CHAPTER XXIII - THE MUTINY AXD THE NATIVE CHURCH OF INDIA

Summary

The one condition on which the physicians allowed Dr. Duff to return to India was that he should still, for six months, abstain from work of all kinds, while he sought the climate of the Mediterranean or of Egypt for another winter. He reasoned that the dry and bracing yet mild air of the Dekhan, or uplands of Central India, is quite as invigorating to the invalid, while there he could return to his loved duties of missionary overseer. Setting out from Trieste, he and Mrs. Duff joined the mail steamer at Suez, but without their baggage. For the first few days in the Red Sea, their fellow-passengers were busied preparing a wardrobe for each. While Mrs. Duff went on by Ceylon and Madras to Calcutta, charged with the care of more than one expectant bride, as is the pleasant duty of Anglo-Indian matrons, her husband joined the Government steamer at Aden for Bombay. There, of course, he forgot all prudence amid the philanthropic temptations of the Western capital. But “the subsequent journey through the delightful region of the Konkan, and the magnificent mountain scenery of Mahableshwar to Sātara, in the edifying society of my beloved friend, Dr. Wilson, soon operated with a reviving effect.” From Poona by Ahmednuggur, Aurungabad and Jalna, where now the Rev. Narain Sheshadri conducts the most vigorous native Mission in the peninsula, he reached Nagpore, even then remarkable for the labours of Stephen Hislop, a colleague worthy of Dr. Wilson and himself.