The New Testament; Nancy Returns (1823)

C H A P T E R

The New Testament; Nancy Returns

[ 1823 ]

HE mission had suffered, he found on his return to Rangoon. Of the eighteen disciples, only three or four were at the mission house. One he knew was at Ava, guarding the hut there. But some had fled across the river to escape the exactions of the taxhungry new Viceroy. The neighbors of others had reported them to the authorities, who had demolished their houses. One, Mah Myatya, had died. Her sister told Adoniram she had nOt feared death. She had put her tt in Christ, and had looked forward to meeting Him in heaven. Nor had Hough done much. Preaching and teaching were not his strong points; and he could not print until he could get type from Bengal.

Thus, although the long-range prospects were good, the immediate outlook was discouraging. As usual when nothing else could be done, Adoniram immersed himself in translation. By July 12, 1823, he had completed his translation of the entire New Testament in Burmese and written a summary of the Old Testament in twelve sections. This latter included a brief account of Scripture history from the beginning to the coming of Christ, and an abStract of the most important prOphecics about the Messiah, in which he used, so far as he could, the actual words of the Bible.

The whole made up a sort of textbook which the converts found absorbing. But Adoniram fretted because it could not be printed, particularly the complete New Testament. Meanwhile, he busied himself with revision until Nancy should return. He had not heard a word from her in ten months, and had not seen her for two years.

Before she arrived, he did one small job of translating that gave him a certain amount of amusement. Maung Shway-bay wrote a letter to the Reverend Dr. Baldwin, in Boston, which Adoniram turned into English so that Dr. Baldwin could read it.

Addressing him as “Beloved Elder Brother,” Maung Shway-bay explained that, “Though in the present state the places of our residence are very far apart, and we have never met, yet by means of letters, and of the words of Yoodthan, who has told me of you, I love you and wish to send you this letter.” He recounted the satisfaction his religious experiences gave him. But, he admitted, it was difficult to be a Christian in Burma: “For, elder brother, I have to bear the threatening of my own brother, and my brother-in-law, who say, ‘We will beat, and bruise, and pound you; we will bring you into great difficulty; you associate with false people; and you keep a false religion; and you speak false words.’ ” Nevertheless, the convert knew their religion was the false one, the religion of death, and he persevered. He concluded:

In this country of Burmah are many strayed sheep. Teacher Yoodthan, pitying them, has gone to gather them together, and to feed them in love. Some will not listen, but run away. Some do listen, and adhere to him; and that our number may increase, we meet together, and pray to the great proprietor of the sheep.

Thus I, Maung Shway-bay, a disciple of teacher Yoodthan, in Rangoon, write and send this letter to the great teacher Baldwin, who lives in Boston, America.

Nancy came back to Rangoon on December 5, 1823. With her came another pair of missionaries, Jonathan and Deborah Wade, of Edinburgh, New York. The Wades arrived knowing a little Burmese. Nancy had been teaching them ever since they had left Boston.

Nancy was “the Ann Hasseltine of other days,” Adoniram wrote, his happiness “inexpressible.” They had much to tell each other about those twenty-seven months they had been apart, but there was much to do first.

For Adoniram had only been waiting for Nancy to return to Ava. With the Houghs, and now the Wades, in Rangoon, the capital was the place for the Judsons. He had a boat all ready in the river. Nancy’s baggage was not even taken to the mission house. It was transferred directly from the ship to the boat—including a rocker and a little work table which Elnathan, Adoniram’s brother, had given her in Baltimore. Their household goods followed, and they Started upriver—with three or four of the disciples, including the faithful Maung Ing and Koo-chill, a Bengali cook Nancy had brought from Calcutta—on December 13, a week to the day from Nancy’s arrival at Rangoon.

The boat was small, the headwind steady, and the downstream current strong. Their progress was slow. But to Nancy, this merely added delight to the trip. It was another honeymoon. She felt well — better than Adoniram, who had suffered much from cholera the past year— and the weather was pleasant. They had plenty of time to catch up on the story of her travels.

She arrived in Calcutta all but dying. The doctors insisted she go to a cold climate. But the American captains had full cargoes; the only passage she could get would have COSt fifteen hundred rupees. Fortunately, Mrs. Thomason, wife of the East India Company’s chaplain, found a “pious captain” who would take her to England for five hundred, provided she would go in a cabin with three children. She accepted, and then found that their father insisted on paying her passage.

In England, her health improved. She met Mr. Joseph Butterworth, a Methodist and Member of Parliament, who took her into his home. She had become, she found, something of a celebrity. From Mr. Butterworth’s house she went to Cheltenham for several weeks for the mineral waters, and then was invited to Scotland. She could pay for nothing. Well-wishers took care of all her expenses.

She did not leave England until August 16, 1822, and arrived in New York September 25. After a week or so in Philadelphia she went home to Bradford. But the cold climate, the excitement of seeing family and friends, and the hundreds of visitors who poured in on her, weakened her. All day long they thronged the house until she could hardly bear the sight of a human face. For six weeks she had not one quiet night of sleep.

Fortunately, Elnathan was now a government surgeon in Baltimore. He invited her to Spend the winter in the warmer climate with him. She accepted, and on December 3 arrived at his boardinghouse.

Here she found rest and seclusion while she underwent more courses of “salivation” with mercury. Soon she felt better and resumed work on a book about the mission which Mr. Butterworth and others had urged her to write. The easiest way to do it, she found, was in the form of a series of letters addressed to him. In spite of her racking cough and the pain in her side she finished the book in March and oversaw its printing in Washington, under the title of A72 Account of the American Baptist Mission to tbe Barman Empire.

Late in the spring she returned to Bradford for a few days, and after a whirlwind round of visits to Plymouth, Saugus, Charlestown, Cambridge and Salem, sailed with the Wades on June 22, 1823.

In Calcutta, she and the Wades were advised not to go on to Rangoon because war between England and Burma was imminent. The chief secretary of the Bengal government had even privately painted the background for her. The Burmese throne, successful for generations in wars of conquest, had coveted the riches of Bengal for a long time. The imperialist expansion of British power, as represented by the East India Company, was bound to bring it into conflict with Burma eventually. But in this particular case the English had not been anxious for war. Teak was almost all that Burma had to offer of a really attractive commercial nature, and the Company already had as much as it could use easily. Therefore, its local officers along the borders had always been warned to maintain a conciliatory attitude.

The English mistake lay in not realizing how abysmally ignorant the Burmese government was of British power. To the Burmese, England was only another Siam which they meant to conquer as soon as they had overrun Siam, Assam, and a few of the nearer countries. This was why Chittagong and Calcutta had buzzed for years with rumors of war.

But the old emperor, Bodawpaya, had been able to control his ministers. The new emperor, Bagyidaw, the one Adoniram knew, was not. Now Maha Bandula—handsome, popular and dashing—who fancied himself a great military leader, had won ascendancy over the king. Even now Governor-General Amherst knew the Burmese people were about to invade Cachar. But Cachar was a “protected state,” under British suzerainty. Its passes opened into Eastern Bengal. If the Burmese took it, they would certainly be in Bengal soon. Thus, willy-nilly, the English had to defend Cachar.

Burma threatened even more immediately in the Chittagong region. There Burmese raiding forces had been kidnapping British parties hunting elephants around Cox’s Bazaar on the pretext that they were trespassing on Burmese soil. They fired on British subjects proceeding up and down the Naaf River. This past September, they had rushed and taken a British outpost on the island of Shahpuri, well on the British side of the river. A letter of protest from Lord Amherst had been interpreted as a sign of weakness. The Burmese envoys had used it as a cue for further insolence, and the kidnaping of two British naval officers whom they trapped by inviting them to negotiate the various border difficulties.

All this Nancy told Adoniram as they traveled up the broad river. It was hard to believe, on that peaceful stream, that anything so terrible as war could happen. But at Tsen-pyoo-kywon, a hun~ dred miles below Ava, they had direct confirmation of the rumors.

Up to this point the trip had been delightful. Nancy had enjoyed the crowds that followed her through the villages when they went ashore. They had never seen a foreign woman before, and, she noted, “all were anxious that their friends and relatives should have a view... some, who were less civilized than Others, would run some way before us, in order to have a long look as we approached them.”

But at Tsen-pyoo-kywon they found a whole army encamped — Bandula’s, reputed to number some thirty thousand. As Adoniram knew, a pass threaded the mountains to Arakan on the seacoast, adjoining British territory. Bandula was obviously preparing a sudden descent in force on Bengal. The men Adoniram met made no secret of it.

Adoniram and Nancy wasted no more time on land, but promptly returned to their boat. A few miles up, they saw across the river a huge fleet of golden war boats, dark with huddled masses of soldiers, each dressed in a campaigning jacket of black cloth, wadded and quilted with cotton, each armed with a musket or spear. The boats looked something like huge canoes, with uprearing stems where the helrnsmen stood. Each boat was scooped from the trunk of a single immense teak tree, some six or eight feet wide. Bright flags and banners by the hundreds fluttered from them, and they made a weird, terrifying spectacle as their paddlers drove them down the river to the beat of the martial music played on board. In the center of this fleet floated the golden barge of Bandula himself.

It was impossible to escape observation. Within moments, one of the golden war boats sped across the river to intercept the mis—sionaries’ vessel, but they were allowed to go when Adoniram ex—plained that he and Nancy were Americans, not English, and were on their way to Ava by express command of the Golden Presence itself.

They arrived at Ava January 23, 1824, after a six weeks’ journey. A few miles below the city, Price met them in a small boat to warn them that he and all foreigners were now out of favor at the court. They were almost as suspect as if the government believed them spies. All the old Atwinwuns had been turned out of office. The new ones were strangers who had no interest in Price or in for—eigners. Price urged that Adoniram and Nancy stay at his new brick house, across the river from the capital.

But his house was so damp that within a few hours Nancy began to show signs of fever. The hut Adoniram had had built on his own plot of ground was uninhabitable. Their only recourse was to live on the boat for the tivo or three weeks it would take to put up a proper shelter.

While this work was under way, the widow of Mya-day-men called at the boat to see Nancy. With her spear—carrying husband’s death her honors had ended, and she was now only a private person. There were no other callers. Adoniram took Nancy to meet a number of members of the royal family, but their reception was not what he had expected. He visited the palace two or three times, but the emperor’s attitude was cold. Adoniram’s friends were not in evidence. The desire to see a foreign woman had evaporated. Soon he could not even pay visits, for the great new palace at Ava was finally finished and the king, queen, royal family and most of the officials retired five miles up the river to Amarapura, the old capital, to make ready for the great ceremony of taking formal possession.

There was not much to do but stay on the boat, await the completion of their little house, and hope that on royalty’s return to Ava it would feel more kindly disposed toward American missionaries.