It did not need the mistake of a clerk in drawing out the letters patent of Bishop G. A. Selwyn's commission to act as bishop from lat. 50º S. to 34º N. (i. e., from the Auckland Islands to the Carolines) to direct the Bishop's attention to the islands of Melanesia. In 1847, when Selwyn first went to Melanesia, Fiji had already been partially Christianized, Tonga and Samoa were practically Christian, the French were beginning to occupy New Caledonia, and the London Missionary Society had Rarotongan teachers in the southern New Hebrides and the Loyalties; John Williams had been murdered in Erromango, and a French Roman Catholic bishop had been killed at Ysabel, Solomon Islands. Selwyn wrote in 1849:
"While I have been sleeping in my bed in New Zealand, these islands, the Isle of Pines, New Caledonia, New Hebrides, New Ireland, New Britain, New Guinea, the Loyalty Islands, the Kingsmills, etc., have been riddled through and through by the whale-fishers and traders of the South Sea. That odious black slug the bêche-de-mer has been dragged out of its hole in every coral reef to make black broth for Chinese mandarins, while I, like a worse black slug as I am, have left the world all its field of mischief to itself. The same daring men have robbed every one of these islands of its sandalwood to furnish incense for the idolatrous worship of the Chinese temples, before I have taught a single islander to offer up his sacrifice of prayer to the true and only God. Even a mere Sydney speculator could induce nearly a hundred men to sail in his ships to Sydney to keep his flocks and herds, before I, to whom the Chief Shepherd has given commandment to seek out His sheep that are scattered over a thousand isles, have sought out or found out so much as one of those which have strayed or are lost."
Selwyn first reached New Zealand in 1842 and five years later his great mind and his godly strength and endurance prompted him to join H.M.S. Dido as acting chaplain on a voyage to Tonga and Samoa and to the southern New Hebrides and the Isle of Pines. It was at this last place that he saw a sandalwood trader, Captain Paddon, living in perfect security among a people credited with every evil passion and with a name for extreme treachery and cunning. Captain Paddon ascribed his safety to just and straight dealing, and the Bishop at once saw the value of this lesson and called Paddon his tutor. Just dealing seldom fails to commend itself to natives, but the Melanesian Mission had sad cause later on to know that disinterested conduct and the best of motives will not avail against outraged feelings or superstitious beliefs or even against the involuntary breaking of a tabu or a going contrary to some established practice of native etiquette.
On August 1, 1849, Selwyn sailed from Auckland in his own college schooner, the Undine, for New Caledonia and the New Hebrides, and [207/208] thus began what his detractors in New Zealand called his "yachting cruises." The Undine was a fore-and-aft schooner of 21 tons, and a square sail could be hoisted on the foremast when the wind was aft. The Bishop had already made several trips round New Zealand in this little vessel with Champion as master. In his later years Champion lived on Norfolk Island, and during my occupation of the chaplaincy of the island I had many opportunities of converse with the old man. He was naturally full of stories about the Bishop and his prowess. One story was told to his own detriment. On one occasion, when about to leave Auckland for Wellington, the Bishop on coming aboard found his captain drunk. He promptly put him below, shut the hatch, got sails set, and then took the wheel all night and navigated the ship past the many islets into open water. In the morning the Bishop opened the hatch and called out, "Champion, are you sober?" "Yes, my lord!" replied Champion. "Then come up and take the wheel while I sleep."
On Selwyn's first voyage to Melanesia he had, of course, no modern charts to go by; all that he had were some old Russian and Spanish charts, the latter being 300 years old. Champion, at my request, made a model of the Undine and presented it to the Mission; it is now in the museum at Norfolk Island. The discomforts of life on a 20-ton schooner in the tropics must have been very great, and in addition the Bishop's cabin was often occupied with sick and ailing natives. The fare on board was doubtless composed mainly of "bully" beef and hard biscuits, [208/209] but one is inclined to think that the following story, if true, shows hardness run to the death. The Bishop had called in at Norfolk Island and on Sunday a roast turkey appeared on the table. The cook was called and was asked by the Bishop where he got the turkey. "Norfolk Island, my lord," he replied. Then said the Bishop, "Have you got no salt beef on board? Heave that thing over the side."
Perhaps the most marvellous feat of endurance on the part of Bishop Selwyn was the compilation, while at sea in the Undine on the Melanesian trips, of his "Verbal Analysis of the Bible," which was intended to facilitate the translation of the Scriptures into foreign languages. Of this work it may be said that the scope of it is as yet too great for our present standards of scholarship. We are too parochial and confined in our thoughts, our efforts are too small and insignificant, our horizon is always so limited, and our efforts are too puny to allow us to work on such broad and comprehensive lines as the Bishop suggests. The greatness of his ideas fairly makes us stagger, so accustomed we are to puddling along in our own little corners.
The book had a twofold object; it was intended to act as a manuscript note-book to assist in the translations of the Scriptures, and also to provide a complete course of annual instruction on the whole subject-matter of the Bible. All the words of the Bible can be classified under less than 250 heads, and these are arranged alphabetically in the analysis, and provision is made for 60 subheadings in each case. References are given showing where each word occurs, either in the Old or in the New Testament. The book is so arranged as to supply a course of annual lessons on the Bible for every Sunday in the year and two or more of a less strictly religious character for every week. These are to be used for spelling and reading lessons, then with the references as lessons on the words of the Bible, then as the heads of catechetical instruction. The missionary is to write down in one of the columns the native equivalents for the various English words, thus enabling him to gain an accurate knowledge of the language of the people among whom he is working, so that the translations may be idiomatic and accurate, and so that as full and complete a list of words may be compiled as the language affords. With the assistance of others the Bishop hoped to expand the book into a complete polyglot dictionary of all languages and a universal cipher for international communication. And all the manuscript was prepared in the cabin of a 20-ton schooner in the tropics! A veritable triumph of mind and spirit over matter!
Bishop Selwyn's powers of body were equally on a large scale as those of his mind. His feat of diving and examining the copper sheathing on the bottom of the Undine, after she had been aground on a reef at Nouméa, well merited the generous applause of the British and French men-of-war's men anchored near by.
[210] The mission carpenter at Norfolk Island told me a story illustrating the general opinion held in Auckland as to the Bishop's ability to box. During the time of the Maori war a man-of-war's man and a marine were fighting in Queen Street when the Bishop happened to be passing by. An onlooker said to Kendall, the carpenter, "Do you see those two fellows fighting? Well, there goes someone who could take it out on the two of them with one hand!" Kendall pretended ignorance and asked who was meant, "Why, the bishop of course," said the other. Champion, of the Undine, used to recount how at Tanna, where the Bishop went first in 1849, a native came off and proceeded to air his knowledge of English, which was mostly of a blasphemous and filthy nature. The Bishop ordered the man to leave the ship and on his refusal bundled him over the side into the water. The man swam ashore and joined a group on the beach, and then the Bishop told Champion to lower the dinghy. "But, my lord," protested Champion, "surely you are not going to venture on shore." "Lower the dinghy" was the order. The Bishop then got into it and sculled himself to shore.
Selwyn's lack of conventionality and his indifference to what is generally regarded as the convenances of his position and his desire to get on with what he had in hand are well exemplified by the story of his carrying ashore from the ship the boxes of his chaplain, who had just arrived from England, and in later years we read of Selwyn himself superintending the recoppering of the mission ship at Kawau.
One result of Bishop Selwyn's first voyage to Melanesia in the Undine was that he obtained five native boys whom he took up to Auckland and thus practically started the Melanesian Mission. In the following year a voyage was made to the same islands again and Tanna also was visited. Some Anaiteum people were returned from Tanna and owing to heavy weather the crossing took two days, and the Undine had 35 people on board all that time.
In 1851 the Undine was replaced by the Border Maid, a schooner of 100 tons and costing £1,200, the money being subscribed in Sydney and Newcastle. The support of the ship was guaranteed in Sydney and by the Eton Association for helping the Melanesian Mission, and ever since then Eton has nobly done its duty by the Mission year after year. The founding of the Australian Board of Missions was another of the results of Selwyn's visit to Sydney that year. The Bishop lamented the passing of the little Undine, which had carried him so well over 24,000 miles of sea.
In company with Bishop Tyrrell of Newcastle, a voyage was made in the Border Maid to the southern New Hebrides, to New Caledonia, to Santa Cruz, and to the Solomons. At Malekula in the New Hebrides the whole ship's company were in serious peril of their lives, Bishop [210/211] Selwyn being on shore filling water-casks and Bishop Tyrrell minding the ship. Stones were thrown and arrows were shot, but the calmness of the whole party undoubtedly saved them from being massacred.
The Border Maid was found to be defective in gear and sails and was sold the next year. The natives who had been brought up to Auckland in her were taken to Sydney and were returned to their homes in a chartered big named Gratitude. A voyage was made in the brig Victoria in 1853 as far as Norfolk Island and the Loyalties, the Bishop being accompanied by the governor of New Zealand, Sir George Gray. Thus Bishop Selwyn completed seven voyages to Melanesia. Anyone who has visited the islands of Melanesia and has had experience with the tropical heat and the wet and muggy atmosphere, would hardly say that he had been on a "yachting cruise"; and when one considers the smallness of the Undine, and the confined space in which the Bishop and his passengers lived, and their sensations in being hove-to in the tropics for 48 hours during a hurricane, their food salt beef or pork and biscuits, one marvels at the courage and determination and endurance of this great hero. There were not wanting those who viewed with great disfavor the Bishop's missionary voyages; he was frequently told that he had plenty to do at home without taking up the new work; but who can dictate to a St. Paul? The fruit of the Bishop's devoted labor is seen to-day in the great missionary diocese of Melanesia.
When Selwyn visited a strange place his habit was to jump out from his whaleboat when 10 to 20 yards from the shore, and then to wade or swim to the beach; on his shoulders he strapped numerous presents, consisting of tomahawks, fish-hooks, handkerchiefs, prints, red tape. To the people who stood awaiting him on the beach he gave presents; he wrote down any names of people that he could obtain (how did he keep his notebook dry?), and made lists of words for future use. He bought their yams or coconuts and established friendly relations with them. In some places he produced one of the native boys who accompanied him and used him as a tame decoy, hoping to get a lad to accompany him. The Sydney Bulletin pictures to-day of missionaries in top hats and frock coats are at least 50 years behind the times. It was a common report in the Mission and it is an indisputable fact that both Selwyn and Patteson often went ashore in such regimentals, though we of to-day wonder how they managed to endure them. In my missionary play "Darkness and Dawn" I had represented Bishop Patteson as thus attired, but rather than seem to give countenance to the Bulletin idea I changed the dress. Bishop Wilson, on looking up his diary, wrote me that George Sarawia, Bishop Patteson's deacon, had informed him that he recollected the Bishop so dressed when he first saw him in the islands. The London Missionary Society also [211/212] has pictures showing John Williams at Eromanga clad in silk hat and frock coat. The modern missionary's dress is of a peculiarly non-descript character. One remembers visiting a man-of-war in the Solomons and looking rather like a beachcomber than a mission priest, a battered straw hat, no coat, shirt torn, skin burned as brown as any native's, white trousers the worse for wear, no boots on simply because there were none to put on; all were worn out with the rough travelling. We had just returned from a trip round Malaita (240 miles) in a whaleboat.
Some of the most pleasant natives one has known have been professional murderers, men who made their money by killing; they quite appreciate the value of Christian work among their neighbors. Most of the popular ideas as to cannibalism take their origin from the descriptions of old Fijian habits or in a measure from the present-day practices of certain African peoples, but cannibalism was never universal in Melanesia; in many of the islands, and even in parts of islands were it is known to be practiced, it is regarded with great abhorrence. Those of them who do eat human flesh eat it as a matter of course, associate it with no superstitious rites or ceremonies, and simply eat it because they learned the practice from the forefathers. The good old idea of the lurking savage going about with his chops watering, seeking whom he may devour, has no foundation in fact, and all writers of fiction have in the main abandoned it now under the light of ethnological research and with a better knowledge of the habits and customs of people. It may safely be said that the natives in Melanesia do not kill men purely for the sake of eating their flesh. Stories of ogres are common enough in the islands, men and women who have developed an inordinate taste for human flesh, but the ordinary native in a cannibalistic district makes no distinction between human flesh and pork; it is simply flesh meat.
The first Southern Cross of the Mission was built at Blackwall by Wigram's. She was a schooner of 65 tons. Miss Yonge had suggested, when Bishop Selwyn visited England in 1853, that funds should be raised for a ship among the readers of "The Heir of Redclyffe," then just published. Mrs. Keble and some friends raised the required sum and gave it to the Bishop. The Southern Cross sailed in 1854 from London on the same day that Selwyn and Patteson left England in the Duke of Portland. On arrival in New Zealand the ship was utilized for a trip to the South Island, and in 1856 Patteson made his first voyage to Melanesia in company with the Bishop. After the wreck of this vessel in 1860 on the Hen and Chickens, the schooner Zillah was chartered for the Melanesian voyages. She was slow and unsuitable, after the smart and speedy and comfortable(?) Southern Cross, and Patteson said that she was guiltless of making 2 miles an hour to windward in a wind.
[213] The year of Bishop Patteson's consecration the Dunedin, a vessel of 60 tons, was chartered. She was characterized as slow but sound. On all these ships the missionaries' practice was to have classes for the natives, and as in Patteson's time these classes were conducted in several languages which he alone know, his time must have been well occupied. The principle on which he worked was that "to teach Christianity a man must know the language well." Certainly it is easy enough to acquire a few words and phrases, but in order to teach and to drive truths home a good, solid, idiomatic knowledge of a language is required. During this same year Patteson made a voyage to the Solomons in H. M. S. Cordelia and greatly appreciated the comfort of his new surroundings. He made a landing on Ysabel, where he acquired a list of 200 words and phrases. The Bishop's practice ever was to leave his boat's crew and go ashore wading or swimming. Patteson and Selwyn were both good swimmers, and it surely requires some skill to swim with a bundle of hatchets and adzes tied to one's shoulders. We read of Bishop Selwyn swimming out in a surf at Omba and of Patteson spending two days and a night in the Banks Group in an open boat in rain and wind riding to an anchor. If sailors do things of this sort we marvel at their intrepid behavior, but how much greater is it when men delicately reared act thus in the performance of their duty for Christ's sake! We heard also of a mission priest last year in the Solomons who left an island at daybreak and after continuous rowing against wind and tide reached his destination the following night. And what shall we say of Dr. Welchman journeying across from Bugotu to Guadalcanar, 60 miles in an open boat, to visit the sick, and then returning the same way? "The noble love of Jesus impels a man to do great things."
While waiting for the second Southern Cross the schooner Sea Breeze was chartered in 1862, and the following year the new Mission ship arrived under the charge of Captain Tilly, who had been navigating lieutenant on the Cordelia and had volunteered to join Patteson. In later years we remember Captain Tilly as the Mission's secretary in Auckland. The second Southern Cross was a yawl-rigged brigantine of 93 tons and was also built at Wigram's. Her cost was £3,000, a large portion of which was contributed by Mr. Keble. Surely if Keble College realized the part Mr. Keble played in forwarding the work of the Melanesian Mission, some of their men would consider it their duty to volunteer for service in that Mission.
No steward was carried on the Mission ship and the missionaries waited on themselves until some of the native boys volunteered to help. This was ever Patteson's way, and Selwyn's too; they were quite ready to do all the work and rather preferred to stir up and quicken their boys into helpfulness by letting the idea sink into their [213/214] minds than to cause them to help through being commanded to do so; but this, of course, presupposed the working of a good deal of spiritual force in the mind of the natives, and one has to remember that a bishop or a person in high authority will often get attention shown him when an ordinary person may easily be passed over. A judicious mingling of the power of example and of the assertion of authority would seem to meet the case. If anything, the Mission, in following the practice of its great leaders, has somewhat failed to exercise the rights of its position, in trusting that the natives would themselves see and realize their duty by their spiritual fathers.
Before Tilly's time the Bishop used to see to all the provisioning of the ship for the voyages, hired the seamen, kept all the accounts, and frequently was responsible for the navigation. O tempora! O mores! We latter-day missionaries, when clearing from Norfolk Island, so far from attending to navigation, cared little in our agony which way the ship's head was pointed. What lively times we used to have: a ship full of natives, boys and girls, the decks cumbered with livestock, the hold, the cabins, the natives' quarters filled with stores and with luggage. There was often no available space for the boys to lie down in; the 'tween decks was littered up with boxes, tables, furniture, packages, all piled one on top of the other. Lucky was the boy who could curl up on the underside of a table stowed upside down. Some people seem to fancy that Melanesians never suffer from the same ailments that Europeans do, are never seasick, never get malaria, etc. There is an equally prevalent belief that natives do not mind the sun's rays at sea, and also that they have no objection to getting wet with salt water, whereas when a spray comes on board they instinctively try to dodge it; possibly this is owing to their objection to having the salt dry on the bare skin; and also they will always congregate when possible under the shadow of the sail to avoid the sun. In rain natives start shivering and their teeth begin to chatter long before a white man shows any signs of feeling cold.
Between Norfolk Island the tropic one generally expected to have a bad time on the Southern Cross. The weather was often very rough, with a cross sea running, and then everything started rolling about. The 8-pound tins of meat stored in the lockers in the cabin would often be shot violently from one side to the other; the bookcase door would threaten to break loose from its hinges, tumblers fell off the stand and were broken to pieces, lamps and doors swung wildly about with the rolling of the vessel, an occasional wave would dash into the side cabins, and to shut the doors meant suffocation. The bunks were arranged on both sides of the cabin, and where the ship was over full some luckless wight had to camp on the settee, and his experiences at night in a gale were somewhat exciting. As often as not [214/215] one of the bunks was occupied by some boy who was being taken home ill. But the crown of it all was making up the teachers' pay in the store-room, commonly known as "the sweat-box," the temperature between 95º and 100º, no air, a rolling ship, and the smell of the bilge water over all.
The old Southern Cross had no bath and we hailed with delight a chance of standing under the rush of water that came off the deckhouse in a shower. Tradition says that Bishop John Selwyn used to get them to turn the salt-water hose on him when they were washing down the decks.
Captain Tilly resigned in 1870 and Captain Jacob succeeded him and was in charge of the ship at the time of the Bishop's murder. The third Southern Cross was built in 1874 and Bongard was her captain from 1875 till she was sold. Bongard was the mate who took in the boat at Nukapu and picked up the Bishop's body. He had previously been mate on Henry Kingsley's yacht. The new ship was built in Auckland, a noted place for building good schooners. She was a three-masted topsail schooner of 180 tons, with a 24 horse-power auxiliary engine; her cost was about £5,000, of which £2,000 came from the Patteson Memorial Fund of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. After she was sold she was renamed Ysabel and was noted for her fast sailing.
The fourth Southern Cross served from 1891 to 1903. She was built at Wyvenhoe in Essex by a noted yacht-builder, a friend of Bishop Selwyn's. Her cost was £9,000 and Bishop Selwyn and his friends contributed the money. In rig she was a three-masted fore-and-aft schooner with yards on the foremast, and still bearing her old name she is in the timber trade from Hobart to Melbourne and may often be seen in the Yarra just below Queen's Bridge. Her present owner speaks well of her sailing powers, but oh, when on her how one longed to be elsewhere! Her sail area was much reduced after she reached New Zealand, owing to a fear that the hull would not stand the strain, and this reduction in driving force, together with the drag of the propeller, made it very difficult to keep her well up when tacking. In 1901 the Bishop asked me to go to Tikopia in the ship from Mota, a distance of about 100 miles. On a previous voyage we had done the same journey in 17 hours; this second time we left on Monday about noon in a heavy swell; when Tuesday dawned we sighted the island a long way to windward and at noon we were 20 miles to leeward of it, and it was 10 a. m. the next day before we landed. It was always a struggle to get from the Solomons to Santa Cruz, and sometimes it took the better part of a week, but the last stretch of 600 miles from Vila to Norfolk Island was a veritable sea of growls. It was generally a case of making less than 100 miles a day tacking against the southeast [215/216] trade-wind, and on one occasion we actually made a minus quantity in the 24 hours' run, so far as actual mileage was concerned, though we were in a better strategic position for getting south. Coming from the hot tropics, we felt the cold; our blood was thin and malaria insistent; supplies were apt to run short and we were perchance but poor exponents of Christian or even of Spartan fortitude. Captain Bongard remained in charge of the ship till 1897, and then he was succeeded by the mate, Mr. Huggett, a very old servant of the Mission, whom Mr. Hammond eventually succeeded.
The present Southern Cross arrived in 1903. Originally she had sail power as well as steam, but the sails were taken off and the masts reduced in number and size. Her tonnage is 500, her speed 12 knots, and she cost £21,000. Captain Sinker commanded her for nearly ten years and wrote a descriptive account of her first voyage to the islands, which is entitled, "By Reef and Shoal."