r a tiger in
our walks; on Penang Hill, also, there was a large tiger staying in the
woods. During one of our visits, we tracked his footsteps in a cave on
the hill; and he carried off a calf from a gentleman's cow-house near
us--at another time a pony from a neighbour's stable. Tigers do not,
however, live at Penang: they occasionally swim over the strait from
Johore, opposite the island, if driven by hunger. The natives made deep
pits to catch them, with bamboo spears at the bottom to transfix them
when they fall in. On one occasion a French Roman Catholic missionary
fell into one of these tiger-pits, and remained there, starved and
wounded, for three days before he was discovered. He was a very good
man, and gave a wonderful account of his happiness, his visions of
heavenly bliss while dying in that slow torture, for he was too far gone
to be restored. He died rejoicing that he had known what it was to
suffer with Christ.

The last two years of our life at Sarawak, the Bishop's health failed
and caused me much anxiety. The long jungle walks, which were so
necessary in getting about from one mission to another, became more and
more difficult to him. Often he had to stop and lie down under a tree
till the palpitation of his heart abated; repeated attacks of Labuan
fever affected his liver; and our friends often warned us that we ought
to go home to save his life. The interest of the different missions
increased so much at this time, that it seemed hard to give up a post
in which many trials and disappointments had been lived through, just as
success seemed about to reward the years of patient labour. The peace
and harmony of the mission was greatly promoted, the last three years of
our stay, by an annual meeting of the clergy with their bishop. They
came from their different rivers to spend a week at the mission-house,
and for certain hours of each day met in the church to discuss
missionary operations, Church discipline, religious terms, translations,
etc. It was very desirable there should be no diversity of opinion in
these matters, but that the different missions should have the same
plans, uses, and customs. And these meetings, besides the importance of
the subjects discussed, knit the missionaries to one another and all to
the Bishop, promoting also that _esprit de corps_ which strengthens any
institution, be it school, college, or Church in a heathen country.

A curious adventure happened to the Bishop in 1865.