Page:The Chinese Empire. A General & Missionary Survey.djvu/414

336 Payenrung, passing through the Jalar Mohammedan country. These Mohammedans were originally from Turkestan, and the women speak Turki only. Crossing large stretches of grassy country often infested by robbers, and staying for a day or two near the celebrated Lhabrang Monastery, where 4000 monks reside, just at the time of one of their large festivals, Taochow was reached, where Miss Annie Taylor, who had just arrived with her Tibetan servant, was met. From here the return journey to Lanchow was made, passing by Choni, where there is a large monastery containing 15,000 monks, and where a Prince resides.

In November of the same year a further journey was made to the mountain town of Songpan (9000 feet high), on the north-west of Szechwan, where a portion of a house was rented. Subsequently the writer brought his family to this town, after a forty days' journey. There they were permitted to remain for two months and a half only. The people being worked up into a frenzy of superstitious fear through drought, expelled the missionaries after handling them very roughly.

Subsequently, after a period of rest in England and a visit to Darjeeling, China was reached again in 1897, in company with welcome reinforcements, and premises were secured at Tachienlu. Here the forty large inns kept for Tibetans were frequently visited in rotation, and copies of the Word of God sold and the Gospel preached. Great help was also given to the medical work by Mrs. Dr. E. Rijnhart, who reached Tachienlu after her painful journey across Tibet, when she lost both her husband and child.

Missionary journeys were taken to the north and west, and one of considerable interest, by Mr. Amundsen, to the south-west, when Mili was reached. On one of these journeys Mr. Soutter died through fever. The Boxer crisis of 1900 closed the work for a time, and Mr. Thomas Radford, when on his way to reopen the station in 1901, contracted typhoid fever and died at Chungking.

After a preliminary visit in 1902 by Mr. Edgar, the