"HARRY THE JEW."

Lake Wakatip Mail, Volume I, Issue 15, 20 June 1863, Page 2 (Supplement)

"HARRY THE JEW."

On the following morning " Harry the Jew" presented himself—the only Englishman who has lived for any length of time in the wild and unknown regions of the interior, and has managed to throw a halo of mystery around himself. His real name is John Humphrey Danford, and he has been for so many years living with Kuruduadua and his family, cut off from all intercourse with civilisation, that he seemed to have lost his reckoning, and was not quite sure whether he had been sixteen, eighteen, or twenty years in the islands. His story is full of adventure. Born in London, he was early apprenticed, first to one then to another trade, but his employers being all men with whom he "could not agree," he left them in disgust, and took to the sea. This brought him to the South Pacific, where he discovered that the captains he had to deal with were disagreeable men; and, after exchanging from vessel to vessel, he finally ran away at Tongatabu. There, after twelve months' residence and many privations, party caused by a great hurricane and its usual successor—a general famine, he perceived the Tonguese, too, were disagreeable people, and at once took passage in a canoe for Fiji. Arriving in this group in distress from heavy weather, the canoe was seized at the island of Kadavu, and the crew condemned to be baked in the oven —thus finding the Kadavu people more disagreeable even than the Tonguese. By strategy, however, he succeeded in making his escape to Rewa, where he remained some time with other white men. To one Charles Pickering, a celebrity of Fiji, and the hero of some capital anecdotes, he sold a pinchbeck watch that only went when carried. Whence he got this precious article he says it is unnecessary to tell: enough for the history that, as soon as he received the price thereof from Pickering, he jumped into a boat and started off for some distant part of the islands, condemning the white men as a disagreeable set of fellows. In his wanderings he met one " Flash Bob," for whom he acted as agent in the selection and purchase of a lady-love from a native chief. This brought him once more in contact with the disagreeable whites. He now commenced a beche-de-mer establishment in conjunction with his friend Pickering, who had given him the name of " Harry the Jew," in consequence of the watch transaction. After some months in the new business, a quarrel arises about the purchase of Flash Bob's wife; the drying house of the establishment is burnt down by a party of natives; Pickering, enraged that his property had been destroyed, takes everything away, leaving poor Danford once more pennyless, shirtless, and friendless, on the beach. His nickname, translated into Fijian, has begun to work mischief amongst the newly-converted natives, and he is denied hospitalities the heathen would not refuse, because he " belongs to a people who have killed Christ" The brother of Chief Kuruduadua, hearing of his forlorn condition, sends him an offer to reside at Namosi, his mountain residence, which offer he unhesitatingly accepted. His heart almost fails him as he toils his way into the very midst of a nation of cannibals. But iron necessity urges him on. Tired and footsore, almost in an absolute state of nudity, he reaches the town. Messengers meet him, and carry him on their shoulders. The chief then gives him wives—how many we shall not say—a yam plantation, two gardens, houses, and dispatches bales of native cloth to the coast, to be exchanged for European dresses for him. He is also raised to the dignity of a " brother," and alloted slaves to attend upon him. Our hero—happy man!— now, for the first time in his life, finds agreeable companions in the chief and his people. In return for the dignities heaped on him, Harry was to repair the muskets of the tribe, and to tell the chief stories about the white men and their country. Having for about a week been an errand boy to a London apothecary, he was able to dispense pills to the sick, and thus to assume another important stand in his new life. Years rolled on without his seeing any white faces, when one day native messengers arrived from the coast, stating that they had been sent by a foreigner, who wished to have an interview with him, and whom they described as wearing a blue coat all covered over with lookingglasses. Harry had seen many extraordinary sights, but a man thus attired excited his curiosity, and he acceded to the request. To his surprise, he found the late Mr Williams, United States consul, whose brass buttons had been mistaken for looking-glasses. Mr. Williams had heard of the existence of some copper-mines in the interior, and was desirous of purchasing them. Through Harry's intervention the object was accomplished, and the mines passed into Mr. Williams's possession, but they have not as yet been worked, nor, indeed, been examined by any scientific man. —A Mission to Viti.

"What trade would you recommend to a short man! Grocer (grow, sir).