'Brazilian Adventure'
0f meeting a missionary in the Brazilian jungle:
"But he gave no hint of what was delaying him, and it was not until afterwards that we learnt that he had stopped because he would not allow his men to paddle on Sunday. Sunday!. We had forgotten all about it. To stumble on it suddnely in the middle of that uncalendared wilderness, and to find, moreover, that its existence could discipline this bright unruly life was as surprising as if we had discovered a degree of latitude embodied in a high brick wall. In waste places time is also waste; and a notice bidding us Keep Off the Grass would not have seemed more incongruous than this heroically irrelevant homage to a seventh day. We went on upstream, marvelling. The missionary, tortoise-bereft, sat down once more before his little tent."
.....
"But he spoke with some bitterness of evangelistic claim-jumping, and of the base tricks employed by the rival missions in the race for converts. It seemed (as on of us afterwards remarked) that bible-punching was a bit of a racket."
- Peter Fleming
"But he gave no hint of what was delaying him, and it was not until afterwards that we learnt that he had stopped because he would not allow his men to paddle on Sunday. Sunday!. We had forgotten all about it. To stumble on it suddnely in the middle of that uncalendared wilderness, and to find, moreover, that its existence could discipline this bright unruly life was as surprising as if we had discovered a degree of latitude embodied in a high brick wall. In waste places time is also waste; and a notice bidding us Keep Off the Grass would not have seemed more incongruous than this heroically irrelevant homage to a seventh day. We went on upstream, marvelling. The missionary, tortoise-bereft, sat down once more before his little tent."
.....
"But he spoke with some bitterness of evangelistic claim-jumping, and of the base tricks employed by the rival missions in the race for converts. It seemed (as on of us afterwards remarked) that bible-punching was a bit of a racket."
- Peter Fleming