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Updated: May 16, 2025
The buildings were not all we could wish, but they were suitable for the climate and for our purpose. Our house was commodious, was in the best position for mission work, had a magnificent view of the snowy range, and we would not have exchanged it for the finest house we had seen in the plains. From the commencement of our residence in Ranee Khet, village schools received much of my attention.
One result of the school was that they began to attend, with great regularity, a service held every Sabbath afternoon in the hall of the school-house. During the last year of our residence in Ranee Khet, the attendance at this service was larger than at any previous period, and it was mainly composed of Doms.
Once, when thirty miles away from Ranee Khet, I met a lad whom I recognized as an old pupil. I asked him if he remembered what he had been taught. He said he did. He went to a house close at hand, brought a copy of St. Luke's Gospel, read at my request the fifteenth chapter, and explained its meaning with an accuracy which surprised me. At the same place I met a man of a different order.
We had much pleasure in these services with our own people, and had every reason to believe lasting good was done. Some of the boys of the Ranee Khet school expressed a desire to be taught English, and these came every second day to our house to be taught by Mrs. Kennedy.
Towards the end of that year it was arranged that our connection with Benares should cease, and that we should begin a new mission at Ranee Khet, about twenty miles north-west from Almora. Kumaon is a sub-Himalayan region, with Nepal to the east, the snowy range, separating it from Tibet, to the north, Gurhwal and Dehra Doon to the west, and Rohilkund to the south.
Some were forward with the promise to erect school-sheds, and to send their children, but the performance did not come up to the promise. When we went to Ranee Khet there was not a single house at the place. The only Europeans were two Engineers and a sergeant, and they were living in their cook-houses, preparatory to building houses for themselves.
If there had been a reward for informers I could have more than once won it by telling what I had seen. A very pleasant break during our life at Ranee Khet was a yearly visit paid to Nynee Tal, about thirty miles distant, which had become the seat of Government for the North-West for half the year, and a place of great resort from the plains during the hot and wet months.
I brought back His Majesty from Khnemet-heru, and the king gave me a gift of gold. I transported the King of the South, the King of the North, Āakheperkarā, whose word is truth, when he sailed up the river to Khent-hen-nefer, to put down the rebellion in Khet land, and to put an end to the incursions of the people of Asemt.
I have not had much experience of the by-paths of the country, but quite enough to have made me thankful for the new order of things. Very recently a road for carts and conveyances has been made from the plains to Nynee Tal, Ranee Khet, and Almora; but the route is so circuitous that the roads hitherto traversed will continue the chief means of communication.
The report made by them was so favourable that a considerable outlay was sanctioned for turning it into a retreat for English soldiers from the heat of the plains. The prospect of Ranee Khet as a European station, where soon a large population was sure to gather, was one reason for regarding it as a good sphere for a new mission.
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