Life of John Coleridge Patteson : Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian IslandsYonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
Religion
Life of John Coleridge Patteson : Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian Islands
Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
Missions -- Melanesia; Patteson, John Coleridge, 1827-1871
'2 P.M., dinner, roast mutton; my seat between the Bishop and Eota.
Fancy the long table with its double row of Maoris. After dinner, away
with the Bishop to the hospital, a plain wooden building a mile off,
capable of taking in about forty patients in all. I am to visit it
regularly when here, taking that work off the parish clergyman's
shoulders, and a great comfort it will be. I went through it to-day,
and had a long talk with the physician and surgeon, and saw the male
patients, two of them natives. One of them is dying, and so I am to be
now talking as well as I can, but at all events reading and praying,
with this poor fellow, and a great happiness it is to have such a
privilege and so on. Came back to tea, very pleasant. After tea made
Eota, and Sydney, a young-man who knows English pretty well, sit in my
room (N.B., there is but one chair, in which I placed Eota), and then
I made them read Maori to me, and read a good deal myself, and then we
talked as well as we could. At 6.15, prayers, the whole party of Maoris
assembled. Mr. Kissling read the first verse of the chapter (Joshua
vi.), and we each read one verse in turn, and then he questioned them
for perhaps fifteen minutes. They were very intelligent and answered
well, and it was striking to see grown-up men and young women sitting so
patiently to be taught. Then the evening service prayers; and so I knelt
with these good simple people and prayed with them for the first time.
Very much I enjoyed all this. Soon after came supper, a little talking,
and now here am I writing to you.
'I wish you could see the tree-ferns; some are quite twenty feet high in
the trunk, for trunk it is, and the great broad frond waves over it in
a way that would make that child Pena clap her hands with delight. Then
the geraniums and roses in blossom, the yellow mimosa flower, the wild
moncha, with a white flower, growing everywhere, and the great variety
of evergreen trees (none that I have seen being deciduous) make the
country very pretty. The great bare volcanic hills, each with its
well-defined crater, stand up from among the woodlands, and now from
among pastures grazing hundreds of oxen; and this, with the grand sea
views, and shipping in the harbour, make a very fine sight.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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