Part 19 (1/2)
One incident of that tiood account for higher ends I often tell it as ”thebit of wood”; and it has happened to other Missionaries exactly as toat the house, I required so a piece of planed wood, I penciled a feords on it, and requested our old Chief to carry it to Mrs Paton, and she would send what I wanted In blank wonder, he innocently stared at me, and said, ”But what do you want?”
I replied, ”The ill tell her” He looked rather angry, thinking that I befooled hi?”
By hard pleading I succeeded in persuading hi at the wood and then fetching the needed articles He brought back the bit of wood, and eagerly ns for an explanation
Chiefly in broken Tannese I read to him the words, and inforh His Book The will of God ritten there, and by and by, when he learned to read, he would hear God speaking to hie, as Mrs Paton heard reat desire was thus awakened in the poor man's soul to see the very Word of God printed in his own language He helpedenthusias portions of Holy Scripture began, his delight was unbounded and his help invaluable The e was not less wonderful than that of speaking wood!
One day, while building the house, an old Inland Chief and his three sons ca was to the home one of the sons fell sick, and the father at once bla that if the lad died we all should be , and by our careful nursing and suitable medicine, he recovered and was spared The old Chief superstitiously wheeled round almost to another extreme He became not only friendly, but devoted to us He attended the Sabbath Services, and listened to the Aneityumese Teachers, and to my first attempts, partly in Tannese, translated by the orator Taia or the Chief Na to the people in their ue
But on the heels of this, another calamity overtook us So soon as two rooms of the Mission House were roofed in, I hired the stoutest of the young men to carry our boxes thither Two of them started off with a heavy box suspended on a pole from shoulder to shoulder, their usual custo of blood; and one of thean, actually died The father of the other swore that, if his son did not get better, every soul at the Mission House should be slain in revenge But Godwas nearly three-quarters of awould be not only sorrowful in itself but perilous in the extreme for us all, I steeped my wits, and with such crude materials as were at hand, I manufactured not only a hand-barrow, but a wheel-barrow, for the pressing eencies of the time In due course, I procured a more orthodox hand-cart from the Colonies, and coaxed and bribed the Natives to assist host of _Macadam_ would shudder at the appearance of that road, but it has proved immensely useful ever since
CHAPTER LX
A CITY OF God
When, in the course of years, everything had been completed to our taste, we lived practically in the e,--the Church, the School, the Orphanage, the S Office, the Banana and Yam House, the Cook House, etc; all very hu the orange-trees, and preaching the Gospel of a higher civilization and of a better life for Aniwa The little road leading to each door was laid with the white coral broken small The fence around all shone fresh and clean with new paint Order and taste were seen to be laws in the white ently to follow our exae were the arts which I had to try to practise, such as handling the adze, the mysteries of tenon and mortise, and other feats of skill If a Native wanted a fish-hook, or a piece of red calico to bind his long whip-cord hair, he would carry me a block of coral or fetch me a beam; but continuous daily toil seemed to him a mean existence The women were te the sugar-cane leaf for thatch, gathering it in the plantations, and tying it over reeds four or six feet long with strips of bark of pandanus leaf, leaving a long fringe hanging over on one side How differently they acted when the Gospel began to touch their hearts! They built their Church and their Schools then, by their own free toil, rejoicing to labor without ood repair, for the service of the Lord, by their voluntary offerings of wood and sugar-cane leaf and coral-lime
The roof was fired with sugar-cane leaf, row after row tied fire was bound down by cocoanut leaves, dexterously plaited froe-pole with hard wooden pins; and over all, a fresh storm-roof was laid on yearly for the hurricane months, composed of folded cocoanut leaves, held doith planks of wood, and bound to the fraain in April to save the sugar-cane leaf froly covered in, and your thatching good to last froht in the sweep of the hurricane, before which trees went flying like straws, huts disappeared like autu at all, was probably swept bare alike of roof and thatch at a single stroke! Well for you at such ti the approach of the store cellar like ours, four-and-twenty feet by sixteen, built round with solid coral blocks,--where goods may be stored, and whereinto also all your householdabout, and sets huge trees dancing around you! We had also to invent a lime-kiln, and this proved one of the hardest nuts of all that had to be cracked The kind of coral required could be obtained only at one spot, about threeat anchor in my boat, the Natives dived into the sea, broke off with haht it up to me, till I had my load We then carried it ashore, and spread it out in the sun to be blistered there for teeks or so
Having thus secured twenty or thirty boat-loads, and had it duly conveyed round to the Mission Station, a huge pit was dug in the ground, dry wood piled in below, and green wood above to the height of several feet, and on the top of all the coral blocks were orderly laid When this pile had burned for seven or ten days, the coral had been reduced to excellent lime, and the plasterwork made therefrom shone like marble
On one of these trips the Natives performed an extraordinary feat The boat with full load was struck heavily by a wave, and the reef drove a hole in her side Quick as thought the creere all in the sea, and, toup the boat with their shoulder and one hand, while swi us ashore with the other! There on the land ere hauled up, and four weary days were spent fetching and carrying from the Mission Station every plank, tool, and nail, necessary for her repair Every boat for these seas ought to be built of cedar wood and copper-fastened, which is by far the most economical in the end And all houses should be built of hich is as full as possible of gue white ants devour not only other soft woods, but even Colonial blue gum-trees, the hard cocoanut, andsashes, chairs, and tables!
Glancing back on all these toils, I rejoice that such exhausting deer made on our newly-arrived Missionaries Houses, all ready for being set up, are now brought down from the Colonies Zinc roofs and other improvements have been introduced The Synod appoints a deputation to acco with hith is thus saved for higher uses; and not only property but life itself is oftentimes preserved
I will close this chapter with an incident which, though it cae only years afterwards, closely bears upon our Settlement on Aniwa At first we had no idea why they so determinedly refused us one site, and fixed us to another of their own choice But after the old Chief Namakei became a Christian, he one day addressed the Aniwan people in our hearing to this effect:--
”When Missi camehis boxes We knew he had blankets and calico, axes and knives, fish-hooks and all such things We said, 'Don't drive his We will let him land But ill force him to live on the Sacred Plot Our Gods will kill hist the men of Aniwa' But Missi built his house on our most sacred spot He and his people lived there, and the Gods did not strike He planted bananas there, and we said, 'Nohen they eat of these they will all drop down dead, as our fathers assured us, if any one ate fruit froround, except only our Sacred Men themselves' These bananas ripened They did eat the for days and days, but no one died! Therefore e say, and what our fathers have said, is not true Our Gods cannot kill theer than the Gods of Aniwa”
I enforced old Nah they knew it not, it was the living and true and only God who had sent the which they possessed, and had at last sent us to teach them how to serve and love and please Him In wonder and silence they listened, while I tried to explain to theone to the Father to save the to take thelory and iether with Hie, dark, groping prayer, with streaks of Heathenisht and sentence; but still a heart-breaking prayer, as the cry of a soul once Cannibal, but now being thrilled through and through with the first conscious pulsations of the Christ-Spirit, throbbing into the words--”Father, Father; our Father”
When these poor creatures began to wear a bit of calico or a kilt, it was an outward sign of a change, though yet far froan to look up and pray to One whoht be far, very far, from the type of Christian that dubs itself ”respectable,”will ever persuadetoo
CHAPTER LXI
THE RELIGION OF REVENGE
ON landing in November, 1866, we found the Natives of Aniwa, some very shy and distrustful, and others forward and i orn; but the wives and elder woirdles like our first parents in Eden The old Chief interested hireater number showed a far deeper interest in the axes, knives, fishhooks, strips of red calico, and blankets, received in payment for work or for bananas Even for payment they would scarcely work at first, and they were most unreasonable, easily offended, and started off in a ht
For instance, a Chief once caed that I could not attend to hie, threatening revenge, and , ”I must be attended to! I won't wait on _hie!
Shortly before our arrival, an Aneityumese Teacher was sacrificed on Aniwa The circumstances are illustrative of whatyears ago, a party of Aniwans had gone to Aneityues, murdered and ate everyon cocoanuts, he awaited a favorable wind, and, launching his canoe by night, he arrived in safety The bereaved Aniwans, hearing his terrible story, were furious for revenge; but the forty-fivetoo hard an obstacle, they made a deep cut in the earth and vowed to renew that cut froe came round Thus the hty years
At length the people of Aneityuly yearned to spread their saving Gospel to the Heathen Islands all around As to God they, like the Church at Antioch, designated two of their leading elize Aniwa, viz Navalak and Nea, as opportunity arose