MANY people have heard Mr. Upcraft talk enthusiastically about Christianizing the province of Szchuan, with its thirty-five million of people. As you may not have seen these missionaries, or their field of labor, let us go and visit them.
It will be a long journey. We must ascend the river Yangtze, the Mississippi of the East, sixteen hundred miles, to Suifu, which Dr. Mabie calls the St. Paul of China, stopping first, after traveling six hundred miles by steamer, at Hankow, "where, as at St. Louis, the heavy navigation of the lower stops." Day after day we follow the majestic river, past pagodas and monasteries and endless walled cities; past the rocky hills that dip their feet into the waters which skirt them on the north; past monotonous flat lowlands green with rice fields that stretch far away toward the polar star, and inhabited by millions upon millions of our fellow-men.
We reach Hankow on a lovely day; the sun shines, the birds sing, and our souls sing, too, with joy when, at the landing, we meet our representative in this heathen city, Dr. Lydia Wyckoff. She conducts us to the house of one of the missionaries of the Union, in whose family she makes her home. She is studying Chinese, and at the same time seizing every opportunity which opens to her for medical evangelistic work.
"You know," she says, "that I only came to Hankow on the 3d of last January, so lately that I can do little yet but study and pray. I have the privilege of being present for two hours daily in the woman's ward of the English hospital, assisted by a nurse who speaks Chinese."
"We have then no hospital of our own?" we ask.
"No, this station is very new. When I can speak the language sufficiently well, I hope to open an office and start things in that way. Everything in China moves along very slowly, but our dependence is on God to act upon the people so that we can get into their hearts and lives."
"You need great faith and courage."
"Yes," she answered, "but then we feel always that we have an army of praying mothers and daughters back of us, whom God hath chosen to plead his cause for China. Therefore we go forth, praying God to fight valiantly for us in the work which is most triumphantly his own."
Our time is short, and we leave Hankow for the West. On again we travel, through a teeming plain, and past a people very pronounced in their opposition to foreigners, for we are in the hostile province of Hunan. At length the limit of steam navigation is reached, so at Ichang we take to a native boat hauled by a careless, happy crew. Then begins an exciting journey, past rapids, eddies, and whirlpools, through cañons where the great river chafes in its narrow channel like an entrapped giant, between stupendous cliffs that shut out the sunshine and echo the shouts of the toiling boat trackers, and we have no glimpse of human life excepting, here and there, little brown, thatched, adobe farmhouses cling like frightened birds to narrow terraces far up on the mountain sides. And yet, before we reach our destination, we pass many a city crowded with inhabitants.
All is expectancy as, at last, after a three months' journey, we round an angular bluff and catch the first glimpse of the white pagoda, that insures the good fortune of Suifu. By noon we are anchored outside the south gate.
The brown, mud-laden Yangtze comes down from the shadowy lands we call Thibet, too wild and brawling to be of much use to navigation, until at Suifu it swings up from the southwest and meets the clearer waters of the Min, as that stream rushes down from the northern mountains. The city stands at the point of confluence of the rivers, where, working for ages, they have erected a little platform of level earth at the base of encircling hills.
On landing, we see first a grayish stone wall with crenated top, a narrow gateway, one of six through which we pass, a maze of narrow, crooked streets, unending rows of shops and houses, not more than two stories high, crowds of leisurely, civil men, hordes of saucy, fun-loving boys, a few venturesome women, then, at last, a whitewashed wall, pierced in the center by a Chinese door.
We pass through this and find ourselves in the courtyard of the house where dwell, right in the heart of the city, the two missionaries of the Society of the West, whom we have come so far to see. They are clad in Chinese garments, that they may seem less strange and foreign to the women whose hearts and homes they long to reach.
One of them is Miss Emma Inveen, who went to Ningpo from Illinois in 1879. We have long been acquainted with her work there. About two years and a half ago she joined the mission at Suifu. The need of woman's work for women was deeply felt in the newly opened station in Western China, and Miss Inveen's experience in work among the Chinese, her knowledge of the language, and her sympathetic nature, made her a welcome volunteer in the forward movement. The Chinese at Ningpo gave her the comforting assurance that "Szchuan people are all wild," but she was undaunted by the distance and difficulties presented to her, and has succeeded in making for herself a large place in the hearts of the women of Suifu.
Last December she had the joy of meeting at Shanghai Miss Frances Bliss, who came from Montana to be a fellow-laborer in the gospel.
Now they gladly receive us in their home, on University Avenue, in Suifu, and introduce us to their Sunday school, the "women's guest hall," where gather the sisters of the church for instruction and prayer, and all the different methods by which the gospel is preached to the women of Suifu.
Remote as this distant province of Szchuan seems to us, it has become the home of our missionaries. Here they find human nature the same as on our Western Continent, and heathenism as cruel and soul destroying as it is wherever it reigns. There is much to be done, even if the work is new. Every door that opens ever so slightly is entered with delight.
The faith and happiness of these ladies is such that we follow them about their work with a longing in our hearts to lead their life and receive their reward.
Far from being disheartened or sad, their attitude is best expressed in Miss Inveen's parting words as we bade her good-by:—
"How can we do otherwise than joy and rejoice in Him who has sent us forth, and who is leading us step by step into the unknown future?"—Helping Hand.