1.07.17. Book 7: 17. Their First Camp

17. THEIR FIRST CAMP

FOUR hundred miles on foot and horseback and they reached their first camp in their own proper battle-ground. When Ragland writes his journal that first evening, English words do not feel enough, so he writes in Hebrew, "And he said, Hitherto hath the Lord helped us." The district they had entered now was the northern part of that tract of country about the size of Yorkshire, known by a silly mispro­nunciation of three sensible Tamil words con­noting to the Tamil ear three desirables, religion, food, protection: Tinnevelly, poor little tin-pot sounding word for Tiru-nel-veli, It is a fair sample of the way we maul any unfortunate "foreign" word that falls into our hands.

This, then, to be called for the sake of peace North Tinnevelly, covers (or covered, for the district is otherwise divided now) some four­teen thousand square miles, and contained two hundred and seventy thousand people scattered in nearly fourteen thousand country towns, villages, hamlets; numbers that sound as nothing to one accustomed to think in millions; but two hundred and seventy thousand is a number neither one man nor ten can reach effectively. The people in this one plain, one out of India’s myriad similar plains, were unreached. It matters not, says the Tamil proverb, whether the water above your head be an inch or a fathom, an inch of water can drown. The country is featureless, flat and for the most part given up to cotton and the coarser kinds of grain. Cotton soil is black, drying to grey. It does not offer anything for the after­glow to turn to carpets of gems. It is eminently prosaic and useful. But all plains have a beauty of their own; wide spaces, edged with blue mountains, patches of bright green where the young grain grows, or miles of dull gold when it is ripening; a long, green, snaky line where a road moves on, its beaten, dusty grey shaded by trees planted by the virtuous; villages, made of the same grey clay-this is North Tinnevelly. And here was the town, Sri-vilai­puthur, with its mountains in the background, and its famous temple, and sheet of temple water, and its twenty-two thousand Hindus; nothing, after all, was worth a thought but how best to bring to them the good news of Christ.

One week of eager work, and Ragland sat by Fenn’s camp-cot in speechless anxiety. Fenn had fever which would not yield. Rag­land was alone with him, as Meadows had had to go to the hills, another month’s journey. Who that has nursed a beloved comrade through an unknown illness, earnestly searching for guidance in books, baffled by symptoms not described or not recognized, with a heart racked by fears of making a mistake, but will sympathize with him? At last, to reach a doctor a dreadful journey north had to be undertaken. A typhus patient in a bullock bandy in the blazing sun of February-there are some experiences better left undescribed.

Fifteen long months were to trail past before the comrades met again. Those who judged the rightness of an action by its immediate result had doubtless much to say. As leader, the only one who could be blamed when things went wrong, Ragland drank of a bitter cup. "Lord, is it I? Who am I that I should be here at all? And yet, hast Thou not sent me? Strengthen me once again."