BURMAH, CHINA, ETC., ETC.

My dear children—­If you will look on your map of Asia, you will see, adjoining Hindostan, at the east, a country called Burmah.  This is another land of idols.  Here the “Baptist General Convention for Foreign Missions” have one of the most interesting and flourishing missions in the world.  The people of Burmah are, if possible, still further removed from divine knowledge than the people of India.  They are in reality atheists, or, in other words, people who do not believe in a creator or preserver of the world.  But still they worship gods, who, they say, have become so by acts of religious merit.  He whom they now worship is called Gaudama, or Boodh.  He is reputed to be the son of the king of Benares, and, if their history be correct, was born six hundred years before Christ.  The Boodhists are all idolaters.  They have many temples erected to the honor of Boodh and his image.  Before this image they present flowers, incense, rice, betel-nuts etc.  Like all other idolatrous nations, the Burmese are very wicked.  They do not respect their females as they should do.  They treat them as an inferior order of beings.  They often sell them.

A very singular custom prevails in that country.  It consists in paying a kind of homage to a white elephant.  This elephant is sumptuously dressed and fed.  It is provided with officers, like a second sovereign, and is made to receive presents from foreign ambassadors.  It is next in rank to the king, and superior to the queen.

Burmah is the country in which Drs. Judson and Price, and Messrs. Hough and Wade suffered so much, during the war with England several years ago.  Messrs. Hough and Wade were the first to suffer.  As the ships which were to make the attack upon Rangoon approached the city, they were seized and cast into prison.  Their legs were bound together with ropes, and eight or ten Burmans, armed with spears and battle-axes, were placed over them, as a guard.  They were afterwards put in irons.  The next morning, as the fleet approached still nearer the city, orders were sent to the guard, through the grates of their prison, that the instant the shipping should fire upon the town, they were to kill them, together with the other prisoners confined with them.  The guard, on receiving these orders, began to sharpen the instruments with which they intended to kill them, and moved them about their heads to show with how much skill and pleasure they would attend to their orders.  Upon the floor where they intended to butcher them, a large quantity of sand was spread to receive the blood.  The gloom and silence of death reigned among the prisoners; the vast ocean of eternity seemed but a step before them.  At length the fleet arrived, and the firing commenced The first ball which was thrown into the town passed, with a tremendous noise, directly over their heads.  This so frightened the guard, that they seemed unable to execute their murderous orders.