THE PADRE ANSELMO—HIS LIFE AND LABOURS AMONG THE AMERICAN
INDIANS—THE PIONEERS OF CIVILIZATION—AMERICAN INDIANS AND
NEGROES—PADRE ANSELMO ON PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC MISSIONS—NATIVE
CHRISTIANS IN INDIA—POPE PIUS IX. ONCE A MISSIONARY—CARDINAL
P—.—PORT OF GRAVOSA—RAGUSA.
I felt an unusual degree of regret, thinking I should so soon lose the
company of Padre Anselmo; we had come all the way together from Trieste,
and had spent many pleasant hours in genial conversation, flavoured from
time to time with spicy, sharp, but good-humoured polemics, during which
the Padre never lost his temper, and I had not always the best of the
argument.
He was a very remarkable man, of an ancient noble Ragusan family,
evidently pious, yet wonderfully large-minded. I shall always remember
with pleasure the conversations we had together on the deck of the 'San
Carlo,' by the bright Italian moonlight, on those deep, smooth waters of
the Adriatic that sparkled with phosphorescence at every stroke of the
paddle-wheel. He was aware I was a Protestant, and though he had been a
missionary for many years he knew how to avoid polemics whenever it was
fit. He had been in South America and in North America; in the plains
of the Amazon and the Orinoco, and among the Sierras of Mexico.
I asked him about his success among the Indians, and after reflecting
for a little he gave me a most interesting account of his life's labours
among them. I carefully noted down each night in my diary, after we had
parted, the principal headings of his narrative, and some day I may give
to the public an account of the labours, trials, and sufferings of this
good and conscientious monk.
In answer to my question as to the amount of success he had obtained
during his long intercourse with American Indians, he said,
"There is a most extraordinary difference in intelligence between
the different tribes, even among those living close together; some
are wonderfully more intelligent than others, and, strange to say, I
found them better the farther they were removed from the influence of
civilization. A great deal might be made of them were it not for the
evil influence of the traders who come among them—the most pernicious of
whom I invariably found were those coming from the United States. These
traders, pioneers of civilization—as they called themselves—were almost
invariably men without any religion or principle; awful blasphemers,
their oaths were too terrific! They generally consisted of the veriest
scum and offscourings of commercial cities; they showed the poor savages
the very worst examples, for fair trading was unknown to them, and lying,
overreaching, and brow-beating were their chief characteristics, while
of drunkenness and unblushing debauchery they were terrible examples.
I was once asked by a chief why we came so far to teach them, and left
our own people untaught."
Padre Anselmo also told me that some of the natives had some idea of
the Divinity, and were very teachable, not like the Negroes of the West
Coast of Africa among whom he had laboured a short time. He contrasted
the capabilities of both races, and shaking his head, added,
"I fear it will take hundreds of centuries of incessant teaching, and
that more by example than by word of mouth, before any good will come from
missions among the Negroes; they seem utterly incapable of understanding
any of the attributes of God. They look upon him invariably as one to
be feared, and propitiated by gifts and sacrifices, so that he may be
induced, if possible, to do them no harm."
A chief came to him one night by stealth, "but not like Nicodemus," as
the worthy Monk added; he brought various presents to the mission, some
of considerable value, consisting of native rings of twisted gold. He
whispered under his breath to the Monk,
"You white man know everything, and you say your God rules everything.
Tell me where I can find him, that I may kill him! he is a bad god—he
has killed my favourite wife, and now I must kill him!"
The Negro was foaming at the mouth from impotent rage, and his fearful
language, together with the rolling of his eyes and the contortions
of his body, impressed the Monk at first with the idea that he was an
impersonation of the Evil One. Yet this chief had till then been the most
promising of all those natives on whom he had been wasting his time,
his patience, and his doctrine. In vain the Missionary tried to reason
with the demoniac chief; his words made no impression, and the savage,
failing to discover from the Monk the whereabouts of the white man's God,
returned to his village, where he burned his own national fetish, and
then cut off the heads of half-a-dozen wretches, having first charged
them with messages to be delivered to his wife in dead-man's-land!
One evening Padre Anselmo and I, after making ourselves snug on a pile
of sacks near the binnacle, were talking about missionary work, when he
spoke to me about our Protestant missions, and asked me many questions
concerning them.
"You work your missions differently from the way we do ours; you pay
your missionaries well, and even allow them, I have been told, to trade
at times, and to buy and sell and follow different callings. I have also
heard that you send missionaries abroad without any particular regard to
their capabilities, for instance as to their knowledge of the language
of the country they are sent to. Now all our missionaries are strictly
prepared for the country where they are intended to labour, and are not
sent out until they have acquired a good knowledge of the language of
that country. How do you find your system to work? Have you had much
success in the East Indies during the hundred years you have had the
opportunity of working in them?"
I imagined I could detect something of a smile playing about the corners
of his mouth as he made these remarks, and just as I was about to reply, a
scene came to my mind of which I had read or heard an account somewhere,
of an English missionary addressing an Arab audience in Tangier through
the medium of a Gibraltar Jew, for the missionary was utterly innocent
of any language but his own London English, and my innate appreciation
of the ridiculous so overcame my sense of what was proper and decorous
that I laughed myself nearly into fits.[6] However, having recovered my
equanimity, I replied, "I did not know very much about the matter; but I
had always heard that, generally speaking, the native Christians were the
greatest blackguards in India, the least objectionable being certainly
the Goanese Catholics," at which the good old monk seemed highly pleased.
His ideas of missionary work were peculiar and interesting. "We should
always," he said, "treat savages and the utterly uneducated, whether
at home or abroad, who are scarcely better than savages, like little
children, like very little children in intelligence, yet endowed with the
passions and vices of grown up men. One should therefore, if possible,
never try to teach them things beyond their understanding, but make
their practical civilization proceed _pari passu_ with their religious
training—instilling morality before preaching doctrine and dogma, both
teachings being backed up by unexceptionable example. "These are not my
own ideas," added Padre Anselmo, "they are the precepts of the wonderful
man who preceded me in the Amazon Mission, the present Pontiff, His
Holiness Pope Pius IX., whose equal will never again occupy the chair
of St. Peter."
"What! was the Pope ever a missionary?" I asked with astonishment. I knew
he had been a soldier, and had been even assured that in his early days
he was initiated a Freemason in a Lodge in Sicily; there was nothing very
extraordinary in his having been a missionary, but I had never heard of
it before, and was therefore taken by surprise.
"Indeed he was," replied Padre Anselmo, "and a very zealous and
hard-working missionary, whose memory is reverenced to this day, among
many a wild tribe on the banks of the Amazon."
Then we began to talk politics, that is to say I talked, the Monk only
listened, till musingly I said, "I wonder who will succeed him in the
Chair of St. Peter?"
"Whoever he may be," replied the Monk, "he will have a difficult task
coming after such a man."
"Have you been lately at Rome?" said I.
"I was there two months ago," he replied.
"What then do you think of Cardinal P—? do you know him?"
The Monk fixed his eyes on me for a moment, as if he would have read my
most inmost thoughts, and then speaking very slowly, said:
"That Sicilian Monk has long been aiming at the Tiara; he lives within
himself, has no confidant, no intimate friend, has no talents, only plenty
of doggedness, _vorrebbe Papeggiare_, but no, never will he occupy the
Pontifical chair, never!" and the Monk, for a minute looked me full in
the face.
We were now getting quite close to the town, which is built on the narrow
strip of land that lies between the Adriatic and the Dalmatian mountains,
that here rise up almost perpendicularly behind it. The morning mists
were clearing off, and the hazy outlines of the towers and ramparts, the
cupolas and steeples, together with the bright colouring of the sails of
the felucas and trabaccoli gliding out of the harbour, threading their
way through the many islands scattered outside it, formed a picture
that might be realized by a painter but of which I will not attempt the
description.
We were now fairly in the port of Gravosa, and the steamer was surrounded
by native boats conveying eager candidates for the privilege of carrying
ourselves and luggage to the shore. The real port is at Ragusa itself,
sheltered and protected by the ancient bastions and towers of the city,
but, though amply deep enough for its ancient galleys, and for those
argosies (so named after this very city of Ragusa) which in ancient
times monopolized with Venice the commerce of the world, it is not now
large enough or deep enough to accommodate our modern practical, though
inelegant fire-ships. It has consequently been abandoned for the port
of Gravosa, which is not only large, safe, and commodious, but also
exquisitely beautiful, though inconveniently distant, being nearly a
mile from the city. An excellent road, however, originally made by the
French and subsequently improved by the Austrians, communicates between
the two places, and numerous small carriages drawn by one or two horses
are constantly in readiness to convey for a trifle those who do not wish
to walk to Ragusa.
The two monks and I were soon on shore, and there I reluctantly parted
with them; they went on foot towards their convent, while I took a small
one-horse carriage and started off to the city.
Away we went at full gallop skirting the harbour, till the rising ground
at the end of the little valley compelled our lively little horse to
a slower rate of progression. We soon however topped the hill, when we
again came in view of the sea on our right hand, while on our left were
numbers of villas peeping out through masses of oleanders and gigantic
aloes, whose flower stems, like colossal candelabra, fifteen to twenty
feet in height, gave a peculiarly exotic character to the scene. Many
of these villas were in ruins, and others more or less damaged, still
bearing evidence of the French occupation at the beginning of this
century, and of their expulsion by the Russian and Montenegrin troops.
Ragusa was now fairly again in sight, and a noble city it is, and how
picturesque! so far as its greatness is concerned, Ragusa is now but
the shadow of what it was in bygone days. Its political importance has
faded away—its commercial supremacy is a thing of the past; but its
local beauty, its domes, its campaniles, its lofty cut-stone palaces,
its churches and public buildings, its exquisitely clean streets, its
balmy air, its azure sea and its pleasant society—all these are things
real and of the present. But Ragusa is not a place to be described, it
must be seen and studied to be appreciated. See it from the land, or
from the sea—wander through its narrow, quaint, artistic streets, ramble
round its walls and ramparts, and you will find it from every point of
view a most remarkable place.
This grand old city, into which neither horse nor carriage is ever allowed
to enter, was founded about the beginning of the seventh century, not
very long after the foundation of Venice. Both cities were Republics,
rivals in commerce and in the arts, and their people were incessantly at
war with one another. But though Venice, by degrees, was able to subdue
and include in her grasp almost the entire Eastern coast of the Adriatic,
she never succeeded, either by cajolery or brute force, in conquering the
Ragusans, who maintained their freedom till 1806; when, after existing
as an independent State for upwards of a thousand years, during which
time it had remained as an advanced post of European civilization on the
borders of wild Bosnia and fierce Albania, it fell with Venice, Genoa,
and the other free communities of Europe which Napoleon I. wiped off
the map of the world.
All down the coast of the Adriatic may be seen the winged Lion of St.
Mark, wherever the encroaching ambition of the Venetians enabled them
to establish themselves; but in Ragusa you will seek that grim Venetian
effigy in vain. Ragusa never was conquered by her great rival!
The carrettella came spinning, at the rate of a hunt, down the hill, at
the bottom of which is the entrance to Ragusa, and turning sharp round
at a speed that threatened to upset us bag and baggage into the middle
of the road, pulled up suddenly on the right, where a very primitive
hotel offers the only prospect of refreshment to the chance traveller
in those parts; though, for such as intend remaining some little time,
good accommodation can be obtained within the city. The hotel is most
picturesquely situated on the very edge of the sea, opposite to the
fortifications "_di mare_," and has in front a considerable plantation
of beautiful Paolonias, then in full blossom; on the opposite side is
the café, where of a Summer's evening congregate the rank and fashion
of Ragusa to enjoy their ices and lemonade, and listen to the excellent
band of the Austrian regiment quartered there, and whatever gossip,
scandalous or otherwise, that may be buzzing about. And very enjoyable
it must be! fine climate, pleasant society, lovely scenery, easy access
to the rest of Europe, either East or West, and cheap living—what more
could be desired? I would not ask for more.