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
'It was about 3 P.M. on Saturday when I landed, and it was an effort to
have to talk incessantly till dark. Then the chief Iri went with me
to his house. It is only one oblong room, with a bamboo screen running
halfway across it about half-way down the room. It is only made of
bamboo at the sides, and leaves for the roof. Yams and other vegetables
were placed along the sides. There is no floor, but one or two grass
mats are placed on the ground to sleep on. Iri and his wife, and an
orphan girl about fourteen or fifteen, I suppose, slept on the other
side of the screen; and two lads, called Grariri and Parenga, slept on
my side of it. I can't say I slept at all, for the rats were so very
many, coming in through the bamboo on every side, and making such a
noise I could not sleep, though tired. They were running all about me.
'Well, at daylight I sent Gariri to fetch some water, and shaved and
washed, to the great admiration of Iri and the ladies, and of others
also, who crowded together at the hole which serves for door and
windows. I lay down in my clothes, all but my coat, but I took a razor
and some soap ashore.
'Sunday was spent in going about to different neighbouring settlements,
and climbing the coral rocks was hard work, the thermometer at sea being
85° in the cool cabin, as the Bishop told me to-day.
'Of course many people were at work in the yam grounds, several of which
I saw; but I found considerable parties at the different villages, and
had, on the whole, satisfactory conversations with them. They listened
and asked questions, and I told them as well as I could the simplest
truths of Christianity.
'I had a part of a yam and drank four cocoa-nuts during the day, besides
eating some mixture of yam, taro, and cocoa-nut all pounded together.
'People offered me food and nuts everywhere. Walked back with a boy
called Tahi for my guide, and stopped at several plantations, and talked
with the people.
'Sat out in the cool evening on the beach at Mwaata, after much talk
in a chiefs house called Tarua; people came round me on the beach, and
again I talked with them (a sort of half-preaching, half-conversing
these talks were), till Iri said we must go to bed. Slept a little that
night.
'I can truly say that you were in my head all day. After my evening
prayers, when I thought of you--for it was about 9 P.M. = 10.10 A.M.
with you, and you were on your way to church--I thought of you, kneeling
between your dear mamma and grandmamma, and dear grandpapa administering
to his three beloved ones the Bread of Life, and I was very happy as I
thought of it, for I trust, through the mercy of God, and the merits of
our Lord, that we shall be by Him raised at the Last Day to dwell with
Him for ever. But indeed I must not write to you how very unworthy I
felt to belong to that little company.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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