ing to revive the recollections of
former glory and prosperity; repeated by grandsires at even-tide to
their listening descendants, and sung by mourners over the graves of
their elders.

"They believe in a God who is denominated Yu-wah," a name certainly
similar to the Hebrew Jehovah. Some of their traditional songs are
curious and interesting. For instance,

"God created us in ancient time,
And has a perfect knowledge of all things;
When men call his name, _he hears_!"

And again

"The sons of heaven are holy,
They sit by the seat of God,
The sons of heaven are righteous,
They dwell together with God;
They lean against his silver seat."

The following stanza, says the writer above referred to, might be
mistaken for the production of David or Isaiah.

"Satan in days of old was holy,
But he transgressed God's law;
Satan of old was righteous,
But he departed from the law of God,
And God drove him away."

They say that God formerly loved their nation, but on account of their
wickedness he punished it, and made them the degraded creatures they now
are. But they say "God will again have mercy upon us, God will save us
again." One verse of one of their songs is,

"When the Karen king arrives
Everything will be happy;
When Karens have a king
Wild beasts will lose their savageness."

Professor Gammell says, in substance, that they present the
extraordinary phenomenon of a people without any form of religion or
established priesthood, yet believing in God, and in future retribution,
and cherishing and transmitting from age to age a set of traditions of
unusual purity, and containing bright predictions of future prosperity
and glory.

When Ko-thay-byu, the poor convert already mentioned, was baptized, he
naturally carried to his countrymen "the thrilling news, that a teacher
from a far distant land had come to preach a new religion, a religion
answering to the religion of their fathers." Others came to listen, and
to carry back to their secluded hamlets the joyful tidings; until "from
distant hills and remote valleys and forests, Karen inquirers flocked to
Tavoy, and thronged around _the teacher_;" listening to the new
doctrines with childlike simplicity and uncommon sensibility. Among
other singular stories that they related to the wondering "teacher,"
one was, that more than ten years before, a book in a strange tongue had
been left among th