ougall learnt to
talk the Malay language, which he only knew from books when he first
arrived. The pure Malay of books is very different from the colloquial
_patois_ of Kuching. To my sorrow, I learnt this some time after, when I
was trying to prepare two women for baptism: they listened to me for
some time, and then one said to the other, "She talks like a book,"
which I fear meant that they only half understood me.

Soon after this we took four little half-caste children to bring up.
They were running about in the bazaar, and their native mothers were
willing to part with them; so Mary, Julia, Peter, and Tommy were housed
in a cottage close by, under the care of a Portuguese Christian woman,
the wife of our cook. Every day I used to spend some hours with them,
that we might become friends. The eldest of these children was only six
years old, Tommy, the youngest, but two and a half; so they wanted a
nurse. They were baptized on Advent Sunday, 1848, and were the beginning
of our native school.

CHAPTER III.

COLLEGE HILL.

We stayed at the court-house a whole year, while our house on the hill
was being prepared. The hill, and the ground beyond it, about forty
acres in all, was given to the mission by Sir James Brooke. It was then
some way out of the town, but as the Chinese population increased, the
town grew quite to the foot of the hill--College Hill, as it was then
called--and a blacksmith's quarter even invaded the mission land. At
first, in order to cultivate the property, nutmegs and spice-trees were
planted, but the soil was not good enough for them; when their roots
pierced through the pit of earth in which they were planted, and reached
the stiff clay of the hill, they died off. It was necessary to do
something to keep the land clear of the coarse lalang grass, which grew
wherever the jungle was cut down. So after a while a herd of cattle was
collected, and they improved the poverty of the land, at the same time
furnishing milk and a little butter. I say a _little_, because even
when seven cows were in milk, as they only gave two quarts a day each,
and there were always plenty of children in and out of the mission to
consume it, but little was left for butter-making. Cocoa-nut trees were
planted in the low ground, and some few grew up; but wild pigs were
great enemies to them, for they liked to eat the cabbage out of the
heart of the young tree, which of course killed it. In that seething
warmth of