er the rocks, and
wandering among the silent hills, he spent a free, careless, happy
boyhood.' Every day had its own romance, its hairbreadth escape, its
thrilling adventure.

Therein lies the difference between a man and a beast. At just about the
time at which James Chalmers was born in Scotland, Captain Sturt led his
famous expedition into the hot and dusty heart of Australia. When he
reached Cooper's Creek on the return journey, he found that he had more
horses than he would be able to feed; so he turned one of them out on
the banks of the creek and left it there. When Burke and Wills reached
Cooper's Creek twenty years later, the horse was still grazing
peacefully on the side of the stream, and looked up at the explorers
with no more surprise or excitement than it would have shown if but
twenty hours had passed since it last saw human faces. It had found air
to breathe and water to drink and grass to nibble; what did it care
about the world? But with man it is otherwise. He wants to know what is
on the other side of the hill, what is on the other side of the water,
what is on the other side of the world! If he cannot go North, South,
East and West himself, he must at least have his newspaper; and the
newspaper brings all the ends of the earth every morning to his doorstep
and his breakfast-table. This, I say, is the difference between a beast
and a man; and James Chalmers--known in New Guinea as the most
magnificent specimen of humanity on the islands--was every inch _a man_.

II

But his text! What was James Chalmers' text? When he was eighteen years
of age, Scotland found herself in the throes of a great religious
revival. In the sweep of this historic movement, a couple of evangelists
from the North of Ireland announce that they will conduct a series of
evangelistic meetings at Inverary. But Chalmers and a band of daring
young spirits under his leadership feel that this is an innovation which
they must strenuously resist. They agree to break up the meetings. A
friend, however, with much difficulty persuades Chalmers to attend the
first meeting and judge for himself whether or not his project is a
worthy one.

'It was raining hard,' he says, in some autobiographical notes found
among his treasures after the massacre, 'it was raining hard, but I
started; and on arriving at the bottom of the stairs I listened whilst
they sang "All people that on earth do dwell" to the tune "Old Hundred,"
and I thought I had