tive missionaries
among their country-women, not only in Serampore but in Chandernagore
and the surrounding country.

The year 1800 did not close without fruit from the other and higher
castes. Petumber Singh, a man of fifty of the writer caste, had sought
deliverance from sin for thirty years at many a Hindoo shrine and in
many a Brahmanical scripture. One of the earliest tracts of the
Serampore press fell into his hands, and he at once walked forty miles
to seek fuller instruction from its author. His baptism gave Carey
just what the mission wanted, a good schoolmaster, and he soon proved
to be, even before Krishna in time, the first preacher to the people.
Of the same writer caste were Syam Dass, Petumber Mitter, and his wife
Draupadi, who was as brave as her young husband. The despised soodras
were represented by Syam's neighbour, Bharut, an old man, who said he
went to Christ because he was just falling into hell and saw no other
way of safety. The first Mohammedan convert was Peroo, another
neighbour of Syam Dass. From the spot on the Soondarbans where Carey
first began his life of missionary farmer, there came to him at the
close of 1802, in Calcutta, the first Brahman who had bowed his neck to
the Gospel in all India up to this time, for we can hardly reckon
Kiernander's case. Krishna Prosad, then nineteen, "gave up his friends
and his caste with much fortitude, and is the first Brahman who has
been baptised. The word of Christ's death seems to have gone to his
heart, and he continues to receive the Word with meekness." The poita
or sevenfold thread which, as worn over the naked body, betokened his
caste, he trampled under foot, and another was given to him, that when
preaching Christ he might be a witness to the Brahmans at once that
Christ is irresistible and that an idol is nothing in the world. This
he voluntarily ceased to wear in a few years. Two more Brahmans were
brought in by Petumber Singhee in 1804, by the close of which year the
number of baptised converts was forty-eight, of whom forty were native
men and women. With the instinct of a true scholar and Christian Carey
kept to the apostolic practice, which has been too often departed
from--he consecrated the convert's name as well as soul and body to
Christ. Beside the "Hermes" of Rome to whom Paul sent his salutation,
he kept the "Krishna" of Serampore and Calcutta.

The first act of the first convert, Krishna Pal, was of his own accord