rmounted all my troubles and difficulties, I will tell, and
were I not a Christian I should be proud to tell, what I have been
engaged upon and accomplished during the last ten weeks. I have been
working in the printing-office, as a common compositor, between ten and
thirteen hours every day during that period; the result of this is that
St. Matthew's Gospel, printed from such a copy as I believe nothing was
ever printed from before, has been brought out in the Mandchou language;
two rude Esthonian peasants, who previously could barely compose with
decency in a plain language which they spoke and were accustomed to, have
received such instruction that with ease they can each compose at the
rate of a sheet a day in the Mandchou, perhaps the most difficult
language for composition in the whole world; considerable progress has
also been made in St. Mark's Gospel, and I will venture to promise,
provided always the Almighty smiles upon the undertaking, that the entire
work of which I have the superintendence will be published within eight
months from the present time. Now, therefore, with the premise that I
most unwillingly speak of myself and what I have done and suffered for
some time past, all of which I wished to keep locked up in my own breast,
I will give a regular and circumstantial account of my proceedings from
the day when I received your letter, by which I was authorised by the
Committee to bespeak paper, engage with a printer, and cause our type to
be set in order.

My first care was to endeavour to make suitable arrangements for the
obtaining of Chinese paper. Now those who reside in England, the most
civilised and blessed of countries, where everything is to be obtained at
a fair price, have not the slightest idea of the anxiety and difficulty
which, in a country like this, harass the foreigner who has to disburse
money not his own, if he wish that his employers be not shamefully and
outrageously imposed upon. In my last epistle to you I stated that I had
been asked 100 roubles per ream for such paper as we wanted. I likewise
informed you that I believed that it was possible to procure it for 35
roubles, notwithstanding our Society had formerly paid 40 roubles for
worse paper than the samples I was in possession of. Now I have always
been of opinion than in the expending of money collected for sacred
purposes, it behoves the agent to be extraordinarily circumspect and
sparing. I therefore was determined,