sion, they had studied the tenets on the voyage, but found
when they arrived, that the points of difference were subjects that the
trio at Serampore did not choose to discuss, lest their work among the
heathen should suffer by attention to personal controversy. However,
their own thoughts and the influences of the place led them to desire
baptism by immersion; and this being done, they considered it due to the
Congregationalists, who had sent them out, to resign their claim on them
for support, though this left them destitute. It was decided that Rice
should go home and appeal for their support to the American Baptists, and
in this he thoroughly succeeded, while the Judsons, after sailing for
Mauritius, where they found poor Mrs. Newell recently dead, made their
way back to Madras, and there found a vessel bound for Rangoon. It was a
crazy old craft, with a Malay crew, no one but the captain able to speak
a word of English. The voyage was full of disaster. A good European
nurse, who had been engaged to go with Mrs. Judson, fell on the floor and
died suddenly, even while the ship was getting under weigh, too late to
supply her place. Mrs. Judson became dangerously ill, and the vessel was
driven into a perilous strait between the Great and Little Andaman
Islands, where the captain was not only out of his bearings, but believed
that, if he were driven ashore, the whole ship's company would be eaten
by the cannibal islanders. The alarm, however, acted as a tonic, and
Mrs. Judson began to recover.

They reached Rangoon in safety, but Judson writes: "We had never before
seen a place where European influence had not contributed to smooth and
soften the rough features of uncultivated nature. The prospect of
Rangoon, as we approached, was quite disheartening. I went on shore,
just at night, to take a view of the place and the mission-house, but so
dark and cheerless and unpromising did all things appear, that the
evening of that day, after my return to the ship, we have marked as the
most gloomy and distressing that we ever passed." The mission-house was
not quite empty, though Felix Carey, who they had hoped would welcome
them, was at Ava. When Mrs. Judson, still too weak to walk, was carried
ashore, she was received by his wife, who could speak Burmese, and
managed the household, providing daily dinners of fowls stewed with rice
or with cucumber.

It was, however, a dismal place, near the spot where public execution