Note 3 — Chapter XXVI · ACROSS LAKE BAIKAL TO TROITZKOSAVSK.

The story of the mission seemed to be this:—At the beginning of the present century there were four parties of foreign Protestant missionaries working in the Russian dominions, namely, (1) the Presbyterians, in the south of European Russia; (2) the Moravians, on the Volga; (3) some Swiss missionaries from Basle, who took the place of the Presbyterians, and worked upon their ground; and (4) the London Missionary Society, which was allowed to send men to the Buriats in Siberia. Among the last company were Messrs. Stallybrass, Swan, and Yule, who saw at once that the first thing to be done was to translate the Scriptures. Mr. Stallybrass left England in 1817, and lived in Irkutsk for a year and a half to learn the Mongolian language. In due time the translation was commenced, from the original Hebrew and Greek, and with such success did the work go on that they actually printed the Old Testament in their Siberian wilderness at Verchne Udinsk, to which place the missionaries removed from Selenginsk, and where they remained till they were sent home in 1840. The New Testament was printed in London. Their work was, therefore, of a preparatory and fundamental, rather than an aggressive, character. Nevertheless, they had a school, numbering, sometimes, from 15 to 20 scholars; but there was found a special difficulty in inducing children to attend, for not only were their parents utterly ignorant of the value of education, but they wanted the children to help them tend their flocks, grazing, not on settled pasturage, but as they wandered over the vast extent of the Trans-Baikal and the Mongolian steppes. Hence the children were at school to-day and gone to-morrow; and even when parents could be induced to leave their children with the missionaries during their own absence with their flocks, these children had to be kept and fed as boarders, and even then the parents begrudged the loss of their services. The object, however, of the Englishmen began to be appreciated, and tokens of success appeared. Then came the difficulty which all along had loomed in the distance. The Russian Synod, in its jealousy for its own Church, had expressly stipulated that the missionaries should receive no converts by baptism, and this had been agreed to, and, of course, kept. But when certain of the Buriats showed signs of having received the truth, in the love of it, the missionaries found themselves in a dilemma. The Russians wished the converts to be handed over for baptism to their Church, and, on these terms, were willing that the English should stay and work as hard as they pleased; but this did not satisfy the men, nor the committee of the London Missionary Society, and neither party was disposed to give way. About this time, however, great political changes had taken place. Alexander I., who favoured Christian missions, had died, and was succeeded by the iron Nicolas, who does not seem to have been particularly opposed to missions; but the Synod was jealous of foreign interference, and an occasion was found for dismissing all foreign missionaries from the Russian dominions, under the pretext that the Synod wished to do all its own mission work for its own heathen. The Imperial ukase to this effect was issued in 1840, and thus a mission was stopped whose foundations were laid by the English, and which produced a translation of the whole Bible printed in Buriat Mongolian. It had taught some few scholars of great promise, one of whom, at least, named Shagder, it was known (and probably many more did so unknown), was afterwards baptized into the Russian Church. How far the Russian missionaries among this people owe any portion of their success to the foundation thus laid I cannot say. Of the Russian mission I shall speak hereafter.