In the New Hebrides; reminiscences of missionary life and work, especially on the island of Aneityum, from 1850 till 1877

Front matter

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' PRINCETON, N. J. "^^

Preface

The literature connected with the New Hebrides is some- Avliat copious. We may pass over the " Memorial of Mendana to the King of Spain," which has been often quoted, more or less fully. The portion of Captain Cook's Voyages referring to the New Hebrides, published more than a century ago, is written in all the clear, graphic, and truthful style of the great navigator. When in 1850 I first sailed along the group, I read Cook's narrative in the large edition of his Voyages, and the accounts seemed as fresh and truth-like as if they had been written only a twelvemonth before. Captain (now Admiral) Erskine's admirable " Journal " refers only briefly to the New Hebrides ; it has reference chiefly to the eastern islands. The second volume of the Eev. William Gill's fascinating work, entitled " Gems from the Coral Islands," contains some interesting details of mission work on the New Hebrides. In his " Nineteen Years in Polynesia," in a clear, methodical, and perspicuous narrative, the Rev. Dr. Turner has recorded the labours and perils of the first two mission families — his own and Rev. Dr. Nisbet's — settled on Tanna, and to which he added three voyages

X PERFACE.

iu the Julin Williams. The Rev. A. W. Murray comes next, with his " Missions iu Western Polynesia," and in strong and earnest language relates what was done for the introduction of the Gospel by the agents of the London j\[issionary Societj'. The next two volumes are from a navigator's point of view, being Journals of Cruises in H.i\[.S. Rosario ; the one by Captain Markham, R.X., the other by Captain Palmer, R.N., who were sent to examine into the labour traffic and report upon it. They are both well-written volumes ; the authors were in deep sympathy with the greatly injured natives. The two volumes that followed those are deeply affecting biographies, the first of the Rev. J. W. Matheson and his wife, and the Rev. S. F. Johnston, by the Rev. Dr. Paterson ; the second of the Rev. G. N. Gordon and his wife, by his brother, the Rev. J. D. Gordon. The life of the Rev. Dr. Geddie, by the Rev. Dr. Paterson, is to a large extent a collection of Dr. Geddie's journals and letters, and gives a full and interesting account of the commencement and early history of the New Hebrides mission, up to the time of our arrival iu I 852. After that date the work connected with the mission increased so much, that it was in working, not in writing, that Dr. Geddie's time was chiefly occupied, and hence his journals and letters were for the most part brief. An excellent little volume, entitled " A Year in the New Hebrides," &c., by F. A. Campbell, 1873, gives a very good account of the islands and the mission up to that date, and is enriched by an appendix containing a " contribution to the phytography of the New

PllEFACE. XI

Hebrides by Baron Von Mueller," tlie plants having been collected by Mr. Campbell, but arranged and named by the learned Curator of the Melbourne Botanical Garden. But the Rev. Dr. Steel's volume, entitled " 1"he New Hebrides and Christian Missions," is really the history of the New Hebrides mission. It contains a vast amount of valuable information, collected with much pains, patience, and discrimination. He records fully and faithfully the toils, trials, and triumphs of the missionaries ; defends them ably, and vindicates them successfully, from the aspersions cast upon them and the misrepresentations made against them by such writers as Meade and Brenchlej' — able men, but prejudiced and misinformed, and who unhappily accepted their information from sources utterly unreliable. Dr. Steel is remarkably well informed on missions, knows everything about the New Hebrides mission, writes with extreme care and accuracy, and is in full sympathy with mission work to the heathen.

It is highly probable that some friends of the New Hebrides mission w^ill be disappointed with this volume. It is not, as they may have expected it to be, a history of that mission. Dr. Steel's book rendered that quite unnecessary ; but I never contemplated a history of the whole mission. When about to prepare his history. Dr. Steel consulted me, and would not have proceeded with it if I had thought of writing a history of the whole mission. But I urged him to go on with his work, as it would in no way interfere with mine. This is a history of the Aneityum rather than of the New Hebrides

XU PREFACE.

missiou, and, furthermore, ratlier of my own station (and not all that I wished to say about it) than of the whole island ; but as the work on both stations was carried on on the same lines, and with very much the same results, it so happens that what I have said about my own station will generally apply to the whole island. This volume is not written in chronological order ; it does not record what was done year by year ; it is a succession of subjects, but not a consecutive history; although, as far as practicable, I have arranged the subjects to follow each other in regular order. It is not autobiographical, but it contains almost nothing that has not come under my own personal observation, or been attested to me by eye or ear witnesses. I have to some extent copied from my own letters and journals published in the Reformed Presbyterian Magazine and elsewhere ; but these extracts have all been rewritten and abridged or extended, as seemed to be required, and the information, where needed, brought down to the present date. There is nothing startling in the book, nothing sensational ; it is not written specially for the learned or for the scientific, but for average Christian readers, who feel an interest in missions to the heathen ; and I sincerely hope that those who come to its perusal with moderate expectations may not be disappointed. The elder Dr. M'Crie used to say, " A sermon is a sermon, but a letter is only a letter ; '"' and on one occasion, at a meeting for Foreign Missions in Exeter Hall, the Chairman said, " Now let the missionaries give us their facts, and we will draw our inferences for ourselves." In the following pages

PREFACE. xiu

I have tried to avoid sermonising, and to allow my readers to draw their inferences for themselves. In a few cases the same idea or the same fact has been repeated in different chapters, but as seldom as possible, and only for the sake of connection.

I have still sufficient materials on hand to form another volume, which would contain biographical sketches of natives, both heathen and Christian, — chapters on the manners, customs, and traditions of the Aneityumese, — illustrations of Scripture through light supplied from the New Hebrides, and other aspects of missionary life and work similar to those given here. But the appearance of that volume will depend very much upon the reception given to this one. Publishers are extremely chary about running any risks with missionary literature ; and hence the authors of mission books have to make strong and pathetic appeals, to secure the patronage of their private friends, as well as the support of the general public.

LiNCUAN Cottage, Kiukcowan, N.B.,

Contents

f.iiAr.

I. THE SOUTH SEA ISLANDS .

II. THE NEW HEDRIDES ....

Chapter I. The South Sea Islands

The South Seas, or the Pacific Ocean, is the largest expanse of water on the face of the globe. Speaking in round numbers, it is 7000 miles square, or nearly fifty million square miles. It is studded with something like a thousand sunny isles, every one of them fair as Eden, and fertile as the garden of the Lord. If Homer had possessed our geographical knowledge, he would have made the 3000 Oceanides, the daughters of Oceanus and Tethys, not to be the goddesses of the rivers, but to be the goddesses of those beautiful, palm-ci-owned, paradise-like islands that stud the Pacific, and bask on its sunny bosom. But Oceanica, or the Island world, as it has been called, is perhaps the most imperfectly known of any portion of the earth's surface. It is invariably laid down in all our maps in such a narrow compass — on such small proportions— that the islands, and groups of islands, appear as indistinct as the star dust, or the nebula?, in the Milky Way; so that nobody, to whom the subject has not been a special study, has any distinct conception of either the separate islands, or of the groups to which they respectively belong.

The name of the Soutli Seas was given to this ocean by Balboa, the man who was the first to discover it ; and it was discovered and named in this way. In 15 13, the year in which the battle of Flodden was fought, when Vasco Nugnez de Balboa was governor of Santa Maria, in the isthmus of Darien, on one occasion while he was travelling inland exploring the country, his native guides informed him that the sea could be seen on the other side from the top of the mountain before him. Animated by a glowing hope, he proceeded alone to the summit, and there, to his surprise and delight, he saw the great expanse of ocean stretching away as far as he could see to the south; for from the bay of Panama to Mexico the coast-line is nearly west. He immediately fell on his knees and thanked God for this great discovery. Columbus, and nearly all those first great discoverers, were men of simple earnest piety; if not enlightened, they were devout, and recognised the hand of God as guiding them. Balboa no doubt felt at that moment, as Franklin felt when he discovered that the electric spark and the lightning were the same, that he had secured an earthly immortality. He hastened with all speed to the shore, and with sword and buckler in his hands, he plunged vip to his middle in the waves, and took possession of the whole ocean in the name of his sovereign, Ferdinand, king of Spain, and from the direction in which the ocean lay from where he stood, not from its relative situation on the globe, he named it the South Sea.

How little did Balboa think, when he performed that symbolic act in the name of his master, that the ocean he had just discovered was of such enormous dimensions — was covered with such a multitude of islands — was to lie so long unexplored — was to be of so little benefit to his country ; but was by-and-by to be the scene on which such triumphs of the Gospel were to be achieved — was to become one of the great highways for the commerce of the world — was, in these latter days, to create such an earth hunger among the colonising nations of Europe, and was to engender such a fever among them for the annexation of its islands !

It received the name of the Pacific Ocean in this way. In 15 19, six years after Balboa's discovery, the year in which Charles V. was made Emperor of Germany, Ferdinand Magellan, a famous Portuguese navigator in the service of Spain, was despatched, in a vessel named the Victory, to discover the exact position of the MoUuccas. He sailed along the east coast of South America till he discovered the two clouds — the two patches of nebulae — that bear his name, and also the straits that are called after him, and through which he passed. He then sailed westward for 7000 miles, at first before the south-east and then before the north-east ti'ade wind, till he reached first the Ladrone, and subsequently the Philippine Islands, where, after all this brilliant discovery, he was killed in a quarrel with the natives in 152 1, just as Cook, after his world-renowned voyages, fell a victim to a native quai'rel at Hawaii, in 1779. As the sea was remarkably smooth during this long voyage, Magellan naturally inferi-ed that it must be always so, and called it the Pacific Ocean ; although at times it is swept over by tremendous hurricanes and is occasionally the reverse of pacific, which has led superficial critics and tyi'oes in seafaring knowledge to show off their feeljle wit by speaking of it as the so-called Pacific, or the ocean that is non-pacific ; but these cases of storm are simply like the exceptions that strengthen the rule. The late Admiral Fitzroy, who was well acquainted with this ocean, and one of the very highest authorities on such a subject, while urging the claims of the Panama route from London to Australia, gave as one of his principal leasons the extent of smooth sailing enjoyed on this ocean. There is so much of this ocean being ^^•ithin intertropical and subtropical regions, where the sea, as a general rule, is so much smoother than in higher latitudes, whether north or south, that Magellan, with the intuitive sagacity of a great man, rightly named it the Pacific Ocean.

Exclusive of Australia and New Zealand, geographers have arranged the South Sea Islands under these three divisions, viz., Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia. Polynesia, or the Many IdamJs (from 'jtoXu;, polys, many, and n^sog, nesos, an island), was the name given at first, in a general way, to the whole of these islands ; then they were divided into Eastern and Western Polynesia ; but now Polynesia is restricted to the eastward islands, situated between long. i8o deg., the last meridian, and South America. Melanesia, or the BlacJi Islands (from fjLO.ug, melas, black, and ^^ffo;, nesos, an island), so called from the colour of the inhabitants, comprises all the islands south of the line from long. i8o deg. and west to New Guinea, including the Fiji group, the New Hebiides, New Caledonia, the Loyalty Islands, the Solomon group. New Britain, New Ireland, the Louisiade Archipelago, and other islands. Micronesia, or the Little Islands (from ,a/?c5o'j, milivos, little, and v^iroj, nesos, an island), so called from the islands being little, comprises all the islands noi-th of the line, from Hawaii on the east to China on the west, and includes the Kincfsmill group, the Scarborough Range, the Radick and the Ralick chains, and a multitude of other ishinds.

The South Sea Islands are inhabited by two, and only two, races, viz., the Malay Polynesian and the Papuan, two races perfectly distinct, both in personal appearance and in language. The Malay are the descendants of Shem, or at least they are of Asiatic origin ; the Papuans are the descendants of Ham, or at least they are of African origin. The Malays are by far the finest in personal appearance ; they are tall and well-formed, their skin a light yellow, their hair a smooth glossy black. Their language is soft and mellifluous, rivalling, if not surpassing, the Italian itself. It is a peculiar but universal rule in all the dialects of this language, that not only every word, but every syllable, ends with a vowel ; while of the consonants, it is the semivowels 1 m n r s, and the slender consonants k p t, that are most commonly used. There are no gutturals, and ng is the only double consonant ; while even that, in some of the dialects, is softened into n—fan/jata, man, becomes tanata or kanaAri. If on a map of the South Sea Islands a point is fixed upon at Easter Island, another at the north-west extremity of the Sandwich Islands, and a third at the south-west extremity of New Zealand, and if lines are drawn from these three points so as to form a triangle on the map, this triangle will include nearly the whole of the Malay Polynesian race. Wliile the language spoken by all these Malays is one, the natives of nearly every group speak a different dialect of this one language. There are at least seven distinctly marked dialects of the Malay languages, viz., the Hawaiian, the Marquesan, the Tahitian, the Rarotongan, the Samoan, the Tongan, and the Maori or New Zealand. The Samoan is by far the softest and smoothest, the Maori is the sti-ongest and roughest. The one is the Ionic of PoljTiesia, the other is the Doric. CHmate, it is said, by affecting the muscles of the mouth, has a strongly modifying influence upon language. Certain it is that Samoa and the Marquesas, where the softest dialects are spoken, are the -R-armest localities ; whereas New Zealand, where the strongest dialect is spoken, is the coldest. But the softness and liquid smoothness of their language brings one great disadvantage to the Polynesians, it renders them nearly incapable of pronouncing English.

Melanesia, or, as it is sometimes still called, Western Polynesia, is inhabited by the other distinct race, the Papuan, who take their name from the island of Papua or New Guinea, the largest island in Oceanica. They are also called Melanesians, from their dark colour, and Negritoes or Negrilloes, from their negro-like aj^pearance. They have crisp hair of different shades, but never glossy black like the Malays. Their skin is dark, a kind of coffee-and-milk colour, and their features generally plain. Tlieir whole appearance is unmistakably African, but without the prognathous, protruding jaws of the genuine negro. Their language is quite distinct from that of the Malay Polynesian ; it belongs to an entirely different family of languages, and it is endlessly diversified. Not only on every group, but on every island, a different dialect is spoken ; and so widely different are they as to be almost, sometimes altogether, unintelligible to the inhabitants of an adjoining island. It will be difficult to say, till the languages are more fully examined and compared than they have yet been, how far they are connected by a common paternity. On the south of the New Hebrides the dialects have evidently sprung from n common language. There are strong resemblances in grammatical structure, Ijut the diversity in the vocables is very great. One would almost think thnt the whole race had come direct from Babel at the confusion of tongues, and that the inhabitants of one island had scarcely ever spoken one word to those of another, from that day to this.

Chapter II. The New Hebeides

Before proceeding to describe the New Hebrides, I mayinsert a short paragraph or two, to connect the early discoveries in tlie South Seas with the discovery of the New Hebiides. After Magellan the next great name that appears in this ocean is Mendana. Alvaro Mendana de Meyra, the nephew of the Viceroy of Peru, sailed on a voyage of discovery from Lima, in South America. He discovered the Solomon Islands in 1567, the year in Avhich the Reformed Kii'k of Scotland Avas established and endowed l)y the State. He called them the Solomon Islands, from a belief that they had supplied the gold and treasure employed in the building of the Temple. The minds of the early discoverers seem to have been constantly inflamed by the description of the wealth of Solomon. The land of Ophir was the object of continual research. Columbus, among his other dreams, believed that he had discovered this source of Jewish splendour in Hispaniola and Veragua. The Solomon group extends about 600 miles, l3ang N.W.W. and S.E.E., between 11 deg. and 5 deg. S. lat. and 163 deg. and 154 deg. E. long. Although this group was discovered more than three centiiries ago, it was, till recently, one of the least-known groups in the world. It is not much more than a century since the vciy existence

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of this group was doubted. So little was then kiioAvn of those seas, that one of the best hydrographers of that period, Dalrymple, removed them on his chart ten or twelve degrees to the west of their true position, under the lielief that the Solomon Islands of Mendana were the same as New Britain. It was not till, by the elaborate disquisitions of the French, comparing and combining the early and later discoveries, that it was found that Mendana, Bougainville, Surville, Carteret, Shortland, and others, had all discovered the same group. The imperfect means in use for finding the longitude left the discoveries of the early navigators in much uncertainty. But with Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, New Caledonia, and other islands all rising to such importance, and lying in such near proximity, there is no fear of the Solomon group remaining much longer a terra incognita.

After the Solomon group, the next discovered was what are now called Queen Charlotte's Islands. Mendana was anxious to revisit the Solomon Islands, and found a colony there, but it was not till twenty-eight years afterwards, not till 1595, that he was able to make the attempt. He was accomjjanied by Pedro Yernandez de Quiros, a native of Portugal, and "an officer of known worth." They failed to find the Solomon group. They knew the latitude, but ship chronometers were then unknown, and their longitude was "WTong. They kept too far to the east, and they came upon the Queen Charlotte's Islands, which they called Marquesas, but which must not be confovmded with the modern Marquesas, which lie to the north-east of Tahiti. Queen Charlotte's group is small, and lies about 10 deg. S. lat. and 168 deg. E. long. It lies a little to the north of the New Hebrides. It was, as I have said, disco vei-ed by Mendana in 1595. He formed a settlement at Santa Cruz, and died there the same year. After his death the settlement was broken up. It was on Santa Cruz where the deeply lamented Commodore Goodenough was killed by the natives in 1876. This group was lost sight of for nearly two centuries, till it was rediscovered by Captain Carteret in 1767, and named after the reigning Queen, It was proposed by French writers to withdraw the name of Queen Charlotte, and to call it the Archipelago of La Perouse, in honour of that distinguished French navigator, who perished in one of them, called Vanikolo, in 1788, But this has not been done.

The episode of La Perouse is the most thrilling event connected with the history of this group ; and all that is known of it has been told by Chevalier Dillon, an enterprising colonial captain, well known in AustraUa more than fifty years ago, who published, in two volumes, an account of his voyages to Fiji, the New Hebrides, &c., and after whom Dillon's Bay, in Eromanga, was named. La Perouse was sailing on a voyage of discovery ; the last place at which he was seen or heard of was at Botany Bay, in New South Wales. The account given to Captain Dillon by the natives of Vanikolo, in 1826, was, that one morning after a fearful hurricane, when they went out, they saw two vessels wrecked on the reef that surrounds the island : one of them sank outside the reef ; the other was driven over the reef into smooth water : a great number of the men on board were drowned, and their bodies devoured by the sharks ; others were killed by the natives, Init a portion survived, who erected a stockade by the side of a stream, and out of the wreck of the large vessel they built a small one with two masts, in which they all sailed away but two. As this vessel was never heard of it must have been lost. The natives had never seen a ship or a white man before. They supposed them to be water or ocean spirits. They said, " A man stood at the gate of the stockade with an iron rod in his hand " (the sentry with his musket). "The men had long noses out from their heads" (alluding to their cocked hats). " They ate only little bits of food " (probably biscuits). " The chiefs kept looking through something at the sun and the stars. Of the two men who remained on the island, the one was a chief, the other a common man ; the chief had died three years before Captain Dillon's visit ; the other had fled away to another island with the native chief under whom he lived." Captain Dillon obtained a great number of articles belonging to the two vessels, so as to furnish abundant proof that La Perouse's vessels were lost there. He conveyed them to France, received the rewards offered by the French Government, and was honoured with the title of Chevalier by the French King. The group next discovered was the Neiu Hebrides.

The New Hebrides w^ere first discovered in 1606, the year after the Gunpowder Plot. Dynamite was then unknown, or the plot might not have been discovered. Torres Straits, between Australia and New Guinea, were discovered the same vear by Quiros's second in command, Louis Varz de Torres, after w^hom they were named. Quiros had been major pilot to Mendana in his last voyage. He supposed the New Hebrides to be part of the great southern continent, the idea that filled the imaginations of all the early adventurers, and hence he called it Tierra del EspiriUt Santo. He anchored in the large bay of St. Filip, in the north-east corner of the northernmost island, now genei-ally called Santo. Here a large river runs into the sea, which he called the Jordan. He founded a town on its banks, which he called Le Nuova Jerusalem, the New Jerusalem. The port he named P^era Cruz, the True Cross. The Spaniards quarrelled with the natives, and soon abandoned the settlement. Quiros returned to Mexico, but Torres sailed west, and passed through the Straits that he discovered, and which are rendered memorable by Commodore Erskine's proclaiming there the British protectorate over the south-east of New Guinea. Nothing more was known of the New Hebrides till 17 68, when Cook sailed on his first voyage to the South Seas to observe the transit of Venus at Tahiti; and, two years after, Wallis and Carteret had proceeded on a voyage of discovery in the same ocean : a period brilliant with eminent men in pursuit of new regions. This year Bougain-\alle ascertained that the land discovered hy Qitiros was not a continent, but a group of islands. He sailed through the passage that liears his name, between Mallicolla and Santo, landed upon what he misnamed Lepers' Island (he had mistaken some skin disease for leprosy — there is no leprosy on the New Hebrides), the connect name of which is Aoba, and called the group by the name of the Great Cydades. In 1773 Captain Cook explored the entire group, and thought he had done enough to entitle him to name them anew himself, and called them The Neio Hebrides, supposing them to be the most westei'n islands in the Pacific. In a sul^sequent voyage, however, he discovered another large island, nearly 200 miles fai'ther west, which he named Nero Caledonia, and took possession of it formally in the name of his sovereign, King George the. Third; but which was taken possession of surreptitiously in 1854 by the French during the Crimean war, when our Government could not afford to have a qviarrel with the French about such a paltry possession. Some WTiters, jealous for the honour of Quiros, have

THE NEW HEBRIDES. I 3

strongly urged that the original name should be restored to this group. For the sake of distinctness and simplicity, the plain, common-sense plan of retaining or restoring the native names of places, wherever these can be ascertained, is now generally acted on. But as the natives have no name for the entire group, some foreign name must be adopted. The name given to them by Quiros, however, is objectionable. Sounding in grave sonorous Spanish, in Roman Catholic ears, there might appear nothing improper in Tierra Australis del Usjnntu Santo. But translated into English, where sacred names are so carefully excluded from common objects, what would sound more harsh and profane in Protestant ears than the Arcliipelago of the Holy Ghost ! Whatever opinion may be formed of Cook's procedure in rejecting the Great Cydades and employing the New Hebrides, the latter name is now so firmly established, that it is certain to be retained permanently and employed universally.

The New Hebrides group extends to about 400 miles in length, lying N.N.W. and S.S.E., between 21 deg. and 15 deg. S. lat. and 171 deg. and 166 deg. E. long. They lie about 1000 miles nearly due north of New Zealand, about 400 miles west of Fiji, about 200 miles east of New Caledonia, and about 1400 miles north-east of Sydney, There are about thirty islands in the group ; nearly twenty of them are inhabited, and the third of them are of considerable extent. It is their proximity to New Caledonia that is the only plausible argument advanced by the French to justify their desire for annexing the group. The French have no claim whatever upon the New Hebrides. The claim of the British is beyond dispute. Everything that has been done for the group, and for the natives of those islands, has been done by the British. Cook, as we have seen, partly discovered the islands ; he fvilly explored them, surv'eyed the whole group, and laid the islands down in maps, with an accuracy that has never been surpassed. For about forty years they have been visited almost annually by a British man-of-war, to maintain law and order, and secure life and property. Nearly all that has been done to develop trade on the islands has been effected by British capital, skill, and industry. All that has been done to introduce Christianity, promote education, and advance civilisation has been done by British missions and British subjects. It was the British missionaries who were the first, and all along have been the most active and earnest, to oppose and repress kidnapping and slavery on the group. Our Presb}i;erian mission has expended ;^ 160,000 in their efforts to Christianise the natives : and Ave are not only maintaining, but we are extending and increasing our agencies to promote the highest interests of the natives. But what have the French done to promote any of these objects ? They have done literally nothing. And judging from what they have done in the islands nearest to us, viz., the Loyalty Islands, they would suppress our mission as fast as they possibly could. Moreover, all the natives are eager to be under British protection. But they all di-ead any connection with the French. It is true there was a French mission for some years on Aneityum, biit what Avere the results 1 They were equal to the means employed, but no more. The missionaries printed no books, opened no schools, and erected no churches. They held one short service in their own house on the Sabbath, and gave to the natives small brass medals with the image of the Virgin Mary on one side, and assured them that if they wore these medals she would protect them from all e\il. After