of
quiet time for study, and he could roam about the city and suburbs for
experience, recreation, and instruction, visiting mills and other large
manufacturing industries as he was inclined.

'After our parents had removed to Hamilton, James took lodgings in
George Street, a regular students' resort when the old college was in
the High Street. It is now removed to the magnificent pile of buildings
at Gilmorehill, in the western district of the city. The site of the old
one in the High Street which James attended is now occupied by the
North British and Glasgow and South-Western Railway Companies.'

James Gilmour left England to begin his Mongolian life-work in February
1870, and then commenced keeping a diary, from which we shall often
quote, and which he carefully continued amid, oftentimes, circumstances
of the greatest difficulty until his death. He gives the following
reasons for this practice at the time when he was living in a Mongol
tent learning the language, hundreds of miles away from his nearest
fellow-worker:--

'I think it a special duty to my friends, specially my mother, to
keep this diary, and to be particular in adding my state of mind in
addition to my mere outward circumstances. In my present isolated
position, which may be more isolated soon, any accident might
happen at any moment, after which I could not send home a letter,
and I think that by keeping my diary punctually and fully my
friends might have the melancholy satisfaction of following me to
the grave, as it were, through my writing.'

In the record of his first outward voyage he included a sketch of his
early life, which we briefly reproduce here, as the correlative and
complement of the picture outlined by his brother:--

'The earliest that I can remember of my life is the portion that
was spent in Glasgow, before I came with my parents out to the
country. Of this time I have only a vague recollection. Then
followed a number of years not very eventful beyond the general lot
of the years of childhood. One circumstance of these years often
comes up to my mind. One Sabbath all were at church except the
servant, Aggie Leitch, and myself. She took down an old copy of
Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_, with rude plates, and by the help
of the pictures was explaining the whole book to me. I had not
heard any of it before, and was deeply interested. We had