The opening · free to read
Although many accounts have been written descriptive of the wild tribes on this border, there was still plenty of room for Dr. Pennell's modestly-related narrative. Previous writers--e.g., Paget and Mason, Holdich, Oliver, Warburton, Elsmie, and many others--have dealt with the expeditions that have taken place from time to time against the turbulent occupants of the trans-Indus mountains, and with the military problems and possibilities of the difficult regions which they inhabit. But Dr. Pennell's story is not concerned with the clash of arms. His mission has been to preach, to heal, and to save; and in his long and intimate intercourse with the tribesmen, as recounted in these pages, he throws many new and interesting sidelights on the domestic and social, as well as on the moral and religious, aspects of their lives and characters.
During a long career in India I myself have seen and heard a good deal about these medical missions, and I can testify to their doing excellent and useful work, and that they are valuable and humanizing factors and moral aids well worthy of all encouragement and support.
No one can read Dr. Pennell's experiences without feeling that the man who is a physician and able to heal the body, in addition to being a preacher who can "minister to a mind diseased" as well as to spiritual needs, wields an influence which is not possessed by him who is a missionary only.
As the author himself writes: "The doctor finds his sphere everywhere, and his hands are full of work as soon as he arrives (at his station). He is able to overcome suspicion and prejudice, and his kindly aid and sympathetic treatment disarm opposition, while his life is a better setting forth of Christianity than his words. There is a door everywhere which can be opened by love and sympathy and practical service, and no one is more in a position to have a key for every door than a doctor."
These few words fairly sum up the situation, and I fully agree with the view they express.
On such a wild frontier as that on the North-West Border of India the life of a doctor-missionary is beset with many perils. A perusal of Dr. Pennell's most interesting story shows that he has had his share of them, and that in the earnest and zealous discharge of his duties he has faced them bravely and cheerfully. I cordially recommend his book to all readers, and my earnest hope is that medical missions will continue to flourish.
ROBERTS, F.M.
December 19, 1908.
After sixteen years of close contact with the Afghans and Pathans of our North-West Frontier in India, I was asked to commit some of my experiences to paper. The present book is the result. I have used the Government system of transliteration in vernacular names and expressions, and I beg the reader to bestow a few minutes' consideration on the table of corresponding sounds and letters given on p. xvi, as it is painful to hear the way in which Englishmen, who, with their wide imperial interests, should be better informed, mispronounce common Indian words and names of places which are in constant use nowadays in England as much as abroad.
Nothing is recorded which has not been enacted in my own experience or in that of some trustworthy friend. In Chapters XIII. and XIV. it would have been unwise to give the actual names, so I have put the experience of several such cases together into one connected story, which, while concealing the identity of the actors, may also make the narrative more interesting to the reader; every fact recorded, however, happened under my own eyes. In Chapter XXII., the night adventure of Chikki, when he met an English officer in disguise, was related by him to me of another member of his profession, and not of himself.
I wish to thank the Church Missionary Society for allowing me to reproduce some articles which have already appeared in their publications, notably Chapter XX. and part of Chapter IV. I tender my best thanks to Major Wilkinson, I.M.S., Major Watson, H. Bolton, Esq., I.C.S., and Colonel S. Baker, for some of the photographs which have been here reproduced; and to Dr. J. Cropper for his kindness in reading the proofs.
We are at present engaged in building a branch dispensary at Thal, a place on the extreme border mentioned several times in the text, where the medical mission will have a profound influence on the trans-border tribes, as well as on those in British India. This will be known as the "Lord Roberts Hospital," as that place was at one time of the 1879-80 campaign the headquarters of his column.
The Author's profits on the sale of this book will be entirely devoted to the building of the hospital, and carrying on of the medical mission work at Thal.
T. L. PENNELL.
P. and O. s.s. "China," Gulf of Suez, September 24, 1908.
The book keeps going
Keep reading, and see it illustrated
Reading is free forever. Sign up and watch scenes appear while you read.
Scenes Storieta drew for other classics.
