NEAR AND FAR
Dr. Carey, the pioneer of the band, arrived in India in 1793. Finding that the allowance of fifty rupees a month, which it was arranged that he should receive from the newly formed Baptist Missionary Society in England, was totally inadequate for the support of himself and his family, he accepted the offer of Mr. Udny, at Malda, to take charge of an indigo factory at Mudnabatty, on a salary of two hundred rupees a month. Carey remained at Malda for over five years, combining indigo-planting with missionary work, the study of Sanskrit and Bengallee, and the translation of the Scriptures.
In 1799 four other Baptist missionaries arrived, to support Carey and his associate, Mr. Thomas, a ship's surgeon, whose early missionary efforts had in the first instance turned the Society's thoughts to India as a mission-field. Of the four new arrivals, one died within three weeks of landing, and another twenty months later; Thomas also died, and the three survivors—Carey, Marshman, and Ward—remained to carry on, for over thirty years, the enterprise which they then began with so much zeal, and to leave a remarkable record of accomplished work, with which their names are inseparably associated.
The four missionaries journeyed to India in 1799 in an American ship, no doubt for reasons
225
