William Carey:
Missionary & Bible Translator

Though Modestly
Educated, He Earned
The Respect of Academics

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By age 14, William Carey (1761-1834) had gone to work as a cobbling apprentice in the town of Piddington in central England. He never attained a complete grade school education. Yet, he taught himself Latin and, after his conversion to Christianity, Greek and Hebrew. Eventually, he mastered dozens of tongues. He became a preacher, then a missionary to India. He finished translating the New Testament into Bengali in 1797. At the time of his death, he had translated all or parts of the Bible into 35 languages; Brown University had conferred on Carey a doctorate of divinity; and he himself had cofounded a divinity school in India.

Those achievements would have been extraordinary for an ambitious Englishman of means. But Carey was born to a family of commoners. Moreover, he suffered health problems from childhood. Because of allergies and skin disorders, he could not bear to be in sunlight for extended periods. His relatives expected him to live a thoroughly unremarkable existence as a cobbler.

But spiritual conviction—and a fascination with Capt. James Cook's worldwide explorations—took him to India in 1793 under the auspices of the fledgling Baptist Missionary Society. Weathering personal distresses (the deaths of his first two wives, two sons and several key colleagues), natural disasters and disputes within the mission team, he became one of the most famous Christian missionaries in history. In truth, he became a legend in his own time, serving 40 years without once taking leave from the mission field. Other missionaries and acquaintances back in England venerated him. Carey eschewed the attention. Late in life, he remarked of "how little I have done for God." His self-written epitaph reads: "A wretched, poor, and helpless worm, On Thy kind arms I fall."

Observers saw him in an entirely different light. Carey's best-remembered quote, from a sermon he preached, is "Expect great things! Attempt great things!"

Interesting footnotes to Carey's life: He sympathized with the American colonists during the Revolution. He went partially bald while a young man as a result of an illness. He flunked his first attempt at ministerial ordination because of his boring pulpit delivery. He protested slavery to the point of refusing to buy West Indian sugar. And he was a respected horticulturist who organized a botanical society in Bengal.

The Inuit
Astonishing Survival Traditions Continue
In the Far North

The name "Inuit" replaced "Eskimo" in 1977 in defining the dwellers of arctic North America and Greenland—officially, in the records of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference that year. (Many members of the language group in Alaska, however, still call themselves Eskimo.) Archaeologists have found relics of early Inuit communities some 3,000 years old in the Aleutian Islands and the nautical extremes of the Alaskan mainland. It's speculated that they came across the Bering Strait "land bridge" from Russia—but, interestingly, after other Native American peoples who settled far to the south.

Today, as in distant generations, the Inuit know how to survive in a land and climate bitterly hostile to most civilizations. Most of them live off the sea. They take fish, seals, walrus and other creatures not just for food but for housing materials, clothing, cords and heating/lighting fuel. Inuit farther inland hunt caribou, polar bear, and smaller game mammals and birds for the same kinds of provisions. While latter generations have adapted to industrialized life-styles, to an extent (company jobs, store-bought packaged food), others continue to live very much as their ancestors did. They roam with the seasons, going where they must to obtain essential game and fish. Some Inuit still, as in generations past, travel via snowshoe, dogsled and kayak.

Inuit arts provide fascinating studies by a people whose roots are preserved. For many centuries, they have carved masks of wood, pipes and ornamental knives from walrus ivory, tools from bones and driftwood. But above all, the Inuit have demonstrated to more indolent peoples that nature in some of its starkest, most forbidding forms can be survived, endured and even enjoyed. They accept the conditions they're given and make much of them, with no repining.

The Great Blithering Antiquity Quiz:

1) Scarlet Sister Mary, winner of the 1929 Pulitzer Prize, was written by:
a) Julia Peterkin
b) Thornton Wilder
c) Margaret Mitchell
d) Pearl Buck

2) True or false: Karl Doenitz (1891-1980) was the German U-boat mastermind of World War II.

3) In what year was the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs created?
a) 1794
b) 1824
c) 1851
d) 1879

4) The major seaport of Wonsan, which was opened to foreign trade in 1883, is in what country?

5) True or false: Pedro Santana (1801-64) was the first president of Mexico.

CHECK YOUR ANSWERS

Mencken—Ol'
"Snarls & Quarrels"

"Writing books," once lamented journalist and author Henry L. Mencken (who wrote books), "is certainly a most unpleasant occupation. It is lonesome, unsanitary, and maddening. Many authors go crazy."

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