we had abandoned them. I had left Sên Chai’s village with the promise to
return. So I went up with the Mūsô Christian boys, and spent a last
night with them. The village again assembled, and we had an interesting
evening. The Sên was greatly disappointed that none of the other
villages would join him. But the New Year was at hand, when the clan
must be unbroken. They would wait another year, and try to get the other
villages to join them. On the whole, I was encouraged. When we left them
we were escorted out of the village to the music of their plaintive
flutes, more like a victorious than a vanquished army.
After a day or two with the Chieng Sên church, we visited the ridge to
the southeast of that city, between it and Chieng Kawng. Our experience
there was but a repetition of that from which we were just come—cordial
receptions, night audiences, manifest interest, individual believers,
anxious consultations, promises for the next year; but the tribal bond
was too strong to be broken.
But Cha Pū Kaw was anxious that we should not pass by his own mountain
villages on the Mê Kok. So we turned southward again toward Chieng Rāi.
This, moreover, was one of those famine years, such as we have already
encountered in our story, and shall encounter yet again; many people
were on the verge of starvation. In places we could not get food for our
own men. And famine was beginning to be followed by disease and death.
This was a serious obstacle to our work.
Another serious obstacle was the use of opium, which became more
prevalent the further west we went along the Mê Kok range towards Mûang
Fāng. We presently reached villages where the poppy was cultivated,
until, in the last village, men, women, and boys, and sometimes even
girls, were its slaves. Fevers and dysentery prevail during the rainy
season. These people have a very scanty pharmacopœia, and no antidotes
whatever for these diseases. Opium in some form is probably their surest
remedy. Many persons told me that they began by using it in sickness. As
sickness recurred the habit grew, until they were fast bound in its
chains. These facts largely determined the character of the instruction
we gave, and made our tour a kind of anti-opium crusade. Encouraged and
disappointed at every village, I was still tempted on by visions of
capturing some large village that would prove a more effective entering
wedge for the tribe than Cha Pū Kaw’s poor little hamlet. The six weeks
so spent were at the time the most novel and exciting, as well as most
arduous, of all my missionary experiences so far.
We took both the old Mūsô men as assistants, and the younger ones as
carriers for our equipment. Our first day’s journey was a fair sample of
what we had to do continually. In many places it would be a misnomer to
speak of the track we travelled as a path. We left the plain in the
morning, and it was half-past two in the afternoon when we reached the
first summit. It was five o’clock when, desperate with thirst, we came
upon a flowing brook. There was, then, still another hard climb before
we saw our long looked-for first village ahead. And, in general, because
of the habit these people have of planting their villages upon the very
highest points where they can get water, the journey from one of these
villages to another in plain sight, and, apparently, but a short
distance away, would take hours of the hardest travel. Sometimes we
would walk weary hours through rain, or through bushes as wet as rain,
to visit a village; only to walk back again after sitting three hours in
wet clothes trying in vain to awaken some interest in old or young.
One of the most interesting, and, at the same time, one of the saddest,
cases we met was that of Mûn Kamprai, the head man of a village which
clearly bore the impress of his character in the intelligence and
industry of its inhabitants. From opium he had kept entirely aloof
until, only a few years before this time, under the stress of a severe
illness, he began to take it. The poor man now realized that he was
becoming a wreck, but seemed to have no will-power left to make the
effort to break away from the habit. He was much interested, however, in
his two fellow-tribesmen whom I had brought as my assistants; and Cha
Waw’s example seemed to afford him a faint gleam of hope. If we would
stop a week and teach his people, and would stand by to aid him, he
would try. If successful, he would surely become a Christian—and then
his village would be the one we had been hoping for to free itself from
the tribal bond, and become Christian.
The experiment was, indeed, pathetic. Removing all temptation, he began
with a desperate determination to succeed. We encouraged him with human
sympathy and the hope of divine aid. We pushed as far as we dared the
use of a tonic which Dr. McKean had given me for such cases; and it
aided him perceptibly. He held out manfully for several days. But, at
last, in an evil hour, he could endure the torture no longer, and before
we knew it, he had resumed the use of the drug. For two nights he had
not slept. In his own expressive language, it was not his eyes, but his
heart that could not sleep. Poor man! his sufferings must have been as
near those of the infernal regions as it is possible to experience in
the body. And then his absolute wreck of mind, and the contempt he felt
for himself when he gave up the struggle as hopeless!
We spared no labour to reach the homes of these people, or their hearts.
We tried to become Mūsôs to the Mūsôs that we might win them. Sometimes
we had to sleep in their huts—on a floor raised two or three feet from
the ground, which the dogs shared with the family, while the pigs and
goats were on the ground beneath. In the centre was a raised fireplace
on which the native teapot always boiled. Sleeping-mats or thin bedding
lay about on the floor, and on this, before bedtime, some of the inmates
would lie down and fall asleep even while listening to the
conversation.—But everywhere the tribal bond was too strong to be
broken.
[Illustration:
MŪSÔ PEOPLE AND HUT NEAR CHIENG RAI]
By this time the rains had set in. The trails—and the leeches that
infested them—were getting worse and worse. Soon the torrent-streams
would become impassable. We must return while yet we could. Our six
weeks’ wanderings we retraced in four days of constant tramping. It had
been a hard trip for all of us. I myself had a touch of fever. It seemed
good on reaching our camp to have once more the luxury of a chair and a
table. And then to be on the sadaw’s back travelling homewards, and to
meet a good mail on the way! My three-score and fourth birthday was
spent in the forest, and I reached home safely on the 18th of May, after
an absence of nearly five months.
* * * * *
The peninsula of Farther India is largely exempt from the terrible
scourge of famine which has become almost chronic in Hindustan, its
greater neighbour on the west. There the population is so numerous that
the normal production of food is just sufficient to supply its needs.
Even a local or a partial failure of the crops must produce distress.
Siam, on the contrary, is happy in that it not only produces an abundant
supply for its own people, but is a granary for the surrounding
countries. The worst that has ever been experienced in Lower Siam in
years of greatest scarcity, has been the necessity of checking the
export of rice. The annual floods there cover the whole country, so that
a general failure of crops is, humanly speaking, impossible.
In the northern states the land is higher; and considerable portions of
it, being above inundation, are directly dependent upon the seasonal and
local rains. But with a population by no means dense, this very
diversity of the cultivated areas is a source of safety. A season of
heavy rainfall which drowns the lowland rice, is apt to prove
exceptionally good for the uplands. And, on the other hand, a season of
light rainfall, which cuts short the upland crop, is apt to be a good
season for the flooded areas. And in considerable sections of the
country there is the chance that a second crop in the same season may
make good the loss of the first. There is a further security also in the
fact that, until communication with the coast becomes such as to make
exportation profitable, the excess of fruitful years remains unconsumed
in the country, to supply the need of less fruitful ones. It thus comes
about that scarcity amounting to a real famine cannot result from the
failure of crops in any single year. It requires two consecutive
failures to produce extensive suffering among the very poor, and three
to result in a real famine.
This last, however, was the case in 1892. In 1890 there was a light crop
throughout the land, with less excess than usual to be stored. In 1891
the crop was lighter still. In the eastern provinces, particularly in
Lakawn and Prê, there was very little rice to be reaped. Famine
conditions began there long before the time for harvest. People were
scattering off in squads or by families into Chiengmai and the northern
provinces, begging a daily morsel. They were poverty-stricken as well as
famishing. The distress led the brethren in Lakawn to make an appeal to
friends in the United States for a famine fund. Quite a liberal
response, amounting to several thousand dollars, was made to this call,
largely by the friends of the Lāo mission. The relief was almost as
timely for the missionaries as it was for the famishing people.
Otherwise they scarcely could have lived through the long strain on
their nerves and sympathies caused by the constant sight of sufferings
which they could not even in part relieve.
The province of Chiengmai could have met its own needs until the new
crop came in, had it not been for the constant draft upon its reserves
to meet the demands of Lakawn and Prê. But, between high prices offered
and pity for the less fortunate, those reserves were steadily drained
away, until, during the latter months of the year, famine was upon us in
Chiengmai, too. Bands of men from destitute villages, maddened by hunger
and unable to buy food, began to roam about the country by night, or,
sometimes, by day, and seize rice wherever any little remnant of it
could be found. The authorities were powerless to restrain them or to
keep order. The condition of the more destitute provinces can better be
imagined than described.
At last the relief committee in Lakawn were asked if they could not
spare us a small portion of their fund, for it seemed that their
condition could not be much worse than ours. A letter from Dr. W. A.
Briggs brought us three hundred rupees, but with the following
_caveat_—the italics are his:
“_Wherever_ we can reach the absolutely starving, that is a
place to invest. We do not pretend to relieve all the
_suffering_. Now, if the need in Chiengmai, or in the district
mentioned, is so great that people are actually dying from
starvation, and those now living are living on such stuff as the
sample enclosed (cocanut-husks, leaves, bark, etc.), _with never
a grain of rice_, then I would advise you to form a Famine
Committee, and go into the business as we have done. The actual
starvation _must_ be attended to, _no matter where it is_. But
our saddest experience is within Prê. Some one should be sent
there at once.”
The scenes reported from Prê were harrowing. I will not pain the reader
by dwelling upon them. One happy result followed the efforts of the
brethren who went to the relief of that district. While administering to
bodily wants, they preached the Gospel, making such an impression that
there was a strong demand for a permanent station there—which was
established the next year, with Dr. and Mrs. Briggs as pioneer
missionaries.
It should be stated that, toward the last, the Siamese government sent
up supplies of rice; but, because of the distance and the difficulty of
transportation, not much reached the suffering people in time to help
them; and much was lost in passing through the hands of so many
officials.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XXXI
CHIENG RUNG AND THE SIPSAWNG PANNĀ
At the Annual Meeting of the mission in December, 1892, the broad field
of Tai peoples north of the frontier of Siam was discussed, and Rev.
Robert Irwin and myself were appointed to make a tour into that region
as long and as far as in our judgment might be deemed wise. The tour
occupied nearly five months—from January 3d to May 25th, 1893. This time
we went fairly well supplied with portions of Scriptures and tracts, and
a good outfit of medicine. Of quinine we carried a hundred ounces, and
returned with less than twenty-five. We relied on the medicines for the
welcome they never yet had failed to win for us. And Mr. Irwin had a
cornet which did excellent service throughout the tour. For riding I had
my big “sadaw” elephant, and Mr. Irwin had a pony; so we could exchange
mounts at our convenience. I pass over the earlier portion of our route,
already so often described, and the two weeks spent among the
hill-tribes visited on previous trips.
The chief object of our trip was to visit, in their ancient homes, two
northern tribes of the Lāo race—the Kôn and the Lû—from which very many
of our parishioners in the southern provinces derived their origin. For,
under conditions which lasted very nearly down to our own time, there
was almost constant predatory warfare going on in this northern
country—stronger states raiding the weaker, and sweeping away the entire
population of the districts they overran, to plant them in their own
realms. Thus whole villages, and even entire districts, in the Lāo
provinces of Siam, are peopled by the descendants of such colonies of
captives. We found it unadvisable to attempt both visits in the same
season, and the Lû were the more accessible, living on the nearer slopes
of the Mê Kông valley. We went up on the west of the river along the
edge of the British territory, now known as the South Shan States, and
beyond it into Chinese territory, as far as Chieng Rung;[15] then,
returning, we made a somewhat wider sweep to the east of the river,
through French Indo-China; finally recrossing the river at Chieng Lāp,
where we struck once more our outgoing trail.
Footnote 15:
This name appears on some maps as Chieng Hung, initial _r_ in the
North being generally pronounced as _h_.—ED.
After leaving Mûang Len, the utmost point of a former trip, we travelled
awhile by a fine road along the summit of a ridge so regular as to seem
almost like an artificial embankment, and affording noble views over the
valley. At Wieng Mai, a recent offshoot of Mûang Yawng, we spent a most
interesting Saturday and Sunday. Here the Prince-Governor sent to ask if
he should not put up a sālā to shelter us during our stay. In the
morning we preached in the market-place, and afterwards I distributed
medicine and talked with the people till noon, when I had to flee away
to rest under the shade of a big tree by the river. The people seemed
hungry for the bread of life. I could not supply all the requests made
for copies of the Scriptures.
Mûang Yawng, the older and larger city, we reached on Monday forenoon,
after a two hours’ ride. An officer met us at the gate, and showed us to
the sālā. When the Chao Mawm heard of our arrival, he sent for us,
meeting us at the door. We had a very interesting interview, but he was
not inclined to talk on the subject of religion. He told me that the
city and district had been entirely depopulated in 1809 by a force from
Chiengmai, when “nothing was left behind but the ground.”[16] It had
recovered itself, however, and its population was now larger than that
of Lampūn. With Nān Suwan I visited the market and the Court. At the
latter place I learned that the British Commissioner would arrive the
next day. Knowing that everything would be in confusion, we decided to
move on the next morning.
Footnote 16:
This incident is a striking illustration of the methods of warfare in
those days. The expedition in question was directed against the
Burmese, who had established themselves in Mûang Yāng some sixty miles
or more to the northwest. On its way it passed through Mûang Yawng,
where it was loyally received. But being defeated at Mûang Yāng, it
fell back upon Mûang Yawng, and there gathered up all the inhabitants
and swept them off to Chiengmai to prevent their falling into the
hands of the enemy!—ED.
From this point on, our elephant was everywhere an object of great
interest. Sometimes the people climbed trees to get a better view of
him. A long day’s march brought us to Mûang Yū, picturesquely situated
on high bluffs, with deep gorges running down to the Mê Lūi. Here we
remained only overnight, leaving early the next morning for Mûang Lūi,
which we reached about noon. That evening we had a large attendance at
worship, the governor and officials remaining till after eleven o’clock.
The original population of both these districts, as well as that of
Mûang Yawng, are now scattered throughout the provinces of Chiengmai and
Lampūn.
Next morning we crossed the beautiful stream on a raft, while our
elephant took the ford. During the forenoon we came upon Captain Davis
of the Commissioner’s staff, who had been sent to make a detour by Mûang
Sing, and was then on his way to join his party. He was resting by the
roadside, ill with fever, and was glad to get from me some quinine.
The following day, Saturday, brought us to Mûang Lūang, the largest and
most important place in the valley and the southernmost of the old
Sipsawng Pannā confederacy. The valley population is wholly Lû. There is
scarcely a Ngīu (Western Shan) to be found east of the Keng Tung
watershed. Here were the best roads we had seen anywhere in Farther
India, with a real arched bridge of stone across the stream at the
entrance to the city. Early next morning we were awakened by a noisy
crowd about our tent, anxious to see us. It was the great market day,
so, instead of attempting a regular service in camp, we chose the
market-place. There, whether reading or speaking, we always had some
attentive listeners.
On Monday our road lay for many miles along the summit of a low ridge on
which at intervals were fifteen large villages, just at the edge of the
long fertile plain, where are the rice-fields that feed the country. I
never saw in all my touring anything quite to equal that row of
villages. It seemed too bad to pass through so many without even
stopping.
[Illustration:
GROUP OF YUNNAN LĀO]
On the fourth day from Mûang Lūang we reached Chieng Rung, the limit of
our northward journey. Its location is strikingly beautiful, on a high
steep bluff overlooking the Mê Kōng River, which sweeps in a majestic
curve about its base. It is in Chinese territory, and is ruled by a Chao
Fā appointed from Yunnan. An officer from Yunnan was there at the time
collecting tribute. The influence of the English was already felt there.
Mûang Chê, to the west, had rebelled against the Chao Fā, who thereupon
sent out an expedition which captured and brought away some three
hundred families of the inhabitants. But England cannot allow border
warfare to go on along her frontier. An English officer appeared on the
scene, and the thing was stopped.
At Chieng Rung we were still in the midst of an area of Lāo-speaking
people—an area which extended far beyond on every side. I gave a portion
of Scripture to a Lû whose home was ten days’ journey northward; and
others to men from as far to the east and to the west.
We had an interview with the Chao Fā by previous appointment. At the
door the officer suggested that we pull off our shoes. We replied that
it was not our custom, and was unnecessary. He looked very doubtful, but
said no more, and we walked in. The Chao Fā received us courteously. We
took him to be a man of no great strength of character, about forty
years of age, and somewhat weakened by the use of opium. He asked
whether we had not some antidote to enable him to stop its use. He
listened attentively to our statement of the object of our coming, and
said, “You are merit-makers, and that is a good work.”
When we called at the court, the presiding officer had a wise suggestion
as to how we might further our purpose and establish our religion in the
place—a suggestion evidently not originating with himself, but from a
higher source. “The favour of the Chao Fā,” said he, “will be necessary
and all-sufficient. I see you have a fine elephant. Just make a present
of him to the Chao Fā. He will be delighted, and your road will be all
smooth.” I told him that I was an old man, far from home, and dependent
on the elephant. So I could not part with him. This same suggestion was
pressed upon us several times afterwards, by the highest officials, and
quite up to the hour of our departure; though its form was modified from
a gift to a sale. I became at last a little anxious about the result,
and was somewhat relieved when we actually got away without loss of the
elephant.
I may mention at this point an incident of this trip which never came to
my knowledge till thirteen years later, showing how we were
providentially spared from what would have put a sudden and tragic end
to our tour and to our lives. When Dr. S. C. Peoples and Dr. W. C. Dodd
were in Keng Tung in March, 1907, the presiding officer of the Court
told them that he had met Dr. McGilvary and Mr. Irwin on their way to
Chieng Rung; that when the people of Chieng Rung first heard that some
foreigners from the south were _en route_ to their capital, they planned
to kill and plunder them. But when they saw that the foreigners rode
elephants and were accompanied by carriers, they decided that this was
probably the advance guard of a formidable army, which it might not be
well to attack. And then, he said, the kindness of the missionaries so
completely won their hearts, that all thought of murder and plunder was
given up.
Our return was to be through the region to the east of the Mê Kōng. Its
northern cities still belonged to the Sipsawng Pannā. But the rest of it
was territory recently ceded by Siam to France. The governing race—the
people of the plains—were everywhere Tai, speaking the Lāo language and
using the Lāo literature. On its mountain ridges dwelt numerous
hill-tribes, especially the Kamu and the Lamēt.
The route we were to take crosses the river two days’ journey south of
Chieng Rung; so we had at first to retrace our steps. We left the city
on Monday, March 13th, safe from unseen plots, and with our elephant. On
the second day, after leaving our upward road to strike across to the
river, we entered unexpectedly a large village, where we met with a
reception ludicrously hostile. At every door men were standing with guns
in their hands. We were surprised; but, supposing that it might be
muster-day or something of the sort, we passed innocently along, without
challenge, to the monastery, where we dismounted and began to unload.
Then guns were laid aside and the head man and villagers came up to see
us and to offer assistance. They had heard that foreigners were coming
with elephants and men, whether for peace or war no one knew. So they
had taken the precaution to be ready. When they found out our peaceful
errand, they were ashamed. We had a pleasant visit and worship with them
that evening.
The next stage of our road was bad. In some places we had to cut our way
through, and there were difficult passages of brook-beds and gorges. We
reached the river at Chieng Hā in a pouring rain, and it rained again at
night. The next day was the Buddhist sacred day, and we were awakened
early by the crowd of merit-makers and worshippers—the women and girls,
as usual, in their head-dresses and gay colours, and all anxious to see
the elephant and the white faces.
It was 10:30 that morning before we got away. Ourselves, our men, the
saddles and luggage, were carried over by the ferry. Nān Suwan alone
faced the deep river on the sadaw to guide him through. At the first
plunge all of the elephant save his trunk, and half of the rider, went
out of sight. Thence on they went, now up and now down, till they
struggled out on the further shore. Such an effort is very exhausting to
the animal, and he has to have a good rest and breathing-spell after it.