Three weeks after leaving Madras, Adoniram began to notice that the water sloshing around the ship was beginning to turn a muddy color. This could mean only one thing: They were near the delta of the Irrawaddy River. The next day, July 13, 1813, the Georgiana dropped anchor in the mouth of the Rangoon River, a channel of the Irrawaddy that ran across the delta to the sea. The river mouth was nearly a mile wide and was flanked by low banks thick with swamp grass.
They laid at anchor until a pilot came onboard to guide them upriver. As they began to move upstream, Adoniram stood on deck and stared at the country he had been planning for three years to make his home. They passed many small fishing villages with rickety houses built on stilts above the water. As he looked upriver, Adoniram could see something glistening in the afternoon sun over the top of the trees. If he had not read about the Shwe Dagon pagoda in Michael Symes’s book An Account of an Embassy to the Kingdom of Ava, he would have been puzzled as to what he was seeing. However, from Symes’s book he had learned it was the tallest of ten pagodas that had taken centuries to build. The pagoda stood over four hundred feet tall and was covered in pure gold. Inside were housed some of the most sacred Buddhist relics. Thousands of pilgrims came to pay homage to the Buddha each spring, and every three years a new layer of gold was hammered over the existing one.
As the ship got closer to Rangoon, Adoniram discovered that the city was not nearly as grand as the Shwe Dagon pagoda, nor was it at all like Calcutta. Rangoon was nothing more than a hugely overgrown village. There seemed to be few permanent buildings, the streets were muddy tracks, and the people were dressed like poor peasants.
When the Georgiana finally anchored off Rangoon, Adoniram went ashore for an hour before nightfall. Everything he saw confirmed his first impressions. Rangoon was a squalid city, more primitive and superstitious than any he had ever seen. His heart sank as he tried to describe it to his bedridden wife. Ann, who was normally cheerful, could take no more. She wept bitterly into her pillow. Unsure of what to do next, the Judsons prayed together. It was not the prayer of strong and courageous missionaries, however. Rather, it was the prayer of two grieving, desperately homesick and deeply discouraged people. “God,” they prayed together, “we commend ourselves to You and ask that You would soon take us to heaven, where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest.”
Chapter 10
Rangoon
The following morning there was nothing else Adoniram and Ann could do but disembark. Ann was too sick to walk, and an armchair with bamboo poles threaded through the arms was rigged to carry her. Adoniram walked along the deeply rutted road beside her. His wife was pale and scarcely moving. A large sunbonnet flopped down over her face. Adoniram anxiously hoped that now that she was back on solid ground she would soon recover. The hired servants carrying Ann set her down outside the customs house.
Within minutes, a crowd had gathered. Small children, completely naked, and many smoking cigars, giggled as they poked at Ann’s shoes. Several older women, brightly dressed in long tunics, their well-oiled hair knotted back in tight buns, drew closer and closer.
“I bet they’ve never seen a white woman before,” commented the captain of the Georgiana as he emerged from the customs house. “There’s no one more inquisitive than a Burmese woman,” he added.
As if to confirm his words, one of the women dashed forward and pushed Ann’s sunbonnet back out of the way so they could all see her face. A gasp went up from the crowd.
“See what I mean?” said the captain.
Ann smiled at the crowd, who giggled back.
“Go on in,” continued the captain. “I’ve filled out your debarkation papers.”
Adoniram motioned to the chair carriers who lifted Ann up again and carried her into the customs house. “House” was a rather grand name for the structure, which was really nothing more than a bamboo hut with woven grass sides. Through a series of gestures, Adoniram learned that one tenth of everything he had brought with him would be kept as a tax for the king. Both he and Ann were thoroughly searched to make sure they were not smuggling anything into Burma, and the correct papers were then stamped, and the couple was dismissed.
But where would they go? Adoniram knew of only one person in all of Burma, and that was William Carey’s son Felix, who lived somewhere in Rangoon. As it turned out, the Careys’ house was not far from the customs house. Soon Adoniram and Ann found themselves looking up at a stately teak home, quite out of place because of its solid construction. Adoniram pulled a rope attached to a bell, and within a few seconds an old native man appeared. The man was startled to see two white people at the gate, and he immediately swung the gate open and ushered the couple into a courtyard. Soon a tall, slim woman arrived, trailed by three toddlers. She was dark-skinned, but not as dark as the Burmese people. Adoniram guessed she was Felix Carey’s wife, whom he had been told was part Portuguese and part Burmese.
“Mrs. Carey?” he asked.
The woman nodded and lowered her eyes. “Yes. My husband has gone to Ava,” she said in broken English. Then looking at Ann, she gestured, “Come in, come in.”
Over a lunch of tea and rice, Adoniram was able to explain a little about who they were and why they had come to Burma. Mrs. Carey listened attentively and then invited the Judsons to stay with her until Felix returned. With great relief, Adoniram left Ann to rest and returned to the Georgiana to retrieve their belongings and clear them through customs. It took the rest of the day to accomplish this task, but by nightfall everything the Judsons owned was ashore. For better or for worse, they were now in Burma.
Felix Carey arrived home the following day. He explained that he had been in the royal city of Ava vaccinating the young princes and princesses against smallpox. Adoniram was intrigued by this. He had read about this modern idea of vaccination, but it was still very new and quite dangerous according to most people.
“I have studied it,” Felix Carey said authoritatively, “and I am convinced it is the best way to stop this terrible scourge. The king has given me permission to vaccinate the entire province.”
“Very impressive,” replied Adoniram. “The king must trust you greatly.”
Felix shrugged. “Today, perhaps, but tomorrow, who can say? Tomorrow he might decide to have my head. You can never tell in Burma.”
Adoniram nodded. “So I hear,” he said dryly.
Felix Carey continued. “It seems Providence has brought you here. My family and I are about to leave for a visit with my father in Serampore. My only worry in going was leaving this house with no Christian witness in it and not being able to continue work on my Burmese grammar book and Bible translation. But it seems God has it all under control. Your timing is perfect.”
Adoniram gulped. “But,” he spluttered, “how soon are you leaving?”
“Next week,” replied Felix. “But don’t worry, I will leave a housekeeper and a yard boy for you, and I know of a very good Burmese scholar who might be willing to teach you the language.”
“Thank you,” replied Adoniram, trying to digest the turn of events.
Over the next few days Adoniram and Felix Carey spent much time together. There were some customs Adoniram had to learn quickly, because to go against them could be fatal. Felix advised him to be very careful with his feet. “Know where they are pointed at all times,” he warned.
“What do you mean?” asked Adoniram.
“The Burmese are very concerned about feet. Never touch anyone with your foot. Never point at anyone with your foot. Never sit so that the bottom of your feet are showing, and never ever stamp your feet. That’s the most insulting thing you could ever do. You would never be forgiven for doing that.”
Such talk made Adoniram feel very uneasy. He wondered what other mistakes he might make. Everything was so different, he could end up insulting the whole city and never even know it!
Two weeks later Adoniram and Ann were on their own. There was not another English-speaking person in all of Rangoon. The couple had to rely on Felix Carey’s old servants to continue cooking and going about their business without any instructions from them.
Both Adoniram and Ann realized that learning the Burmese language was the most important thing they could do right then, and they began lessons immediately. The old scholar Felix Carey had recommended to teach them was a Hindu man who spoke no English. Lessons, which lasted for twelve hours a day, six days a week, were very frustrating at first. Adoniram and Ann had no way of discussing grammar or the makeup of the Burmese language with their teacher. Instead, they had to learn the language the way a little child would, by pointing at a familiar object and waiting to be told what its name was in Burmese.
Writing the language came a little easier, though. The Burmese alphabet consisted of many shapes made up of circles and arcs. It was not as difficult to write as it looked, and soon both Adoniram and Ann were filling pages with the rounded shapes that made up the language. However, when they came to writing words and sentences, they got a surprise. Written Burmese contained no periods, no commas, no question marks, no other punctuation marks of any kind. It did not even use spaces between the words. Since words all ran together, the reader had to make up his or her own mind where one word ended and another began. Thankfully Felix Carey had left the Judsons with the unfinished Burmese grammar book he was writing, and Adoniram and Ann were able to get some help from it as they studied. Adoniram loved the challenge of figuring the language out. It reminded him of the puzzle books his father had given him as a child.
The days turned into months as Adoniram and Ann struggled on learning Burmese. They were very lonely during this time, as only a handful of Europeans were in Rangoon, and they were either Portuguese or French. The couple longed for the opportunity to begin their missionary work proper, but both of them knew it was impossible without knowing the language.
Finally, in October 1813, three months after arriving in Burma, Adoniram decided it was time to visit Mya-day-men, viceroy of Rangoon, the ruler in charge of the city. He requested an audience with the viceroy and received a summons to the palace. The day of his audience, however, the viceroy seemed very bored and paid little attention to the American man stammering on in broken Burmese. Adoniram went home wondering whether the viceroy had even noticed he was there.
By the following morning, Ann had come up with an idea. She told Adoniram that if he could not make an impression on the viceroy, perhaps she could make one on the vicereine, his head wife. Adoniram was reluctant to allow his wife to attend court. The viceroy and his wife had absolute power, and they often had people who displeased them beheaded. Still, he knew that unless they secured some kind of favor from the authorities they would not get far with their missionary efforts, and so he agreed to let Ann try.
Later that afternoon, Ann went to the viceroy’s house, accompanied by a French woman who was a frequent visitor there. Adoniram waited impatiently for her to return, hoping everything went well.
Finally, Ann burst into the house, her eyes shining. “Thank God!” she exclaimed, untying her bonnet and hanging it up. “Oh Adoniram, I wish you had been there.”
Adoniram grinned at her. His wife was always at her best in a crowd; he had known that since the day he met her back in New England. “Tell me all about it,” he said.
“Well,” started Ann, sinking into a wicker chair, “we arrived early, and the vicereine was taking a nap, so about ten of the viceroy’s other wives entertained us. Actually, I think we entertained them. You should have seen them. They called their children, about twenty of them, and they all examined our clothes. They wanted to try on our bonnets and gloves and see our petticoats and stockings. I was just showing them what I kept in my pocket bag when the vicereine came in. You should have seen her, Adoniram. She is a beautiful woman, and she was wearing a gold embroidered gown and smoking a long, silver pipe.”
