sought the shade of the friendly hut. We were all completely done up, but a wash-the first for several days-revived us somewhat, and we then tried for sleep, which, however, I could not get, for the temperature was 11440, and the large flies and mosquitoes, our old friends, had made their re-appearance. The poor camels were quite done up, as were the men, and though we gave them a sheep they were too tired to cook it.

July 8.-How thankful for a good night's sleep I was, and I awoke like a new man; all was excitement to get ready for our entry into Berber. The best clothes we could muster were looked up, and our camels loaded as neatly as possible. The last cup of coffee in the desert was consumed, and we left Moheber at six A.M. For two hours we rode, nothing to be seen; can we really be so close to our journey's end? What do I see? the tower of a mosque ? yes, just above the horizon the tower appeared. We urged our camels on, "he, ho, hiss," and soon Berber came in sight. O how delightful to see the mud houses and palm trees! Soon after, a kavass from the Mudir met us, conveying his welcome, and he was to show us the way to our house. Berber looks like a string of mud houses, extending for about two miles, with here and there most beautiful clusters of palm trees. Another quarter of an hour, and we entered the town-narrow ways you cannot call them streets, and we were soon in the courtyard of the house appointed for us. It is the largest house in Berber, once the residence of the French consul.

The distance travelled is, as near as we can make out, 330 or 350 miles, as the route is so winding. The camels go about two and three-quarters or three miles an hour. No European should ever attempt this journey in the middle of summer. In the cooler parts of the year it must be a most delightful ride, but in these months almost unbearable. Surely God has been good to us, and to Him be all the glory. We have been in perils enough, but His Arms have been round us, and no harm has come to us.

PERSIA MISSION-THE FIRST FUNERAL. ERSIA has not been mentioned for a long time in the GLEANER. Mr. and Mrs. Bruce, and their Armenian helper from Bombay, Carapit Johannes, are faithfully and earnestly labouring at Julfa, the quarter of Ispahan inhabited by the Oriental Christians. The congregation consists now of 170 of these, who have joined the purer worship of our Reformed Church. Meanwhile Mr. Bruce takes as many opportunities as possible to set the Gospel before the Mohammedans; and he is actively engaged in revising the Persian Bible. Here is an interesting gleaning from his Report for last year:

We have had one death of a baby in our congregation, but even connected with that we had a cause for special gratitude. Our people lived in fear of the first Protestant funeral, as our Tobiahs and Sanballats held it up as a threat to our little flock that they would not allow a Protestant to be buried peaceably. On August 27th I headed the first native Protestant funeral procession through the streets of Julfa without a word being spoken against us. We selected a large corner of the Armenian consecrated graveyard, separated by a public road from the graves of the Armenians and Roman Catholics, for the Protestant "God's acre." I gave notice to the leading Armenians that we purposed appropriating it, if they made no objection; and none was made. Never had a poor man's baby a larger funeral. The Mission-chapel was filled. I preached on "Be ye ready also," and many who had never heard the Gospel before had full salvation by the blood of Jesus set before them. And the object of my service-not to pray for the dead, but to give thanks for those who fell asleep in Jesus, and pray for the living-was explained.

LETTERS TO MY PARISH FROM SANTALIA.

BY THE REV. W. T. STORRs.

V.-Into the Wilderness after Lost Sheep.

TALJHARI, August 6th, 1878. T becomes increasingly difficult to write to you, for my work is so very quiet during the rainy season that I seem to have very little to say. However, to-day I think I will tell you about a little expedition which I have to make two or three times a month to look after some scattered sheep in the wilderness.

I have prayers here as usual in the morning, and about half-past eight a goods train stops near this for a minute, and I get into the guard's van, with a little man I take with me to get my breakfast ready, and about nine miles north of this, at the first station we meet (for the stations hereabouts are fourteen and sixteen miles apart), we get out. I should prefer riding on my horse, but the country the whole way is nothing else but mud and water-such deep mud that my horse could not possibly get through it, so I am glad to take the train. Then I have to walk back, down the line, about a mile and a half; and, after leaving the line and scrambling through some marshy ground, I come to a village on a little eminence.

Here I stop for an hour or two; there are about seven or eight houses of Christians here. I think it is as unsatisfactory a village as I have. The head-man is a Christian, and I once hoped great things of him, but he is a great trouble to me now. He used to be very upright and straightforward; now he has become a regular "blarney," saying things merely to please, and pretending to be religious, when he means nothing. He is rather a clever man, and for a Santal particularly fine-looking; I have only lately found out the cause of his declension, which is that he has taken to the use of an intoxicating drug; and this is eating the life out both of his body and soul. I am sure he is very miserable, he looks so different from his own bright self, as I knew him ten years ago; but he pleads that he had some disease about two or three years ago for which he began to take this drug, and now he cannot give it up. But besides this there does not seem to be one family in the whole village that is really in earnest in living for God; they are all quite lukewarm; their little chapel is all out of repair; they are very irregular at service, and they have none of the pleasant happy look that one sees in most of the Christian villages. When I come they all gather for service, but that does not please me, for I know when the catechist comes many of them are absent. God is sending great trouble among them in the way of sickness just now, and I hope that it may work for good. First of all I go from house to house, paying a short visit to each one with a few words of talk or prayer. Then I have breakfast with my Horton canteen, which not only supplies from its contents my plates, cup, &c., but itself serves as a table for me, as I sit astride a native bed. After breakfast the bell rings, and all the people come for a short service; and I daresay you can imagine that I do not say nothing but smooth things to them; yet I do try to say what I have to say in love, and were it not for the depressing effect of the head-man's life upon the people, I think some good would be done. Well, perhaps I ought not to write in this faithless way; I may have some good to tell you about Mehudi (for that is the name of the village) when I come home.

Then I take as my companion, part of the way, the son of the head-man of the village, who will one day himself be head-man, and who seems a really good young man; and I start up the hills behind the village to visit some Christians right upon the very top of the hills. The people I have been with are Santâls, but those I am going to see are Paharis, quite a different race, different in language, dress, aspect, habits and worship. In some respects they are a less pleasing race than the Santâls, as they are much more shy and much less honest; but they are a clever race, and can learn more quickly than the Santals. They have been terribly neglected. Numbers of them, at one time or another, have been baptized and then left almost entirely to themselves, and so have lapsed again into semiheathenism. One thing that I am most anxious to do before I come home is to secure some one who will give his whole time to these Paharis. I am sure something might be done among them if some missionary would give himself entirely to work and go about from village to village in these hills. Really I can say most truly my heart is deeply grieved for these people; they have received so little justice at the hands of us missionaries. We have known what a weak people they are morally-we have known what tremendous temptations they are exposed to-and yet, when we have baptized those who apparently with thorough earnestness and sincerity turned to the Lord, we have left them almost alone with their heathen neighbours. I have been up frequently among them lately, even in the rains, when most Europeans look on these hills as inaccessible, and my whole heart has been stirred by the way in which the poor scattered Christians have received me. I am sure there is a work to be done among them if I can only get a man to do it. I wish Horton would send me out a man-a man who is not afraid of a tedious climb

every day up rocky hills-a man who enjoys a good walk-and, above all, a man with a heart full of love.

I go to three villages of these Paharis, where there are a few Christians in each, and have a little prayer and reading with them, and the poor creatures seem so delighted to see me. It is a tremendous pull up the hill, and a long walk along the top, but the view down on to the great plain of the Ganges from the top is grand, and the vegetation I pass through is lovely; and were it not so terribly hot and steamy, I should quite enjoy it. The last time I was up I got wet through two or three times, and my shoes (which were not half strong enough) were torn to pieces with the rough stones, but I came down with a light heart, blessing God for His goodness, but with a heavy weight just in one corner of it, at the thought of the neglect these people have endured at our hands. W. T. STORES.

A MEMORABLE SPOT IN NEW ZEALAND. T was on December 22nd, 1814, that the first three missionary settlers, sent out by the Church Missionary Society, landed in New Zealand, accompanied by Samuel Marsden, at whose earnest request the Mission had been undertaken; and three days after, Mr. Marsden himself preached the first Christian sermon to the Maoris, from the words, "Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy" (Luke ii. 10). The landing took place in the Bay of Islands, at the village of Rangihua, afterwards called Tepuna. The following interesting letter from Mrs. Marsden Clarke, a daughter of Bishop Stuart, of Waiapu, describes the place as it appeared in December last, just sixty-four years after :

We were all on board about ten o'clock and sailing down towards the sea; it was agreed that it would be very nice to go to see Tepuna, the first spot of New Zealand where the missionaries landed, and on whose beach the first Christian sermon was ever preached by good old Mr. Marsden. It was here that the first three missionaries came, and where they lived,│ and worked, and where they and several of their children are buried. Hall, Kendall, and King were their names, and the different families of Kings in this district are the children and grandchildren of the latter. It is a wild, desolate place; the remains of some of the houses are to be seen, but neither Maori nor European live there now. Across a great grand bay to a white strip of beach, with high green hills and scraps of cleared land, and we were at Tepuna.

The place is held tapu (sacred) by every Maori in the north, and justly so; and one could not help feeling a certain awe and reverence when we climbed a little wooded hill and came to the small enclosed place where sleep so many of the best and noblest of men. Not a single monument or stone to mark it, or to proclaim their virtues, but it was touching to see how the love of home in them all had gathered there some of the choicest of English flowers and shrubs. A fine yew tree (probably the only one in New Zealand), some tall cypress, jessamine, and an exquisite white moss rose I saw. We all stood round with reverence-for what to the sons and daughters of missionaries could be more sacred?-and Archdeacon Clarke pointed out to us which was which of the graves of the good old people.

It seems impossible for people to realise how truly they were heroes. At that time, just sixty-four years ago, it was a wild cannibal country; these very hills then swarmed with hundreds of heathenish natives, and as we stood on the shore and looked out to sea, it came over one what it must have been for those men being landed here in boats off the ship, seeing their friend Marsden return thither, watching the vessel set her sails and slowly disappear, leaving them, as it were, helpless amongst savages. They had no knowledge of the language or the people, it had all to be found out; no means of self-defence, and if they had, what could three men do? Cannibalism was rife in these parts, and we are told in grave earnest by Mr. King that they knew their only chance for many years was to keep themselves as thin as possible. I only wished we had had one of the Kings in our party; old William King, our Waimate churchwarden, the last and youngest son, would have been the one; he could have told us of the old times as an eye-witness.

It is such a lovely spot, with its beautiful familiar shrubs and its quiet graves, and the whole far reaching bay spread out below, studded with countless beautiful islands, and nowhere a sign of humanity but ourselves and our boat; it seemed like another world, and I began to wonder vaguely if people would ever penetrate these fair regions with their modern ideas and their civilisation, or if it would bloom on in solitary beauty till the Resurrection Day, when the bodies of these noble servants of God would rise from their lonely graves and see it all just as it was! The last buried there was good old James King, of Springback. He died last year. M-- was telling me about the funeral; they came in two boats, a sad and silent band, and then they laid him there beside his father, mother, wife, and child, and others of his relatives.

FIRST EXPERIENCES IN THE PUNJAB.

BY THE REV. C. P. C. NUGENT.

[Our readers will like to have, for once, a young missionary's first impressions of his field of labour, and an account of his first attempts at preaching in a strange tongue. Mr. Nugent went to India in the autumn of 1878 to join the Rev. G. M. Gordon in the Jhelum Itinerant Mission. The Jhelum is one of the five rivers of the Punjab, and there is on its banks a town of the same name. Pind Dadan Khan is a town lower down the river, at the foot of the Salt Range of mountains. All these will be found in the map of the Punjab in the GLEANER of February, 1878; and in the July number appeared two sketches of Pind and the mountains, by Mrs. Nugent, and an account of them by Mr. Gordon.]

PIND DADAN KHAN, November 28th, 1878. AM beginning this on the anniversary of our landing in Calcutta, and although I have comparatively little to say about work done by me in the mission field, yet this at least I can say, that "goodness and mercy" have followed us from the first. On February 2nd, I set out on my first tour with my dear chief, Mr. Gordon. Mr. Shirreff and one of the students from the Lahore College were to join us a day or two later at Jhelum. We left Lahore, at 7.45 A.M., reaching Jhelum about 3 P.M., where we were met and welcomed by Captain J. B. Hutchinson, the Judicial Assistant Commissioner, and the tried friend of our Mission at Pind Dadan Khan.

Two days after, at about 11 P.M., we found ourselves in an old boat-house by the river side, which we had seized for fear we should not get away early enough if we put up at the dak bungalow. What with a fire burning and three men sleeping in a room rather less than twelve feet square it was warm, but in the deadly cold of the early morning not a bit too much so, we found. At 6 A.M. Shirreff appeared with Matthews (the student). Got on board our bark at about 8 o'clock. It was an open boat, not at all a bad one, and with Gordon's carpet utilised as an awning we managed to do very well. Until the night set in all was very pleasant, even our frequent acquaintances with the numerous sandbanks in the river raising our spirits, or rather keeping them up, while we kept our fingers from numbing by occasionally relieving the oarsmen, and then didn't we make the old boat fly! When the evening, or rather night, was settling down, the hills looked very lovely, a beautiful bluish grey mist covering them partially. We sang hymns as we rowed, and certainly realised that Presence we so much need. It was not nearly so satisfactory at night; we seemed to be always getting on sandbanks, and they did not improve on further acquaintance, and the cold was most intense. It literally got into one, and made us wish fervently we were on shore in front of a good fire, enjoying a good cup of strong tea.

At about 10.30 P.M. we landed at a place about a mile and a half from Pind Dadan Khan. After quite an hour's getting such things as we positively needed for the night together, and of course haggling with the boatmen and coolies, we marched off through the jungle in search of shelter for the night (which we were not at all certain about getting), as it was now far too late to think of getting on to Pind that night. After a good half-hour's wandering we came up to the village and found out a large shed inhabited by two donkeys, who did not seem at all disposed to evacuate in our favour. Gordon went off and knocked up the head-man of the village, and that good man, with more urbanity than most Englishmen would treat one who pulled them out of bed at such an advanced and exceedingly cold hour (for twelve with them is much the same as three or four is with us), offered us the use of the mosque (a very great honour), which we declined, as it already seemed sufficiently tenanted by ten not very clean Mussulmans. We selected the shed, and our good friend supplied us with beds, a grand carpet, and put up chicks (a kind of curtain made of twigs bound

together*) as doors, and here we laid ourselves down to rest at about a quarter to two o'clock, very tired and very cold.

Next morning we find that the head-man has supplemented his civility of last night by sending us more eggs than we can eat for our "little breakfast." In discussing these we are interrupted by his son, who is followed by bearers carrying in a sumptuous breakfast-a huge pile of cakes (awful things steeped in ghee), some splendidly curried meat, and a Punjabi pudding, formed of a kind of flour called soogie (pronounce "g" like "j"), sweetened. Their kindness was somewhat overwhelming, for I had to eat nearly an entire enormous chipate (a native cake), which, as it was largely composed of not the freshest ghee, was decidedly too rich for my taste. There is a very good Moulvie living in this village who has met with much persecution on account of his reforming ideas. He is very well affected towards Christianity; God grant he may become something more some day. He always comes into Pind to see Mr. Gordon when he is there. They all brought us on our way out of the village, and after many salaams and expressions of goodwill we parted. and expressions of goodwill we parted. Gordon had not lost an opportunity of repaying their hospitality by offering them the Bread of Life.

I was much pleased with my first impressions of Pind Dadan Khan; it is a most picturesque-looking town, and with the Salt range on one side, and the river Jhelum on the other, the view from the housetop is very fine.

We did not remain long in Pind, but at once set off for Kheura, the settlement at the Salt Mines, where the principal European officers in charge of them live. By the kindness of Dr. Warth, the Collector of Customs, we had an opportunity of seeing the mines to great advantage. In the evening of the next day we set off for Choya Saidan Shah, a place about 3,500 feet up, which Gordon was anxious to visit. It is, as is all the country about, a very lovely spot, and at this time (January and February) was especially so-beautiful valleys surrounded by such very pretty low hills, and here and there intersected by delightful little streams. In the evening we went to the village to preach, and after a great deal of waiting, the Moulvie appeared with two other men, and at once tried to get rid of us by saying it was the hour of prayer. However, we waited patiently and then had our say. They were not at all friendly, cavilling at everything, and raising the usual questions about the unlawfulness of eating pig's flesh and not fasting.

We marched back on foot to Jhelum (65 miles), after spending a very happy Sunday at Pind, my first in this town. We had service (that in the morning with Holy Communion) at the dear little church, the name of which I must not forget to tell you is St. John's in the Wilderness.

During the months of February, March, and April, we remained quietly at Pind, I struggling on with the language. Then we went to Sakesar. This is our hill station, being the highest point of the Salt Range, and is somewhat over 5,000 feet high. Here we spent six months. During the greater part of this time I had the privilege of ministering to the European officers (and some ladies) of Shahpur. I cannot sufficiently in words acknowledge the kindness I received from all of these, and especially from Major Corbyn, the Deputy Commissioner, whose brotherly love and Christian sympathy will ever be treasured by

me.

Of course my especial work while there was preparing for my examination for priest's orders, and studying the language. But I did fulfil my wish of visiting some of the villages. I give you an account of one visit :--

I was met at Serai (the nearest village to Sakesar) at 7 A.M. by my Munshi, and with him was the head-man of the village, Mian Lall. This is a most patriarchal-looking old man; he is about 6 feet 2 inches, splendidly made, and has a long snow-white

* Our readers will see these chicks in the large picture of Teaching in a Zenana in our March number.

beard, in fact he is

just the kind of man one likes to fancy Abraham

66

was.

These, with one or two others, preceded me to the place where most of the gossip of the village takes place. Here we seated ourselves, and being joined by one or two more, making my congregation in all about six, I read Isaiah liii., and tried to speak as well as I could about sin and sinners, and the need of and provision for salvation in Christ. But I fear my faith was very low, or I felt very shy, or perhaps a good deal of both reasons operated, for I felt very much restricted.

I did not wait more than an hour here, but pressed on with my Munshi and a guide for Amb, the next village. We had a very hot sun to walk under, and a very disagreeable road to travel over, principally formed of large stones about as firm as very yielding sand. Some places we had to cross were very difficult even for us, and must have been to my poor horse Tommy, which I did

not ride, what tight-rope walking would have been to his master. In some places almost perpendicular banks of loose earth and stones had to be crossed, yet he managed magnificently. I did give in when nearly at the top of a steep hill going up to AmbI suppose the sun was too much for me; any way, after lying

down for a time I got up on Tommy.

Amb (it is pronounced Um) is the most picturesque village I have yet seen, and that part of it where we rested the most picturesque of it all. It is a raised kind of platform, used, I believe, as a place of prayer. It is almost covered by the branches of a huge pipal tree, and at one side a delightful swift stream hurries by, which simply to look at rests and refreshes one. It is just the kind of place that one would feel constrained to offer the Water of Life and the Rest of Christ in. Here we waited for a long time for the magnate of the village, Mian Lall's brother, and at last gave him up in despair, and at the request of about eight of the leading men of the village I "opened

more

[The picture gives a view of the Salt Range of mountains referred to by Mr. Nugent.]

OUR SOLITARY MISSIONARY IN UGANDA. [The picture of King Mtesa and his chiefs on the opposite page

French engraving. We do not know the original source of it.]

Some brief full in the GLEANER.

is a

OME months have elapsed since we gave any account of the Rev. C. T. Wilson, who, after the death of Lieut. Smith and Mr. O'Neill, and before the arrival of Mr. Mackay (reported in our February number), was our only missionary on the Victoria Nyanza. extracts from his letters-which have appeared in C.M. Intelligencer-ought now to find place in the

It will be remembered that Mr. Wilson and Lieut. Smith reached Rubaga, the capital of Uganda, on the north side of the Lake (see the map in the GLEANER of January, 1877) in June, 1877. Lieut. Smith then re-crossed the Lake to Ukerewe Island,