospel Calendar. We're still
getting letters for him, and that presents a translation prob-
lem. We hope .to get a Cambodian, and later a Russian, and we had
a Jap for a bit. We aim, and desire, to have nationals from many
countries: to supplement not to supplant the tapes."

I had been at D.ZAS. for nearly three hours. Mr. Reynolds re-
appeared and took me over to a workshop, the home of yet another
original enterprise: the Portable Missionary, or PM. D.Z.A.S. buys

Manila Calling

portable wirelesses and lends them to Christians all over the Philip-
pines on the promise of use as "portable missionaries." A large round
notice is sent to display outside home or shop: "D.Z.A.S. P.M. Club
Everybody welcome I " In remote areas especially hundreds of people
not owning a wireless could gather round a P.M. and listen in to
Christian broadcasts. In 1948 a clumsy wooden receiver was used
I saw a few of them. "Retired missionaries/' the Filipino technician
remarked. A compact Dutch transistor model it now is. "Dutch are
better for this size than United States models. Japanese would be
cheaper, but our problem is dependability." Each set costs U.S.
$35, and remains the property of D.Z.A.S., being returned for repairs.
About a thousand were out, the number growing yearly but
limited by funds with which to buy them. The scheme was neces-
sarily confined to the Philippines, but could be adopted elsewhere
if supporters in other Asian countries set up the necessary organi-
zation.

In the compound we examined the antennae, and I stretched my
neck at a tower which had been picked up, if that is a phrase for
308 feet of metal frame, for a song from a local cable company
which did not know what to do with it. The interior of the transmit-
ting shed looked Martian.

Back at the office I listened to stories of the influence of D.Z.A.S.
I asked about Tibet. "Yes," said Reynolds, "we've heard of many
traders coming out of Tibet and hunting up a missionary. They have
heard the Gospel from us and want to know more. Then there was
the missionary in North Thailand who went where no missionary
had been before and was asked by a man if he had a Bible. Of course
he wanted to know why, and the man said, Radio Manila says
everyone should have a Bible. I've never seen one.' But we can't
tell you very much about influence overseas. The evidence doesn't
normally come back here. We can tell you a lot about the Philip-
pines." He rang for his Filipino public-relations officer, Max Atienza.

Atienza had plenty to tell. Of a barrio nearby where people lis-
tened, and wrote to say so. Atienza went over, preached, and now
there was a small Protestant church. Of an Aglipayan priest who
said : "My people now study the Bible that is new. They sing now,
all of them. Because we listen in."

"We have evidence," said Atienza, "of Roman priests telling

280 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

their people that they must not listen. Many go on just the same.
And we know that priests listen to our broadcasts." The strongest
evidence of general interest was the Bible School of the Air. 330,000
have enrolled, "That works out at one in every eight people of the
Philippines."

After lunch Reynolds drove me ten miles farther into the country
to see the new 5o,ooo-watt transmitter bought, with the ioo,ooo-watt
at Okinawa, from the United States Government for a mere $30,500.
The story of how a new member of the staff, in San Francisco Bay
for the voyage to Manila, noticed a huge Voice of America instal-
lation for sale, how the money was raised and the heavy equipment
moved to the Far East, was nothing short of miraculous, and a ster-
ling* endorsement of the faith of those behind the enterprise.

I looked at the antennae in the paddy fields and walked about
the transmitting building. These smart gray cubicles of machinery,
so silent to the bystander, were almost ceaselessly sending sound
to the far corners of Asia, an unfathomable Christian influence.

f

Farthest East

THIRTY-SIX

Pearl of the Orient

A home of your own. In Hong Kong after nearly a year of
constant travel we had the luxury of a flat. Two flats, rather, a
week at each while the family was on holiday, in the shadow of
the Nine Dragons, the hills from which Kowloon takes its name,
and both on the far side of Boundary Street, a reminder that in less
than forty years, except for four square miles of the Peninsula and
Hong Kong Island itself, the whole reverts to China. The flats were
under the approach to the International Airport, and all day, but
mercifully not at night, a succession of Britannias, Electras, and
Skymasters flew out and came in from the corners of Asia and the
world. The Comets generally used the harbor approach to the man-
made peninsula of the new runway, a mountain removed and cast
into the sea.

That the first flat should be lent by David Adeney who spends
his time traveling the universities of the East as an officer of the
International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, and the second
by Bryce Gray, a Londoner, of the staff of the Christian Witness
Press, was symbolic of Hong Kong as a center, like Singapore, of
missionary activity for all the Far East. Our actual host, originator
of this kindly scheme for our comfort, was the head of the Chris-
tian Witness Press, Ron Roberts, an Australian. The posters, leaf-
lets, books, and the Lighthouse magazine of the press I had met
constantly in different languages in jungle, mountain, and city. Ron
Roberts gave me a complimentary copy of the latest production, a
tiiirty-five-page picture comic in the lurid style beloved of Chinese
283

284 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

children, as violent as the immoral rubbish they hire from street
stalls and pore over for hours, but with a Christian story and mes-
sage.

A home of your own. By that very fact our attention was focused
on the appalling problem of Hong Kong refugees.

The superb setting of Victoria Harbour, the loveliness of the Peak,
the outer islands and the New Territories, the magnificence of sky-
scrapers and huge office blocks, the ceaseless shuttle of the ferries
passing freighters, liners, and American warships may blind the
tourist to the shacks festooned on the hills, to the rooftop and bed-
space slums.

At the end of Oxford Road, where the second flat was, a track
led off to a piece of waste ground. Squeezed between vegetable
gardens and a hill stood hundreds of shacks housing at least a
thousand people, less cramped than in many squatter sites because
after a fire they were forbidden to rebuild until fire lanes had been
marked.

Near the other flat in College Road ran a narrow alley arched
with laundry and old clothes. We went to photograph a woman who
had squatted there with her family eight years since flight from
Kwangtung. Her entire home consisted of a shelter like those seen
in London beside holes in the road. Her view was a high brick
wall, her kitchen the public alleyway, its closeness such that Anne
had difficulty in focusing the woman, her two grandchildren, and
what passed for the door. Two coolies were moving sand from a
dump a few feet off, and every time they needed to pass Anne had
to step up, the alley and stand back in a recess.

Off Waterloo Road from bus or taxi I had often noticed a dump
of boxes and a knot of people on a covered pavement. I presumed
it a street hawkers' pitch. A woman missionary took us visiting.
"Eighty to one hundred people are living in this section of the
street/ 7 she remarked as we said goodbye to a woman making
cheap paper bags, and moved six inches to the next "home." "They
were cleared once but they've all cgme back again." There were
cooking pots on one side of the pavement, trunks, boxes, a stick
or two of furniture on the other. Traffic passed continually. Water
could be obtained from a stream across the main road or from

Pearl of the Orient 285

rain in the gutter, and latrines were on the other side of a big
crossroads with traffic lights.

Over by the lights, into a doorway, up dark and littered stairs
and out onto a small rooftop. Seventy to eighty cheerful Chinese, in-
cluding children, here had homes. Most were of carton paper, which
was surprisingly waterproof ; some were of wood, some looked like
rabbit hutches, others like dog kennels, and some were only shoulder
high. All water had to be brought up the steep stairs. "The old
ladies earn money by carrying for those out of work/ 3 I was told.
"Quite a few of these huts blew away last typhoon season."

Farther down the same street the missionary took us into an-
other doorway, up a short flight of dark stairs into a room, about
the size of a medium-length classroom, shared by twenty or thirty
families, each "flat" being roughly equivalent to half a ping-pong
table. We called on a woman who had fled from Shanghai and had
lived in this bedspace flat for eleven years. The raised floor was bed,
sitting space, everything, covered with a red reed mat. A little shelf
held four small cups. Clothes from a hook draped two Thermos
bottles. A clock and a photograph of her late husband in marine
uniform told of former prosperity, and above were washing lines.
The next flats were curtained off, and she was fortunate in a "ground
floor" with no other bedspace above, and having only herself and
her granddaughter; her son and grandson came home occasionally
and one of them slept underneath the bed. At the back the communal
kitchen for all thirty families was also washplace and latrine: the
lids on the wooden pails did not entirely shut off the stench.

These bedspace rooms were not as crowded as some ; when two
houses nearby burned down, five hundred Chinese were made
homeless. "Think of the fug when the door is shut at night," said
the missionary. I asked about sexual promiscuity. "They are very
good on the whole. There are prostitute streets, of course. And
there might be a prostitute or two here, but they are always
known." On the next floor an old man, flat-chested and gaunt in
his black pajamas, sat by the window, hands shaking in a per-
petual nervous dance ; opposite, a woman minded a baby for wages,
and in the murk by the door a man made matchsticks by the light
of a weak oil lamp, though it was midmorning. Going to the roof we
found a couple with a child apparently of nine months but in fact

286 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

of two years; his sores were nauseating. "Malnutrition," said our
guide, producing a tin of condensed milk. "The woman is subnormal.
The man sells soft lime on the streets." The wall of their home was
a filthy abutment of roof.

None of these slum dwellers looked morose or savage. They were
grateful to be out of Red China, at the price of existing in little
more than coffin space, while all around in the same room neighbors
ate, slept, quarreled, lay sick, and died.

Indignation must be directed to the right quarter. Hong Kong
is not to blame. The old slums of London could be laid at England's
door; the refugees of Germany were the result of making war.
Hong Kong's refugees are her responsibility only because she did not
refuse asylum to hundreds of thousands fleeing from Red China, until
forced to close the gates except on a quota system.

Indignation must relate to facts. Someone gave me a sentimental
booklet by a missionary contrasting in shocked tones handsome
offices and stacked shops with the squatters' poverty. The dazzling
shoppers' paradise is a key to the solution. Only through prosperity
can the colony afford to continue rehousing squatters. The booklet
insinuated, in the manner of Charles Kingsley's Two Years Ago,
that the tourist who bought a tailor-made suit at Hong Kong's low
prices was wicked to encourage sweated labor. It is only by suits
being cut, jade earrings fashioned, more Hong Kong goods exported
that wages can rise, as at last they have begun very slightly to rise.
Sweating is inevitable with a labor reserve of such magnitude and
a tradition of piecework. Nearly every person can earn a little;
few can earn enough.

I came to Hong Kong expecting to describe missions and voluntary
relief agencies as the principal actors in the solution of the refugee
problem. I had my casting wrong. I saw soon, and every day
strengthened the conviction, that the real hero of this drama is the
Hong Kong Government. It is a saga not of dedicated missionaries,
despite the value of their contribution, but of ordinary British -ex-
patriates and their Chinese colleagues. They are supported by
British and Chinese businessmen. "Our chaps are jolly good about
it on the whole," I was told; "so are some of the Chinese, some very
definitely so. A lot of their effort is a matter of 'face/ of course. And

Pearl of the Orient 287

there are the thoroughly selfish ones too." Government is not the
least complacent, and what it has already achieved is remarkable.

Chinese birth rate is proverbial ; the sea door from China cannot
be tight shut, and thus the population rises every month. "To keep
pace with the birth rate alone, we have got to build the equivalent
of a city the size of York every year." The Colony Hong Kong Is-
land, Kowloon, the New Territories covers 391 mountainous square
miles; not until I had sailed in under hills green above red cliffs
like South Devon, and driven or walked or viewed the Hong Kong
Cotswolds, Cheviots, South and North Downs, Snowdon, did I realize
how mountainous. Of the 391 square miles as little as 62 are usable ;
at present 50 square miles are in agriculture and 12 for housing, com-
merce and industry.

Into this must be packed a population larger than that of New
Zealand. Over 2j4 million are crammed between the mountains and
the sea. It is believed that about 4 million are uninvited guests or
their subsequent progeny. "Don't forget," said the bishop, "that
nearly every family has one or more relatives from other parts of
China living with it. They do not swell the official refugee figures."

"Not every squatter is a refugee," the Colonial Secretariat pointed
out; "many are pre-1949 inhabitants who have been elbowed out
by richer immigrants or fallen on hard times."

Government deputed the usual resettlement officer to show me
what had been done for refugees, a young man who was, I dis-
covered, a convinced and active Christian. He conducted me from
a squatter area to the first resettlement site where in the early
i95o j s, when it became clear that refugees were not returning to
China nor the United Nations taking responsibility, the government
built cottage lines as on a tea estate in Ceylon or Malaya. This at-
tempt to empty a reservoir with a teaspoon was abandoned after
the disastrous fire of Christmas night, 1953, a fire which made
80,000 squatters homeless and provoked the bold decision to keep
the cleared site vacant and build there permanent two-story blocks.
Seven months later another large fire made plain that even these
were not a sufficient use of land. Once more public funds were
dedicated to the uninvited guests. Hence the great six- or seven-story
massifs rising ugly but practicable, fifteen or twenty together on

288 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

more and more sites, some by superlative engineering feats, carved
out of hillsides or reclaimed.

From the top of one of the twenty-seven blocks at Shek Kip
Mei, site of the Christmas Day fire, the noise of Chinese was as
breakers on the seashore: 63,000 people live in the settlement, 2,500
or more in each H-shaped block. Superficially like workers' flats
on the slum-cleared area of a British city, they differ in that the
crossbar of each story contains communal water taps, lavatories, and
laundering space, and that each small room may be the home of
five adults, or of two adults and six children. "Mere concrete
boxes," sentimentalists say; the phrase suggests a bleak cubicle
far different from the gay confusion of Chinese decoration and furni-
ture. It is crowded. "They would crowd in more if we did not stop
them," said the resettlement officer. This is emergency housing at
a rent which can be afforded.

The rooftops of these blocks have an importance of their own.
The Communists, having created Hong Kong's problem, do all
they can to play on the poverty and overcrowding. Government
realized that social and spiritual needs must be met, if for no deeper
motive, and keeping some of the rooftops for recreational space it
gave the rest to churches, missions, or other voluntary agencies.
Rooftop primary schools, vocational classes, and clubs are scattered
freely in the resettlement areas: a ready-made field for religious
and social workers in which magnificent work is done.

There must be more missionaries per square mile in Hong Kong
than anywhere else on earth. The list of organizations in the resettle-
ment areas, in relief, in the slums and among the squatters, in
schools, hospitals, orphanages, and old folks' homes, is imposing.
Added to that are the normal missionary affairs of a great city with
a predominantly non-Christian population.

Relief money pours in, much from America, and is welcome
despite its importance being secondary, the real burden falling on
the Colonial Government. Charity and sentiment will not solve the
problem. "Why can't everybody get together and give enough to
finish it off?" said a woman in the ship going on to Japan. Money
is not enough.

Across Asia I often felt critical of governmental attitude to mis-
sionaries. In Hong Kong this was reversed.

Pearl of the Orient 289

I went to see the head of one of the relief organizations, impres-
sive to watch in action. I liked him, admired his crusading zeal,
and he happened to do me a personal kindness.

Emphasizing his belief that the relief of distress was an important
Christian ministry to be done professionally with technical com-
petence, not as a religious sideline, he described the clinical method
by which a man's need is discovered and relief arranged irrespective
of creed. He swung into a blistering attack on the Hong Kong Gov-
ernment. He complained of lack of coordination between government
and the voluntary agencies ; he was scathing in accusation of unim-
aginative policy. The multistory buildings were "horrible." Govern-
ment was creating ghastly slums for the future; the tuberculosis
rate, already high, must rise ; Europeans never would have stood for
such overcrowding, only the poor, patient Chinese, "How would
you like to live in a concrete cubicle with only one tap between
two hundred persons?" Government ought to have built satellite cot-
tage cities out in the New Territories he knew a nice flat valley
just waiting for one.

Anne and I had been invited to dinner the following evening by
Colonel John Clague, to whom we had a private introduction. Head
of a Hong Kong business house, Clague had first come to the
Colony as a soldier in the war, had escaped from a prison camp
and served with guerrillas in Kwangtung before rejoining British
forces. He was now a member of the Legislative Council and had
been on the Resettlement Committee from its start.

I told him of my interview of yesterday. He said: "We do not
like two hundred persons per tap or latrine any more than he
does. The multistory blocks are a temporary expedient. The first
job is to get the squatters off the streets." Government reckoned
that this would take another five years. Overcrowding could then
be eased. The blocks were designed "so that they could be con-
verted at a later date into orthodox self-contained flats." The
words come from a government publication I read afterward, won-
dering why the relief missionary had not read it. So much for future
slums.

Clague gave me an insight into the rackets and ramps, the pressure
on Chinese officials which endangered the scheme, rendering essen-
tial the building of accommodation that should not be attractive
enough to the wrong people. I was impressed with his approach to

2 po EARTH'S REMOTEST END

these problems and his interest not only in resettlement but in the
promotion of better housing. We discussed relief, and he commented,
"America's best way of helping the refugees is not to tax Hong
Kong exports ! "

The next morning I was flown round the Colony in an R.A.F.
Auster of the Hong Kong Defense Force. The flight had been post-
poned two days because of heavy rains. We crossed the Dragon's
Back, Stanley Peninsula, and the south coast of the island to
Aberdeen, around mountainous Lan Tao, by Castle Peak Harbour
into the New Territories and back across Kowloon by Boundary
Street. Two facts were irrefutable: the extraordinary difficulty of
finding flat or accessible land for new housing or for new industries,
for no Chinese will move from the city to a rural resettlement if
no means of livelihood is at hand; and the extent of reclamation
in progress.

The third day I went to the principal planning officer of the gov-
ernment. The relief missionary's case, already tattered, was left
in shreds. Instead of an unimaginative government content to
cram its squatters into concrete slums, I saw plans for the next
ten years. "Money, on the whole, is not the limiting factor," said
the officer. "In other words, if we decide on a thing we can gen-
erally get ahead with it right away. The limiting factor is land."
He had no need to say more after that flight. "The answer is Rec-
lamation." He marked on my map places to be reclaimed by 1965,
and those designated for reclamation by 1970. Great new reservoirs
were to be built by enclosing and draining arms of the sea. Gover-
ment aimed to resettle at the rate of 140,000 a year. By 1965,
3,000 acres would be reclaimed, and built over at the density of a
mere 700 persons per acre instead of the 2,000 in the present re-
settlement. The type of dwelling had not been decided ; it might be
a cottage type as in the original experiment.

The idealistic missionary might have justification in his plea
for a satellite city in the "nice flat valley" in the New Territories.
"That valley," said the planning officer, "is one of the most histor-
ical places in the Colony. They used to say the best rice in all China
grew there. The Emperor always had his rice from that valley
brought overland the whole way to Peking." Was it right to dispos-
sess hereditary farmers by a wave of the hand to house uninvited

Approach to Japan 291

refugees? The plan was to reclaim the inlet below the valley and
build there, in the belief that the farmers would then sell out as
a profitable investment.

No government is perfect. Notwithstanding defects of personal-
ity at any level, departmental rivalries or mixed motives, Hong
Kong proves that a government in the East may still be actuated by
Christian principles.

THIRTY-SEVEN *0* Approach to Japan

No road to China. Negotiations for a visit to Red China had broken
down before we left England. As for Formosa, I was warned that an
Englishman might be refused permits for travel away from main
centers, nor could I expect to meet national leaders.

And so, a year and a day after leaving Liverpool we approached
Japan, followed Commodore Perry's course into Tokyo Bay, passed
a fishing fleet of strange striped sails such as he saw, and steamed
under factory chimneys belching orange smoke to dock at Yokohama,

Owing to causes beyond my control we arrived in Japan without
knowing our itinerary. One clear .intention I had: to avoid the
tourist areas, the show-piece "cherry blossom" Japan not that
it was cherry-blossom time until I had encountered the ordinary
workaday life of the Japanese. If ever there was a country that
hides its true face from the casual globe-trotter blinkered in a
package tour, it is Japan.

I locked the last suitcase and came out of our cabin. Hurrying
toward me was a man I had known at Cambridge, followed by an-
other whom I took to be Arthur Kennedy, who was to look after
us in Tokyo. "Michael ! " I said, as we shook hands, "I had no idea
you were in Tokyo."

"I arrived this morning to take you back up north." Mike
worked at Hakodate on the near tip of Hokkaido, the northern
island which is under snow three months of the year: as hum-
drum a place as could be wished.

We took a taxi that evening through built-up streets stretching

292 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

the sixteen miles from Yokohama to Tokyo, the most heavily popu-
lated city in the world, which must also be the worst lighted, for
brilliant displays of neon lights outclassing Piccadilly Circus are no
substitute for street lamps. The taxi, mindful of the reputation of
Tokyo taxis, quickly reduced us to nervous debility. I clung to
Luther's dictum, "I am immortal until my work is done."

The Kennedys lived in an outlying district, Baling or Croydon,
as it were. Like every Japanese house the exterior was drab, and
like most it was built of timber. The interior was not fully Japanese,
but as I removed my shoes in the porch and put on slippers pro-
vided by my host I had that sense of entering a different and older
culture under the thin veneer of the West.

Most of our time in Japan was spent in houses of Japanese or
semi- Japanese interiors, similar without regard to class, wealth, or
district, of which the basis is tatami, yellow mats made of the fine
long stems of a weed on a foundation of rice straw and, beneath that
by law, a layer of D.D.T. powder sprinkled twice a year. Sliding
doors of decorated paper partition off other rooms or the cupboards,
in one of which are kept the thick quilts to be laid on the floor at
night as mattresses. In completely Japanese homes everything is
done on the floor, on cushions at low tables or desks. Because slip-
pers must be worn in the passages, no shoes on the tatami, wooden
clogs in the bathroom and straw sandals in the lavatory, life in a
Japanese house is pernickety. I always seemed to be changing foot-
gear.

Two afternoons later we left for the center of Tokyo in one of the
endless procession of electric trains which speed down endless sub-
urban tracks through innumerable stations 300 trains an hour at
certain junctions. We strap hanged. And the enigma of Japan was
forced upon me. The politeness of railway officials could not be
exceeded; the orderliness of the rush-hour crowd on the platform
was admirable. Came a train, and the assault, the unsmiling, relent-
less shove, left me gasping.

The train ran through the unbroken belt of villages that is
Greater Tokyo, mile upon mile of dingy one-story wooden dwellings,
all much the same, relieved here and there by concrete structures at
the centers, until we reached the area of the great department
stores, the office blocks, a brief sight of the Imperial Palace grounds,
and the tallest tower on earth Tokyo Television.

Approach to Japan 293

We left Tokyo in a saloon carriage of spotlessly clean upholstered
seats in pairs, all facing one way for extra privacy but able to be
swiveled round if four wished to travel in company. Efficiency was
everywhere : circulating fans, a red light to show when the toilet was
occupied, fresh iced water available, polite detailed announcements
over the P.A. before reaching a stop, waitresses deftly dispensing
fruit juice tins, cleaners swiftly removing litter with long tongs. For
all this, Japanese trains too much reminded me of English in war-
time. They are crowded ; they are so smutty the cleanliness fails to
survive ten miles; they smell of bad coal. Unlike English trains
in wartime they ran dead to time. The most important junction will
not detain a Japanese express more than two minutes, and when they
are scheduled to arrive at noo hours they arrive at noo hours, not
1059 or II o i -

Men sat with transistor wirelesses attached to their ears by plugs.
Others curled up : in any Japanese railway carriage at least half will
be asleep, nor will a passenger searching for a seat in a crowded train
remove trespassing legs. Little boxes of cold rice, seaweed, dried
squid, and other delights were opened and disposed of with short
chopsticks. A woman undressed her upper half completely and put
on a kimono. Men prepared for sleep by removing most of their
clothing.

In these couchettes we slept well, and awoke to a countryside
typical of Northern Honshu in August : a landscape garden of hum-
mocky pine-clad hills, green rice fields flecked with silver paper to
scare birds, thatched wooden houses which were mostly drab but
occasionally of a Worcestershire black and white, a dirt road, trucks
churning dust, cart horses in the fields. And always grid lines or
electricity wires. When the train entered the famous apple country
near Aomori, I marveled at the patience behind the protective paper
wrapped round every apple on every tree.

Aomori, a port bombed flat in the war, since rebuilt, was like any
other small port in Japan, dingy despite a fine setting of hills and
bay. The ferry steamed out under an umbrella of black smoke to
the strains of Auld Lang Syne from the P.A., in a shower of colored
streamers from passengers' friends. As clean and efficient as a Swiss
lake steamer the ship replaced one lost with all hands in a typhoon
two years before ; they had such trouble identifying the bodies that
we were ordered to write out name and address before going on board.

294 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

The population pressure again forced itself on my consciousness.
Here was a cross section of Japan. Western-dressed young women
carrying babies strapped to their backs under "happy coats," some
of the older in kimonos which must be duller colored the more aged
the wearer; schoolboys in shirtsleeves or the usual black cap and
uniform resembling that of a British naval officer in late Victorian
days ; schoolgirls in sailor suits complete with the three white lines
for Nelson's victories. The schoolboys practice their English,
solemnly announcing "I am a boy/ 7 the first line of the primer ; the
schoolgirls giggle and stare. Their elders whisk camera to eye, in-
tent on the oddity of skin, eyes and hair, for few Japanese may go
overseas. Several members of the United States Security Forces were
on board, but the novelty of a foreigner appears never to wane.

The crossing to Hokkaido took four hours. I had always supposed
Mike to work in a remote, even desolate corner. As we neared
Hakodate a helicopter hovered and flew away. When the ferry turned
the headland on which a fort used to stand, now a television tower,
I might have been approaching Barrow-in-Furness or Sunderland:
a pall of smoke ; cranes, railway yards, a large ship on the stocks, tall
chimneys, a cable car for tourists up the hill, and colored advertise-
ment balloons floating over a department store,

We traveled nearly three thousand miles in Japan, and never
ceased to wonder.

I suspect that Japanese efficiencies do not appear so impressive to
an American, but I could wish for the adoption of several in England.
Public telephoning is easy. Nearly every shop has a red hand set on
the counter, with a coin slot. Restaurant windows display priced
models of the dishes; occasional attempts on this line in England
are repulsive. In Japan they are temptingly realistic. A railway-sta-
tion name board gives the next and last stop (in characters, phonetic
script and English) . A provincial department store has exciting elec-
tric toys an elephant blowing bubbles was my favorite and gad-
gets. The Sony transistor radio is world famous. Fire alarms, fires
precautions, the fire service are the best of any nation, and need to be.

The Japanese have a passion for information; maps, plans, the
temperature, endless announcements; for photography, mostly of
themselves draped round ancient monuments; for sport; whenever

Approach to Japan sg$

I saw one of the nine television channels a baseball match was on,
except during the autumn tournament of the wrestling called sumo.
They have a passion for classical music and for education, as befits
a nation highly cultured when England was emerging from the Dark
Ages: literacy is nearly 100 per cent, and more than 228 universities
are recognized. The competition for a place is as fierce as the struggle
a graduate has in finding a post.

Japanese roads are bad, except for a few major routes. Japanese
sewage is worse. The ordinary house has no flush toilet and no drain,
merely a tub under a hole, and in the streets you may see municipal
night-soil removers using long hooks to pull out and lift the tubs,
emptying the brown stinking stream into a cart or lorry. It is dis-
posed of for agriculture, and the excuse that sewers might crack
in one of the frequent earth tremors strikes me as lame. The hole
and the tub are tucked in a corner behind wooden doors, but unless
a Westerner has installed flush and a cesspit, the house is never
quite free. Another small point of breakdown : I lost my glasses and
was astonished to discover that this highly industrialized country of
myopics with an alarming road-accident rate has no triplex un-
breakable glass, only plastic which, they admit, scratches easily.

I reached Japan with a total misconception of the position and
strength of Japanese Christianity. A misconception widely shared,
I believe, in Britain.

Accounts in the immediate postwar years of vast evangelistic meet-
ings, of huge demand for Bibles, of missionaries flocking in; the
Japanese bishops at Lambeth, the Archbishop of Canterbury's visit
and the great welcome accorded him ; the centenary celebrations ; all
this made me expect a flourishing settled church, predominantly
Japanese in leadership and thrust, a minority but powerful, steadily
reducing the non-Christian percentage of the population.

I found a Church microscopic.

Out of a population numbering 91 million, Christians of all kinds
total somewhat over 600,000, or between half and three-quarters of
one per cent; in India Christians form 2.2 per cent of the population.
Japanese Protestants are two-thirds of the total, a lead which Roman.
Catholics are believed to have shortened in recent years. The indirect
influence of Christianity must always be considerable. And an Ori-

2 p6 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

ental nation which imbibed and adapted Westernization with the
speed and thoroughness of Japan inevitably swallowed a large slice
of the Christian heritage of the West. The Japanese frankly ascribe
to Christian initiative their progress in the emancipation and educa-
tion of women, although the recent outlawing of prostitution owed
more to women members of the Diet than to direct Christian ad-
vocacy. Japan's greatest leaders of social reform, such as Kagawa,
have been Christian. This tradition is maintained. "Everyone in the
flooded district," reported the Japan Times after the Great Typhoon,
"lavished praise and gratitude on the Christians who rushed to their
aid when they needed it most."

Direct influence is negligible.

When Christianity was first brought in the sixteenth century by
the redoubtable Francis Xavier, swift progress, entangled with the
politics of warring feudal lords and complicated by the custom that
a man must adhere to his lord's religion, was followed by brutal re-
pression on the decision of the Shogun, hereditary ruler of Japan in
the name of Emperors kept powerless in seclusion, that the Jesuits
were precursors of Portuguese or Spanish conquest. Dutch mer-
chants played no creditable part in the intrigue, but had Dutch or
English Protestants of the early seventeenth century sent mission-
aries they might have been admitted. None came. Japan closed its
door tight against the West, except for the trickle of trade permitted
the Dutch under ignominious terms. Christianity was outlawed and
Christians were ruthlessly exterminated.

The centenary celebrations of Protestantism's arrival "in 1859 con-
tinued during our visit. The first few missionaries, English and Amer-
ican, had a forbidding task. Christianity remained proscribed "until
1872, four years after the Meiji Restoration had broken the
Shogunate and set Japan on her Western road. A later suggestion
that as a political expediency she be made Christian in the manner
of Constantine's Edict mercifully came to nought. The i88o's saw
such remarkable progress that to read contemporary mission litera-
ture is to sense an expectation that Christianity might soon become
dominant. The spirit of Japan frustrated this hope.

After some fifty years of freedom the churches were maturing,
-despite a tendency toward fragmentation and an inevitable inocula-
tion of the loose theological thinking of the 1920'$ and 1930*8, when

Approach to Japan 297

they ran into the appalling tensions of the militarist tyranny and the
Pacific war. The government imposed on Protestantism the Nihon
Kirisuto Kyodan, a United Church. Those who resisted, including
two-thirds of the Anglican-Episcopals (Nippon Seikokai), several
smaller groups, and individuals of the major collaborating churches,
were persecuted and imprisoned. Some died, in prison or after re-
lease. A Japanese vicar in Tokyo offered me a novel view of the
origin of the Kyodan. "The militarists/' he said, "intended taking
large numbers of Christians to Manchuria and there executing them.
Moderates in our ministry of education thought out this scheme of
merging Protestants into one group, Catholics being the other ; they
could then assure the militarists that Christians were under control
and mass execution unnecessary."

"A very Japanese way of meeting the problem," commented the
Englishman with me.

As for persecution, Bishop Michael Yashiro of Kobe, Presiding
Bishop, one of those who refused to join the Kyodan, firmly put me
in my place. The Bishop of Kobe is, on a Japanese scale, of John-
sonian proportions, a mountain of a man. Illustrating his point with
a doodle, he said : "Missionary societies are too fond of talking about
'the period of persecution,' 'the period of opportunity. 3 That is the
wrong way to look at it. The truth is that a Christian can turn per-
secution into fun. Opportunity is there all the time,"

Some denominations regarded the Kyodan as providential, and re-
mained in it when freedom returned. Christians as a whole, within
and without the present Kyodan, whether they collaborated or not,
look back on the militarist period as one of shameful compromise.
"Yet it was very difficult for any of us to do anything," said a pastor
whose own record is unblemished. "The Church was small and in-
significant." In Hitler's Germany the Confessing Church could hope
to awake an echo in the German conscience. The Japanese had no
Christian conscience.

"Defeat was the Providence of God." I heard this again and again
from Japanese Christians. Shinto was toppled from its exclusive
position as a state religion binding on the adherents of all others.
Complete freedom of thought, worship, and propagation was intro-
duced by the Allied Occupation and has remained; no restriction of

208 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

any kind is placed on national Christians or on the entry of foreign
missionaries. More than India, far more than Burma or Indonesia,
Japan is a nation true to the United Nation's conception of freedom
of religion.

"MacArthur was God's gift for that time/' said an English mis-
sionary with service before and after the war, "The Japanese greatly
loved him, aloof as he was. I do not think," he added, "that the
British with their reserve could ever have succeeded as did the Amer-
icans with their friendliness." For all its mistakes, the predominantly
American Occupation must rank as the most enlightened and success-
fill in history.

General MacArthur appealed for missionaries. They flocked in,
Scandinavian, Australian, British; very many American and Ca-
nadian. Former missionaries returned. Excellent men and women
joined them, prepared to give unstintingly in the hour of Japan's
need. Others were arrogant : "We'll show these old-timers how to do
it." Most of the new were handicapped by knowing no Japanese, and
a few, to this day, consider a grasp of the language unnecessary,
with painful results.

The Japanese in their poverty and distress, and in the tremendous
fresh wind of freedom, showed inquisitiveness. Motives were mixed,
"They would invite us to church and have coffee and cakes," re-
called a young schoolmaster, now a Christian. "Lots of us went just
for the coffee and cakes. My friends would say to me : 'Let's go to
church. We can get coffee.' "

"Many came to our center," said a missionary of long experience
who returned to work among students in Tokyo, "because we had
light and paper, somewhere they could read and work. Some were
genuine seekers." The demand for Bibles undoubtedly was inflated
because they made good cigarette paper.

Japanese preachers and foreign evangelists using interpreters, at-
tracted enormous crowds. Anchorless, feeling national guilt or na-
tional failure: "The Japanese gods have failed. The American God
was victorious. Let us try the American God" ; they swept forward
when the preacher asked for decisions.

What went wrong? There has been growth: official government
figures give an increase in Christian membership of over 158,000 be-

Approach to Japan

tween 1952 and 1955. Allowing for normal birth rate in Christian
families, the growth is infinitesimal in proportion to population, and
belies the apparent promise of those crowds sweeping forward.

"It was all in their front/' said a ticket collector, a postwar Chris-
tian, now deacon of a church in northern Honshu and a delightfully
spiritual man. It was, he said, a superficial desire for conformity
"rather than heart interest.' 7 Genuine converts became lasting Chris-
tians, but the mass of "the Deciders" are no more seen.

"The Church took the opportunity as far as it could," said an
elderly pastor in Kobe whose opinion I respect. "It gave what it
could but it had not much to give. There was no real linking of the
Deciders, no building up." That the Japanese Church was not pre-
pared to absorb people is the considered opinion of many. One further
disadvantage: the Bible was largely unintelligible to the younger
generation. The new translation of 1955 has not received unqualified
approval but is a great advance on its predecessor.

Some blame for the general situation must fall on the American
approach. I have no wish to seem impertinent, and I respect deeply
those who endure a spiritual climate so uncongenial, but in a country
where the trappings of life differ little between peasant and prince, it
was easy in the days of the defeat for a missionary unconsciously to
cause affront by an apparently too high standard of living. "There
were some splendid missionaries," said a man who then lived in
Kyushu, the southernmost island, "but some of the others lived in
such luxury, and we had nothing. We saw them in large cars, com-
fortably off. I began to feel, 'You go back to your own country.' I
felt a resentment against those preaching the Gospel. I had the im-
pression you have to be rich to be a Christian."

Apart from those of obscure semi-Christian beliefs such as Mor-
mons, the good fight of the majority has been impeded by two types
of missionary. One is the shallow thinker, secure in an ostrich hole of
cliches, often with little or no knowledge of the Japanese. This is
the kind who forms his own little church, content with a prolifera-
tion of sects. There are 2,400 foreign missionaries in Japan and 112
societies; of these, more than one-half have less than 10 members
and 97 have less than 30 members. It is true that among those listed
as very small will be great societies who have in Japan a few rep-
resentatives working with mainly indigenized churches ; and there is

3 oo EARTH'S REMOTEST END

no doubt of the admirable contribution of certain reputable and old
established interdenominational missions. Nor is God necessarily
with the big battalions. But the number of fractional churches in
Japan is disturbing.

The second damaging type is the profound theologian of one
"school" or another, who confuses the Japanese with theological
systems not plainly drawn from the whole heritage of Christian
truth, or who leaves his hearers with a tattered Bible. Japan has been
an echo board for transatlantic theological quarrels, to its confusion.
The Nippon Seikokai is less affected. I was asking the Presiding
Bishop whether in the Seikokai, the Incarnation, the Atonement, or
the Resurrection was most stressed. "But we're Church of England ! "
he cried. "We don't belong to one or other school. We have no Barth
or Brunner. It is all there in Anglicanism."

The Korean War stressed another trend which has had adverse
effect : the implied identification of Christianity with the American
way of life. The Japanese were already inclined toward this error,
and they have not been adequately disabused. The mid-nineteenth
century British missionary never was free of an unspoken convic-
tion that Christianity was synonymous with the Empire, and his
attitude to finance, education, and leadership in native churches was
benevolently imperialist. In the mid-twentieth century Christian im-
perialism flies another flag. If missionaries only were concerned, the
harm could have been slight. They returned in the wake of a Chris-
tion Occupation, Church and administration appeared interwoven.

A foreigner resident in Tokyo before, during, and after the war,
whose church affiliation, Protestant or Roman Catholic, I never dis-
covered, pointed to the Achilles heel of the Allied undertaking : "We
said their old gods were bad but we have not given better. The result
is, we have left the Japanese with nothing but extreme egoism-
nothing but shove. It was impossible to do what we set out to do
without the Christian foundation. We were attempting to create
what was essentially a Christian society without giving the Christian
basis, because we had ourselves drifted away from it"

Enigma 301

THIRTY-EIGHT & Enigma

"Well, what is your verdict? What do you think of us?" asked
lemasa Tokugawa, former Prince, grandson of the last of the Sho-
guns. I dissembled. I was touched that a man of such venerable emi-
nence, a Minister to Canada and Ambassador to Turkey, should
trouble to call on me, and with exquisite courtesy and charm, typi-
cally Japanese, should lay himself out on my behalf. I dissembled.

If every missionary had been perfect and every church, sect, group
paragons of Christian wisdom and ministry, the additional gains of
the past fifteen years would have been trifling. The seat of the trouble
lies elsewhere.

The Japanese way their age-old traditions, structure of society,
customs and outlook is antipathetic to the way of Christ.

"The longer I live in Japan, the less I feel I know them." This
remark of an English missionary sums up the enigma of Japan. At
first the contrasts astonish. The Japanese are polite and they are
pushing, friendly and uncivil, artistic and unfeeling, gentle, es-
pecially with children, and harsh. And there is the behavior in war.

When astonishment is replaced by discernment, the contrasts be-
gin to fall into pattern. Even a visitor may peep into the Japanese
mind, for this most logical race is the prisoner of so complete a
structure that its members behave true to pattern.

The bows, return bows, and return-return bows, pleasing to watch,
are part of an elaborate individual saving of face interwoven with
mutual obligations. Whenever a relationship, whether of hospitality
or of service, exists, the Japanese are exceedingly polite and efficient.
To see the airline office girl bowing as the passengers enter the bus,
to enjoy the blend of friendliness and helpfulness of the staff of In-
ternational House, or the service of a maid at a Ryokan, the Jap-
anese-style hotel, to have the privilege of being received in a home,
all this made me glad to be in Japan. Courtesy may take odd forms.
Waiting for a train, Anne and I were being rude about the Japanese
bath. A young lady shared the seat. "I had better stop," said Anne,
"she may know English."

3 02 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

"No, no," said the girl with a charming smile. "It is all right. I
do not understand English."

When they think themselves free of obligations, when "face" is of
no import, politeness vanishes. I lost count of the times I was
elbowed aside in booking-office queues or at exit barriers, or bruised
by the angular backloads of old women boarding buses.

The Japanese is spotlessly clean in person and generally in Ms
home, and every evening the householder throws water over the
street outside. Face would be lost by dirt or by failure to maintain
community obligations. Away from home the Japanese are litterbugs.
A railway carriage quickly becomes a slum. Climbing Mount Fuji is
like walking up a municipal ash heap because on the endless vol-
canic ash is the most complete collection of thrown-away empty
tins I have seen.

The individual counts for nothing. There is no sense of person-
ality, only relationship. A man has no importance for himself, only
for his place in the family or community. And thus there is no com-
passion. A kind deed will be rooted in obligation or in displaying
superiority. Homes are bleak, except for the small child who is
idolized; indeed the Japanese have no word for "home," only for
"house," and the man seeking color in life goes out of his house.
Gambling arcades are frequent and full. To the numerous hot springs
businessmen take not wives but mistresses. The train through the
mountains had stopped at a hot spring where a man took the one
vacant seat, and his middle-aged woman in brown kimono strap-
hanged. "How do you know?" I said when my companion mur-
mured "mistress."

"The way they are being so chatty. If it was the wife there would
be less chat." I looked at her face, and had little doubt. The Jap-
anese have no word for sin, only words for vice and crime. A
preacher who, dilating on St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, tells his
audience, "You have all sinned," may seem to be offensively imply-
ing that they are all convicted criminals who have done time.

"The great national sin of this country," said Bishop Yashiro, "is
pride."

"The great national failings," said an Englishwoman who first
came to Japan in 1916, "are pride and jealousy. Pride rather than
arrogance." They are insular, unbelievably insular. A student asked

Enigma 303

a friend of mine, in all seriousness, whether London buses carry
signboards in Japanese as well as English.

The great changes since 1945 have opened a gulf between the old
and the young, who have broken with many traditions. The dif-
ferences are raucous but superficial. And any conscious transference
of loyalty has been to communism. Saiji Hasegawa, a leading Jap-
anese publisher, said that the dominant factor among the young is
communism: "They look to Marx, Russia and China, not to the
United States. Tibet made no difference. Japan's prosperity is due
to United States trade, but this makes no difference either."

It is common knowledge that the teachers in Japan are largely
left wing. In this are the seeds of disaster. Japan's nationalist mili-
tarism has gone. Her postwar desire to be the Switzerland of the
East was genuine, though much harping on the atomic bombs has
dulled the sense of guilt, and the older generation is now firmly
aligned to the West. The young are not. As I was told, "The Com-
munists may be small, but they are noisy and well organized, have a
great purpose and know how to fight."

An equally sharp division appears to lie between city and country.
I was more at home among the country people with their apple
cheeks, long blouses, aprons and wooden clogs or cloven-hoof boots.
The women especially would smile. With Mike in Hokkaido we en*
tered a third-class carriage full of men and women returning from
carrying goods to a distant market, a long journey done daily. A
large friendly woman, a cake seller, recognized Mike because she
had once played with his small son in the same train. She gossiped
like any English villager. I was wedged next to an equally bulky
woman asleep under a newspaper. The cake seller tapped Mike's
arm. "You listen to this. That lady in the corner there is a seller of
eggs and she weighs seventy kilos." She made an expressive gesture.,
"Very big in the bosom too ! "

These divisions are more apparent than real. The same instincts
move country and town. As for the gulf between old and young,
it is as hard to get a Japanese self -assessment as to ask a cockney to
define sportsmanship ; foreigners who know Japan best believe that
the fundamentals are unaltered. "There have been great changes in
Britain since the war," said a professional man recently returned to

304 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

Japan after many years' absence, "but the British character has not
really changed. And the same here."

"We are not a religious people." To wander round Nikko, one of
the show places and to me more beautiful than the older and larger
temples and shrines of Kyoto, is to gain some awareness of the odd
mingling of faiths and 'philosophies. Confucianism, altered to the
Japanese taste, for conduct of life; Buddhism for burial and life
after death, a Buddhism introduced from China, absorbed and
adapted. The Japanese visits the Buddhist temple and pays his re-
spects to the idol. He passes through the torn, a distinctive square
open gateway, to the Shinto shrine, tugs the rope to pull the bell,
claps his hands, throws money in the box, and departs.

Shinto, the religion which is proclaimed as indigenous to Japan,
is the ancient animism of numberless gods and devils, blended with
the exaltation of great forebears and of the spirit of Japan. No longer
a state religion, its exponents still consider that, as the Nikko guide-
book claims, Shinto "stands above all religions so any Japanese
should believe in it even if they are Buddhists or Christians." In
the Buddhist temple are the ancestor tablets. At a quiet and lovely
temple in Hirosaki, the religious and cultural center of Aomori Pre-
fecture, a black-robed priest opened one of a row of red-lacquered
family shrines, identical with the shrine in the home. Inside stood
the tablet inscribed with gold leaf, and a photograph of the dead, a
young soldier killed in the war, waiting for the family to worship
him and report to him.

At the Meiji Shrine homage is paid to the spirit of the great Em-
peror who opened Japan to the West, and at the war shrines to the
dead, by death made divine. The Sun goddess, founder of Japan, is
worshiped at the greatest Shinto shrine of all, at Ise. Shinto is
stronger than it was immediately after the war when the gods had
failed. The statistics of "worshipers" are inflated by the hundreds of
thousands of Japanese tourists and schoolchildren on excursion. At
Nikko I counted forty motor coaches in the car park on a Sunday
afternoon. The line between devotion and diversion is drawn thin.

Custom rather than religion, sentiment rather than belief: the
Japanese spirit is irreligious because it is essentially pragmatic, not
speculative.

Enigma 305

In Tokyo I was invited to the house of the Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court, Kotaro Tanaka. The Chief Justice, a former Minis-
ter of Education, and professor at Tokyo University, who was an
opponent of the militarists, is a Roman Catholic and has the face of
a Japanese St. Francis. In a long discussion he emphasized that "in
Japan behavior counts more than belief this militates against ac-
ceptance of Christianity." He spoke of the conflict of Christianity
with the Japanese tradition, and above all of their lack of absolute
values. From his experience in education and law he described how
his non-Christian countrymen do not consider whether an action is
morally right or wrong, good or evil, but whether the results will be
favorable or adverse.

The Chief Justice has stated, "I dare say that in no other country
of the world have foreign missionaries been confronted with greater
difficulties in propagating their faiths than in Japan." He was prin-
cipally referring to the period between 1859 and 1945. His words re-
main pertinent.

The Japanese rejects Christianity as foreign because it was not
born in Japan. "Why must we accept Jewish Scriptures and believe
that someone born a Jew was the only Son of God?" He rejects be-
cause Christianity will not conform, will not trim its doctrines to suit
traditional Japanese outlook. Defeat has not cured the assumption
that Japan is a nation more exalted than any. Christianity stands
for an internationalism alien to the Japanese mind ; it preaches that
individuals matter, that love and obligation extend limitlessly. The
Japanese is prepared to accept Christ as another god in the pantheon,
but will not tolerate the First Commandment.

I felt no affinity with the Japanese, no bond of sympathy. They
threw up a barrier I had sensed with no other race in Asia. Op-
pression of spirit was strong. The weight of heathendom which had
not burdened me as it burdens better men, in lands where the sym-
bols of heathendom are far more evident, here seemed overwhelm-
ing, and my admiration for those in Christian work in Japan in-
creased daily. I was not surprised to learn of the high incidence of
nervous disorders among missionaries, caused not only by the extreme
difficulty of language and written characters. I wished to escape. I
found myself beginning to dislike the Japanese.

The very deserved rebuke came from a man, not a missionary, of

3 o6 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

thirty years' residence who had asked us to lunch. Analyzing the Jap-
anese character during the meat course, during the pudding he had
been describing hours of wartime interrogation from the Kempei.
"Remember, as I remembered then," he said, "that these people had
no Greece, no Rome, no Christ, no Renaissance, no Reformation."
He thumped the table. "There is only one thing to do with the Japa-
nese, and that is to love them."

"There have been and are," said a forthright missionary, "in-
dividual Christians who have lived tremendous lives of self-sacrifice.
But that spirit has not been captured by the whole Church."

Too many characteristics in conflict with Christ have not been
shed. Pride. "You can't tell a Japanese Christian what to do. You
have to whisper from behind a bush." The same might be said of
Christians of most races in Asia, and of many Englishmen. Lack of
consideration for individuals is more peculiarly Japanese. The Jap-
anese have a word which means "not interfering in the affairs of
others": from a passing bus I saw a girl fall off her bicycle and
struggle to replace an awkward load. No one stepped forward. In
the Church this attitude may extend to a deficiency in pastoral care.

Buddhism has left a legacy. Having gathered his little coterie of
disciples, the Buddhist teacher has no desire to expand it ; and the
disciple's loyalty is to the master rather than to the teaching. The
normal Christian congregation in Japan is a similar small group : I
heard of a pastor, with theology as soundly reformed as that of
Calvin or Knox, whose attitude was, "My faith is for me and my
Christians. Other people have their own faiths." And as for the dis-
ciples, missionaries sometimes complain that on taking over a sta-
tion from a colleague they lose church members.

Bishop Vile, Assistant Bishop of Tokyo, a senior American mis-
sionary told me that in the Seikokai was "little evangelistic drive. I
am anxious to get laymen moving." A recent conference of diocesan
evangelism officers concluded that the laity were "not pulling their
weight." Bishop Vile considered this a matter of considerable gravity,
concerning which Christians in the West should pray. He added
that in his opinion nonepiscopal Christians "have better private
prayer lives. Our people are rather inclined to depend too much on
corporate prayer, and * that is not the first thing."

Enigma 307

Dr. Matsushita, President of St. Paul's University in Tokyo, com-
mented that "it is comparatively easy to be a Christian but not an
aggressive Christian. When a man becomes Christian the attitude
of his friends is indifference, tolerant amusement, or friendly opposi-
tion. There is no aggressive opposition. It might be better if there
were. Our young" people are content to keep their faith and not to
attempt to spread it."

Undoubtedly one of the strongest temptations of Christians is
compromise, for syncretism is a Japanese tendency. Sects such as the
Tenrikyo, which was founded by a woman in the nineteenth century
and which might be termed Shinto's Christian Science, have strong
f ollowings who propagate their beliefs vigorously. For the Christian,
now that he is no longer bidden by militarists to worship the Em-
peror, the temptation is to fail to discern between religion and cul-
ture, to accept idolatry as part of the Japanese scene and, as an
Englishman might watch morris dancing, attend the Shinto festivals
forgetful that this is a betrayal of the uniqueness of Christ. I asked
a middle-aged pastor his reason for Christianity's small strength in
Japan. "Because of the many churches that do not preach against
idolatry," he replied. "Compromise and expediency" was the diag-
nosis of the missionary interpreting. "There are two ways ahead,"
added the Japanese. "Either compromise, and let your so-called be-
lievers hang on to old beliefs. Or trust the Holy Spirit to break
through."

"If you are thinking of committing suicide here, please think
again. ".This notice, in red characters, by a way over a railway track
where trains pass every two minutes, is symbolic of the hopelessness
which easily grips the Japanese in debt, business troubles, examina-
tion failure. This hopelessness is a road Christ takes into the citadel
of Japanese heathendom.

There are other roads. The mass meeting under certain conditions
may yet prove of lasting influence : the tent campaign, the English
Bible class for students where study of the English Bible often leads
to serious study of the Word of God. Even the Japanese public bath,
a faint parallel to the English pub, is a useful source of contacts in
a small town. In Borneo a missionary took off his rain-soaked shirt
and went on teaching the little group of even more naked tribes-

3 o8 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

men. After a few minutes he dived into his pack. "I had better put
on another shirt or you will put me down as preaching the Gospel in
string pants ! " In the steamy leisure of a Japanese men's bath house
I was delighted to see the Gospel propagated in a state entirely
Adamic.

These ways into the citadel cannot replace humdrum persistency.
"One hundred and fifty visits yielded one contact," I was told in
Hakodate. "The hardest part is to drive yourself out to house-to-
house visiting. Sometimes you feel, Is it worth while? The propor-
tion of returns may be very small. I expected it to be humdrum. It
was even more humdrum than I expected." Only intense devotion
and patience, so far as human elements are concerned, yields chips
from the granite. Nor is that all. "Rather than just doing a lot of
talking," said an elderly Japanese, "the very life of the Christian
should do a lot of shouting."

THIRTY-NINE Jff* The Morning Sun

Ega San is a Hairy Ainu. The Ainu were the aboriginals of Japan,
now confined to Hokkaido, and almost entirely assimilated. Only a
third, including Ega, are still pure-blooded. A white race of Cau-
casian origin, their presence in Japan is an anthropologist's puzzle.

When I saw old Ega he certainly seemed hairy. His grizzled head
was cut close as a schoolboy's but black hair ran riot on his forearms
and down his fingers and peeped over his collar, in a manner
thoroughly un- Japanese. He had deeper-set eyes and a face oval
instead of round. His home was messy. And the walls were hung
with family pictures and Bible patriarchs, such a forest of whisker
that it was hard to tell who was who. He was voluble and mercurial ;
I laughed with him more than in all my talks with Japanese.

He was retailing his life history. He seized my writing pad, my
glasses, a book or two, Anne's knitting, everything on the table and,
laughing, laid them in a line. I was mystified until the translation
came through : "These are bear pelts ! This is how the Ainu were
cheated by the Shamoo [Japanese]. They hunt bears. They bring

The Morning Sun

.the pelts for sale. Twelve pelts. 'Ah/ says the Japanese, 'you bring
pelts. I count/ He points at the first: 'Beginning, one, two, three,
four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, end that is ten. I pay you for
ten pelts.' And the silly Ainu did not know he was cheated. When I
was growing up I raged against the Shamoo. I wanted revenge. My
race were poor and cheated, always cheated, and this because they
were illiterate and drunk. I determined to be a schoolmaster, and
never to drink. My one aim was revenge."

He became literate in Japanese and in Ainu. Ainu had been re-
duced to writing, roman letters being used, by an English clergy-
man of the Church Missionary Society called Bachelor, who came
to Hakodate at the age of twenty-four in 1877. Hearing about the
Ainu, then still in the forests hunting and carving, he devoted his
life to them. He retired when forced from Japan in 1941 at the age
of eighty-eight, with a beard that would have done credit to an
Ainu, and died in Sussex at ninety-one.

Ega taught in a small Hokkaido town. His resolution to temper-
ance wilted under pressure from Japanese colleagues. "I became as
hard a drinker as any of them. One night in 1917 I had been on a
round of the teachers' houses getting really drunk. My pupils were
helping me home. I was asked into yet another teacher's house. A
stranger was there, a Japanese, who had been sent by Mr. Bachelor
to preach. 'You are an Ainu, aren't you?' he said. 'Have you heard
about God?' " Ega, who could not have been more than tipsy, re-
plied that he knew scores of gods.

"But about the one God?"

"No."

"There is only one sun, isn't there, for the whole world? Not one
for Japan, one for China? So, there is one God for the world."

"As he talked," continued Ega, "and told me of God, and Christ,
and judgment and the cross, I saw that I would perish through
drunkenness like all the Ainu. I believed then and there. I returned
home and I apologized to my wife for being out every night and
for all the wrong I had done. She was even happier than I was and
determined to believe with me. We were baptized a month later by
Mr. Bachelor."

To go to church on Sunday from his town he had a round walk of
fifteen miles, "but it seemed no distance because I loved the Lord."

3 io EARTH'S REMOTEST END

He still hated the Japanese until he heard a story, so involved that I
lost its thread, which convinced him that in God's eyes hatred was no
better than murder. Having taken up teaching from a false motive,
he resigned, and spent two years with Bachelor preaching among
the Ainu. He went to Tokyo to the Bible School of the Holiness
Church, leaving the Anglicans but looking always on Bachelor as his
hero. He saw him off to England in 1941, and wept bitterly. Listening
to his tale I was defeated by garrulity and guffaws, but in 1931 Ega
seems to have been back teaching in the Hokkaido coastal town
where we met. On the militarists' order that pupils and teachers
must bow daily to the Emperor's photograph, Ega was faced with
the struggle of conscience common to every Japanese Christian. "I
went to the higher school authority and said it was wrong. He said
I must do it or leave. I bowed for a time." In 1936 Ega left teaching
for evangelism with the Holiness Church, down south in Kyushu,
until on the outbreak of war he had to return to Hokkaido, and
worked in the town office.

A few Christians lived in his town. All had lapsed by 1941 except
one, who came to Ega's house every Sunday for service, two but not
three "gathered together in My name." Ega said he did not do
much for his faith, but I was told that this denial might be mere
modesty. When members of the Overseas Missionary Fellowship
came to live in his town in 1953, he and his friend remained the only
Christians. Ega is now a mainstay of the modest but growing church.

On September 23, 1923, at 11:58 A.M., occurred the Great Tokyo
Earthquake. One of the survivors was Shotaro Kogo, then aged
eighteen.

"The two things I most hated," he told me, "were rats and Chris-
tianity." His father was a contractor, reasonably affluent, and next
door to their home in the Honjo district of Tokyo was a church
and pastor's house of the Japan Evangelistic Band. The family be-
longed to the Nichi Ren, a militant Buddhist sect, and refused every
invitation to church. If Kogo saw the pastor coming, he would cross
to the other side of the street.

After the earthquake came fire. Gas and water mains had burst,
electric wires fused. "Near our house was a wide-open space where a
military uniforms factory had been. Everybody around fled to it,

The Morning Sun 311

fifty thousand people with their belongings filling the place. Gradu-
ally the fire enclosed us. The heat was terrible. There was a tre-
mendous rush of air, sucking up men, horses, chairs, tables, even a
large notice board buckled up and went whistling into the air.

"As the fire closed in, all began to pray to the gods they had been
worshiping. I looked up. The sky began to redden, and smoke passed
over. I felt at that moment that there must be something behind
the universe. <O God, please help ! ' I cried. 'Even if my life is cut
down to another fifteen years, please help ! ' There was no hope be-
cause the water mains were burst. It had started to rain, then
stopped. The fire roared nearer. People fled this way and that, and
were caught and burned. On those who stayed, sparks ignited the
thick hair oil people used in those days, and set them on fire. Father
went back to the house to rescue things, and was burned to death.
Mother was knocked down by lumber. The fire caught my younger
brother in the back. I should have tried to rescue, but rather than
help others my desire was to help myself.

"My younger sister and a neighbor's girl clung to me. We found a
small ditch which had two meters of water. We jumped in. Others
jumped on top, frantic. I lost the girls; they slipped under. All I
thought was: I am free now. I can escape. The fire swept right
over us, but there were bodies above me and I was untouched."
Somehow he extricated himself and ran where the fire had not gone.
"All around, people were being hit by flying things. The fire finished
them off. It was a real miracle I was saved. Just as I approached a
wall I was hit in the eye." The wall was nine foot high, but he was
a gymnast and, half blinded as he was, scaled it. He thought then
that he was the only one of the fifty thousand to escape.

Kogo ran to a brook, blood streaming from his eye. Survivors had
made a bridge of boats, and he crossed. He found a watermelon, but
one bite making him sleepy he stopped eating, for he knew the fire
might come. Desperately thirsty, he refused more than a mouthful
because that too made him sleepy. People helped him cross the wider
Sumida River to safety. A nurse, without medicine, bandaged his
eye, the splinter still in it, and he fell asleep covered with blood
on the roadside.

When he awoke he became one of the hundreds of thousands of
shocked, wounded survivors struggling toward medical aid. He could

3 i2 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

hardly see. For a time he clung to a woman telephone supervisor
and four of her girls, and they reached Ueno Park. Becoming sepa-
rated, he knew he was dying. "A young laborer, a poor man, picked
me up and put me on his back. I feel he was like an angel from
heaven. He took me to a rescue center manned by medical students."
Kogo's life hung on a thread. "That night great numbers committed
suicide in Ueno Park. I greatly rejoiced I had been saved." He was
taken to one of the few undestroyed hospitals ; though the doctor ex-
pected him to go blind, his right eye survived. He has a glass eye
for the left.

After a month he learned that his younger sister survived. Nothing
was left of their home, "no friends, no neighbors, only a bit of the
old bath."

Two years later he was a maker of compasses in Nagoya. He had
no lack of money ; but, "I just could not understand the problems of
life. Why must man suffer ? No parents, no home. I took to drink.
It is better to die. I got a train. I was drunk. I was going to throw
myself from the train over a precipice. The thought came, What
if there is a future life? Fear gripped me. Difficult to live, impos-
sible to die."

Some time afterward he returned to Tokyo. A friend who was a
Christian found him lodgings in the home of a member of a Japan
Evangelistic Band church. One day a visiting pastor came to call. It
was the man who many years earlier had been his next-door neighbor
and special aversion. ELogo went to the church with him. "The first
words I remember hearing in a Christian service were, The Lord is
my Shepherd.' I found a former member of that next-door church in
this one. What struck me as noteworthy was that having lived next
to the J.E.B. in childhood, now after the earthquake I met them
again."

He went to a week of meetings on Christian holiness. He could
not understand, was annoyed, and refused to continue. Some friends
urged him, and he went again, in a bad temper. "I could not follow
what the preacher was talking about until the story of the Prodigal
Son. This went home. I thought I was righteous, but that night I re-
alized I had been lying. Many past sins came before me, such as
deserting my mother and brother in the earthquake fire. At the close
of the meeting, when all the Christians began to pray, each on his

The Morning Sun 313

own but aloud, I burst forth in prayer and confessed my sins to God.
The preacher had urged us to believe in the cross of Christ. During
the closing hymn I had assurance of sins forgiven. I just wanted to
dance with joy. That was Sunday, February 21, 1926. Next Sunday I
was doing evangelistic work."

He served as a Sunday-school teacher, went to Bible school, and
became an evangelist. During the war he worked steadily in a coun-
try district. He is now dean of a Bible school, but his love is to
evangelize. I met him in a little country town through the hills
behind Kobe, where he was holding a tent campaign.

Walking one day with a missionary, we saw a working woman
in typical blue apron, white blouse, cloven-hoof boots, and baby
strapped to her back. I was pleased when she invited us to her cot-
tage. I had heard about her husband.

By trade a soya-bean curdler, he showed us the process next morn-
ing. Bean curd with rice is a favorite and succulent Japanese dish.
Some months earlier, at the time when Anne and I had been nearing
Borneo, he was a sot; in his own words, "utterly dependent on drink-
ing, doing no work at all but just going crazy with drink." He would
come home at night drunk, rout out wife and children from bed, and
beat them. He tossed his children into the gutter. Once when his
wife was pregnant he knocked her down and kicked her. He was al-
ways in debt.

On May 8, 1959, after assaulting a policeman and spending the
night in jail, he was wandering about the town with a hangover,
hating himself, unable to pay his debts, considering suicide. He
walked up a side street toward the church, which was merely the
front room of the missionaries' little house. He knew nothing of
Christianity. He thought vaguely as he saw the Gospel posters that
through faith he might be able to stop drinking and become a true
man. He entered and spoke to a Swiss girl. She said at once : "The
Lord Jesus loves drunkards. The Lord Jesus can save drunkards."
These words struck home as no phrases about sin or judgment
would have done. He came again and again in the following week to
hear more from one or other of the women.

He bought a Bible on May i4th, and on his way back called on an
elderly Christian. "I asked him : 'What does this mean? I can see the

3 i4 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

Lord Jesus just a foot before me, like a vision, crucified.' 'It's grace/
he said. 'The door of your heart has opened/ I went home. At two
o'clock I went out for work as usual on my motor bicycle. Without
particularly noticing anything, I had just come to the entrance of
the primary school. The Lord Jesus, dressed in white and hanging
on the cross, appeared before me clearly. At that moment the tears
streamed from my eyes. Like flood waters bursting through a dam
came the realization. <Ah, I'm a sinner, a fool; how sinful I have
been ! ' Like a revolving water wheel all my evil deeds passed before
me, and I cried out aloud, weeping. I must have wept like that for
ten minutes, I think."

It was typically Japanese that no passer-by ventured to ask if
anything was the matter. He said, "I cried : ' Ah, this is my Saviour,
truly my Saviour. Here, in this world, He was crucified in my place.
Truly I have been a great sinner.' I rocked to and fro in a distress so
deep I could not remain still. C I must lay my face against His cross,
at His feet and beseech His forgiveness,' I said.

"That same evening a friend who belongs to a new faith religion
of Japan came to see me. He urged me to join his religion. I was em-
barrassed. But finally taking out my Bible, I said, 'I have believed
this teaching.' After a lot more talk I said, 'We are traveling on
parallel lines that can never meet.'

"Again before I slept I saw the Lord's form, on the wall there
before me. And after that I saw the Lord high and lifted up, with a
multitude standing at his feet and the morning sun rising behind
Him. Then I realized clearly that Jesus is the only God of all the
earth." In the middle of the night his wife found him in their mean
living room, bare even of tatami so poor they were because of his
drunkenness, weeping and praying. "She was amazed to see me in
such a state of mind.

"Since then I have burned the idols in my home, and I was able
to stop the priest who used to come twice a month from visiting
us any more." The bean curdler wanted at first to make a fresh
start elsewhere, but felt that he must stay where his unsavory past
was known and that men should see what God could do to a
drunkard. Spiritually he has grown fast. The little local church is
captious: he has still to stand the test of years, aijd they recall
that what ; grows quickly may wither quickly. His wife, now
awaiting baptism, tells her friends, "You have no idea how wonderful

Typhoon 315

it is to have an ordinary human being for a husband instead of a
sot," and wonders why she had never discovered Christ for herself
earlier. "I could have had peace all the time."

When walking back from baptism the bean curdler said to the
missionary, "I am like a starving man who was grubbing on the
rubbish heap to look for a ten-yen piece to stave off hunger. In-
stead, I have found a treasure I can never exhaust."

FORTY JKF Typhoon

On September 22, 1959, we went to Kobe for the final episode of
our Asian tour. After that there would be nothing but the journey
back to Tokyo and on to Karuizawa, in the hills ninety miles
northwest, where we had rented a log cabin to spend the autumn
writing before sailing at the beginning of December for the United
States and home.

We flew, intending to return by train and enjoy the unsurpassed
scenery of the Tokaido trunk line. It was our first flight in Japan,
and gave fine views of the summit of Mount Fuji wreathed in cloud,
and an impression of a delicate but highly developed countryside.
The stewardess kept us informed about the landmarks. At one
point she corrected herself, and thus I distinctly remember the
coast line of Ise Bay, "and up there at its head, Nagoya." The plane
being early at Osaka, we circled the city three times, as if to em-
phasize the immensity of Japan's industrial might factories,
bridges, roads, railway lines, and children in their thousands ranked
on the playgrounds for gym at schools across the city.

From Osaka Airport our last host of the tour, Mr. William Bee,
Field Secretary of the Japan Evangelistic Band, took us by com-
plicated suburban electric lines, three changes, twenty-five miles
to Suma in the suburbs of Kobe, the great shipbuilding center and
now first port of Japan, set on a fine position on a narrow strip
between mountains and the Inland Sea.

Four days later we awoke to a sultry but sunny morning. When I
went down by bus to meet the presiding bishop, it had turned over-
cast and sticky. "Pretyphoon weather," said Mrs. Bee. By the time

3 i6 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

I emerged from seeing the bishop, rain had begun and the wind
freshened. Back at Suma, Mr. Bee welcomed me with, "They say
it is the worst typhoon of the season, and coming straight at Osaka."
There would be no going out that night, and this meant disappoint-
ment: we could not visit the famous Mission Hall which has been
called "the most strategic in the Far East" because it is in the
Prostitutes' Street in the heart of Kobe's amusement area. No one
would be out; too much danger from falling tiles or collapsing
buildings. It was our only opportunity, for the next day we were to
return to Tokyo.

A typhoon's punch is in its "eye" where the winds swirl at a
fantastic speed. The "eye" is comparatively small in diameter, but
travels irresistibly for a long distance, carving through a country.

We tried a short walk in the driving rain after lunch. The wind,
coming from the east, blew us along the beach where the waves
were beginning to boil. Turning back, heads well down, we could
just move. Ships were making for the open sea to ride out the
storm. Trains had slowed down ; road traffic was thinning. "If the
gusts get too strong and frequent, come back at once," we were
told; "a typhoon arrives with a rush, and then the tiles fly." Our
host and his neighbors were boarding up their windows. The whole
world was going to ground.

After tea the view from the windows was of nearly deserted
streets; and on the hillside tall pines dancing madly and slender
firs almost touching the very ground in wild homage to the storm,
a salute of the condemned before they should be torn out by their
roots. The electric light flickered off and on, breaking finally at
five- thirty.

Half an hour later the seven of us in the house sat down to a meal
by candlelight. In the middle of a lively conversation above the
noise outside, at six-fifteen Mr. Bee left his place. "Forgive me,
friends, but the wind has changed. The rain is pouring in the other
side. I must shut that window." It was at that moment that Typhoon
Vera smashed into the peninsula near Ise at 161 miles per hour,
roared past Nagoya City, about sixty-five miles east of us, and
charged into Central Japan while tidal waves swept up Ise Bay and
over the seawalls: 5,276 persons were killed or drowned or washed
out to sea; 10,000 were injured;

Typhoon 317

At Kobe by bedtime it was certain that the "eye" had missed
us ; rain lashed windows, trees still swayed, trains had stopped ; the
gusts were at longer intervals, and weaker. No one then knew that
it was the worst typhoon in Japan's recorded history, destroying
39,000 houses, washing away 1,875 bridges, sinking 276 vessels and
damaging over 2,000. The Australian liner Changsha ran aground.
Damage to public works amounted to over 80 million, to agri-
culture, fishery, and forests, 45 million. A tree one thousand years
old fell on a building of the Grand Shrine at Ise.

Next morning we were due to leave Osaka by the crack express
at 9:00 A.M., and Mr. Bee accompanied us from Surna Station at
about 7 130. Apart from a bric-a-brac of branches the only signs of
the typhoon were small trees uprooted from the pavement: they
could be replanted. Local trains were running, but at Osaka Central
the express was not in the platform. Mr. Bee went to reconnoiter.
"No trains to Tokyo," he reported. Nineteen lines of the Japan
National Railway had been cut. The express might run the next
day or the day after ; seats were limited and the chances of obtaining
two, even should the line be restored, were remote. The only hope
was by air.

We hurried to the travel office outside the big station, joined the
crowd jostling for air tickets, and thanks to Mr. Bee's command of
the language were half-promised seats on a plane for 2:00 P.M.
The railway Fare Adjustments Office instantly refunded our tickets,
a forcible contrast to the seven or more months' delay on Indian
Railways.

Expectation was dashed twice. Tickets for an extra plane finally
were handed to us at i :oo P.M. Not until then did the faithful Mr.
Bee leave us.

We had reached Osaka from Kobe about 8:45 A.M. After two
postponements, we were dispatched to the airport at 10:15 P.M. A
wait of thirteen and a half hours. Plenty of time to cast my mind
back over thirteen and a half months of tour.

I have been decisively convinced that missions and the Christian
churches are a weighty factor in world affairs. They helped very
largely to make Asia what it is, since missions were foremost in
the promotion of intellectual and social progress, without which the

3 i8 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

birth of many modern Asian nations would have been retarded.
And they are an even weightier factor today. Asia is on the march.
The direction of that march matters to the world.

A man of experience said to me : "It is true that when the people
of Asia are as highly developed as the people of the West, she will
dominate the world. She will never reach that stage until there is
a much higher level of moral integrity and righteousness." I dis-
agree. This tour has continually touched, without entering, the lair
of the Dragon Red China. In Nepal, Indian Tibet, the Kachin and
Shan States of Burma, Laos, Hong Kong, I was close to the borders
of China, and throughout East Asia expatriate Chinese, looking more
to Peking than Formosa, were in the scene. Red China shows how
fast and dangerously an Asian nation may develop when urged by
a perverted purpose and a false morality.

The sure bulwark is a right foundation ; most of Asia's millions
have not got it. "Democracy can only work in a Christian back-
ground," said an Englishman during the last days of my tour. "That's
why it has failed in Asia."

"The big burden of Asia is fatalism," said an American right at
the start. "People's wealth consists not in what they possess but
what they produce. These fields and factories are not producing
what they might. There is no right incentive."

That American, Dr. W. A. Zoerner, a Presbyterian in Lahore with
whom we stayed on our way through to Nepal, was a man of great
knowledge of India and Pakistan. We had discussed the present
close interaction of West and East; a truth since impressed more
forcibly on me as we traveled, by the opening of the regular jet
services between the Far East and London, the Far East and
United States, making the very word "overseas" more redundant.
Dr. Zoerner and I were agreed that if the West did not help the
East to a firm spiritual foundation, in a generation it might be too
late. I told him how our local postman, saying goodbye, had ex-
claimed, "If we don't help those people now, we are sitting on our
own children!"

"Ah," said Dr. Zoerner, "the approach of Enlightened Self-in-
terest: the motive behind United States aid to underdeveloped
countries, It has no place in a Christian ideology." He conceded that
a low native was better than ;no motivq, and that if men and women

Typhoon

awake to the stark reality that their own future is threatened they
may develop a less selfish concern as knowledge grows.

"I am so concerned at the home situation/' went on Dr. Zoerner.
"Many of our people think they can discharge their Christian obli-
gation to the overseas mission of the church simply by contributing
money. They do not follow through with personal involvement in
what is going on. The result has been that they are not well in-
formed. They contribute their own imagination, and have no idea
how people live, or what missionaries do."

Undoubtedly the Western churches are not mobilized. In Borneo
I saw the Report of the Lambeth Conference which had ended as we
left England. An apt paragraph ran : "To think of missionary activity
(whether to the islands of the far seas or to the unevangelized
masses of England or America) as a kind of 'optional extra' to be
undertaken by those who are enthusiastic for that sort of thing,
is to make complete nonsense of the Gospel." The English Christian
community gives what is left over from its own concerns, of money,
energy, prayer, to the world outside. The way of blessing is to
reverse this order.

There are many people of Asia wide open to the Gospel, political
difficulties being as nothing to the appetite for truth of the ordinary
man and woman. One of the surprises of the tour has been the
emptiness of non-Christian faiths as they confront the modern Asian.
Resistance comes from custom, indifference, fear, and not because
the traditional religions offer a satisfying answer to the riddles of
existence or a compelling purpose in life. If the Christian nations,
as nations and not as a sprinkling of individuals, set to the task
of evangelism, the consequences would be startling.

We reached Osaka airport at 10 :so. Extra planes were on and it
was as busy as at midday. Television newsreels showed bodies and
wounded being removed from the typhoon area, parts of Nagoya
under water, hundreds of people clinging to the roofs of houses,
United States Security Forces and the Japanese Self-Defense Force
swinging into action.

Our Skymaster came in, and the flight ahead took off immediately.
At ii :40 we entered the plane. Still delay, for one passenger was
missing, and we did not fly until midnight, passing high above

3 20 EARTH'S REMOTEST END

Nagoya in the darkness. The last of the typhoon winds puffed us
to Tokyo at exceptional speed.

A tour of Asia that had begun overland because we could not get
through by air ended by air because we could not get through by
land.

APPENDIX

Log of the Tour

Total Miles Traveled
(Excluding local travel, i.e., out and back to a center within a day)

Liverpool (Aug. 16, 1958) until departure from Yokohama

(Dec. 6, 1959) 33,040
Yokohama to England via the United States (approx.) 12,000

45,040

Methods of Transport, Asian Tour

miles

Sea 12,177

Air 5,370

Rail 12,000

Road 2,748

Water 508

(canoe, launch)

Foot 237

33,040

Distances Within Countries

miles

Pakistan 777

Nepal 297

India 5,583

Ceylon 486

Burma 1,880

Thailand and Laos 2,357

Malaya and Singapore 766

Indonesia 1,309
Sarawak and North Borneo 1,443

Philippines 1,041

Japan 2,919

Photo by Anne Pollock

J. C. Pollock's writing reflects his broad
experience in journalism, his dedication
as a minister of the Church of England,
and his deep-rooted concern for the fu-
ture of Christianity. He was educated at
Trinity College, Cambridge, and Ridley
Hall, Cambridge, the Theological Col-
lege of the Church. of England. During
World War II he served as an officer in
the Coldstream Guards, retiring with the
rank of Captain.

It was during this time, when J. C.
Pollock was serving on Mountbatten's
staff in Southeast Asia, that he first came
in contact with some of the countries he
writes about in this book/ A later tour
led directly to this arduous and enlight-
ening trip.

Mr. Pollock is the author of five books
and numerous articles published in re-
ligious journals. For five years he was
editor of The Churchman and is. now a
contributing editor of Christianity Today.

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