Show mrs bardsley Bard sEey again hears fears from brother travel letter no five rangoon burma november 11 1929 dear friends we left Teng gilan by row boat the district officer kindly lent us his boat find and furnished a crew of bagaus to pull the oars through the swamp of a river and across the strip of bay which lay between llan and cuaran our next stopping place there were two things about the bagaus that interested me their gay colored hats hate fastened on top of their turbans and their singing of a long in a high nasal drome which the whole crowd seemed to enjoy we soon learned they loved a joke and that they were generally laughing like the chinese they are inveterate gamblers and they seem to lose rea readily dily all they have to the hands bands 01 0 those thos e who run the gambling farms in borneo bagaus love gay colors have tastes tar far in excess of their pocketbooks pocket books ability to provide for though this i would not be the case were they not so EO lazy they love the sea and are commonly spoken of as the sea gypsies of the tropics it Is said that most ot of a bagaus time la Is taken up with stealing water buffaloes in one part of the chuu country and selling them in another ina inasmuch s as they do not drink intoxicants is nor eat pork they are edans th tho 0 one really wonders to what extent they are arc faithful followers of tho the prophet our experience with them was such euch ithac that I 1 shall never forget them the du i suns had been so meek and mild had bad taken with thankfulness what was agreed upon as their wags wage tor for services rendered I 1 had thanked for it as well as for the tip we added to their pay and bad been so lovable in all their ways then we fell into the hands of bagaus with their jangling their loud bolst boisterous erous clamoring I 1 tor for more than we agreed upon and their noisy nuisance thru and thru they reminded me once more ot 1 being in china with the carry men there I 1 felt greatly relieved when we left them at cuaran and took an auto to hesselton Jes selton the headquarters of the borneo mission and I 1 hope I 1 shall never have to need their services again so unpleasant was this first impression of 0 the bagaus carry men wo we stopped for a short visit with brother and sister Pak at tharen where they are engaged in the study of the cuaran dustin dialect we found them of good courage cheered them on by telling them about the progress of the work in all parts of the field wished them success and pressed on to the office where we spent a very enjoyable day in the home of pastor and mrs J I 1 W rowland As it was brother rowlands birthday we celebrated by going to the beach to take our lunch we enjoyed a good swim while there and only two of tho the party were stung very badly by the poisonous jelly fish which are forever flooding floating about in tropical waters these jelly fish have long poisonous tendril like things hanging down from them it Is these things that cling to you the moment you touch them and when you have rubbed them off by applying sand vigorously you find the part to which they clung burned as with a hot wire and terribly painful the next day we were oft off tor for what I 1 was going to be the most comfort able trip of the whole visit to borneo but my mind was soon to be disabused dis abused of its wrong conception the railway officials had kindly issued extra passes to the two visiting members of our union family and as rowland has an annual pass with them we all travelled in style travelled first class at any rate whether in style or not w we will let yo you judge our passes were dated so we could make as many trips as we I 1 liked during our stay at hesselton Jes selton how to describe that trip from jessel ton to benom I 1 know not some folks have accused me of being a man of whom the words just roll which accusation cusa tion I 1 think Is not deserved by my seit nor have I 1 ever felt at any time capable of having words roll out of me as fast as I 1 seemed to roll from one side of the seat in that first class coach t to 0 the other it reminded rne me at once of f something I 1 do not have the name ot of yet yet but which I 1 saw at long beach the last time I 1 was there it was a drunken or crazy electric car turned loose in a strongly etron gly fenced ln in building with a steel floor overhead was a network of live wires at the edges were strong bumpers to send the car off in some new direction and within well dare I 1 say it were people as foolish as the car itself appeared now tho the shaking up we got must have approached for surely it could not have exceeded what those people got in that electric car in long beach but the rocking the bumping tho the tossing the pitching and all must hove been worse on the borneo state railway I 1 that reminds me I 1 have a pom somewhere about that very train ond and that ride from hesselton Jes selton to benom let me get it out of my grip and copy it in here over the metals all rusted brown thunders the mall dinall to Jessel Jes selton tan town tearing on madly reeking not rate fate making up tip tinie time ashes two days late see how the sparks from her smokestack shower swaying on wildly et at three miles an hr ir they stop to examine a bridge sometimes they stick on the crest of a ridge sometimes they find the lin line e washed away and postpone po apone tl thra advance till the following day benom to Jes jesston selton tour ot of delight Tal talking kinf all day and the best of the right ight ov over e r the m metals atals all rusted brown drives on the mall to hesselton Jes selton town things are perhaps better now than when that was written but at best one gets terribly shaken up on that train still II 11 1 I have since wondered it if one reason tor for giving visitors passes was not to keep them from filing claims against the company for damages sustained in transit I 1 was sitting there reading out of a book supposedly I 1 hardy hardly know which side of nf the train I 1 was on but we will say sav the center for I 1 was there twice as often as I 1 wits was at either side naturally but after a rather severe jolt I 1 found myself reading the nearest page of a magazine of the gentleman who sat next to me leaving hesselton Jes selton the first thing in n the morning as that train does one Is reasonably certain nowadays of making the whole trip from hesselton Jes selton to benom the headquarters of the interior residency before nightfall and the distance Is just lust exactly eighty miles that does not sound like breakneck break neck speed does it no and it Is not there would bo be no aral train i left to drive back the next day d a y it if there was any speed displayed A at t that the trip Is ever so much better than the old overland trip which they say required ten days of real toll from the early pioneers before the advent of the steam line at benom we have our only station end and work among the but we trust that we shall soon have many stations among that people one of the chiefs had kindly opened his home to us as a place to hold meetings in the providence of god a young living there was delighted to fill in as a a translator while brother aglan agian our batak missionary to the Afu ruts Is acquiring the language thus the gospel Is being preached while the first of our missionaries sio sion aries narles to that people is still unable to speak the language himself we enjoyed our night in those jungles very much the old drum that used to call together tor for other purposes now ca calls ils together for religious meetings long and loud did they beat it then after a few minutes we ne saw the lighted torches flickering here and there as the came thru the jungles from every direction the torches are made of split bamboo braided together like homemade home made rope and dried they came in whole fa milles and all were carrying a bundle of something on their heads when they drew nearer we saw it was their mat to sleep on and some scanty rags tor for cov cring they always bring their bedding with them brother aglan explained and after the meeting they all sleep in the roomy veranda like hall of the chief till they can go home by morning light in that way they need not brave the wild beasts late at night I 1 it seemed so strange to me that there were so few children among the As a general rule the orientals Orient als have large families it Is more especially true of course of the chinese and the who believe in ancestral worship which n necessitates e cess large families so as to insure that it can never under any circumstances tall fall to those who will worship s the ancestral shrine and tablets B but t the are the first peoples I 1 ba haap met in the east who have very few children the chief himself had three wives and but one daughter and she looked sickly in another family there were two wives and also only one daughter many famines families with no children at all in them and but very few more than one child it must be a condition that could have been remedied or that could still bo be remedied if proper attention were given to their diet and mode of living while many ot of the tribes are so nearly like the that one oca cannot be certain as to which Is which still the mountain tribes of the differ greatly in appearance they are shorter and of slighter or more slender blender build than the tha and even fairer due no doubt to the dense jungle shade in which he be spends all his time the wear their hair long a fringe hanging down the forehead but tied up in a sort of a knot at the back with a piece of 0 bone for a hairpin he la Is fond of earrings ear rings 1 I would make a good modern modem women in that respect but gets along nicely without trousers to him his loincloth is sufficient the tha next piece he adds if he adds any Is a goatlike coat like we wear they formerly made their clothes from the bark of trees but now th the chinese trader supplies them their I 1 with gaudy gaud rd cotton cloth which makes a fine lo 10 loincloth in for the men the better fixed axed fl aln anc lally will wind fifty feet of this narrow cloth about ab ut their loins and leave a little hanging down for ft a sort of a tassel you be mean enough to call ich ch an a loincloth loin cloth still what would you call it many of the men wear beads or other necklaces about their necks their language does not vary greatly tho two or three of the tribes have a distinct dialect of their own their customs too do not differ greatly the same I 1 believe can be said also ot of their kittre their houses many of them at least aro are still composed on the order ot of he one we held our meeting in that Is laving a wide veranda running the whole length of the house with family cubicles opening on to it from one side aide ea each c h wife where there are several has n ne e such cubicle to herself the approach to these tb ese houses which are all from tour four tn six feet above the ground Is by means of a notched pole or post I 1 noticed that even the dogs learn how to get up on such crazy ladders the doors always have a round hole in them at the bottom 0 o the village dogs can come and go day or without having to be waited visited or on underneath Is t the he village pigs tyes and the hen roosts boosts and all it Is said in olden days that the used to tie up the bills of their roosters to keep them from crowing and thus giving away the location of the house or village when I 1 tell you that their cocks begin crowing about and crow off and on steadily ditt till morning you wont blame me too much when I 1 tell you that 1 I arr one wished the old practice was in vogue still rice bice beer is much indulged in especially at their feasts and the other special gatherings at that it Is said to the shame of the white man that both and are the least temperate when they live on the fringe of what the white man calls civilization that Is to say ary that those away from the influence and example of the planters and business men are more apt to abstain from drunkenness than those who know most about the so called western civilization how shime shameful ful this we were told while at benom that the has no form of worship whatsoever this Is indeed very interesting it if it Is true I 1 want at some time to go into that question very thoroughly for it if true it makes them the only peo peoples D es I 1 in the far east of whom can be ss to eo tar far as I 1 know slid and am conversant with the facts we have every reason to believe that they will make good christians when converted for the gospel Is the power of god unto salvation to all who believe we hope soon to have many believers among the tribes people of borneo low how we v w li we might have commenced to labor among them ten I 1 years ago for we should now have had barge constituencies among them but I 1 we ere are not to worry about the past which Is gone but to make the best use of the present which Is ours to be improved I 1 prom from benom we retraced our steps over that same rusty railed steam line and I 1 even made one more round trip on its ralls rails before leaving the country A couple coupe of days spent at the office and wo we were off for singapore and home yes it should have been home but as the family was still in shanghai I 1 had but the hollowness of an empty house to welcome me to headquarters consequently I 1 managed to get away from singapore as soon as my work was done i I 1 must not keep you longer in this letter for you have yet a long ways to go before you complete the rounds in this to me wonderfully interesting field I 1 have enjoyed every trip I 1 have taken in malaya I 1 only wish you could have taken them with me for I 1 am sure you would have enjoyed them fully as much as I 1 have maa mabe be you will pass this way some day and I 1 be at home working who knows in our next letters we shall deal with the newest part of our union and with the newest mission field in the tar far eastern division that of french indo ch chana n there will be three letters on travels and conditions there and about tour four on slam siam will follow those |