put up a booth for us; soon we were very comfortable. At evening prayers I used a part of the picture roll. I had given half of it to the P'ia. All repeated the Lord's Prayer after me. Afterwards I taught the Ten Commandments, explaining each and repeating the first and second till all knew them. Then the Raja told me that he and his people wished to learn and receive the commandments later. After some questioning I found that he wished me to consent for him and his people to have a big drunk the next month. The reason for this mild request was that some time ago there were some marriages. The other party had given the customary feast of hog and whiskey and next month it would be the Raja's turn to give a similar feast. I did not wish to seem arbitrary so I told him I would think about it and consult with the elder and let him know the next morning.

I made the Raja's request the subject of special prayer, that I might be given the grace of speech so to put the matter before him as to lead him into the right not drive him away from it. For he was no ordinary Kamu. He had been to Maulmein, Mawkmai, Chiengmai, and down as far as Pitsanulok in lower Siam. He had lived in Lakawn for eight years and spoke Tai fluently. The elder, the Raja and some of his leading men were called to my booth. A long talk followed. The elder joined me in assuring them that when one agrees to "learn" he must "enter," that is he must learn with the intention to obey. When this was made clear to the Raja ho said "I will enter today and receive the commandments. We will have the feast and tear down the spirit shrines now." This meant the whole village, of fiftyfour adults. In the late afternoon we assembled in one house, in the inner room where the spirit shrines had just been torn down. The family said they wished me to sit just where Satan's seat had been, and I did. The feast was spread before us. The elder led in a prayer of dedication of the house and its inmates to the dear Lord Jesus. I followed in a prayer of consecration of the feast. Then before eating we went to two other houses and cleared them of Satan and his belongings.

In the evening we divided into three companies for instruction. After lessons my company asked to hear a hymn in English. I gave them a few hymns in my best style. The Raja said it made him want to dance. He said he wished I would sing English songs in the houses tomorrow; the spirits would surely flee then! He explained that his idea was that the spirits of the

land do not understand English and would be frightened by English songs. People stayed and studied till I was thoroughly tired out that night.

The next morning, Sabbath, they came early with their books to study the Lord's Prayer. After breakfast we had three gongs and a pair of cymbals to summon us to service in each of the five houses, whose spirit shrines we tore down. After luncheon a little nap! Then all the pictures of the chart, a fow rounds of teaching the Lord's Prayer and services in three more houses, making eight expositions of scripture that day. Then the Christians, just before dark, to the music of the gongs and cymbals, formed a ring and two of them danced! I called the elder and asked him what he thought of it. He said, didn't David dance before the Ark of the Lord? As we are exhorted to praise the Lord with cymbals, harps and all kinds of instruments and to come before him with dancing, I did not feel at liberty to forbid these demonstrations of joy on the part of the Kamu Christians. They are probably to be the Salvation Army of Indo-China. They seem to have the requisite zeal and fervor.

Before we left, the Christians of Huie Ngun gave me a letter for their Yûn brethren. It was a bamboo stick and it read as follows: One big notch means, send us a big man, a minister to baptize us next year and to teach us and the other Kamu. Two small notches on that side mean: Come the second Lao month, so as to give time for sufficient teaching. The six notches on the other side are six villages who have told us they will enter Christianity if teacher or elder come in time to give them a good start next dry season. The one notch by itself is a witch village which will surely enter.

Surrounding our goods with a circle of Kamu, Yûn, and American Christians, we sang again of the Happy Land, commended Ban Huie Ngun to the Grace of God, then said goodbye expecting to part then and there. But no, the Raja and quite a company with gongs and cymbals accompanied us for the forty minutes walk out to the main road. Truly few are blessed with such experiences.

After the rare and much wished for privilege of visiting all the other stations in the Mission, the tour of four and a half months, which began in Chiengrai ended in Chiengmai, where my wife and daughter were awaiting me for our furlough which was due and already sanctioned.

The bamboo letter was never answered. The following year

the Mission sent Dr. Campbell and Mr. Mackay to M. Sai but they found a closed door. The local commissioner had received orders from the French officials at headquarters "to forbid our missionaries to visit the Christian community, or to hold any religious service with them." So they shut the door- the door of hope for thousands of the Kamu people. We have some reason to think that the door may open again, however, in these post-war days if men and means are sent to carry on the work.

Word comes from time to time that our Kamu Christians aro faithful. One of them is studying in the theological school in Chiengmai, to be prepared to go back and work among his people. With his help, Mrs. Crooks of our Mission has translated First Peter in Kamu, which was printed in the Yûn character in Chiengmai. It is now in the second edition,

CHAPTER XVII

THE YUN

Of all the different branches of the Tai race that we have met and known those nearest and dearest to our hearts are the people of North Siam. It is not strange that we should love so loveable a people after living with them and working for them for the greater part of thirty years. Furloughs and tours of evangelization and exploration have kept me away for long months at a time; but always, I returned to them joyfully, feeling that there I belonged. With them was my home; for "home is where the heart is." There were many pulls at the heart strings when we finally broke the ties which bound us so closely to them and started anew in the land of the Lü.

To our friends and co-workers in the home land, with the exception of the Siamese, the people of North Siam are the most familiar and most dear. I wonder if you who have worked so long and so faithfully for them, will recognize your dear Laos people in the title of this chapter. If not let me introduce them to you under a new name. The old name and the old life of the Laos people have passed away. The name "Laos" as applied to the people of North Siam was a mistake, both in pronunciation and application. Even though it has been used for generations past alike by Siamese, Europeans, and Americans, it was never used by the people themselves. A few years ago, the Siamese government expressed a desire, which was equal to a mandate, that all the people of the realm should be called Siamese. So in deference to government plans and innovations the name of our Laos Mission was changed to North Siam Mission, and the North Laos people passed out of existence. Their country is now to be known only as Payap.

The name Yûn is not a new name. It is the name by which they have been known by the peoples around them from earliest history. When the first great Tai migration drifted down from China as early as the sixth century B.C., the Ai Lao found the country east of the Salween inhabited by the Yûn or Karens. This Lin-y, Tehen-Tching, the Karen kingdom, seems to have been a large domain extending from the Salween to the Mekong

and probably as far south as Cambodia. Its riches were said to be immense. As the Ai Lao offered their allegiance to the Yûn or Karen King he accepted it and allowed them to dwell in his land. In the early part of that century if not carlier they had built several large towns in what was then Yûn (Karen) country. Among these were Mueng Lem and Chiengrung, Chiengtung and Chiengsen the oldest town in what is now Siam.

According to the local history which I have read, in the year 543 B.C. the Ai Lao by strategy threw off the Karen yoke in all these towns and surrounding districts. But they got thereby the Karen name according to Mr. Hallet. He says that "the Burmese still call the country east of the Salween Yûn and the Shans who inhabit it Yûn Shans (or Tai)." The lapse of two milleniums and two centuries finds all these Yûn towns still extant as Tai towns. And the name Yûn is in use in these regions though now only applied to the Tai of North Siam and to the Buddhist literature and religious cult which has come from there. As we have seen, this is true in the Shan States of Burma, among the Lao of French territory, and the Lü and Tai Nüa of Yunnan, in fact wherever the Chiengmai character is in use it is the Yûn script, and the Chiengmai people are called Yûn.

The name Chiengmai seems also of Karen origin, as it is spoken of in history as "Tsching-mai, a Karen principality," in very early times. History records that the capital of the "empire of Chiengmai" has been at various times at Chiengrai, Chiengsen, Lampun, Lakawn, Chiengmai, and other places. Mr. Hallett says, "On the death of the King of Chiengsen, the King of Kengtung seems to have been acknowledged as the ruler of the Yûn Shans, for in 707 A.D. the son of the King of that kingdom conquered the northern half of Cambodia, settled there with a horde of Shans (or Tai) and drove the inhabitants to the south amongst the Siamese. The first wave of the Yûn Shans thus descended to the neighborhood of the Gulf of Siam."

From that time this whole region was an immense battle field, kingdoms and empires changing hands in a gigantic tug of war. Siam, Chiengmai, Cambodia, Vieng Chan; China, Burma, and Pegu were "mixed up in constant warfare until the armies had swept the country and gathered up as in a great net all who were not killed in battle." Great areas were left desolate without man, woman or child, and elephants, rhinoceroses, tigers, deer, and wild cattle took possession. In all these reverses and conquests the "empire of Zimme" (Chiengmai) had its part, until, in 1774,