The Careys stayed with George Udney and his mother for two weeks. It took that much time to coax Dolly back into the boat and for George Udney to answer all William’s questions about the indigo factory and the dye-making process. There was so much to learn, and William did not want to make any mistakes. George Udney patiently explained that it would soon be monsoon season and that was when indigo dye making began. For three months, starting the end of July, Indigofera Tinctoria (indigo) plants that had been planted in March were cut down at the stalk, and the whole plants were bundled up and brought to the factory on bullock carts. There, the indigo plants were soaked in huge vats of water.
While in the water, the plants were beaten to release the blue dye. To do this, the Indian workers stripped naked and waded into the vats, beating the water with huge bamboo paddles. At just the right moment, the water had to be drained from the vats and the leaves strained out, leaving behind the liquid indigo that had settled at the bottom of the vat. The mixture was then left to ferment before the remaining liquid was evaporated off, leaving behind solid cakes of indigo dye. The cakes were then cut into chunks and transported to Calcutta to be sold locally or shipped to Europe. Indigo, William learned, was in high demand because it dyed fabrics such a bright shade of blue. In fact, the blue coats worn by American soldiers during the American Revolution had been made from fabric dyed with indigo.
During his stay in Malda, William was asked to preach at the small church service held each Sunday in George Udney’s home. Just the thought of a church service reminded William of how lonely he had really been for Christian fellowship. On Sunday, sixteen English people, including Dr. Thomas, arrived for the service.
Afterward, William and Dr. Thomas talked privately. William forgave Dr. Thomas for the problems he had caused with the money and agreed that now everything was starting to work out well. The two men also talked about translating the Bible into Bengali. William was determined to keep working on the project during the nine months when there was no indigo dye production.
Finally, after two weeks, it was time for the Carey family and Ram Boshu to climb back into their boat and head thirty-two miles up the River Tangan to Mudnabatti, where the factory William would be overseeing was located. The current was strong, and the journey took three days. The factory Dr. Thomas was overseeing was located at Moypaldiggy, another seventeen miles on up the river past Mudnabatti.
When the Careys finally arrived, they found things much as George Udney had described them. A large two-story brick house with large venetian windows was set back just a little from the riverbank. Several servants dressed in white came scurrying out as soon as the boat tied up at the jetty. Inside, the house was furnished with everything an English family could want. For the first time since leaving England a year before, William Carey breathed a sigh of relief. His family was safe, they had a strong home and plenty to eat, and most important, he had enough money left over to continue his translation and missionary work. Things were beginning to look up.
The three older Carey boys loved their new home. From their upstairs bedroom they could see bright green rice fields stretching for miles in every direction. Spread out among the rice fields were small villages in the shade of huge mango and banyan trees. Unlike the jungle at Dechatta, there weren’t many wild animals prowling near the house, except snakes. They soon learned not to walk too close to thickets of prickly pear bushes. Deadly cobras lived among them, and a cobra’s bite meant certain death, often in less than an hour.
William had been in the new home a month when the monsoon rains began signaling it was time to harvest the indigo plants. He pulled out all the notes he had taken during his conversations with George Udney and prepared to set to work making dye.
The night before the factory was to open, William looked outside his dining room window and saw a group of men he had just hired coming toward the house. They were carrying a struggling baby goat between them. William hurried outside to see what they wanted.
“It is time for the factory to open,” began one of the men in Bengali.
William nodded with a puzzled look on his face, wondering where such a statement was leading.
“Then you must come with us, Sahib, “ the man continued on. “It is time for you to make the sacrifice to Kali. See, we have brought the offering with us.” He pointed in the direction of the young goat.
Now William understood what they wanted. He had seen statues of Kali, a huge, ugly Hindu goddess with four arms, a tongue that stuck out, and a belt draped around her waist with human skulls hanging from it. Kali was the goddess of destruction. William took a deep breath and said, “Kali is your goddess of destruction. You make sacrifices you cannot afford to her because you are scared she will destroy your crops, kill your families, and blow your homes away. I am not scared of these things, because I serve a God who loves me. I will not make sacrifices to a god who destroys things. The Living God gives life; He does not ask for us to take it.”
The Indians nodded quietly as William explained to them more about God and the Bible. William learned the next morning, however, that they sacrificed the goat anyway. When William came down with a bad case of malaria a month later, many of the Indian workers decided that it was Kali paying him back for his lack of respect.
Dolly and Felix continued their slow recovery from dysentery. The sickness had left them both weak and thin. Then in September, just as the last batch of indigo had been crated and put on boats for Calcutta, five-year-old Peter came down with dysentery. His small body was not able to resist the disease, and he died within hours.
William and Dolly were heartbroken, and since they were both ill themselves, they sent Ram Boshu out to find someone to make a coffin for their son. There were several carpenters among the men who worked at the factory, and William felt sure that one of them would be willing to help out, especially since he paid them well. But every one of them refused to help. They were all Hindus and would have nothing to do with a dead white person’s body. This was because of caste, the strict system of rules that forbade different groups of Hindus from doing certain tasks. If they did them, they would be breaking caste and would be thrown out of their families and villages. Handling the dead body of a Christian was against the rules for all Hindu castes. The experience demonstrated for William the strong grip the caste system had over every Hindu. When he recovered, William wrote in his journal: “Perhaps the caste system is one of the strongest chains with which the devil ever bound the children of men. This is my comfort, that God can break it.”
In the meantime, William Carey lay in bed too ill to do anything but pray that someone would have compassion on a family who had just lost one of its members. Because of the heat, it was necessary for Peter’s body to be buried the same day. But who was going to do it? Finally, Ram Boshu found four Moslem men who agreed to make a coffin for Peter and dig a grave in which to bury him.
Peter had been a bright little child, and like his father, he loved to learn new things. He could also speak Bengali like a native. While William grieved for him, his death had a much more devastating effect on Dolly. At other times when she had experienced great tragedy, like the death of her two daughters, she had taken a long time to recover emotionally. But after Peter’s death, she did not recover. Perhaps it was the strain of not having Kitty to help her, or the trauma of knowing people would not help with the funeral, or her own long bout with dysentery. For whatever reason, Dolly sank deeper into sadness and depression.
William, too, was also beginning to feel the effects of depression, but for a different reason. He had been in India for fourteen months now and still had not received one letter from England. He was feeling cut off and lonely.
Chapter 12
Spies!
“Surely you have not forgotten us?” William Carey wrote in his careful handwriting. He hoped those on the missionary society committee were still “holding the ropes” for him back in England as they had promised. But it was hard to believe that fourteen months after arriving in India he still hadn’t received a single letter from any of them, or from anyone else in England for that matter!
What William didn’t know was that the war between England and France had grown worse. As a result, the French privateers had become bolder. They were no longer content just to plunder off the English coast. Now they lay in wait for British ships all along the trade route to India. By the middle of 1794, two out of every three ships sailing from Calcutta were being boarded and looted by French pirates. Not only had William not received any letters from the committee, but the committee had not received any of the letters he had written to them.
During the remaining nine months of the year when indigo dye was not being produced, William visited the two hundred small villages that surrounded Mudnabatti. He inspected the fields where the indigo plants were grown and stayed on to talk with the people about their Hindu gods.
Dr. Thomas was just as busy in Moypaldiggy running a free medical clinic. It was the only clinic for miles, and Dr. Thomas’s house was surrounded day and night by sick people begging for help.
Both William and Dr. Thomas used some of their money to start a boarding school, which was attended by twelve young men. Among the subjects taught were geography, science, and Bible study. Ram Boshu was the principal, and the two missionaries paid for all the boys’ needs. The three men hoped to train up Christian leaders for the Bengal district.
William had made great strides in translating the Bible into Bengali. He had also set himself the task of learning Sanskrit. While the Sanskrit language was very difficult to learn, William had begun to see its importance. Sanskrit was an ancient language that had originated in India about 1000 b.c. Many European languages, such as Latin, English, Greek, and German, had words with Sanskrit roots. The Bengali language also had many Sanskrit words in it, which was one reason William began learning it. If he could understand Sanskrit, it would be easier for him to unlock the meaning of Bengali words. William had another reason for wanting to learn the language. Almost all of the classical Indian writing was in Sanskrit, and William realized that if he wanted to reach the educated people of India with the Bible, he would have to translate it into the same language as their classical religious writings. And so he busied himself learning the language.
William was grateful that he worked for the East India Company because by 1796, company officials had become even more determined to round up missionaries and other unwanted English people and return them to England. William’s job meant that he could go about his missionary work without fear of being sent home.
Yet, for all his work, William felt frustrated because he had not won a single Indian convert to Christianity. He had no difficulty attracting a crowd of two or three hundred people who would sit politely and listen to him for hours. But there were no converts. William held a short service each morning with his factory workers, who all nodded enthusiastically when he told them about how God could save them from their sins. But still no converts. Even Ram Boshu, who had sacrificed so much to help William with his Bible translation and missionary work, was unwilling to shut the door completely on the Hindu gods and be baptized.
At least things were going a little better at home, though. After more than a year and half of deep depression, Dolly’s condition improved a little, and she became pregnant again. In 1796, when William was thirty-five years old, Dolly gave birth to their seventh baby, another boy, whom they named Jonathan. Much to everyone’s relief, Jonathan was a chubby, healthy child right from the start. His arrival made both William and Dolly very happy.
