“In the meantime the rainy season set in; and it proved a season of unusual sickliness, even for that sickly place. To add still more to the uncomfortableness of our situation, the season for the Buddhistic Lent, which continues several months, came round; and, probably for the first time in fifty years, foreigners were so far compelled to observe it as to abstain from eating flesh or fowl. If we had known of the prohibition in season, we could have been prepared; but it took us quite by surprise. A few fish were exhibited in the bazaar; but it was so disreputable to trade, even in these, that they could scarcely be found, except in a half-putrid state. The only baker in town left soon after our arrival; and we were forced to live almost exclusively on boiled rice and fruits. To the former I unfortunately took an unconquerable disgust; and the latter proved unwholesome to all of us. One child was seized with erysipelas; the other with a complication of diseases brought on, as we supposed, by the meagre diet, and exposure to the damp winds; and Dr. Judson himself had a most violent attack of dysentery, which kept him from his study-table six weeks. For myself, my appetite had failed in proportion to the means of gratifying it; so, without being ill, I was so reduced in strength as often, in walking across the room, to fall, or rather slide, down on the floor, not from faintness, but sheer physical weakness. One of the assistants also took the fever; and the nurse I brought from Maulmain, the only woman besides myself in the household, became seriously ill. Of course we had no medical adviser; and if we had desired it ever so much, we could not get away, as the monsoon was now at its height, and the small native vessels in the harbor were not only without accommodations for invalids, but too frail to be trusted with the freight of human lives.”
And thus again to her friends in America she wrote:
“RANGOON, _June_ 16, 1847.
“Trouble on trouble—trouble on trouble! You could scarce imagine, dear aunt Cynthia, people in a worse condition than we are now. Last Saturday evening Dr. J. came into my room with red eyes and a voice all tremulous with weeping. ‘We must be at the worst now,’ he said; ‘and in all my troubles in this dreadful country, I never before looked on so discouraging a prospect. We are hunted down here like wild beasts; watched by Government and plotted against by Catholic priests. The churches at home have made no provision for our going to Ava, the governor is importuned to send us out of the country, the monsoon is raging, and we could not go to Maulmain if we wished, and you are failing every day—it seems to me dying before my eyes—without the possibility of obtaining either medicines or a physician.”...
To what straits the family was reduced for food may be seen in the following sketch from Mrs. Judson’s pen:
“Our milk is a mixture of buffaloes’ milk, water, and something else which we can not make out. We have changed our milk-woman several times, but it does no good. The butter we make from it is like lard with flakes of tallow. But it is useless to write about these things—you can get no idea. I must tell you, however, of the grand dinner we had one day. ‘You must contrive and get something that mamma can eat,’ the doctor said to our Burmese purveyor; ‘she will starve to death.’ ‘What shall I get?’ ‘Anything.’ ‘Anything?’ ‘Anything.’ Well, we did have a capital dinner, though we tried in vain to find out by the bones what it was. Henry said it was _touk-tahs_, a species of lizard, and I should have thought so too, if the little animal had been of a fleshy consistence. Cook said he _didn’t know_, but he grinned a horrible grin which made my stomach heave a little, notwithstanding the deliciousness of the meat. In the evening we called Mr. Bazaar-man. ‘What did we have for dinner to-day?’ ‘Were they good?’ ‘Excellent.’ A tremendous explosion of laughter, in which the cook from his dish-room joined as loud as he dared. ‘What were they?’ ‘_Rats!_’ A common servant would not have played such a trick, but it was one of the doctor’s assistants who goes to bazaar for us. You know the Chinese consider rats a great delicacy, and he bought them at one of their shops.”
But amid all the discouragements and sufferings of his life in Rangoon, Mr. Judson did not lapse into despondency. He wrote to a friend:
“My sojourn in Rangoon, though tedious and trying in some respects, I regard as one of the brightest spots, one of the greenest oases in the diversified wilderness of my life. May God make me thankful for all the blessings which have hitherto fallen to my lot, and for the hope of those richer blessings which are just concealed by the cloud of sense from our spiritual vision. If this world is so happy, what must heaven be? And as to trials, let us bear up under them, remembering that if we suffer for Christ’s sake, with Him we shall reign.”