Start for Fiji—Life in Australia and New Zealand—Death of the Rev. F.
and Mrs. Langham.
From the moment of my return to Britain, every one seemed to consider it
a matter of course that I should continue the travels which had hitherto
proved so pleasant, so at every turn I was met by the stereotyped
question, “And where are you going next?” As I had not the remotest
prospect of any more invitations to visit far countries, the question
seemed so silly that I replied in equally stereotyped form, “To Fiji!”
simply because that was the most absolutely improbable idea that could
suggest itself.
Yet of all improbable things this, the most unlikely, very quickly
happened. Before the end of the year the Fijian chiefs had
unconditionally given the whole group of lovely isles to the Great White
Queen, to secure her protection against unscrupulous foreigners, who
were doing all in their power to ruin the people. The gift was accepted,
and the Honourable Sir Arthur Hamilton Gordon, now Lord Stanmore (son of
the Earl of Aberdeen), was appointed first governor.
Lady Hamilton Gordon was a daughter of Sir John Shaw Lefevre—as lovable
and gracious as she was pleasant to the eye—the very ideal of a comely
British matron and happy wife and mother. Believing that my love of
travel and of painting would enable me to make myself happy in the isles
which we all believed to be still somewhat savage (possibly still
cannibal, for really none of us knew anything definite about them—only a
vague recollection of some song about “The King of the Cannibal
Islands”), she invited me to accompany her thither, and needless to say,
I accepted with delight.
So on 23RD MARCH 1875 (Tuesday in Holy Week) I joined the Fijian
Government House party at Charing Cross station, and we crossed to
Boulogne, and thence to Paris, where we attended services at many of the
most interesting churches. On the night of Good Friday we took the train
to Marseilles, where we had a pleasant afternoon of sight-seeing. On
Easter morning we embarked on board the Messageries Maritimes ss.
_Anadyr_. We had one long day at Naples, which of course we all enjoyed,
although the streets were wet and muddy, and sea and sky were cold and
grey. Strange to say, these brief glimpses of Paris, Marseilles, and
Naples form my sole acquaintance with the continent of Europe.
For miles ere we reached Port Said, the “blue” Mediterranean was
literally a sea of mud, the result of prolonged stormy weather, and we
had cold grey weather all the way to Aden. Curiously enough, often as I
have passed through the Red Sea, I have never once experienced the great
heat which many find so trying, and have always found a dress of navy
serge and pilot-cloth jacket the most comfortable clothing. We halted
for three days at Ceylon, where Point de Galle was still the port of
call, and there renewed several old friendships.
We bade adieu to the _Anadyr_ at Singapore, where we had a week to wait
for the ss. _Brisbane_, in which we were to proceed to Australia. A very
pleasant bungalow was lent to Sir Arthur, where we could rest in cool
shade under tropical foliage when we were not exploring the wonders of
the town. But as this was my first contact with real Chinese
life—temples, gardens, processions—all were keenly interesting, and I
was sight-seeing and painting from daybreak till sunset. One of the most
picturesque scenes was the cemetery on the hillside, with all its
horseshoe-shaped graves overshadowed by clumps of feathery bamboo.
Another scene of special interest was a great festival in honour of the
moon-goddess, when the houses were all decorated with scarlet draperies,
and the temples were crowded with gaily-dressed women, as well as men—a
rare sight in China. Even the funeral of a rich man provided a feast of
colour.
On 3rd May we again embarked, but in a very different vessel to the
luxurious French steamer in which we had travelled so far. The
_Brisbane_ proved a dirty little vessel, with wretched accommodation
mid-ships, and five hundred and twenty very low-class Chinamen fore and
aft, either bound to work on estates in Australia or to try their
fortune at the gold diggings at Cooktown. So from whichever direction
the wind blew, it brought us overpowering stinks of Chinese
cooking—_ghee_, ancient cabbage, salt-fish, and other horrors. The poor
creatures were packed in tiers several deep—one of them died, and was
dropped overboard.
So, although the sea was calm as glass, literally without a ripple, and
our sail through the beautiful Malay Archipelago, coasting lovely isles,
was delightful to the eye, our afflicted noses refused to be comforted.
We were not sorry when these poor toilers reached their various
destinations, as we touched at various northern ports—Cooktown,
Townsville, Bowen, Rockhampton, etc.; and when on 21st May we anchored
in Morton Bay, there a small steamer was waiting to take us up the river
to Government House at Brisbane, where our pleasantest impressions were
of the beauty of the semi-tropical botanic gardens and a sunset drive
along the river banks.
On the 23rd we re-embarked, and on the 25th steamed up the lovely
harbour to Sydney, where we were cordially welcomed by Sir Hercules and
Lady Robinson; but as space at Government House was limited, Commodore
and Mrs. Goodenough had offered to receive me—a privilege for which I
never can be sufficiently thankful, for to have been the guest of that
grand sailor, saint, and martyr, only too soon became one of life’s
landmarks.
On 20th August he died from the wounds received eight days before from
poisoned arrows, shot by islanders of Santa Cruz to avenge cruel
kidnapping by a trading-vessel; just as, for the same reason, they had
previously shot Bishop Patterson, thus in their ignorance slaying their
two most devoted friends.
Ere starting on this fatal voyage, the Commodore had taken Sir Arthur
and all the gentlemen of his party to Fiji, leaving Lady Gordon, the two
children, and me at Sydney, there to remain till a suitable home could
be prepared for us in the Fijian Isles. We were much made of by many
kind Australians, and I profited by the delay, which enabled me to
explore the Blue Mountains, and secure careful paintings of Govat’s
Leap, the Weatherboard, and other places of special interest, as well as
of many lovely scenes in the numberless creeks of the great harbour.
What memories of fragrance and beauty come back to me when I think of
the headlands, covered with many varieties of _epacris_ (which to me
appeared like hot-house heaths), rank masses of scented geranium,
thickets of yellow mimosa, and countless other wild flowers, while in
the gardens large tree-camelias showered their crimson and white
blossoms on the grass, and the scent of orange-blossom perfumed the air.
On the 9th September we embarked on board the _Egmont_, which was
specially chartered to take a detachment of engineers to do Government
work in Fiji. Very fortunately for me, the superintendent of the
Wesleyan mission, the Rev. Fred. Langham, and his wife, obtained a
passage on board of her, and thus we became firm friends, and much of my
delightful voyaging in the next two years to many of the loveliest isles
in the Fijian Archipelago was entirely due to their kindness in taking
me with them in their mission-ship, when they visited their native
clergy.
Australia had given us so much to think about, that our ideas of the
condition of the two hundred and fifty isles composing the Fijian group
were still somewhat hazy, when we were startled by Mr. Langham’s reply
to one of the engineers, who told him that they hoped to be of some use
to the poor islanders, and had brought a lot of copy-books to try if
they could teach them something.
He expressed his pleasure that they were coming with such kindly
purpose, but added that they would find the islanders already knew a
little, as they had eight hundred schools and as many churches, where
native teachers taught, and native clergy ministered, supported by the
villagers, who themselves had built their schools and churches. He might
have added what we subsequently ascertained, that there was scarcely a
house throughout the group (except in one small mountain district which
still continued heathen) where the family did not begin and end the day
with family prayer and reading the Scriptures, not as a matter of form,
but in all the earnestness of first love.
And yet it was not fifty years since two humble Wesleyan missionaries
had had the amazing courage to land among those most cruelly cannibal
people, and for the first time deliver to them the Message of Love,
which, two thousand years before, their Master had bidden all who have
heard it, pass on to those who have not received it. And that message
had wrought so marvellous a transformation, that the whole race had
become the gentlest and most earnest Christians I have ever known.
And this involved their practically becoming vegetarians as a first step
in the new direction, as the isles yielded no pasturage, and
consequently no animal food whatsoever, except fish, which was a very
uncertain supply, and the pigs, descended from those left by Captain
Cook, were far too precious for use except on great occasions. I often
wonder how we should face such a test as this.
It is not my purpose now to speak of the next two years, of which every
day was full of interest and novelty. In my book, _At Home in Fiji_,
published by Blackwood, I have described all this, and also our
enchanting visit to Sir George Grey, in his delightful Isle Kawau, off
the north coast of New Zealand, and my own still more fascinating visit
to the Wonderland of the pink and white terraces, and all other marvels
of the volcanic region in the North Isle.
The pictures which I happily secured at that time were all borrowed by
the New Zealand Commissioners, for exhibition in the great Indian and
Colonial Exhibition in London, and were actually on show when the awful
tidings came of how (after its summit had for fully eight hundred years
been the burial-place of great Maori chiefs) Tarawera, the so-called
extinct, but in truth only dormant volcano had suddenly reawakened as a
mighty giant, refreshed by his sleep of ages, and had wrought awful
destruction all around, reducing to chaos the fairyland which had so
fascinated all travellers.
Here I can scarcely resist recording my gratification at the wholly
unexpected heartiness of the welcome which was accorded to that book on
Fiji and New Zealand by reviewers representing every phase of opinion.
But indeed I may say the same of each of my books in succession—so
unanimous has been the kindly appreciation with which my critics have
received each fresh series of the notes of this wanderer.
All I wish now to say about our life in Fiji is simply as a brief
postscript to suggest a few of the developments of twenty-five years.
The Dr. M‘Gregor of my story, whose sympathy with and influence over
brown races was so remarkable, became the first Governor of British New
Guinea, and now, as Sir William M‘Gregor, rules over Lagos.[57] He was
succeeded in the government of New Guinea by George Ruthven Le Hunte,
who was the youngest of our party, and whom we called “our British boy,”
because he so excellently embodied our ideal of such an one. He received
the honour of knighthood on his promotion to be Governor of South
Australia. Captain Havelock, now Sir Arthur Havelock, has ruled over a
succession of colonies, as has also Sir Arthur Gordon, whose Fijian
“Round-Table” assuredly sent forth many earnest knights-errant to do
their country’s work in distant lands.
Very pathetic was the closing chapter in the life of my friends, the
Rev. Frederick and Mrs. Langham. They had begun their work in Fiji in
1858, when many of the tribes were still heathen, and the horrible old
customs still continued. But by their unvarying kindness and courtesy,
and attention to all that was not actually wicked in native manners
(Fijian etiquette being curiously well defined), they won the love and
confidence of the most savage men and women. Mr. Langham remained longer
in the isles and baptized a larger number of the people than any other
missionary. Except for brief furloughs in Australia, he and Mrs. Langham
were there for forty years.
The Bible was first translated into Fijian in 1865, and was immensely
read and really studied and loved by the people. But when the
missionaries (who had to commence by reducing Fijian to a written
language) became more thoroughly conversant with its niceties, they felt
that a revision was desirable, and so in 1898 Mr. and Mrs. Langham and
their adopted daughter, Annie Lindsay, came to London to do this work
for the British and Foreign Bible Society. Annie was the daughter of a
neighbouring missionary, and being born and bred in the isles, spoke the
Bau dialect (which is the purest “classic” Fijian) as her mother-tongue.
Together they worked at verse by verse, and great was their joy when
they heard of the extreme satisfaction with which in 1901 the New
Testament was received by the islanders.
With heart and soul they continued their very toilsome labour of love,
and were far advanced towards completing the revision of the Old
Testament, when just before Christmas in 1901 Annie caught a cold, which
rapidly developed into pneumonia, and she died. I received a
heart-broken letter from the dear old man, telling me that his wife
could not raise her head for sorrow, and that she was suffering from the
same illness. Only a few days later she also passed away, leaving him
desolate indeed.
Happily the Rev. Joseph Nettleton and his wife—retired Fijian
missionaries—were at hand to give him such comfort as was possible, and
to help in revising his final proofsheets. At last the Old Testament was
also complete, and then his life’s work was finished. By the advice of
Sir William M‘Gregor, who for ten years had witnessed Mr. Langham’s work
in Fiji, the University of Glasgow then conferred upon him the degree of
Doctor of Divinity, and he left London, purposing to go first to
Liverpool to address a conference, and thence to Glasgow to be
ceremonially invested with cap and gown.
On the journey he was taken ill, and after some weeks in Liverpool he
wished to be brought back to London, whence, on 25th June 1903, he
passed away. Shortly before his death he said: “I have seen a vision. I
thought I was sleeping, as we so often slept on the deck of the schooner
in the South Seas. I awoke at midnight. The Southern Cross was above me,
and all that part of the sky was luminous. The stars forming the cross
came down towards me. They were very near and very bright. Then behind
the stars I saw the face of my dear one—only her face, for her robe
faded away into light. She smiled, and said to me, “_Edaru ena tiko vata
tale_ (‘We two will live together again’). It was all very real to me.”
When told that it was doubtless a premonition, as he himself had reached
the brink of “the river,” he said: “It is all right, all is clear. I
have not to seek my Saviour. He is a living, bright reality to me now.
There is no love like His, and I am resting upon His love. He knows what
is best.” Then he repeated the first verse of “Jesu, Lover of my soul,”
in Fijian. Early on Sunday morning he passed away from this earth, on
which he had been the means of helping so many to pass from grossest
darkness into the true light.
Instead of being “capped” on earth, he was called to receive that crown
of life which his Master and ours has promised to all who are faithful
unto death, as he assuredly was. I think all who knew that venerable old
man in his latter years, with his halo of long, silvery white hair, felt
that they were in the presence of one of God’s own saints.
The close of his life was saddened by a very painful event on his
beloved Rewa river (where I spent such a delightful time with him and
his wife, travelling from village to village in the mission-boat, right
up to beautiful Namosi with its shapely peaked mountains). This was the
nominal conversion to the Church of Rome of the Namosi Chief and a
considerable number of his tribe, and the solemn _auto-da-fé_ of two
hundred and thirty-eight copies of the New Testament which were
collected in the Namosi district, in exchange for rosaries, and brought
about sixty miles down the river to Naililili, there to be publicly
cremated in a Fijian lime-kiln by the Roman Catholic sisters and other
ecclesiastical authorities in presence of many natives and Europeans.
Other copies of the Scriptures obtained in the Soloira district were
torn up by the priests on the passage down the Rewa and thrown into the
river, whence portions were recovered and given to Mr. Swayne,
Government Commissioner. When accounts of this reached Australia, so
much indignation was evoked, that the “Bible-burning” was denied _in
toto_ by the highest ecclesiastical authorities—the quibble being in the
word Bible, instead of New Testament. Afterwards a corrected version was
published to say that “in accordance with the practice of the Catholic
Church to destroy by fire all sacred objects when worn out, the Catholic
sisters had filled one kerosene-case with soiled and useless Wesleyan
Testaments, which had been exchanged for Catholic books.” Some
bystanders, however, contrived to rescue several Testaments which,
except for having had the covers violently torn off, were in perfect
condition, as well they might be, seeing that they were copies of Dr.
Langham’s new translation, printed by the British and Foreign Bible
Society in 1901. One copy bears an inscription proving that it was
bought by the owner on May 23, 1902, less than nine months before it was
so ruthlessly dealt with.
The circumstances which led to this very distressing occurrence are as
follows:—When New Zealand refused to join the new Australian
Commonwealth, some of her politicians strove to form a New Zealand
Commonwealth by incorporating South Sea Islands, especially Fiji, in
which a special crusade was started against the “crown colony” form of
government, and especially the stringent regulations against selling
liquor to natives, which hitherto have done so much to save the Fijian
race.
The promise of free trade in drink, and of a general time of glorious
liberty, found favour with sundry discontented white men, and some of
the chiefs, amongst others the Chief of Namosi. The Wesleyan native
minister excited his anger by using all his influence in support of the
existing government, whereupon the chief said that he and his people
would join the “Seventh Day Adventists,” who have now secured a small
footing in Fiji. These refused to receive him, telling him that as soon
as his anger subsided, he would return to his old church.
Then, in still greater dudgeon, he applied to Father Rougier for
admission to the Roman Church, into which, needless to say, he was
forthwith received, together with several hundreds of his people, who,
whatever their real religious convictions, believe that federation with
New Zealand will mean getting rid of all the restrictions and necessary
taxation imposed upon them by their present government.
It is one of the saddest things I know to note how, in all the different
groups of beautiful Pacific isles, the first whole-hearted conversion to
a simple Christian faith and life becomes tarnished after much contact
with merely nominal Christians of other nationalities, especially when,
as in New Zealand, political matters and land-grabbing come into play.