Dr. Abeel reached Singapore just as Mr. Tomlin was on the eve of embarking on a second visit to Bangkok, and arrived with him in Siam on June 30, 1831, a few days after Mr. Gutzlaff, disheartened by the death of his devoted wife, had sailed away in a native junk for Tientsin on the first of his memorable voyages of missionary exploration up the coast of China. He had been in Siam nearly three years in all, and had baptized one Chinese convert, whose name was Boontai.
The new-comers found the people eager for the books and medicines they had brought, and they labored faithfully for the good of the many Siamese and Chinese of high and low degree who came to visit them. In six months, however, Mr. Tomlin was called away, and Dr. Abeel also was obliged to leave Siam on a trip to Singapore to recruit his impaired health. Returning to Siam, he labored on till November 5, 1832, when continued ill-health drove him finally from the field.
Just two months before this the Rev. John Taylor Jones, who had been appointed a missionary to Siam by his American Baptist missionary associates in Burmah, to whom also Messrs. Gutzlaff and Tomlin had written, left Maulmain, where he had been stationed, for Singapore, on his way with his family to his new field. Delayed at that port, he did not
