Round the world on a church mission

Front matter

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tUe M'hetttogiciti

PRINCETON, N. J.

Preface

In the year 1884 the present Archbishop of York, who was at that time Bishop of Lichfield, and included in his yet undivided diocese the county of Derby, wrote to my friend, Mr. Charles Bodington, who was Vicar of Christ Church, in the city of Lichfield, and is now a residentiary canon of the cathedral, and to me, saying that he had been requested to send two clergymen to preach missions in the dioceses of Christchurch and Auckland in New Zealand, and asking us to go. The call was unexpected and startling. But if any one on earth had a right to utter it, it was our own diocesan. He had the first claim on our obedience. He knew us and our parishes very well, and when, after weighing all the objections we could urge, he unhesitatingly took upon himself the responsibility of telling us to go, we felt that for us to refuse would be presumptuous (see Appendix, p. 363).

We sailed from Liverpool on the 4th of July in

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the next year, and we followed the course of the sun “round the round world.” We crossed the Atlantic Ocean and the great continent of America, and, stopping to lunch at the Sandwich Islands and to breakfast at Tutuila, reached New Zealand in the early spring. Our missions in the two islands lasted through the finest summer that had been known for twenty years, and it was winter when we steamed away through the storms of the South Pacific to Tasmania and Australia. Somewhere between Brisbane and London we slipped through another spring and summer, and reached home in September, 1886, after an absence of fourteen months. The mission was, I think, the first that had ever been sent to the colonial Churches.

The New Zealand Church paid our travelling expenses, as well as the stipends of the two clergymen who took charge of our parishes. It was, therefore, costly ; but the sum we received was not greater than the annual income paid to the incumbent of a city church in the colony.

This story of our travel was chiefly written during a short summer holiday in 1887. Change and growth are rapid in the colonies. Five years in these young countries are equal to fifteen at home, and there must have been many alterations in New Zealand since we learned to love it. These pages only profess to represent our impressions of the country at the time.

PREFACE.

IX

Although in writing them I had the benefit of Canon Bodington’s diaries, I could not possess myself of his recollections, and naturally the story has been told from my own point of view. I am afraid that this sad necessity may have given it a tinge of egoism, in spite of my desire to veil the naughty “ ego.” I know that he would not notice it himself, and I hope the more observant reader will forgive me.

My best thanks are due to my cousin. Miss Meadows Taylor, for selecting and laboriously transcribing from my letters and diaries the materials which I have here condensed ; and to my brother, Mr. W. H. Mason, of Morton Hall, Notts., for reproducing in pen and ink the drawings from my sketch-book. The illustrations are nearly all his work. That on p. 43, although taken from my sketch-book, was copied by me from a photograph. The Clematis indivisa, on p. 93, was drawn by him from nature ; and the kiwi, on p. 74, from a stuffed specimen given me by Dr. Kinder, of Auckland. The unacknowledged quotations are from Captain Cook’s “Voyages,” and from the “Diaries” of Bishop Selwyn ; and I have corrected or verified my own impressions of the country by consulting the excellent “Year-Book of New Zealand” for 1886, published by Messrs. Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington.

It is well, perhaps, to add that all the remarks I have made on the advantage and the duty of

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colonization were written long before “ General ” Booth proposed his scheme. It is evident, I think, that he has rightly discerned “ the signs of the times.” It is equally plain to me that the Salvation Army, regarded not as a Society for the conversion of sinners, but as an independent and self-sufficient religion, does not offer a strong and permanent basis on which to build up this important social work.

G. EDWARD MASON,

Rector of Whitwell, Hon. Canon of Southwell, and a “ Canon-Missioner" of the Diocese.

ON A CHURCH MISSION.

Chapter I

On the 13th of July, 1885, we were steaming westward in the Bothnia. It was an incomparably delicious day ; the sea waveless and like a sheet of polished silver. Although we were four hundred miles from New York, the pilot came on board in the morning at seven o’clock. We saw a cruel shark with black fins cutting the water like lightning, and the petrels skimming round him. A lovely flying-fish flew on board. I bought it, and sketched it. It is like a mackerel with four wings. The web of its wings is like very delicate gelatine, more transparently clear than tracing-paper.

The next day was a busy one, our first spent in

ROUND THE ROUND \YORLD the New World. And remarkably new it is. It would be quite impossible to mention half the new things that we saw in our forty hours’ stay in New York. All was new. For instance, the waiters are all black. They have such comfortable faces and sleek skins and impossibly-large, rolling eyes, that they look exactly like seals — as though some of the creatures out of “ Wonderland ” had suddenly proved to be realities ; and we breakfasted on blackberries and blue-fish.

There are three things well worth notice in an American hotel. The first is the sensible and scientific variety of bread ; the second is, that breakfast is always begun with fruit and cream ; and the third is, that wines and other intoxicating liquors are seldom touched in the dining-room. They may be had, if they are required ; but the guests are not expected to ask for them. Their attention is not called to the wine-card. If they want such luxuries they go to the bar downstairs.

The streets are full of tram-cars ; and over the tram-cars, suspended in the air about the height of the second or third story, is an “ elevated ” railway. The waggons, instead of being heavy and lumbering, are all springy and light, looking as if they were made of nothing, and they are painted all colours. The horses are chiefly white, with flowing manes and tails, and jingling with incessant bells. They are troubled with very little harness. The omnibus which brought us to the Metropolitan Hotel was grand and lofty and balanced on leathern springs. It was very like the Lord Mayor’s state coach. But the coachman did not correspond to this idea. He had no gold lace or

ON A CHURCH MISSION.

powdered wig. He wore no coat ; he drove us with his shirt-sleeves tucked up. He had a straw hat on his head and a cigar in his mouth.

The streets are all full of telegraph-posts ; not one line, but many lines. The posts are simply trees with the bark off, painted, and leaning about in every direction. Some of them have as many as eight cross-yards, each of them with six or seven lines of wire running through them. These untidy posts are quite in character with the streets, which are roughly paved with large cobble-stones, and often littered with rubbish and encumbered with bales and crates of unpacked goods. The only really neat and quiet street which we observed, and the only one with a well-made, smooth road, was the famous Fifth Avenue, the home of the wealthy grandees who despise the English and copy them. The shops are, of course, all “ stores.” They are like warehouses, very large and roomy ; and each boasts a sign. These signs are very demonstrative. They do not overhang the passengers ; they contest the pavement with them. They are generally statues — a Highlander, perhaps, or a Red Indian, or a polar bear. Thrones are erected here and there for those princely people who can afford to have their boots blacked. They must be princely, because fivepence is the very smallest sum for which they can get what the “brigade” in London call “ a shine.” In the same way, if you want your hair comfortably dressed, you must pay a dollar. In fact, except at the hotels, which are to be considered cheap, a dollar appears to go little further than a sixpence. How rich the shoe-blacks must be ! I have often reflected since that here is a great opening for gentlemen with broken fortunes.

Policemen, or, as they are familiarly called, “ cops,” lounge about the streets in cool suits and white hats, armed with ugly batons. They are, we were told, chiefly Irish, and are very handy with their official shillelaghs, and are apt in a row to “ fetch you a crack over the head to see if you’re the right man.” But of this we cannot speak from experience. The postmen are like sportsmen ; they wear comfortable grey clothes, and carry the letters in real game-bags.

What with signs, and shoe-blacks, and goods exposed for sale, and the motley crowd in summer costumes, the streets, though untidy, are remarkably picturesque. If some things are untidy in this New World, it is because the Americans— and they admit it — are so “go-ahead” that they have not yet had time to stop to finish them.

The older part of New York is as irregular as London or Rome ; the newer part is mapped out with mathematical precision. The avenues run north and south, and are four or five miles long ; the streets, which may be two miles long, cross them at right angles from Hudson River to East River. Avenues and streets are mathematical, not only in structure, but also in name. For their names are simply numerical. There are twelve avenues ; and, when you have gone down Sixth Avenue as far as the Central Park, you find yourself in P'ifty-ninth Street. How much further these streets may go beyond the Park, and up to what numbers they may run, I would not hazard a

ON A CHURCH MISSION.

There is one advantage connected with this plan, that a slight knowledge of arithmetic enables you to find out how far you have to walk to get back to your hotel.

W'e crossed the vast suspension-bridge which connects New York and Brooklyn. It carries every kind of traffic across it at an immense height above the East River, and you look down on big ships being towed out beneath you. In the centre of the bridge is a broad foot-walk, with seats in the shade. Beneath there is a passage full of telegraphs and telephones. On either side comes a line of steam-cars, which run across without an engine. Outside these, again, is a broad carriageway, making altogether five roads side by side.

From depot to depot (the word “ station ” is unknown in America) the bridge is a mile long. The view from it is splendid — it is like London in form, and like Venice in colour. The houses are chiefly red, but also white and yellow with green Venetian windows. The rivers and harbour are crowded with shipping. Each line of steamers has its own separate landing-stage, and the water is so deep that the largest ocean-steamers simply come straight in and sidle up to their own platforms without aid from tugs or boats.

On the bridge, as elsewhere, may be seen original and startling advertisements — here a huge statuary' armchair ; there a seven-league boot ; there a placard in praise of “ Phosphaline,” a restorative for headache and " gone-ness," strong enough, you would be assured, to restore even “ a gone coon.”

The Americans have a passion for exaggeration. They have produced such extraoi'dinary results in so short a time ; their inventions are so sudden, their discoveries so surprising ; and everything they have is so big, such big lakes, rivers, mountains, prairies, and trees ; such big cities, such big industries, such big “ stores,” such big “tracks,” such big “ cars ; ” everything, in fact, is on so great a scale that they naturally take an enlarged view of possibilities ; their imagination overleaps all the difficulties and rushes to a superlative conclusion. They have no desire to deceive, only to astonish. They have the instinct of a Jules Verne. They have the French love of la gloire ; only with them la gloire is not ideal but material. Much that they say is not meant to be taken au pied de la lettre : it is simply their droll humour. A young IMexican was describing to us a curve in a Pennsylvanian railway, which was so sharp that he was thrown out of his berth in a sleeping-car. “You know,” he continued, “the curve is so sharp that you can step from the hind car into the front ” — and, after a moment’s hesitation — “ in fact, there was once a collision,” and then he burst into laughter. Another was explaining inoculation, and he said, “ For instance, Peru is the place for fleas, but, after you’ve been there a few days, you don’t feel them at all.” The Mexican at once broke in with, “ Pve just come from there, and I quite miss them.” A New York merchant, lately returned from travel in Europe and the East, initiated us into the mysteries of his cypher telegrams. One was the word “ kopper.” This was a telegram to be sent to his wife through his partner in business — indifferently from England, Rome, or Smyrna — and meant, “ I am enjoying

ON A CHURCH MISSION.

splendid health. The country interests me exceedingly. The climate and scenery are delightful.” If he wanted to vary the message, he telegraphed “ hoppers,” and the little crooked letter, by the time it reached the delighted wife, had swelled into several more pleasant and reassuring messages.

Of all the new things in New York nothing is more new than the style of the newspapers. There they are hung in rows on the wall on the ground floor of the hotel — the ground floor, which is quite open to the street, and serves as a public club ; but the difficulty is to find one that is worth reading. You look in vain for anything like the Times, the Morning Post, the Daily News, or the Standard. You see no telegrams from Alexandria or Moscow. You can trace no mention of the burning questions that agitate Europe. You find trade, agriculture, and mining, adventure and amusement, gossip and scandal. Column after column is devoted to sensational stories, emphasized here and there by half-lines in large print, in which elopement, the revolver, or the dollar plays a prominent part. The fact is that the Americans have no politics, European questions affect them very little. They look on, but they do not mingle. Their political horizon is much the same as their geographical horizon ; it does not extend beyond what they can see from Coney Island on the Atlantic, and from the Cliff" House on the Pacific. They have the confidence of strength and distance, and they are not shaken out of their easy nonchalance unless somebody looks with a greedy eye upon the Sandwich Islands or refuses bait to their fishing-smacks. Some of s the newspapers have romance in their very names. Two that may be seen on every stall are called the Catskill Mountain Breeze and the Lake George Ripple. We are accustomed to an Evening Star, but a ripple or a breeze is picturesquely novel.

The perfectly free use that is made of the ground floor of the hotels must be a tempting inducement to well-dressed rogues to make perfectly free with the property they find there. I suffered from it myself. One of them walked off with my umbrella. I know well who it must have been. I was writing a letter in the writing-room, and I placed my umbrella on the table beside me. As I wrote I observed a man seated on a chair not far off, who appeared to be asleep. I remarked that he slept very funnily, with his right eye half open. My umbrella fell on to the floor, and, soon after, the sleeper awoke, and moved his chair round to the side of the table where the umbrella lay. For one brief moment I went to the bureau for a stamp, and when I returned, the umbrella and the sleeper were both gone, and all inquiries were in vain.

There seems to be a real solid Church work going on in this great city. There ought to be a grand cathedral, like the splendid one built across the water in Brooklyn almost entirely by the munificent generosity of one devout lady. But, in spite of this want, the Church is doing well. Trinity Church is the mother church of New York. It is old and well endowed. The original building dates from 1697 > the present structure is only forty years old. It has six daughter churches, and is the centre of the most important parish in New York. It also supports twenty other churches

ON A CHURCH MISSION.

ill the city. In the parish there are more than five thousand communicants. This large number is no doubt partly due to the elaborate system of guilds which is established throughout this group of seven churches, and is admirably managed by the clergy, with the help of the Sisters of St. Mary. At Trinity Church alone there are the guilds of St. Ambrose, of the Holy Cross, of St. John, of St. Nicholas, and of St. Paul, for men ; and the guilds of the Good Shepherd, of St. Agnes, of St. Mary, and of St. Monica, for women. The guilds form a connected chain, and are so arranged as to protect children from bad influences, and attach them to the Church, and keep them, as they advance in years, still under the care and guidance of good friends, until their habits and principles are fixed, and they become faithful and active Churchmen for life. It is pleasant to notice that the young men are not overburdened with religious instruction, but have their reading-rooms and billiard-tables, and their classes for geometrical drawing and clay-modelling. That the Church is aggressive in the best sense may be seen by the fact that there were no fewer than seventy-three adults baptized in the year, and thirteen hundred children, and five hundred and sixty persons confirmed. The collections amounted to more than sixty thousand dollars.

It would take too long to mention all the charitable and educational works of the parish. There are nineteen clergy, and an imposing and even puzzling array of choristers, servers, acolytes, and crucifers. The church itself, which is open all day for priv'ate devotion, stands in a fine position

Oil Broadway in a green churchyard overshadowed by lofty trees. It has an impressive interior. The chancel is raised, and is separated by a low screen from the body of the church. There are handsome stalls, and behind the altar is a very fine carved reredos in several compartments, representing the Crucifixion and other scenes in our Lord’s life. There seems to be a great future before the American Church. The American people have a reverence for what is .venerable and peaceful, and, with vigorous work and wide sympathies, the Church may look forward some day to a position as influential in the United States as the position of the English Church is in England, and more.

To a Churchman this does not sound a selfish hope. The Church does not exist for herself, but for her Lord and for His world. It is through the Church that His best gifts are bestowed upon men. The Church made England and Europe ; and the American Church may make America. It is a glorious opportunity. There lies before her a varied and magnificent material. And, if she is able to rise to the true grandeur of her position, to mould the forces that are struggling around her, to lead the van of freedom, to wed the thought and the faith of the centuries that lie behind her with the life and speech and movement of the future that is crowding upon her, then, guided and governed by the good Spirit within her, she will be able to assimilate all that is best in other kindred forms of faith and worship, and by the compelling attraction of her vigour and her beauty, to lead all who profess and call themselves Christians into the

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II way of truth. A great American Church, sweeping her unresisted sceptre from ocean to ocean, might present to the world such a spectacle as has never yet been seen. It would be a boon to the whole world. “ The people of America ” — I quote from a poet of their own — “are becoming in many respects more intimately allied with the mother country than they were before their independence. Whatever goes to develop such an alliance contributes to the prosperity of both countries; and does something for the good of the human race, not to say for the glory of Him whose advent was peace and good will.” The Church subserves “ the noblest and most sacred interests of the Old World and the New, awakening sympathies and strengthening instincts, which, far more than skilful diplomacy, will ensure a perpetual unity.”*

* Bishop Coxe.

Chapter II

What geographical blunders it is possible to make! If a drawing-room full of people were asked to name approximately the latitude of New York, how many persons would guess it to be about the same degree as Penzance, and then hesitate for fear they should have ventured too far south 1 It really requires quite an effort of faith in Mr. Stanford or Mr. Johnston, to believe that New York is, in fact, in the latitude of Naples. So it is ; and no wonder it is hot in July. In the same way, we are tempted to feel that New York is the capital of America, when it is not even the capital of New' York State. Washington is the political capital. But perhaps we might say that America has tw'O other capitals besides — Boston, the literary and scientific capital ; and New York, the capital of commerce and of fashion. The capital of New York State is Albany, which lies north on the Hudson River ; and not far from it is the w'ell-knowm Saratoga Springs, the Buxton or the Baden-Baden of New York.

We steamed up to Albany in a river-boat. These

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steamers are broad barges, luxuriously fitted up with saloons and restaurants, and the decks are roomy verandahs. They are propelled by paddles, and the man at the wheel is in the last place where you would expect to find him — in the front of the funnel, and half as high. It is the same on the bustling little tugs. As they approach they present the appearance of diminutive turret-ships. On the deck of our steamer was a characteristically American notice, “ Gentlemen will not smoke ; others must not.”

The trip to Albany is a favourite and fashionable one ; and so it deserves to be. The scenery is very pretty. The names of Rhinecliff and Rhinebeck on the left shore would seem to challenge a comparison with the famous German stream. A better comparison, perhaps, would be the Falmouth River or the Dart, although sometimes the rocks and precipices are bolder than would be seen on these English rivers. The banks are clothed with wood, chiefly cypress, down to the water.

Instead of feudal castles, there are ice-houses. In the winter the river freezes thickly. Ice-ploughs cut the frozen crust into blocks, which are stored away for summer use. And almost every hour one or two steamboats come puffing and panting down stream with a flotilla of ten or twenty icebarges in tow. On the top of the barges a little windmill or two may be seen for baling out the water from the melting cargo. The grey Catskill Mountains wreathed with floating mist form a charming background to the groves of cypress, the villas and gardens, the rocks, the boat-houses, the ice-houses, the reed-beds, and the smooth, deep water. We reached Albany in the evening, and went by night train to Niagara, and arrived in the morning at the station on the Canadian side called “ Suspension-Bridge.”

We took a carriage and drove up to Clifton House. It is a beautiful homely-looking house surrounded by cool verandahs, shaded by plane trees and embowered in leaves and blossoms. The view is splendid. The whole range of the Falls is spread out before you in a grand semicircle. The water of the Horseshoe Fall, as it bends and sweeps over the top of the precipice, is a clear, brilliant green. The foam rises high above the river, and forms a dense floating cloud, and makes the air moist and cool for half a mile. The violence of the rushing waters produces an incessant storm in the air, and the trees are tossed and blown about as if before a gale of wind.

The huge volume of the great St. Lawrence River plunges four million tons of water every minute over a wide and irregular precipice, a hundred and sixty feet high. On the right is the vast imposing amphitheatre of the Horseshoe Fall. The abrupt crags of Goat Island, crowded with cedars and with " the gadding vine o’ergrown,” break the white line of toppling water ; and on the left the smaller division of the river gushes out, itself divided into two or three waterfalls, the least of which is larger than the Velino at Terni, or the Aar at Handeck. Beyond them again, to the left, arc broken precipices and trees, the suspension-bridge, and cascades, and veils of dripping water that remind one of the streaming hillside of Tivoli.

Across the suspension-bridge is a little town.

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IS

Everywhere were signs of a recent festivity. The state of New York has bought up all private rights on the American side, and thrown the whole into a free park. This public gift was made with much ceremony a few days before we arrived. All the houses were decorated with the stars and stripes and with the red, white, and blue. One window was quite banked up with white lilies. A triumphal arch in the main street bore the mottoes, “ Niagara redeemed free to the world,” and “ New York’s imperial gift to the world,” with the names of the President and of the Lieutenant-Governor of Canada. In order to honour the occasion, Canadian troops were desired at the ceremony. But for Canadian troops to set foot on American soil was an illegal act. How to get over this formidable difficulty was the question. Recourse was had to the witty race of lawyers. They put on their spectacles and fumbled over their acts and deeds and parchments, until they found a clause which exactly met the difficulty, by providing that the suspension-bridge might be crossed by “ workmen carrying their tools.” So the soldiers marched merrily across to the sound of “Yankee Doodle,” and burned as much powder in their “tools” as the .solemnity of the day demanded.

It is certainly a most generous and useful gift, and I hope the state will soon do something to make the park neat and well-kept. It lies along the edge of the cliff between the suspension-bridge and the first fall. At this point a solid rampart of wall has been built on the very brink of the precipice, just where the water plunges down, so that you can almost dip your hands in the stream i6 as it races past ; and a few paces further you can look right down into the gulf full of foam, and mist, and rocks, and wild water. Two hundred yards above this spot a bridge has been thrown across this branch of the river to Goat Island. Along the south shore of Goat Island are several little islands with withered cedars and festooned with tangled vine and Virginian creeper. One of them is called Luna Island. It .stands on the very edge of the precipice. You can stand there, and, looking down, .see on either side the sheets of dazzling foam.

On the day of rejoicing a woman was drowned here. She slipped off the bridge into the water. All help was impossible. She was swept swiftly down the few yards of rapids, and then sank over the brink. The body had not been found. The water, we were told, keeps the body behind the rocks, rolling it over and over, and playing with it till it is torn to bits, and, at last, washed out piecemeal.

On Goat Island a staircase constructed inside a funnel leads down to the foot of the cliff. The traveller, wrapped in waterproof, can descend, and thread his way along the plank bridges, which lead from rock to rock through the spray, and can actually circle round and pass behind one of the columns of thundering water. A few yards from the top of this descent there is a most picturesque view of the Horseshoe Fall. The nearer end of the semicircular precipice juts out into the pool, and is seen in profile. The spouting water that shoots over this eager prominence is in dark violetgrey shadow, and stands out, with the group of