Part 14 (2/2)
From Carey to Livingstone, alike in Asia and Africa, the greatest Christian evangelists have been those who have made science and literature the handmaids of missions.
Apart from the extreme south of the peninsula of India, where the Danish missionaries had explored with hawk's eyes, almost nothing was known of its plants and animals, its men, as well as its beasts, when Carey found himself in a rural district of North Bengal in the closing decade of the eighteenth century. Nor had any writer, official or missionary, anywhere realised the state of India and the needs of the Hindoo and Mohammedan cultivators as flowing from the relation of the people to the soil. India was in truth a land of millions of peasant proprietors on five-acre farms, rack-rented or plundered by powerful middlemen, both squeezed or literally tortured by the Government of the day, and driven to depend on the usurer for even the seed for each crop. War and famine had alternated in keeping down the population.
Ignorance and fear had blunted the natural shrewdness of the cultivator. A foul mythology, a saddening demon-wors.h.i.+p, and an exacting social system, covered the land as with a pall. What even Christendom was fast becoming in the tenth century, India had been all through the eighteen Christian centuries.
The boy who from eight to fourteen ”chose to read books of science, history, voyages, etc., more than others”; the youth whose gardener uncle would have had him follow that calling, but whose sensitive skin kept him within doors, where he fitted up a room with his botanical and zoological museum; the shoemaker-preacher who made a garden around every cottage-manse in which he lived, and was familiar with every beast, bird, insect, and tree in the Midlands of England, became a scientific observer from the day he landed at Calcutta, an agricultural reformer from the year he first built a wooden farmhouse in the jungle, as the Manitoba emigrant now does under very different skies, and then began to grow and make indigo amid the peasantry at Dinapoor. He thus unconsciously reveals himself and his method of working in a letter to Morris of Clipstone:--
”MUDNABATI, 5th December 1797.--To talk of continuance of friends.h.i.+p and warm affection to you would be folly. I love you; and next to seeing your face, a letter from you is one of my greatest gratifications. I see the handwriting, and read the heart of my friend; nor can the distance of one-fourth of the globe prevent a union of hearts.
”Hitherto I have refrained from writing accounts of the country, because I concluded that those whose souls were panting after the conversion of the heathen would feel but little gratified in having an account of the natural productions of the country. But as intelligence of this kind has been frequently solicited by several of my friends, I have accordingly opened books of observation, which I hope to communicate when they are sufficiently authenticated and matured. I also intend to a.s.sign a peculiar share to each of my stated correspondents. To you I shall write some accounts of the arts, utensils, and manufactures of the country; to Brother Sutcliff their mythology and religion; to Brother Ryland the manners and customs of the inhabitants; to Brother Fuller the productions of the country; to Brother Pearce the language, etc.; and to the Society a joint account of the mission.”
He had ”separate books for every distinct cla.s.s, as birds, beasts, fishes, reptiles, etc.” Long before this, on 13th March 1795, he had written to the learned Ryland, his special correspondent on subjects of science and on Hebrew, his first impressions of the physiography of Bengal, adding: ”The natural history of Bengal would furnish innumerable novelties to a curious inquirer. I am making collections and minute descriptions of whatever I can obtain; and intend at some future time to transmit them to Europe.”
”MUDNABATI, 26th November 1796.--I observed in a former letter that the beasts have been in general described, but that the undescribed birds were surprisingly numerous; and, in fact, new species are still frequently coming under my notice. We have sparrows and water-wagtails, one species of crow, ducks, geese, and common fowls; pigeons, teal, ortolans, plovers, snipes like those in Europe; but others, entirely unlike European birds, would fill a volume. Insects are very numerous. I have seen about twelve sorts of grylli, or gra.s.shoppers and crickets. Ants are the most omnivorous of all insects; we have eight or ten sorts very numerous. The termes, or white ants, destroy everything on which they fasten; they will eat through an oak chest in a day or two and devour all its contents.
b.u.t.terflies are not so numerous as in England, but I think all different. Common flies and mosquitoes (or gnats) are abundant, and the latter so tormenting as to make one conclude that if the flies in Egypt were mosquitoes, the plague must be almost insupportable. Here are beetles of many species; scorpions of two sorts, the sting of the smallest not mortal; land crabs in abundance, and an amazing number of other kinds of insects. Fish is very plentiful, and the princ.i.p.al animal food of the inhabitants. I find fewer varieties of vegetables than I could have conceived in so large a country. Edible vegetables are scarce, and fruit far from plentiful. You will perhaps wonder at our eating many things here which no one eats in England: as arum, three or four sorts, and poppy leaves (Papaver somniferum). We also cut up mallows by the bushes for our food (Job x.x.x. 4). Amaranths, of three sorts, we also eat, besides capsic.u.ms, pumpkins, gourds, calabashes, and the egg-plant fruit; yet we have no hards.h.i.+ps in these respects. Rice is the staple article of food...
”My love to the students. G.o.d raise them up for great blessings. Great things are certainly at hand.”
But he was also an erudite botanist. Had he arrived in Calcutta a few days earlier than he did, he would have been appointed to the place for which sheer poverty led him to apply, in the Company's Botanical Garden, established on the right bank of the Hoogli a few miles below Calcutta, by Colonel Alexander Kyd, for the collection of indigenous and acclimatisation of foreign plants. There he at once made the acquaintance, and till 1815 retained the loving friends.h.i.+p, of its superintendent, Dr. Roxburgh, the leader of a series of eminent men, Buchanan and Wallich, Griffith, Falconer, T. Thomson, and Thomas Anderson, the last two cut off in the ripe promise of their manhood.
One of Carey's first requests was for seeds and instruments, not merely from scientific reasons, but that he might carry out his early plan of working with his hands as a farmer while he evangelised the people. On 5th August 1794 he wrote to the Society:--”I wish you also to send me a few instruments of husbandry, viz., scythes, sickles, plough-wheels, and such things; and a yearly a.s.sortment of all garden and flowering seeds, and seeds of fruit trees, that you can possibly procure; and let them be packed in papers, or bottles well stopped, which is the best method. All these things, at whatever price you can procure them, and the seeds of all sorts of field and forest trees, etc., I will regularly remit you the money for every year; and I hope that I may depend upon the exertions of my numerous friends to procure them.
Apply to London seedsmen and others, as it will be a lasting advantage to this country; and I shall have it in my power to do this for what I now call my own country. Only take care that they are new and dry.”
Again he addressed Fuller on 22nd June 1797:--
”MY VERY DEAR BROTHER--I have yours of August 9, 16, which informs me that the seeds, etc., were s.h.i.+pped. I have received those seeds and other articles in tolerable preservation, and shall find them a very useful article. An acquaintance which I have formed with Dr. Roxburgh, Superintendent of the Company's Botanic Garden, and whose wife is daughter of a missionary on the coast, may be of future use to the mission, and make that investment of vegetables more valuable.”
Thus towards the close of his six years' sacrifice for the people of Dinapoor does he estimate himself and his scientific pursuits in the light of the great conflict to which the Captain of Salvation had called him. He is opening his heart to Fuller again, most trusted of all:--
”MUDNABATI, 17th July 1799.--Respecting myself I have nothing interesting to say; and if I had, it appears foreign to the design of a mission for the missionaries to be always speaking of their own experiences. I keep several journals, it is true, relating to things private and public, respecting the mission, articles of curiosity and science; but they are sometimes continued and sometimes discontinued: besides, most things contained in them are of too general or trivial a nature to send to England, and I imagine could have no effect, except to mock the expectations of our numerous friends, who are waiting to hear of the conversion of the heathen and overthrow of Satan's kingdom.
”I therefore only observe, respecting myself, that I have much proof of the vileness of my heart, much more than I thought of till lately: and, indeed, I often fear that instead of being instrumental in the conversion of the heathen, I may some time dishonour the cause in which I am engaged. I have hitherto had much experience of the daily supports of a gracious G.o.d; but I am conscious that if those supports were intermitted but for a little time, my sinful dispositions would infallibly predominate. At present I am kept, but am not one of those who are strong and do exploits.
”I have often thought that a spirit of observation is necessary in order to our doing or communicating much good; and were it not for a very phlegmatic habit, I think my soul would be richer. I, however, appear to myself to have lost much of my capacity for making observations, improvements, etc., or of retaining what I attend to closely. For instance, I have been near three years learning the Sanskrit language, yet know very little of it. This is only a specimen of what I feel myself to be in every respect. I try to observe, to imprint what I see and hear on my memory, and to feel my heart properly affected with the circ.u.mstances; yet my soul is impoverished, and I have something of a lethargic disease cleaving to my body...
”I would communicate something on the natural history of the country in addition to what I have before written, but no part of that pleasing study is so familiar to me as the vegetable world.”
His letters of this period to Fuller on the fruits of India, and to Morris on the husbandry of the natives, might be quoted still as accurate and yet popular descriptions of the mango, guava, and custard apple; plantain, jack, and tamarind; pomegranate, pine-apple, and rose-apple; papaya, date, and cocoa-nut; citron, lime, and shaddock.
Of many of these, and of foreign fruits which he introduced, it might be said he found them poor, and he cultivated them till he left to succeeding generations a rich and varied orchard.
While still in Dinapoor, he wrote on 1st January 1798: ”Seeds of sour apples, pears, nectarines, plums, apricots, cherries, gooseberries, currants, strawberries, or raspberries, put loose into a box of dry sand, and sent so as to arrive in September, October, November, or December, would be a great acquisition, as is every European production. Nuts, filberts, acorns, etc., would be the same. We have lately obtained the cinnamon tree, and nutmeg tree, which Dr. Roxburgh very obligingly sent to me. Of timber trees I mention the sissoo, the teak, and the saul tree, which, being an unnamed genus, Dr. Roxburgh, as a mark of respect to me, has called Careya saulea.”
The publication of the last name caused Carey's sensitive modesty extreme annoyance. ”Do not print the names of Europeans. I was sorry to see that you printed that Dr. Roxburgh had named the saul tree by my name. As he is in the habit of publis.h.i.+ng his drawings of plants, it would have looked better if it had been mentioned first by him.”
Whether he prevailed with his admiring friend in the Company's Botanic Garden to change the name to that which the useful sal tree now bears, the Sh.o.r.ea robusta, we know not, but the term is derived from Lord Teignmouth's name. Carey will go down to posterity in the history of botanical research, notwithstanding his own humility and the accidents of time. For Dr. Roxburgh gave the name of Careya to an interesting genus of Myrtace[oe]. The great French botanist M. Benjamin Delessert duly commemorates the labours of Dr. Carey in the Musee Botanique.
It was in Serampore that the gentle botanist found full scope for the one recreation which he allowed himself, in the interest of his body as well as of his otherwise overtasked spirit. There he had five acres of ground laid out, and, in time, planted on the Linnaean system. The park around, from which he had the little paradise carefully walled in, that Brahmani bull and villager's cow, nightly jackal and thoughtless youth, might not intrude, he planted with trees then rare or unknown in lower Bengal, the mahogany and deodar, the teak and tamarind, the carob and eucalyptus. The fine American Mahogany has so thriven that the present writer was able, seventy years after the trees had been planted, to supply Government with plentiful seed. The trees of the park were so placed as to form a n.o.ble avenue, which long shaded the press and was known as Carey's Walk. The umbrageous tamarind formed a dense cover, under which more than one generation of Carey's successors rejoiced as they welcomed visitors to the consecrated spot from all parts of India, America, and Great Britain. Foresters like Sir D. Brandis and Dr.
Cleghorn at various times visited this arboretum, and have referred to the trees, whose date of planting is known, for the purpose of recording the rate of growth.
For the loved garden Carey himself trained native peasants who, with the mimetic instinct of the Bengali, followed his instructions like those of their own Brahmans, learned the Latin names, and p.r.o.nounced them with their master's very accent up till a late date, when Hullodhur, the last of them, pa.s.sed away. The garden with its tropical glories and more modest exotics, every one of which was as a personal friend, and to him had an individual history, was more than a place of recreation. It was his oratory, the scene of prayer and meditation, the place where he began and ended the day of light--with G.o.d. What he wrote in his earlier journals and letters of the sequestered spot at Mudnabati was true in a deeper and wider sense of the garden of Serampore:--”23rd September, Lord's Day.--Arose about sunrise, and, according to my usual practice, walked into my garden for meditation and prayer till the servants came to family wors.h.i.+p.” We have this account from his son Jonathan:--
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