 After six months with Robert Morrison as his first and only help that had come to join the work from England, he took Morrison's advice to visit Java and the Chinese settlements in the Indonesian archipelago.Milne agreed and traveled south, distributing tracts and books, finally returning to Guangzhou on 5 September to spend the winter of 1813–1814 there.Milne spent most of his missionary career in the British Straits Settlements of Malacca, beginning in the Spring of 1815.