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
So at Star Island three or four natives said, 'In ten moons you two come
back; very good, then we go with you.' 'I think,' Patteson tells his
sisters, 'you would have liked to have seen me, standing on a rock, with
my two supporters, two fine young men, who will I trust go with us next
time, my arms round their necks, and a fine background of some thirty
or forty dark figures with bows and arrows, &c., and two or three little
rogues, perched on a point of rock above me, just within reach,
asking for fish-hooks.' He says it in all simplicity, but the picture
presupposes some strength of mind in the sisters who were to appreciate
it.
Few natives appeared at Espiritu Santo, and the vessel passed on to
Oanuta or Cherry Island, where the Bishop had never been, and where
a race of dull, good-natured giants was found. The chief was a
noble-looking man with an aquiline nose, and seemed to have them well
under command, and some of the younger men, who had limbs which might
have been a model for a sculptor, could have lifted an ordinary-sized
Englishman as easily as a child. They were unluckily already acquainted
with whalers, whom they thought the right sort of fellows, since they
brought tobacco and spirits, did not interfere with native habits,
nor talk of learning, for which the giants saw no need. The national
complexion here was of a lighter yellow, the costume a tattooed chest,
the language akin to Maori; and it was the same at Tikopia, where four
chiefs, one principal one immensely fat, received their visitors seated
on a mat in the centre of a wide circle formed by natives, the innermost
seated, the others looking over them. These, too, were accustomed to
whalers, and when they found that pigs and yams in exchange for spirits
and tobacco were not the object, they were indifferent. They seemed to
despise fish-hooks, and it was plain that they had even obtained muskets
from the whalers, for there were six in the chiefs house, and one was
fired, not maliciously but out of display. The Bishop told them his
object, and they understood his language, but were uninterested. The fat
chief regaled the two guests with a cocoa-nut apiece, and then seemed
anxious to be rid of them.
The Banks Islands, as usual, were much more hopeful, Santa Maria coming
first. Canoes came round the vessel, and the honesty of the race showed
itself, for one little boy, who had had a fish-hook given him, wished to
exchange it for calico, and having forgotten to restore the hook at
the moment, swam back with it as soon as he remembered it. There was a
landing, and the usual friendly intercourse, but just as the boat had
put off, a single arrow was suddenly shot out of the bush, and fell
about ten yards short. It was curious that the Spanish discoverers
had precisely the same experience. It was supposed to be an act of
individual mischief or fun, and the place obtained the appropriate name
of Cock Sparrow Point.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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