THE CANNIBAL ISLES.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 16487, 28 February 1914, Page 7

THE CANNIBAL ISLES.

PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OP FIFTY-FIVE YEARS AGO.

(Br Hugh 11. Lusk, Auckland.)

No. I.—WHY "WE WENT THERE? Now Zealand was; a very young colony fifty-five years ago. It Lad been in existence as a country for whito man’s settlement just eighteen years, and it had a white population of about 59,000 persons. There were probably at the time nearly, if not quite, two Maoris for every white in in in the country, though the exact number could not bo ascertained, as many of the Natives lived in districts that wero almost unexplored by Europeans There had been missionaries in New Zealand a good deal longer than settlors, and these men had done much valuable work in preparing the way for civilisation, as well as in the way of spreading knowledge that was more essentially religious. To* tho missionaries, it may fairly bo said, had been owing the annexation of New Zealand to the British Empire as a colony, but so far tho missionary enterprise of the Mother Country in the Pacific had been almost exclusively confined to the limits of- tho now possession. Australia had offered no field for missionary effort, as the natives belonged to a race so undeveloped that it land out little or no promise of success. There were, however, many islands scattered over the more central waters of the Pacific that had begun to attract tho attention of heneyolent people in England as the homes of a race, or races, apparently connected with tho Maoris or Now Zealand, and offering in every way a better prospect for missionary effort than the Australian blacks. It is true that even then very little more was known of tlie.se islands and their people than could he found in Captain Cook’s account of his voyages of exploration. There were a few traders, indeed, who risked their lives among the uncharted reefs a net islands, in tho hope of exchanging highly coloured calico for the natural fruits and products of theso tropical islands, and at . the time of which 1 am writing a few, a very few, missionaries had begun to take their lives in their hands and land on a few widely scattered islands, in the fiope of Christianising, and eventually of civilising the natives. In those days the demand for the natural products of the tropical islands was naturally very small, and the risks of the trade wero so serious that it is by no means wonderful that the number of seamen familiar . with those islands might almost have been counted on a man’s fingers.. New Zealand had been practically the first field of missionary effort entered upon by the Church of England in the South Pacific, and when tho first Bishop was set apart to superintend the work, soon after England had taken, over the sovereignty of the islands tvs a British colony, it was impressed upon him by the Archbishop of Canterbury that lie was not to consider his charge confined to New Zealand, but if possible to extend tho field' of his mission to other islands in the Pacific. The first Bishop of New Zealand, Bishop Sehvvu, was in many respects a very remarkable man, but perhaps intense personal energy and vigorous comiiionsense were, after all, the most remarkable of his natural endowments. He arrived in the voting colony in 1842, and for the first twelve years after his arrival he found the work within New Zealand itself sufficient to employ all his time and energy. There were at that time believed to be about a hundred thousand Maoris in the country, while the population of European origin did not amount to half that number, and 'as a- large proportion. of the Maoris _ knew little of Christianity it is easy to understand that it was impossible, with the forces at his command, for tho Bishop to extend his field of work beyond New Zealand itself. He lmd not, however, lost sight of the instructions he had received at the time of his appointment-, and in 1854 he paid his first visit to the more tropical islands to which his attention had been directed. In those early days there were many difficulties that, will hardly be understood by the younger generation, eccustomed os it is to-day to the safety and comparative luxury of ocean travel on the Pacific. It was, of course, impossible to procure a steamer of any kind in which to make a voyago of exploration, and. it was almost as difficult to secure a reliable captain to navigate even a small vessel among •tho dangerous reefs of tho uncharted island groups. The best that could be done was to secure tho services of a little trading schooner, commanded bv n, seam.-in who had some experience of the island trade. In this the Bishop visited several of the groups that were least distant from New Zealand, gainring some idea of the people and their conditions, and forming his own conclusions as to what might ho done, and what system would most likely prove successful. In the course of this voyage Bishop Selwyn went as far eastward as Tonga, and also visited several of the Now Hebrides, calling finally at two of tho smaller islands of the Loyalty group.

Tlio general conclusions arrived at by. tho Bishop were that the best hope of Christianising the islanders lay in u system that made use of their own people as missionaries, and the only way of fitting them for such a work was to form some central school .where they might be educated and trained. Such a school, he thought, might be established near Auckland,' tho climate there during at least half tho year being sufficiently mild to suit even tropical constitutions. _ The greatest difficulty lay in.securing the services of a man suitable for conducting the work successfully. Tho work, as ho recognised at once, was one of a very special kind, requiring unusual qualities, both physical and mental. A man who was young, active and fearless, was needed to begin with, as tho work of tho new mission would be strenuous as well as dangerous. Tn addition to this, tho man 'who was to conduct such a mission successfully must have the power to attract savago tribes in 'no ordinary degree if he were to persuade them to entrust the younger members of those tribes to him, and to a life of which they could form no idea. Energy, devotion and tact of no ordinary kind were demanded in tho case of tho man who might reasonably hope to accomplish much in those directions, and there was another qualification almost more rare than any of these: the man who was to found such a mission must possess the gift of language to a. most unusual extent. Bishop Selwyn knew of no man possessed of all these qualifications, hut, as he was about to pay h visit to England he decided to make the task of discovering such a man one of his chief objects. The man of whom Bishop Selwyn was in search ho found at the homo of an old friend, one of the best-known and most highly esteemed English judges of his time, in the person of the judge’s eldest son, John Coleridge Patterson, who was at tho time curate of a parish in tho neighbourhood. Mr Patterson was a young man, not more than twenty-seven years of age, full of youthful energy and aroused to a strong enthusiasm for tho work suggested to him by bis father’s old friend, tie was a man of strong personality, of a kind less likely to attract general attention, perhaps, than that of Bishop Selwyn, yet of a kind that possessed a greater force of attraction for those who came much into contact with him. He.

the talent for acquiring and making use of new languages, indeed his aptitude in this direction might fairly have been described as the gift of tongues. Mr Patterson came to Auckland with Bishop Selwyn on his return from England in the "latter part of 1856, ana early in the following year he accompanied tho Bishop on a first visit to tho scene of his future work. The voyage, which was once more made in a little coasting schooner, lasted between two and three months during which visits were paid to islands of nearly all the groups which it wa6 intended to include in the new mission field, and on the return voyage they finally called at the Loyalty Islands. Here their reception was most encouraging, and they succeeded in getting about a dozen lads to return with them to form tho beginning of the first Melanesian summer school at St John’s College, the buildings of which wero at the time unoccupied by any Maori or European students. The experience of this first voyage fully eonfinned Bishop Sehvyn’s original impression that he had found in Air Patterson n man eminently suited for the work of founding such a mission as that to the dark, islands qf .the, .south-western Pacific. His amazing facility for understanding and speaking the almost endless variety of dialects, one of which was apparently peculiar to every island; his wonderful power of attraction for the natives, especially tho younger ones; and his quiet, but untiring zeal for the work, led Bishop Selwyn to' feel that in Lis companion, if anywhere, were to be found the rare and varied qualities needed to command success.

Mr Patterson, and the little party of scholars, spent about five months of the summer of 1857-58 at St John’s College, and it was there that I had tho opportunity of joining him, and in company with Mr (afterwards Archdeacon) Dudley, assisting him in the teaching of his first Melanesian scholars. Like almost all New Zealand settlors in those early days, especially those of the North Island, I had seen a good deal of the Maoris, who in those days did much of the farm work for the settlers, and I was much interested in observing the resemblances and differences between tho races, which were, no doubt, originally of one stock. This was specially, observable in their languages, ond in some of their habits, in both of which. I seemed able to trace the effect of tho struggle for existence, which had been so much more severe for four or five centuries among the Maoris than among tho tribes of tho same people that had continued to occupy tho islands within the tropical region. The Loyalty Islanders are a fine race of men, powerful in body, and fairly intelligent in mind, but lazy to an extent that greatly exceeds the same tendency in the case of their I New Zealand cousins. Their language also if softer, and their voices generally lower in tone. with a tendency to slur tho harder consonants, reminding one of .the negroes of the United States. Biffing the four or five months spent at St John’s College . with tho Melanesian, lads' I not only learned something of tho scholars and their language but also _ to appreciate tho wonderful suitability of Mr Patterson for tbe work. By tho time our summer school was over both Mr Dudley and I were on good terms with our scholars, but Mr Patterson had become their, intimate friend, We had learned enough of their language to make ourselves fairly understood'by them, but with him they talked freely and he had already compiled a grammar, and had even begun to translate part of the gospels into their language. His aptitude for language was so amazing that it amounted to a very exceptional genius, ,lmt even this was loss remarkable than his personal influenco over the lads. By tho end of March the time had arrived when the first approach _of colder weather made it time to think of breaking up our summer school and returning the scholars to their own islands. After this had been done it was proposed to visit as many as possible of the island groups, make the acquaintance of. tho natives, and if possible secure a greater variety of scholars for the next year’s summer school. This had been rendered more easy by the arrival at Auckland of the first “Southern Cross,” the mission schooner provided by the liberality of friends in England as one of the results of-Bishop. Selwyn’s visit. Tffie first Melanesian mission vessel w-as an attractive yaclit-like schooner of somewhat less than two hundred tons, with a selected crew of excellent seamen, and .after a month, spent in overhauling, and making other preparations, all was ready fop tho first real voyage qf the new mission. (To he continued.)