g.
Our dear friend Willie Brereton, who had done so much for the Sakarran
Dyaks, was dead of dysentery. There was no medical man when my husband
was away.

Our Rajah had been very dangerously ill of small-pox, and had only a
Malay doctor, who was devoted but ignorant. Happily Mr. Horsburgh, with
medical books to aid him, came to the rescue in time, but the return of
the physician of soul and body was much desired. I see, by my journal,
that after a weary passage of twenty-four days in a sailing vessel from
Singapore, we reached Sarawak on the 25th of April. Mr. Horsburgh came
to fetch us from the mouth of the river in the Siam boat, a long boat
with a house in it, which the Rajah brought with him from Siam after his
embassy to that country. Mr. Horsburgh told us that all the chief
Government officers were away, looking for Lanun pirates on the coast;
but we had plenty of kind greetings from the Christian Chinese, who came
about us in the bazaar, and all the school-children came running down
the hill with Mrs. Stahl, who almost screamed for joy at our return. The
house looked nicer than ever, for the trees had grown up about it, and I
felt most vividly that this was our chosen home, endeared to us by many
sorrows, but the place where we had received much blessing from God, and
where our work lay, and perhaps some day its reward, in the Church
gathered from the heathen into Christ's fold. We were not long alone;
the next day Mr. Chambers arrived from Banting with a party of seven
baptized Dyaks.

We had brought all sorts of beautiful things from England for the
Church. A carpet to lay before the altar, a new altar-cloth, also
painted shields for the roof. Our friends in England had furnished us
with a box of clothes for the Dyaks, cotton trousers and jackets, and
gay handkerchiefs for their heads. We always dressed the Christians for
baptism--it was a sign of the new life they professed at the font; but
we did not expect them to wear clothes generally, except their own
chawats, nor was it to be desired until they knew how to wash them. We
had also brought a beautiful magic lantern with a dissolving-view
apparatus for our people's amusement and instruction, for some of the
slides were painted by Miss Rigaud to illustrate the life of our Lord,
and there were many astronomical slides also. All these treasures
brought us numerous visitors. The Chinese Christians were all invited to
a feast at our house, after which the magi