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 seemed as though the time were come for calling on the Baurese to
cease to be passive, and sixty or seventy men and women having come
together, Mr. Patteson told them that he did not mean to go on merely
taking their boys to return them with heaps of fish-hooks and knives,
but that, unless they cared for good teaching, to make them good and
happy here and hereafter, he should not come like a trader or a whaler.
That their sons should go backwards and forwards and learn, but to teach
at home; and that they ought to build a holy house, where they might
meet to pray to God and learn His will.
Much of this was evidently distasteful, though they agreed to build a
room.
'I think,' he writes, 'that the trial stage of the work has arrived.
This has less to attract outwardly than the first beginning of all, and
as here they must take a definite part, they (the great majority who
are not yet disposed to decide for good) are made manifest, and the
difficulty of displacing evil customs is more apparent.'
In fact, these amiable, docile Baurese seemed to have little manliness
or resolution of character, and Sumaro, a scholar of 1857, was
especially disappointing, for he pretended to wish to come and learn at
Lifu, but only in order to get a passage to Gera, where he deserted, and
was well lectured for his deceit.
The Gera people were much more warlike and turbulent, and seemed to have
more substance in them, though less apt at learning. Patteson spent the
night on shore at Perua, a subsidiary islet in the bay, sleeping in a
kind of shed, upon two boards, more comfortably than was usual on these
occasions. Showing confidence was one great point, and the want of safe
anchorage in the bay was much regretted, because the people could not
understand why the vessel would not come in, and thought it betokened
mistrust. Many lads wished to join the scholars, but of those who were
chosen, two were forced violently overboard by their friends, and only
two eventually remained, making a total of twelve pupils for the
winter school at Lifu, with five languages between them--seven with the
addition of the Nengone and Lifu scholars.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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