| Description | Extravagance of Travancore missionaries is shocking, but trusts it is now checked; has met Caemmerer, also Schnarre, who reports melancholy state of affairs; conversion of people is hindered by "disregard if not opposition" of government and dissipated lives of Europeans; priests have been affected, the missionaries seeming mere chaplains for reading the services and stewards only of the goods of the church; Mr. Schreyvogel has become secularised by his associates, but Schnarre enjoys Christian conversation with him, whereas Caemmerer shows himself unwilling to talk on such subjects; when Schnarre first arrived he was so depressed that he almost fell into a melancholy as Ringeltaube has; he has a fine assistant in John Devasagayam; Strachan visited town and saw the mission church, built by Ziegenbalg and Grundler, who are buried on either side of the altar; the church was completed in 1718 and in the shape of a square cross, the four arms of equal size, the pulpit at one of the corners of the centre, altar at the east, chief entrance at north, the different compartments serving for the accommodation of the different castes; also visited the printing office, charity school and library; in the evening the children from the schools in the district assembled for inspection
8 May: Negapatam: information relating to Tranquebar was confidential; has been visited by David, brother-in-law of John Devasagayam and second assistant in the school, formerly principal catechist at Tranquebar; Schnarre had expected catechists from Tanjore, but Kohloff could not send them as the state of the people is as bad in Tanjore as Tranquebar, two thirds of the Christians being maintained in idleness at the mission's expense; hopes for some catechists from the seminarists
10 May: first stage from Negapalam: reports examination of Free School at Negapalam, superintendent Frederick Pillay; gives time-table of daily instruction |