LIFE AMONG BANDITS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 16 October 1924, Page 3

LIFE AMONG BANDITS.

VICTORIAN MISSIONARY’S STORY. HARDSHIP AND HUMOUR OF CAPTIVITY. Details of the experience of Rev. E. H. Came, a Victorian missionary in China, who was held captive by mountain bandits for over a month, have been received in Melbourne. It will be recalled, says the Age, that, following the report that two. missionaries had been killed at Kweilin, four missionaries—Revs.- W. J. Jaffray (Canada), E. H. Carne (Victoria) and Revs Ray and Dr. Miller (America) — set out to investigate, and, if not too late, to rescue their brother missionaries. While travelling from Wuchow (in the Kwangsi province to Pingto, aboard the American hospital ship Roanoke, they were captured by bandits at Taiwin—ten miles from Pingto. The Canadian missioner, Mr. Ray, escaped from the band diiring a heavy storm in the mountains, travelling all night to Chaoping, and thence by Chinese gunboat to Wuchow. On June 16 a message from Hongkong reported that Mr. Carne was still a captive, having “refused to attempt an escape,.” The bandits were then demanding £3OOO from the Chinese Government for his release. The expedition in search of the missing missionaries was undertaken. it is understood, with the approval of the Chinese Government.

In a letter just received by a relative at East Malvern. Mrs. R. McDougall, Rev. E. H. Carne, writing from . Wuchow, says: “You will; have received my cable sent off on reaching here, and the time of anxiety is over. What shall I gay about it all? In the first place we could not but venture on the trip, since our friends were shut up in Kweilin —whether living or dead, we knew not. And now we-are all free once more, unharmed, and thankful to God for His gracious, deliverance!

“As to my sojourn in the mountains, it was not till the forty-second day that I was released. It was a case of waiting till .the robbers were willing to accept the sum offered by the Chinese Government as ransom, 5500 dollars (about £700). They wanted 200,000 dollars (£25,000) at first. In the meantime they did not treat me cruelly, but kept moving me from place to place on the mountains lest my whereabouts be detected.' In all I stayed at nearly twenty places. The usual pi ; oce-. dure was to assign a body guard of eight armed men to look after me, while the large force went off on some plundering expedition. The usual A r ariety of bed offered me was of spilt bamboo, hard and uneven. I slept once on the'bare earth. The robbers had'me in such outlandish places, on the tops of mountains 3000 ft high, that they had difficulty in obtaining food. Sometimes we fasted on red rice gruel only, without meat, or vegetables. One of the, robbers used to borrew my Bible —the only boolc left to me—and, with a pair of liose glasses (taken from Mr J_affray\ tied on to his head with a piece of cloth (for their noses' are flat), ho would pore over the English book by the hour. Then another would parade up and down in my cotton union suit, worn outside his other clothes. Another fellow found amusement in combing his hair with a fork. One afternoon the. robbers thought, the soldiers were, coming, and rushed me off to the dense undergrowth, wet and slimy, before I had time' to lace my shoes. After _I. had been hidden away for an hour, the robbers’ fears were found to have been due to a false alarm.

“I stood the strain, well enough, for a month or more, but the last place was too much for me. I was. confined over a cowshed, which was rarely cleaned. The thatched roof did not keep out the rain and the wind, and I took sick, had a fever for five consecutive days. Once I realy thought I was really finished. Just at this juncture deliverance came. The Chaoping officials got 4000 dollars together, after Mr. Oldfield (one of our missionaries) had press, ed them, but they lacked 1500 dollars of the required amount, so they provided seven rifles and two pistols as security for the balance. Mr. Oldfield came in with the carriers to the indicated rendezvous. They had brought a sedan chair for me. I was half carried down the steep mountain to the place where the sedan chair waited. A few more hours and I was received in Choaping, with .Mr. Oldfield and the rescuing party, to the accompaniment of a fiTe-cracker salute. To Wuchow I travelled with the Kweilin missionaries, who were making for the coast.”