BRAVE WOMEN.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 336, 24 June 1911, Page 10

BRAVE WOMEN.

MISSIONARIES' SACRIFICES. Within the city of Fez, the capital of Morocco, that was close compassed by rebel tribes, live British women, four of whom are missionaries of the North African Mission, were living amid »11 the trials and perils of a siege. The roads were held by the rebels. The women could have left Fez before the situation became serious, but they decided to remain and continue the work of the mission among the women of the place, wdio live behind the veil in the white-walled houses of the city where no man but the master of the house may cuter. The incident is typical, and serves to bring into prominence the general question of the danger under which hundreds of English women missionaries work in all corners of the globe. In the Congo States, for example, where the station of the Baptist Missionary Society stretch away into the wilds I.iOO miles from the const, the women missionaries go out among hundreds of savages each day without thought of what might happen. They live in the scantily-built native h-.its in a climate that to Europeans is the very reverse of healthy. Here is the experience of one woman missionary in the heart of Africa: "We never think of any harm from the native; we just trust'them. Frequently we accomplish long journeys among them, most of the way travelling in hammocks borne by native' bearers. "Once when up ( on such a journey just ahead of my caravan in' the path through the scrub a herd of elephants stampeded. They burst through the undergrowth, tearing down trees and beating y, broad way flat for their progress. Anything alive in their path they would have stampeded over. Just a little more and cur caravan would have been in their course, and then ■" None of the women missionaries on the Congo thinks of the average discomfits of life there. Such things, for example, as little food to eat when thp stores of tinned provisions and Hour, which have to be brought up from the coast, run low, and the day when the new stock will arrive is distant, or the fact that it is deadly dangerous to. walk abroad after nightfall for ft-ar of a chance encounter with a snake. Letters from home come infrequently. Friends are seen at rare intervals. One woman missionary who has reeetitlv returned had relatives farther up country and yet, so great were her difficulties in travelling the distance between, that they found the best way to meet was to return home to England. Adventures great or less come to every woman missionary, but few encounter such a thrilling experience as that which befel Miss 11. M. Tuttle working for an American Congregational I mission.

When on a voyage from II),. Caroline Islands to Sydney, she fell overboard when the vessel was out of sight of land. She was an expert swimmer, and swam on for several miles until she picked up a piece of drifting timber and, clinging to it, was swept ashore on an island. For hours she was alone on tin's island until she sighted a passing native canoe. She managed to attract the attention of the natives, who happened to be friends, and they took her into their ennoe. Hut danger was not vei, over, for the canoe, with Miss Tul'lle aboard, was chased by a second canoe crowded with hostile savages who had just before attacked a trading schooner and butchered the crew. Fortunately, after a long stern chase tlie pursuers were out-duT-tanced.

Hardship and discomfort, every mile of the war. was met with in Persia not long ago by a woman of the Church of England Missionary Society who journeyed across Persia out of Ispahan upon a gun carriage. Hour after hour and day after day she spent riding upon this lumbering heavy-wheeled gun carriage amid a troop of Persian soldiers. A more uneasy, uncomfortable vehicle it would have been hard to find. ■ Its jolting threw her from side to side until, aired and aching in every limb, she was relieved when the time for encampment came. Then all she could be provided with was a small tent, a rug upon the ground for n bed, and a share of the rough food of the soldiers'. The country traversed bv the party was in an unsettled state, and there was always a risk that they might be attacked, and yet the missionary chose to make such a journey in order to reach a new field of work. Similarly it is the journeyings to and fro in China, where the Inland Mission and the Church Missionary Society have so many stations, that constitute the great ordeal for the women missionaries. The following description of « mission journey in Western China by a lady not long home shows what has'to be faced: "Sometimes we travel in pairs, but often a woman missionary sets out'quite alone with her Chinese servants. I have made many journeys like that, travelling in a chair carried bv coolies, with all my luggage packed away in two baskets borne by a third man. "Everything needed for U\o. journey has to be carried: tinned food, clothing —for. it is impossible to get anything washed—bedding, and even a wash'stand" basin and looking-glass. Nights are passed in Chinese guest houses by the way, and these nights are awful. T have spent many a night in the upper room of wayside houses, reached by a rugh step-ladder, with pigs grunting and nosing about, in the room below. "Rats ran around my bed upon tTfe floor, and over my head, and th«r# ni all manner of vermin. The absolute filth of these guest houses is unrenlisanle to a woman at home. You cannot hand your clothes upon the walls, for thev are so dirty, and often I have'tied strings across from rafter to rafter so that T might have somewhere to put unclothes and keep them awav from walls and floor." Many are the ways selected hy the women missionaries when they are upon itineraries lo attract attention in the villages through which they pass. For instance, one missionary always makes it a. practice f 0 take her meals in the open air upon a table covered with a white cloth embroidered at the ede-cs with Bible texts in Chinese. Crowd, collect to read the writing and to watch the stranger feed, and thus she gathers a congregation curious to hear what message she brings. A recent mail from China carried a letter back to London from a.' woman missionary upon a tinv island in the South China S Pa . She wrirps thn( . R])n is the only European upon the island, and when T lons, as Tdo so often, for the sight of a white face. T go and hiolc inroinv trlass; it is the only thing T <•»„ do." This Englishwoman, brought up in an English home, has been alone fur Hie sake of her work. She has dwelt m a. Chinese house, with Chinese servants, eating the same sort, of food—mainly nee—as the Chinese, and reading and re-rending volumes of Rnskin hi" her snare-time hours. She changed her English home for a life like that at the will winch came to labor in the mission field And there are scores of English gentlewomen like her, cut off from England and home, remote from any friends, lonely in strango lands-, and yet rejoicj ing in their work.