ADVENTURES IN PAPUA

New Zealand Tablet, 28 August 1913, Page 9

ADVENTURES IN PAPUA

WITH THE CATHOLIC MISSION (Reprint of A.C.T.S. Publication.) By Beatrice Grimshaw. . (Continued) Back from Ton Ovia to Waima we went in the full heat of the burning afternoon; dawn, dusk, or noontide is all the same to the Catholic Mission. We sent on the horse, with one Sister, as I could not ride with comfort on the cross saddle, and the other Sister tramped' back with me over miles of sand, so hot that one could not endure to touch it with the bare hand, through more than one village, past enormous, splendid groves of cocoanut, past betel-nut, banana, hibiscus, and huge reed-grass. Such coloring, even in Papua, one rarely sees. Gold-green on the lofty summits of the palms violet, the hue of rich glass in a cathedral window, the shadow of their tossing fronds; springing columnar trunks that shone pearl-white against a sea as blue as Dresden china; betel palms, spiring up in an incredible hundred-foot ivory mast, as slim as a lady’s neck, to a huge gay ruffle of fluted leaves and dangling • golden fruit, set in the very eye of the sun—the flame of the hibiscus bloom, rocketing out from a branch that sprang like a fountain jet. . . There is a curiously dynamic quality in many New Guinea plants and trees; enormous trunks of enormous tonnage shoot themselves upwards with the one, clean leap of a flower-stem; shrubs and small trees jet their foliage at you; flowers cast themselves at the sun, or throw themselves chokingly round and round the strangled bodies of the forest kings. Whatever this weird, wild country is, it is not restful, even in its life of bush and flower. ■ - The Villages Were Quaint and Pretty, and rather like something made to set on a stand, and to use as a table ornament. On the burning sand, beneath the swinging shadows of the cocoanuts, stood tidy little houses, built of satin-brown leaves and grass. They were decorated with projecting gables and long deep fringes, that swayed in the hot land-breeze; their doors and windows were neatly edged and squared; they had ornamented plants with red and yellow foliage, set in the sand, inside the low fences that kept away ..the pigs. The people were coming back from fishing, hunting, and gardening, when we passed throughtall, fine-looking men with flowers in their hair, and woven, colored bracelets about their limbs; women in short grass petticoats carrying huge loads of sweet potato and yams in nets upon their backs. Bronze skins and black eyes gleamed in the sun; the miraculous i New'Guinea mop of hair stood out above each face, J stiff and full. Prom almost every mouth poured streams of blood, or what looked like it, as the natives chewed and spat their betel-nut. There is no place in Papua where so much of this semi-intoxicating drug is used; the betel-palm grows very freely in Mekeo, and men, women, and children chew almost without ceasing. It seems to have little effect on them, though in other places it makes the chewer almost drunk; no doubt they are all so deeply soaked with the drug that it has in large measure lost its effect. One grows accustomed, ' after a while, to the crimson tefeth and gory smile, and the other uhpleasing accompaniments of betel-chewing;

but it is an ugly trick at best, and must have been alarming to the earlier white visitors. ■ The Sister Was Greeted Pleasantly by the natives, a good many of whom came later on to the Benediction at the little church. Here, as elsewhere, the Mission is very cautious about Baptism, giving it only at the end of a long period of probation, or when the catechumen is at the point of death. But the people show much interest in the services of the Church, and behave reverently when they attend. Still, it is somewhat astonishing, to the newcomer to see a couple of young savages, naked, brown, cocoanutoiled, swinging their way up a Mekeo church before High Mass, their ornaments of beads and dogs’ teeth rattling as they go, and to watch them emerge from the sacristy a minute later, decorously clad in the acolyte’s white and scarlet, and ready to serve Mass with, perfect reverence. . . When the priest has left the altar, the acolytes precede him, pacing gravely on their bare, brown feet. . . Next moment, a ; couple of cannibal-looking, naked youths are swaggering down the aisle once more, feathers waving in hair, ornamental tail of fibre swinging out behind, betel-nut quid jauntily wedged in cheek. , . It is enough to make one giddy. From Waima it was fourteen or fifteen miles to Inawi. One of the Fathers rode with me half, way, setting out, as usual, in the full sun of afternoon. Berina, some miles on, where we halted for a little, has a small church and school, visited from Waima. I could have told there was a school somewhere, a mile or two before we came upon it, for the native children began to call out in English words after us, offering to show the way, asking where we were bound for. At Berina itself the influence of the Mission was even more clear, when one found the children actually bringing cocoanuts and behaving civilly to the stranger, instead of screaming, jeering, and throwing mud and stones the agreeable custom of native children in most other parts of Papua. ' ; There Was a Long, Hot Stretch in the fierce equatorial sun, across bare plains of grass, and then a bridge, with a forest in the distance, and there the Father left me, after telling me that the creek that had just been bridged at that spot was one that had nearly cost the lives of some of the Mission. Floods, in the wet season, are the bane of the Mekeo country. The rivers rise into torrents, the tracks are lakes and canals. But the Mission goes about its work just the same; Brothers and Sisters cross flooded creeks • at peril of their lives, and wade calmly to church and school knee-deep, or waist-deep, in water. It is not a healthy practice; Mekeo is riddled with fever, and you are almost certain to get an attack of malaria, even passing, hurriedly through in the dry season. * Much more are you certain to get feverthe ordinary malarial kind, or the fatal blackwaterif you wade to your work in the wet season. If the Mission had boats, or even canoes —but they have hardly leather to shoe their feet, so what is the use of talking? It .was almost dusk when I got to Inawi, one of the most important towns in Mekeo. I left my horse at the gate, found the Sisters’ house, and walked right into a Raphael picture. The tall, arched doorway of the house, the light passing through from another arch behind, the rough bare table, with benches set beside, the brown wood walls and floor, the amber glow of evening, stabbed with high color where the red clay water-jar stood on the table, and the Sisters’ light blue veils showed out of the dusk— for line, it was taken from the medieval pictures in dull gold frames that one remembered so far away and so long ago—surely in some other world than this of the strange brown men and women, and burning tropic skies! j The Father’s House, a raffle of sticks and thatch, practical but unpicturesque, had somehow escaped the medieval note; and the Father Himself, in his flannelette shirt somewhat the worse for wear, his coarse khaki trousers, and rough, miner’s boots, had nothing of romance about —unless it were the ,•

■ '' '‘ Light that never was on sea or land/ ■ ■ that shines from the sun-dark, fever-worn faces of all .these noble priests. The lamp of their great sacrifice burns plainly, in their eyes; the fire of that renunciation, embracing all that human hearts hold dear, shows almost visibly, through the, veil of flesh. ' This simile of fire returns again and again, watch- . ing the work of the Catholic Mission in Papua. It is inevitable. ,The enthusiasm, the devotion, the high unfailing courage, ready and bright as a well-kept sword-the eagerness, almost hurry, that seems to run through the work,: so that a Father or Brother or Sister on the road is always going at top speed, and any work carried on about the house seems to drive along under high —looking on at all this, from the sluggish world in which outsiders live, one, feels the very wind and onrush of some sacred flame. What Explanation Can the Man Without Religion ' Give?- " Enthusiasm is common enough. Charity, thank God, is not rare, devotion, self-sacrifice—the world outside knows them well. . But over all these flowers of fallen human nature spreadsas we in the world. see them-the destroying blight of intemperance. Who can be always at the blossom time of good ? Who does not weary, turn slack and slow, get tired of effort? A year or so—a month or so —even a day or so —and the flower . drops from its stem. The winter comes. But the fire flower at the heart of the Catholic , Mission spreads its petals of immortal flame to-day, to-morrow, and for ever. It is the flower, the fire of the Sacred Heart. The missionaries do not tire. I did not ask them if they did. Their faces, their work, were proof enough. After twenty years a Father, a Brother, a Sister, lives on in the bright enthusiasm of the earliest days; just that kind of light-hearted, eager industry and interest —anywhere —one would mark as certain not to last* Again, where is thfe agnostic’s answer? Autosuggestion, delusion ? Dreams? . As well look on at a giant dynamo making the light of a thousand homes, harnessing the power of a myriad horses, and say that it gets its force from its own bright, polished wheels.' . . . The dreams, the delusions that can drive this weak machine of the Mission to do the work it does must be dreams and delusions of a firmer make than most hard realities. Dreams, surely, worth the study of even an intelligent man. There was a day or two at Inawi, and a Sister took me round the village, as soon as she had finished what she was at that morning— it happened to be mending fences, after' school was over—the Father was making copra, in a dreadful collection of clothes, having said his Mass some time before; the other Sister was handling frying-pans in the kitchen, with a French and masterly touch, and I think the Brother was*killing pigs, or else teaching catechism. Inawi was like nearly all the inland Mekeo towns, a huge, sandy street, with two tall rows of houses, all head and legs, so to speak• great overhanging sago-thatch roofs set almost directly on long rickety legs of piles; naked brofan children rolling in the dust; women making nets, or cooking; married men, a little fat and a little dowdy, squatting and chewing under the shade of their verandahs; bachelors . But one must really stop to tell about The Mekeo Bachelor, who groans beneath a tyranny surely unparalleled in the history of the human race. Strictly speaking, he does not exist at all. From childhood up to seventeen or so, at which age he generally manages to secure a bride, the unmarried youth of Mekeo is kept in such subjection that he cannot be said to have any life of his own. The girls make fun of him, if they notice him at all; the older men snub him. He is not allowed to walk in the middle of the street, but has to slink along behind the houses. He is not given any regular meals, but lives on what he can steal out of the gardens, or shoot in the forest. There is a polite fiction to the effect that he does not eat at all; certainly no girl must see him

eat, for the -women, ; when married, are the gardeners, and raise the crops on which the family feeds.; so the marriageable youth tries to suggest that he is extremely easy to keep, and, in fact, lives on air. To further this delusion, he tight-laces horribly, drawing in his waist with a wide bark belt until the tortured flesh swells out above and below in - a brown shining wave. So wasp-like is the figure -of the Mekeo youth .that he reels visibly as he walks, just like the overlaced girl one may see any day in the street ,of any - ' great city. His forehead, ,in that climate of torrid ■ heat, is loaded down with a heavy band of beadwbrk, is tightly drawn. His hair, oiled, teased, and trimmed, ' stuck through with flowers, and ornamented with. feathers, looks as if it took a couple of hours to dress. His face is gaily painted in stripes of black and red. Withal he seems a trifle shy, and does not swagger like the handsome young unmarried man of the white races)' in holiday dress. The constant snubbing from which he suffers has a visible effect on his spirits. ; V He is naturally very anxious to get married, and often slips off with a few more youths of his own age, to draw lots and cast auguries of all kinds, by means of berries, , sticks, water, much as the girls -of the white race do. The youth who receives the lucky lot, and is ■ to be married first, rejoices visibly. At last he secures a bride; buys her from her . parents (usually on the time-payment system, as if she were a sewing machine or a piano), and sets up house with her in the main street of the village. If they are Catholics, they will be married in the church;, and an increasing number are so married every year.If they have not been baptised, they marry accordingto native fashion, simply with, the celebration of a feast. In either case the troubles of the Mekeo youth are over. He lets out his waist, washes his paint, and allows his hair to go ‘ anyhow;’ unless there is a dance in prospect. tie eats his fill, openly and in the light of the day. He puts off his feathers and his beads. . . . there is no use in running after a ’bus when you have caught it, says the Mekeo man. And the wife works in the garden. When he dies -. But' 'they told me that at Beipaa. Beipaa was Some Miles On. A Sister saw me there. We fought a little, piously and politely, for who should not have the horse. It ended in my riding—score one to the Sister. (She did not say so, of course, but whenever a Sister of the Mission succeeded in carrying off my very dirty clothes to wash, or giving me up her bed and sleeping on the floor, or in foisting upon me the better half of the dinner she wanted badly enough herself, or in inducing me to ride while she walked in the burning sun, I could see she felt that she had somehow won the game — put it impiously. It was a notable reversal of the customs of the outer world. And you could not ‘have’ them anywhere —these dear Mission people— had a simple religious cunning that got the better of you every time. Tell a Father or a Sister that they were causing you to sin through selfishness and • greediness, and stifling any small remnants of the cardinal virtues there might have been in your soul when you began the tour; they had turned in your hands like an eel, agreed that selfishness and greediness and luxury were sins, and no gentleman or lady in the present’ company had anything to do with them; but for them they simply loved dining on half a yam, sleeping on the floor, and scrubbing clothes, and it was a treat, to them to walk . . . with the thermometer at 100 in the shade. Well ! I came to- Beipaa, where there were four Sisters and a Father; one Sister had been in the Mission from the very first, had lived in native huts, and eaten sago and cocoanuts for weeks; had nearly died of fever over and over again; had been in constant peril of her life from infuriated cannibals, She was a sturdy, practical, middle-aged Frenchwoman, a master hand with cattle and fowls, cooked excellently, .and (one somehow knew) lived high-on the mountain tops of an invisible land of her own. Her name was not Martha, but it surely should have been. As: for.- the

Father,t only the hand of Victor Hugo could have done him justice. ' He was also One of the Original Founders. He had been : twenty-three years in the Mission, and was not young, nor yet slender. But he was gay with a French gaiety, a great reader, a student of native character and tradition. He is a real Father to these natives of Beipaa, that rather stormy town (they had a terrific fight while I was there, and a good number of casualties, though no one was killed. Father V—— generally manages to compose these differences, before they proceed to actual bloodshed, as they .used to do.) I liked the Mission folk of Beipaa much the best. I also liked those of Waima, Inawi, Bara, Inawai,. Yule Island, Mafulu, and Dilava much the best, too. This may read confusingly, but it is nevertheless true. Each Sister, when one fixed one’s mind on her,, was the best of the lot ; each Father or Brother was nicer than all the restuntil one detached one’s mind again and carried on the comparison. The fact .is that they were all . too good to be trueonly they were true.

And some of themmany of themwere so pretty (the Sisters, I mean). One ; could not help liking this, because it showed plainly that the Mission was not fed with the left-overs and odd-come-shorts of the outer world. Nothing - was too good for the work. - I shall long remember the calm Madonna face, the still blue eyes with an altar-flame. in each, of on© 'young Sister from the far-away North; the dainty • Dresden-china-ness of a little French' Sister who made wonderful flowers and ornaments for the church, and (one felt) was neat and elegant and precise in her very prayers; the dark, handsome, gallant nun, who looked like her own hussar brother (I am; sure she must have one, ;somewhere away- in France),, rode like Joan of Arc, and seemed somehow incomplete without a banner in her hand. And there were othersbut . the less said about this the better the dear Sisters would be pleased, for beauty is one of the things that they laid down on the altar when the great sacrifice of all was made, and they think of this and other vanities not at all. (To be continued.)