Noble Deeds of American Women. Various
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by the deleterious influences of the climate, that it was deemed necessary that she should go to Calcutta for medical advice, better physicians being located there than in Rangoon. She was so feeble that her husband was obliged to accompany her. She was soon removed to Serampore, where were eminently skillful physicians and a purer atmosphere. Her health so improved in six months that she returned with her husband to Rangoon. The malady which had afflicted her was the chronic liver complaint. It was not entirely removed at Serampore, and a few months after her return, it began to distress her more than ever. It was now thought that nothing but a visit to her native land could save her. Accordingly, on the twenty-first of August, 1821, she started for Calcutta, where, after some delay, she found a ship bound to England, by which route she returned, reaching New York on the twenty-fifth of September, 1822.
She remained in this country nine months. During that short period, aside from paying a visit to her relations, she attended the Triennial Convention at Washington, held in May, 1823; visited the larger cities North and South; attended numerous meetings of female associations; and prepared a history of the Burman mission which was so ably written that even the London Quarterly Review, and, if we mistake not, other English periodicals of high critical character, noticed it in commendatory terms.
The following extracts from letters written to Dr. Wayland while in this country, show the interest she took in the affairs of Burmah while absent from that land of her adoption. Under date of "Baltimore, January twenty-second, 1823," she says, "I want the Baptists throughout the United States to feel, that Burmah must be converted through their instrumentality. They must do more than they have ever yet done. They must pray more, they must give more, and make greater efforts to prevent the Missionary flame from becoming extinct. Every Christian in the United States should feel as deeply impressed with the importance of making continual efforts for the salvation of the heathen, as though their conversion depended solely on himself. Every individual Christian should feel himself guilty if he has not done and does not continue to do all in his power for the spread of the gospel and the enlightening of the heathen world. But I need not write thus to you. You see, you feel the misery of the heathen world. Try to awaken Christians around you. Preach frequently on the subject of Missions. I have remarked it to be the case, when a minister feels much engaged for the heathen, his people generally partake of his spirit."
Writing from Washington in the following March, she says, "I long to be in Rangoon, and am anxiously hoping to get away in the spring. Do make inquiries relative to the sailing of ships from Boston and Salem. I must not miss one good opportunity."
With her health much improved though not fully restored, she sailed for her Burman home on the twenty-second of June, 1823, and reached Rangoon on the fifth of the following December. She found the work of the mission prospering. The next year, however, a war broke out between the Burman government and the English in Bengal, and, not only suspended the operations of the missionaries, but jeopardised their lives. They were supposed to be spies employed by the English government. Mr. and Mrs. Judson, with Dr. Price, another of the missionaries, were at that time at Ava, where the imperial government of the Burman Empire had just been removed.
"It was on the eighth of June, 1824, that a company of Burmans, headed by an officer, and attended by a 'spotted-faced son of the prison,' came to the mission house, and, in the presence of Mrs. Judson seized her husband and Dr. Price, and after binding them tight with cords, drove them away to the court house. From this place they were hurried, by order of the king, without examination, to a loathsome dungeon, known as 'the death prison,' where along with the other foreigners they were confined, each loaded with three pairs of fetters and fastened to a long pole, so as to be incapable of moving. Meanwhile, Mrs. Judson was shut up in her house, deprived of her furniture and of most of her articles of property, and watched for several days by an unfeeling guard, to whose rapacious extortions and brutal annoyances she was constantly exposed, without being able to make any exertion for the liberation of the prisoners, or the mitigation of their cruel sentence. She however, at length succeeded in addressing a petition to the governor of the city, who had the prisoners in charge. By a present of one hundred dollars to his subordinate officer, their condition was somewhat meliorated, and by the unwearied perseverance of Mrs. Judson, and her affecting appeals to the sympathies of the governor, he was induced to grant her occasional permission to go to the prison, and at length to build for herself a bamboo shed in the prison yard, where she took up her abode, in order that she might prepare food for the prisoners, and otherwise minister to their necessities.
"At the end of nine months they were suddenly removed from Ava to Amarapura, and thence to a wretched place several miles beyond, called Oung-pen-la, where it was arranged that they should be put to death in presence of the pakah-woon, as a kind of sacrifice in honor of his taking command of a new army of fifty thousand men about to march against the English. This sanguinary chief had been raised from a low condition to the rank of woongyee; but in the height of his power, just as he was about to march at the head of the army he had mustered, he fell into disgrace, was charged with treason, and executed, at an hour's notice, with the unqualified approbation of all classes of people at Ava. His timely execution saved the missionaries from the fate which hung over them, and they were left uncared for in the miserable cells of Oung-pen-la, till the near approach of the English to the capitol induced the king to send for Mr. Judson, to accompany the embassy that was about to start for the English camp, for the purpose of averting the destruction that now threatened the Golden City.
"During this period of a year and a half Mrs. Judson followed them from prison to prison, beneath the darkness of night and the burning sun of noon-day, bearing in her arms her infant daughter—the child of sorrow and misfortune, who was born after the imprisonment of its father—procuring for them food which Burman policy never supplies to prisoners, and perpetually interceding for them with their successive keepers, with the governor of the city, with the kinsmen of the monarch, and the members of the royal household. More than once the queen's brother gave orders that they should be privately put to death; but such was the influence which Mrs. Judson possessed over the mind of the governor, that he evaded the order each time it was given, and assured her that for her sake he would not execute her husband, even though he was obliged to execute all the others. And when at last they were to be taken from his jurisdiction and driven to the horrid prison-house of Oung-pen-la, at the command of the pakah-woon, the old man humanely summoned Mrs. Judson from the prison where he had permitted her to go and sit with her husband, in order that she might be spared the pangs of a separation which he had not the power to prevent. Her own pen has traced, in lines that will never be forgotten by those who read them, the affecting history of the dismal days and nights of her husband's captivity. We follow her alike with admiration and the deepest sympathy as she takes her solitary way from Ava, at first in a boat upon the river, and then in a Burman cart, in search of the unknown place to which the prisoners have been carried. At length, overcome with fatigue, with exposure, and the bitter pangs of hope deferred, we see her in a comfortless cabin, prostrate with disease and brought to the very gates of death—while her infant is carried about the village by its father in the hours of his occasional liberation, to be nourished by such Burman mothers as might have compassion on its helpless necessities.
"Such is a single scene from this melancholy record of missionary suffering. History has not recorded; poetry itself has seldom portrayed, a more affecting exhibition of Christian fortitude, of female heroism, and all the noble and generous qualities which constitute the dignity and glory of woman. In the midst of sickness and danger, and every calamity which can crush the human heart, she presented a character equal to the sternest trial, and an address and fertility of resources which gave her an ascendency over the minds of her most cruel enemies, and alone saved the missionaries and their fellow captives from the terrible doom which constantly awaited them. Day after day and amid the lonely hours of night was she employed in conciliating the favor of their keepers, and in devising plans for their release, or the alleviation of their captivity. Sometimes, she confesses, her thoughts would wander for a brief interval to America and the beloved friends of her better days; 'but for nearly a year and a half, so entirely engrossed was every thought with present scenes and sufferings, that she seldom reflected on a single occurrence of her former life, or recollected that she had a friend in existence out of Ava.'"[6]
When peace was declared between