Morning Prayer

It is not easy to make one’s way through the interiors of Borneo today. Imagine how much harder it would have been and the steadfastness required in the early 20th Century for an English planter’s teenage daughter to follow a Scottish trader from Rajah James Brooke’s capital Kuching to a settlement along the Batang Ai river in search of a missionary she had met only once before. There were steamers that plied the serpentine waterways from the capital to various trading and administrative posts along the mighty river but chartering one would have required sums of money which the young lady did not possess. The option which was within her limited financial means was to journey on foot with merchants who employed local guides. The route crossed head-hunter territory although, by the time the events in this story took place, it was considered a safer passage after the conversion of several of the major tribes in Borneo to Christianity.