t to open at Thal. The
second and third sons have received a medical training in the mission
hospital, and are both engaged in medical mission work--the second at
the Bannu Headquarters Hospital, and the youngest is in charge of a
branch dispensary built on the very land that his Muhammadan countrymen
tried to wrest from his father. On the last occasion of my visiting
this branch, just before leaving India for my visit to England in 1908,
this young doctor--Fazl Khan by name--had made a dinner for the poor
of the village, and nearly two hundred must have come to partake of
his hospitality. This custom of feeding the poor is often done in
India by those undertaking a long journey or some other enterprise,
so that the prayers of the poor may be a blessing on the work.

Well, after all the guests had partaken, the Christian doctor offered
prayers for my safe journey to England, and for the medical mission
work at Bannu and at Sheikh Mahmud, and after each petition all present
raised the cry of "Allah," being their way of saying "Amen." Now,
these were the sons and relatives of the very men who had burnt the
house of the Christian doctor's father, and tried to oust him from his
lands. This is an example of what may be accomplished in a fanatical
frontier district through the agency of medical mission work carried
on by an Indian Christian.

I am constantly getting requests from maliks (chiefs) of these
trans-frontier tribes to visit them in their mountain homes, and
when I have accepted I have received a cordial welcome, and been well
treated, while I have had abundant opportunities of medical mission
work. There is great scope for the itinerant medical missionary among
them, but he requires a base to which he can send cases requiring
severe operations or ward treatment. Small branch dispensaries in
charge of Indian hospital assistants are of the greatest value, and
there are many suitable places for such along our Indian frontier. The
advantages of such dispensaries I believe to be as follows; (1) They
exert an extraordinary Christianizing, civilizing, and pacifying
influence on the tribes in their immediate vicinity. (2) They form
subsidiary bases for the medical missionary, not only enabling him
to work up that particular district, but relieving the pressure on
the headquarters hospital. The assistant-in-charge sifts the cases
that come to him, tells some that their disease is irremediable,
thereby saving them the expe