Part 7

_Sunday, August 15th._--There are two very homely sounds which break the stillness of the early morning here, and the first is the cock which seems to have a peculiar faculty for crowing in these latitudes, he starts his chant before commerce is awake and he keeps religiously at it all day long. Here at Maewo, too, these birds are in prodigal abundance, their flesh is esteemed very delicate food, and is kept for great and exalted occasions. Here the male takes precedence of the female even in the matter of dumb animals, and sows and hens are looked upon as only fit food for women. The crow of the first cock is a signal for a general chorus, and then the natives begin to stir. As soon as they appear on the threshold of their doors another chorus takes up the morning song, and the pigs begin their squealing. Whether it is that one looks for more peace on Sunday morning, or whether one perchance is a trifle more inclined to take a little more sleep or a little more slumber, whatever the actual cause may be, I always notice that on Sundays there is always a greater noise from the domestic animals than on ordinary days. The pigs here are hand fed, and will not be denied, they squeal to their hearts’ content until they have their morning meal, and being in considerable numbers the noise is not sleep producing. In old days these animals were kept for their heathen feasts, but as of late these have fallen into disuse, so the pigs have increased until they have become one of the features of the place. At a Baptism or any great Church Festival such as Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, one or more male animals have to die, and although the possession of a flock is as much valued as an Englishman’s stud, no one ever grumbles to kill his animal when his turn comes round.

Being very hot this morning, and there being a prospect of the repetition of the Egyptian plague of flies, who always add to the discomfort of a congregation, we had school very early. Our numbers were slightly augmented by outsiders, but not quite to my satisfaction. After a hasty breakfast I started for Uta. This is a good long distance from here, and I was in a state of dripping perspiration when I arrived there. I found everyone keeping a Sabbath, but very few appreciating the idea of a Christian Sunday.

However, I had quite a large congregation in the neat little school but the ladies preponderated in point of numbers. We had quite a nice hearty little service, and they listened patiently to an address from myself. I wish from my heart I had a good teacher to place here, for I know he would be the means of doing much good work to God’s glory. The present teacher is a very good, conscientious fellow, but his own knowledge is not much above that of his own countrymen, and they grow weary of hearing continually the same thing. I was quite pleased with my visit, and amply rewarded for any discomfort I experienced in the journey. I do not expect that any immediate result will issue from such spasmodic efforts, but there is no knowing the power of grace, and God’s ways are not as our ways. Often it is that the last becomes first, and the first last. At all events I keep the door open, and I hope before long someone else may be raised up to settle among them as a permanent teacher. After resting awhile I took my homeward journey, escorted according to custom by the denizens of the village beyond their own boundary. I returned by way of “Na Ruru,” where “Anthony” one of our Norfolk Island trained boys has a school. He seems to be doing fairly well there, and has a nice school. After sitting with him for some time, the shades of evening began to close in, and I to feel somewhat famished, having had but little since morning. Bidding him goodbye I started for Tanrig, where I arrived in due course. After dinner I baptized three children, Maida, Victoria and Matthew respectively. The Font was very prettily arranged and decorated by Arthur Huqe, and the service generally, very nice. Later on we had Evensong, quite a refreshing and stirring service, at which I preached, and never before do I remember to have secured more attention. These children I Baptized this evening make up the number of Christians here to 100, under God, the fruits of my own, and my teacher’s work, and I feel that by the orderly and consistent lives of most of them, I can thank God and take courage.

I took as the basis of my remarks, our Lord’s last command to His Disciples, and I urged those who had already been admitted into the fellowship of Christ’s religion, to eschew all those things which were contrary to their profession, and to follow all such things as were agreeable to the same, and those still without the pale to lose no time in applying for that rite, the absence of which our Lord declared must be condemnation. Those words have a strong sound here for Missionary and heathen--“He that believeth and is Baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be dammed.” One realizes here their full weight, and solemnity, and power. Quite three parts of the congregation have dropped in to wish me good night, and by the hushed stillness over the place I can tell that God’s Word has not fallen to the ground. God grant that it may minister grace to hearer and preacher.

_Monday, August 16th._--The night was made perfectly hideous by the howling of the fiendish curs which are dignified with the name of dogs, the squealing of hungry swine, and the cackling of a poor forlorn goose whose kith and kin have left her a solitary representative of her species, and who seems to find her only solace in sitting outside my door and calling to her lost companions. The dogs are simply a pest to the place, they keep up their incessant bark all the day long, and all night they howl and prowl around. They are hideously ugly, undersized creatures, and are the more loathsome because they are the acknowledged scavengers of the place. They are not worthy to be called dogs, and any one except he was assured of the fact, would scarcely believe that they were dogs. They are supposed to be useful in catching wild pigs, but from their appearance you would fancy that it must be a poor specimen of a pig they would dare to tackle. It was a beautiful moonlight night, and all these sounds rending the still night air simultaneously drove sleep from my eyes, and produced such inward irritation and disgust that if a thought could have killed the lot, none of them would have troubled the world again with their noises. A most glorious morning enticed me up very early, and certainly the early dawn was very fresh and beautiful. We had Prayers very soon after daylight and even then the blue bottles had collected in great numbers and were by no means a help to devotion. These pests spring into existence at once as soon as any number of human bodies are congregated together, and are particularly active in church and school. The idea of them apart from their propensities is very nasty and disgusting, and when in a country like this without the concomitants of devotion, one wants all the solemnity one can possibly obtain, their presence and irritation are the more odious and nauseating.

To-day, according to custom, we kept the Christening Feast of the children who were Baptized last night. The parents of the children gave a most beautiful pig, and the women attended to the cooking, the men dispersing in many directions each in quest of his own business or pleasure. I went with a party to Ruosi where we bathed, and got back in time for the opening of the ovens, and the division of the feast. I said grace and then each one partook of his or her share of the plentiful repast, all eating together in the most harmonious fashion, and not as in old days the sexes keeping religiously apart. This middle wall of separation has been almost entirely broken down, and family life and sociability have taken the place of the old seclusion and division. It was a most glorious night but the people were too tired to dance, and we all retired early to our houses. I kept busy till very late writing up arrears of correspondence and reading, and was the last in the village out of bed.

_Tuesday, August 17th._--The most glorious day from earliest morning till now at night, the evening one of the most beautiful I ever saw, when the moon rose it was a most perfect night above and below, the sky studded with myriads of stars and absolutely cloudless, here everything hushed in peaceful slumber, except the restless, ever-singing crickets, whose buzz is continuously kept up by night and day. At the heathen end of the village there was a sort of Irish wake kept up to-day, but there was no “tangi” or any ceremony except a pig being killed, and a great feast being prepared. Formerly, death days were kept with great strictness, and the day of death and the 100th were observed with great festivities. I have seen nothing of the kind now for years, and I fancied the custom had quite died out. It was supposed in old days when the people were still heathen, that the disembodied spirit, after it left its earthly tenement, hung about hungry and restless on the thick creepers in the bush, and on the day of death a great feast was prepared for it, after which it retired to the place of departed spirits called Banoi. This same Banoi is near Tasmouri, but I have never seen it. The idea, I believe, is that when the spirit is at length at rest, its stone is placed in a certain cave or pit there exists there, and the people who have seen the place, tell me that certainly there far inland are smooth seaside stones laid in wonderful regularity, and in old days supposed to be put there by successive spirits in order as they died. Until quite recently, no one ventured into this ghostly place, and it was regarded as eminently sacred. Some day I hope to go there and examine it for myself.

I cannot find out the rationale of the subsequent death days, but they seem to have more to do with the living than the dead, and are supposed to show the departed one that he or she is still kept in faithful and affectionate memory.

In old days everyone was careful to have one good pig at least, in readiness for the day of his death, and any others which he might possess at the time of his departure, his friends were careful to kill in his honour.

They carefully kept the days, principally the tens, I think, and religiously observed the 100th, after which remembrance seemed no longer necessary, but before that, I am afraid, there was a large amount of selfishness about the death days, and more was thought of the living in them than of the dead. The people tell me how strictly these days were kept formerly, they dispensed with their regular ordinary food sometimes for the whole 100 days, and ate only such roots and fruits as grow wild in the bush, religiously abstaining from all garden produce until the full time had expired. Some went even beyond this when a very particular person died, and for the whole 100 days ate only one kind of root, and that the most difficult to obtain, strenuously refusing to partake of food in common with others. I have known a man myself adhere to this rigid, self-imposed abstention, in the case of the death of a son, and of a wife, not here however, but at Opa. A man once came into my house over there, tired and hungry after a long fast and a laborious journey, but he strictly refused a biscuit or other food which I ventured to offer him, and when or where he ate I do not know, for the particular food he had chosen to eat was most rare in the neighbourhood, I doubt even if it was obtainable at all. Yet no privation or distress would force him to break his rule, and eat promiscuously until the proper time had elapsed. In the keeping of their days they are wonderfully accurate, and you seldom find them wrong in their calculations. Their fingers are their ready reckoners, and they have to do a great deal more work than ours in assisting a weak memory, where the use of slate and pencil are unknown. I very often ask people to count over the names of persons in the place or neighbourhood, just to see how clever and correct they are with their numbers. Here the whole ten fingers are used, at Opa only the left hand, five fingers down being five, the first finger up and the rest down six, and so on until all are up which makes ten, then two tens, three tens, up to ten tens or one hundred. In the distribution of food, too, it is wonderful how accurate they are, and it is very rarely that any one is left out of the count. Of course, where the science of numbers is unknown, nature teaches by a more roundabout, but scarcely less accurate process. For all practical purposes and uses, their fingers help them a great deal, indeed almost as far as their requirements go, for their lives are very simple and their ways uncomplicated. The leaves of a certain palm, however, lends them some assistance, especially in the distribution of food, and as the person is seen, or his name thought of, a leaf is broken off, and then the broken leaves are counted. I have never heard of the toes being used as assistants, although one might fancy their being of service.

_Wednesday, August 18th._--About midnight as I lay reading in bed, and a perfect stillness reigned around, we experienced a very sharp shock of an earthquake. My house shook so uncomfortably, that I really feared it was coming down, and I had the sort of feeling as of some one trying to upset it, and I felt as if I must say “Oh! do not, please leave off, you will have it down.” My neighbour’s fence was shaken so, that I fancied some considerable damage had been done. The vibration lasted a good long time, some seconds I should say, after the real shock was over, and I felt myself, a sort of palpitation for some considerable period. I was not afraid, but no one can feel an earthquake without some instinctive dread. Nothing, I think, makes one feel one’s littleness and helplessness and insecurity more, and there is such a solemnity attached to it, that you are very thankful when it is fairly over. Man, bird and beast were roused into action at once, and there was quite an excitement here for a time. Curiously enough, in the evening there was a very bright and exceedingly beautiful after-glow, and I remarked to the boys how like it was to the time when the terrible destruction was caused in the gulf of Sunda, and I said casually, that I should not be surprised if we had more earthquakes soon. The natives have a firm idea that they are the precursors of rain, and certainly this morning we have had a very heavy downpour. This is the first rain we have had for the whole month I have been here, and the first day I have been kept to solitary confinement. Most of the day I have been absolutely alone, and my pen has been kept very busy writing letters and hymns and songs. With the latter I have been very successful, and have managed four. One, particularly successful, goes to the chorus of “Wait till the clouds roll by,” and is as follows:--

Ge togatoga ririkqa. Mati ni van ra[¨n]ai, A la[¨n]i ni rowo na wia, Tavi dago na tasgoro.

Gana sako na usu maraga, Gana toura na gabe tar, Gana tura goro na masi Gana koko betegag.

Gana unui vagamatera A le[¨n]ele[¨n]e mas Gana tuwur, sogon le gete Toli tasgoro rik ka sem.

of which the translation is:--

Wait a little bit longer, Wait till the tide is low, Wait till the wind blow fairer, And then make the tasgoro.

Then we will take bow and arrow, Then we will carry our nets, Then we will stop in the fishes And gather them properly up.

We will kill them dead with poison, All and every kind of fish, We will gather and lay them in baskets, What a glorious tasgoro!

The _tasgoro_ I have before described. Part of beach enclosed, tabu’d, and after lapse of time opened again to the public.

This evening we have sung this chorus with grand effect, and high as I was previously in popular estimation as a poet, I have gone still higher now. What a little thing wins popularity, how little is a thing so easily purchased worth the having! One other song goes very prettily and smoothly to “Home sweet Home,” and is much appreciated. It is, as far as I could adapt it, the reproduction of the English song into Maewo. “Dream Faces” supplied me with another very pretty little song, which runs very well, the theme of which is the “moonlight.” “Our Jack’s come home to-night,” lent me the music of a fourth song, which is peculiarly native in expression, and slightly more comic than the two above mentioned.

The production of this last was received with such peals of laughter, that for a time confusion and merriment took the place of composure and perfect gravity. It would lose its charm and half its meaning if I were to attempt to translate it into English. Here, however, is the Maewo:--

Ta disava qarik Isei ni tau na as? Eh? Ro[¨n]o lolora va! Ki isei qa ni sawu? Wa sagoro ta sagoro Ki gida, sem, ta lai ra[¨n]ai! Ro[¨n]o lolora va! Toli sagoro rik!

Da! ta sagoro da! Ge riri betigag! Ta sagoro tei rik Ga laia ra[¨n]ai sag! Kare mawmaw, tei riki vak! Ge wosawosa limamu! A wula marama! Tolina rik ka sem!

The “Dream Faces” song is as follows:-

Nan ligo asik suri marama, --I’ll make my song about the moonlight, Tolina rik sem a wula marama, --Charming indeed is the light of the moon,

Osoos ti rasu mera na maran, --Darkness has flown, it is light as the day, Non eteete ti lita soun na --His brightness chased the night far away. qo[¨n].

Nan ligo asik suri marama, --I’ll make my song about the moonlight, A[¨n]eisa tea le isi Tamada, --Some day I ween in our great Father’s land,

Ala na maran vagatewa tau, --There day unending for ever will be, Qon tigai ala, moa marama, --Night is unknown there, light only endless.

The light called “marama,” is looked upon by natives as the perfection of light, because it is, I suppose, unaccompanied by the burning heat of the sun. I therefore use it as illustrating better the idea of heaven’s light. Maran is the light of day.

_Thursday, August 19th._--The village was hushed in the stillness of slumber again about midnight, and I was preparing for bed, too, and kneeling down to say my prayers, when another quite sharp earthquake shock was felt, and the sensation came upon me very solemnly and impressively while so engaged. I cannot say why I trembled, but I did, and it was quite instinctive. However, I went to bed and slept profoundly. We have had another slight shock of domestic earthquake here this morning, and Ann, one of our young married women, after rating her husband, started off for Naruru, and we were quite in a ferment here for a short time. However, this evening, her parents went for her, and I have had to give her a scolding. I told her that anger was like a charge of dynamite, it not only exploded itself, but it produced destructive effects far and wide, indeed there was no knowing what the extent of its mischief might be. She seemed penitent, and was utterly ashamed of her unchristian conduct. I am thankful to say that scenes of domestic warfare are uncommon here, and, generally speaking, a great deal of harmony prevails, but of course there are clouds in the most perfect day, and the smoothest ocean is at times ruffled by the sudden breeze. Beyond this, our day has been like most other days, except for the thatching of Peter’s “gamal,” which has brought together a large concourse of people, and has been the occasion of a great festivity this evening. Arthur, Patrick and myself walked down to Ruosi in the afternoon, where we bathed, and returned in the evening. Our evening duties as usual.

_Friday, August 20th._--Certainly we are blessed with the most glorious weather. This morning was simply perfect, and one almost wishes one could keep some of its coolness for the middle of the day, when the heat is very great.

After school and breakfast this morning, some of the people invited me to go with them eel catching. As the performance was new to me, I gladly assented. The scene of the sport lay in the direction of the water fall, and I took my camera, hoping to get a good view of it.

We followed the course of the stream, and waded through the taro gardens, and finally found ourselves in the most advantageous position for a photograph. It ought to be good, after all my efforts to secure the picture, but I could not get far enough away. While I have been writing this, since I began the last sentence, an earthquake shock has shaken the place very perceptibly, and, why I know not, has left a tremour all over me, which I cannot explain. The picture being shot off, I hastened back to where the eel catching was going on. The water was cleverly dammed off above two large pools, and then one pool “teemed” out with buckets. In the first pool nothing was discovered, and the next proceeding was to empty the full pool into the now empty one. This took some time, but it was finally accomplished, and one large eel was captured, the sole occupant of the pool, and the only sport afforded after a long day’s work. Disappointment was depicted on all countenances, and I was rather disgusted too, having expected to see some sport. I comforted myself with a most glorious bathe in the broad flowing river, and hastened home to drown my disappointment in a cup of tea.

After school this evening, I was sitting here alone, when four men came in, in whispers, and shut the door behind them, and when they had sat down, they said, still in the lowest accents, “we wish to see your Eucharistic vessels.” I proceeded to exhibit them, and they seemed quite awe struck. Miss Patteson would have been pleased to have seen how her noble gift was valued and appreciated. The exhibition of the beautiful vessels gave me much food for conversation with these men, and I told them I hoped the day was not far distant when they would be regularly used in the Church here, and they themselves be partakers from them of the Blessed Tokens of Redeeming Love, the bread of the world in mercy broken, the wine of the soul in mercy shed.

_Saturday, August 21st._--General holiday as usual. Nothing of particular importance marked the day, except the visit of three nice fellows from Uta. The British Workman’s Almanac adorns my walls, and they were particularly struck with the picture of Lord Shaftesbury which occupies the centre. Curiously, many others have admired this same picture, why I do not know, except perhaps from its size. I told these visitors all about the late Earl, of his philantrophy and the goodness of his life, and I told them too, of the philantrophy and goodness of a greater than he, “who went about doing, and healing all manner of diseases and sicknesses among the people.” They asked me if I had heard the earthquake of late, to which I responded in the affirmative, and told them of the terrible outburst of volcanic power at Tarawera, and the fearful and alarming results, and I said there was no knowing but it might be our turn next, and we ought to try and be prepared for whatever lay before us. I urged them to fly, while they had the opportunity, to the Higher Rock, for there we should find shelter and protection until the tyranny were overpast, and any such visitation would be but to bring us the quicker to a haven of rest and safety, whither such things never come. They asked me if I could not spare some regular teacher to come and live with them, to teach them the wonderful things of God’s law, and expound more fully to them, the things concerning the Kingdom of God. I promised them a weekly service, but I could do no more just yet.