CHAPTER XII

Start for Fiji—Life in Australia and New Zealand—Death of the Rev. F. and Mrs. Langham.

From the moment of my return to Britain, every one seemed to consider it a matter of course that I should continue the travels which had hitherto proved so pleasant, so at every turn I was met by the stereotyped question, “And where are you going next?” As I had not the remotest prospect of any more invitations to visit far countries, the question seemed so silly that I replied in equally stereotyped form, “To Fiji!” simply because that was the most absolutely improbable idea that could suggest itself.

Yet of all improbable things this, the most unlikely, very quickly happened. Before the end of the year the Fijian chiefs had unconditionally given the whole group of lovely isles to the Great White Queen, to secure her protection against unscrupulous foreigners, who were doing all in their power to ruin the people. The gift was accepted, and the Honourable Sir Arthur Hamilton Gordon, now Lord Stanmore (son of the Earl of Aberdeen), was appointed first governor.

Lady Hamilton Gordon was a daughter of Sir John Shaw Lefevre—as lovable and gracious as she was pleasant to the eye—the very ideal of a comely British matron and happy wife and mother. Believing that my love of travel and of painting would enable me to make myself happy in the isles which we all believed to be still somewhat savage (possibly still cannibal, for really none of us knew anything definite about them—only a vague recollection of some song about “The King of the Cannibal Islands”), she invited me to accompany her thither, and needless to say, I accepted with delight.

So on 23RD MARCH 1875 (Tuesday in Holy Week) I joined the Fijian Government House party at Charing Cross station, and we crossed to Boulogne, and thence to Paris, where we attended services at many of the most interesting churches. On the night of Good Friday we took the train to Marseilles, where we had a pleasant afternoon of sight-seeing. On Easter morning we embarked on board the Messageries Maritimes ss. _Anadyr_. We had one long day at Naples, which of course we all enjoyed, although the streets were wet and muddy, and sea and sky were cold and grey. Strange to say, these brief glimpses of Paris, Marseilles, and Naples form my sole acquaintance with the continent of Europe.

For miles ere we reached Port Said, the “blue” Mediterranean was literally a sea of mud, the result of prolonged stormy weather, and we had cold grey weather all the way to Aden. Curiously enough, often as I have passed through the Red Sea, I have never once experienced the great heat which many find so trying, and have always found a dress of navy serge and pilot-cloth jacket the most comfortable clothing. We halted for three days at Ceylon, where Point de Galle was still the port of call, and there renewed several old friendships.

We bade adieu to the _Anadyr_ at Singapore, where we had a week to wait for the ss. _Brisbane_, in which we were to proceed to Australia. A very pleasant bungalow was lent to Sir Arthur, where we could rest in cool shade under tropical foliage when we were not exploring the wonders of the town. But as this was my first contact with real Chinese life—temples, gardens, processions—all were keenly interesting, and I was sight-seeing and painting from daybreak till sunset. One of the most picturesque scenes was the cemetery on the hillside, with all its horseshoe-shaped graves overshadowed by clumps of feathery bamboo.

Another scene of special interest was a great festival in honour of the moon-goddess, when the houses were all decorated with scarlet draperies, and the temples were crowded with gaily-dressed women, as well as men—a rare sight in China. Even the funeral of a rich man provided a feast of colour.

On 3rd May we again embarked, but in a very different vessel to the luxurious French steamer in which we had travelled so far. The _Brisbane_ proved a dirty little vessel, with wretched accommodation mid-ships, and five hundred and twenty very low-class Chinamen fore and aft, either bound to work on estates in Australia or to try their fortune at the gold diggings at Cooktown. So from whichever direction the wind blew, it brought us overpowering stinks of Chinese cooking—_ghee_, ancient cabbage, salt-fish, and other horrors. The poor creatures were packed in tiers several deep—one of them died, and was dropped overboard.

So, although the sea was calm as glass, literally without a ripple, and our sail through the beautiful Malay Archipelago, coasting lovely isles, was delightful to the eye, our afflicted noses refused to be comforted. We were not sorry when these poor toilers reached their various destinations, as we touched at various northern ports—Cooktown, Townsville, Bowen, Rockhampton, etc.; and when on 21st May we anchored in Morton Bay, there a small steamer was waiting to take us up the river to Government House at Brisbane, where our pleasantest impressions were of the beauty of the semi-tropical botanic gardens and a sunset drive along the river banks.

On the 23rd we re-embarked, and on the 25th steamed up the lovely harbour to Sydney, where we were cordially welcomed by Sir Hercules and Lady Robinson; but as space at Government House was limited, Commodore and Mrs. Goodenough had offered to receive me—a privilege for which I never can be sufficiently thankful, for to have been the guest of that grand sailor, saint, and martyr, only too soon became one of life’s landmarks.

On 20th August he died from the wounds received eight days before from poisoned arrows, shot by islanders of Santa Cruz to avenge cruel kidnapping by a trading-vessel; just as, for the same reason, they had previously shot Bishop Patterson, thus in their ignorance slaying their two most devoted friends.

Ere starting on this fatal voyage, the Commodore had taken Sir Arthur and all the gentlemen of his party to Fiji, leaving Lady Gordon, the two children, and me at Sydney, there to remain till a suitable home could be prepared for us in the Fijian Isles. We were much made of by many kind Australians, and I profited by the delay, which enabled me to explore the Blue Mountains, and secure careful paintings of Govat’s Leap, the Weatherboard, and other places of special interest, as well as of many lovely scenes in the numberless creeks of the great harbour.

What memories of fragrance and beauty come back to me when I think of the headlands, covered with many varieties of _epacris_ (which to me appeared like hot-house heaths), rank masses of scented geranium, thickets of yellow mimosa, and countless other wild flowers, while in the gardens large tree-camelias showered their crimson and white blossoms on the grass, and the scent of orange-blossom perfumed the air.

On the 9th September we embarked on board the _Egmont_, which was specially chartered to take a detachment of engineers to do Government work in Fiji. Very fortunately for me, the superintendent of the Wesleyan mission, the Rev. Fred. Langham, and his wife, obtained a passage on board of her, and thus we became firm friends, and much of my delightful voyaging in the next two years to many of the loveliest isles in the Fijian Archipelago was entirely due to their kindness in taking me with them in their mission-ship, when they visited their native clergy.

Australia had given us so much to think about, that our ideas of the condition of the two hundred and fifty isles composing the Fijian group were still somewhat hazy, when we were startled by Mr. Langham’s reply to one of the engineers, who told him that they hoped to be of some use to the poor islanders, and had brought a lot of copy-books to try if they could teach them something.

He expressed his pleasure that they were coming with such kindly purpose, but added that they would find the islanders already knew a little, as they had eight hundred schools and as many churches, where native teachers taught, and native clergy ministered, supported by the villagers, who themselves had built their schools and churches. He might have added what we subsequently ascertained, that there was scarcely a house throughout the group (except in one small mountain district which still continued heathen) where the family did not begin and end the day with family prayer and reading the Scriptures, not as a matter of form, but in all the earnestness of first love.

And yet it was not fifty years since two humble Wesleyan missionaries had had the amazing courage to land among those most cruelly cannibal people, and for the first time deliver to them the Message of Love, which, two thousand years before, their Master had bidden all who have heard it, pass on to those who have not received it. And that message had wrought so marvellous a transformation, that the whole race had become the gentlest and most earnest Christians I have ever known.

And this involved their practically becoming vegetarians as a first step in the new direction, as the isles yielded no pasturage, and consequently no animal food whatsoever, except fish, which was a very uncertain supply, and the pigs, descended from those left by Captain Cook, were far too precious for use except on great occasions. I often wonder how we should face such a test as this.

It is not my purpose now to speak of the next two years, of which every day was full of interest and novelty. In my book, _At Home in Fiji_, published by Blackwood, I have described all this, and also our enchanting visit to Sir George Grey, in his delightful Isle Kawau, off the north coast of New Zealand, and my own still more fascinating visit to the Wonderland of the pink and white terraces, and all other marvels of the volcanic region in the North Isle.

The pictures which I happily secured at that time were all borrowed by the New Zealand Commissioners, for exhibition in the great Indian and Colonial Exhibition in London, and were actually on show when the awful tidings came of how (after its summit had for fully eight hundred years been the burial-place of great Maori chiefs) Tarawera, the so-called extinct, but in truth only dormant volcano had suddenly reawakened as a mighty giant, refreshed by his sleep of ages, and had wrought awful destruction all around, reducing to chaos the fairyland which had so fascinated all travellers.

Here I can scarcely resist recording my gratification at the wholly unexpected heartiness of the welcome which was accorded to that book on Fiji and New Zealand by reviewers representing every phase of opinion. But indeed I may say the same of each of my books in succession—so unanimous has been the kindly appreciation with which my critics have received each fresh series of the notes of this wanderer.

All I wish now to say about our life in Fiji is simply as a brief postscript to suggest a few of the developments of twenty-five years. The Dr. M‘Gregor of my story, whose sympathy with and influence over brown races was so remarkable, became the first Governor of British New Guinea, and now, as Sir William M‘Gregor, rules over Lagos.[57] He was succeeded in the government of New Guinea by George Ruthven Le Hunte, who was the youngest of our party, and whom we called “our British boy,” because he so excellently embodied our ideal of such an one. He received the honour of knighthood on his promotion to be Governor of South Australia. Captain Havelock, now Sir Arthur Havelock, has ruled over a succession of colonies, as has also Sir Arthur Gordon, whose Fijian “Round-Table” assuredly sent forth many earnest knights-errant to do their country’s work in distant lands.

Very pathetic was the closing chapter in the life of my friends, the Rev. Frederick and Mrs. Langham. They had begun their work in Fiji in 1858, when many of the tribes were still heathen, and the horrible old customs still continued. But by their unvarying kindness and courtesy, and attention to all that was not actually wicked in native manners (Fijian etiquette being curiously well defined), they won the love and confidence of the most savage men and women. Mr. Langham remained longer in the isles and baptized a larger number of the people than any other missionary. Except for brief furloughs in Australia, he and Mrs. Langham were there for forty years.

The Bible was first translated into Fijian in 1865, and was immensely read and really studied and loved by the people. But when the missionaries (who had to commence by reducing Fijian to a written language) became more thoroughly conversant with its niceties, they felt that a revision was desirable, and so in 1898 Mr. and Mrs. Langham and their adopted daughter, Annie Lindsay, came to London to do this work for the British and Foreign Bible Society. Annie was the daughter of a neighbouring missionary, and being born and bred in the isles, spoke the Bau dialect (which is the purest “classic” Fijian) as her mother-tongue. Together they worked at verse by verse, and great was their joy when they heard of the extreme satisfaction with which in 1901 the New Testament was received by the islanders.

With heart and soul they continued their very toilsome labour of love, and were far advanced towards completing the revision of the Old Testament, when just before Christmas in 1901 Annie caught a cold, which rapidly developed into pneumonia, and she died. I received a heart-broken letter from the dear old man, telling me that his wife could not raise her head for sorrow, and that she was suffering from the same illness. Only a few days later she also passed away, leaving him desolate indeed.

Happily the Rev. Joseph Nettleton and his wife—retired Fijian missionaries—were at hand to give him such comfort as was possible, and to help in revising his final proofsheets. At last the Old Testament was also complete, and then his life’s work was finished. By the advice of Sir William M‘Gregor, who for ten years had witnessed Mr. Langham’s work in Fiji, the University of Glasgow then conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Divinity, and he left London, purposing to go first to Liverpool to address a conference, and thence to Glasgow to be ceremonially invested with cap and gown.

On the journey he was taken ill, and after some weeks in Liverpool he wished to be brought back to London, whence, on 25th June 1903, he passed away. Shortly before his death he said: “I have seen a vision. I thought I was sleeping, as we so often slept on the deck of the schooner in the South Seas. I awoke at midnight. The Southern Cross was above me, and all that part of the sky was luminous. The stars forming the cross came down towards me. They were very near and very bright. Then behind the stars I saw the face of my dear one—only her face, for her robe faded away into light. She smiled, and said to me, “_Edaru ena tiko vata tale_ (‘We two will live together again’). It was all very real to me.”

When told that it was doubtless a premonition, as he himself had reached the brink of “the river,” he said: “It is all right, all is clear. I have not to seek my Saviour. He is a living, bright reality to me now. There is no love like His, and I am resting upon His love. He knows what is best.” Then he repeated the first verse of “Jesu, Lover of my soul,” in Fijian. Early on Sunday morning he passed away from this earth, on which he had been the means of helping so many to pass from grossest darkness into the true light.

Instead of being “capped” on earth, he was called to receive that crown of life which his Master and ours has promised to all who are faithful unto death, as he assuredly was. I think all who knew that venerable old man in his latter years, with his halo of long, silvery white hair, felt that they were in the presence of one of God’s own saints.

The close of his life was saddened by a very painful event on his beloved Rewa river (where I spent such a delightful time with him and his wife, travelling from village to village in the mission-boat, right up to beautiful Namosi with its shapely peaked mountains). This was the nominal conversion to the Church of Rome of the Namosi Chief and a considerable number of his tribe, and the solemn _auto-da-fé_ of two hundred and thirty-eight copies of the New Testament which were collected in the Namosi district, in exchange for rosaries, and brought about sixty miles down the river to Naililili, there to be publicly cremated in a Fijian lime-kiln by the Roman Catholic sisters and other ecclesiastical authorities in presence of many natives and Europeans. Other copies of the Scriptures obtained in the Soloira district were torn up by the priests on the passage down the Rewa and thrown into the river, whence portions were recovered and given to Mr. Swayne, Government Commissioner. When accounts of this reached Australia, so much indignation was evoked, that the “Bible-burning” was denied _in toto_ by the highest ecclesiastical authorities—the quibble being in the word Bible, instead of New Testament. Afterwards a corrected version was published to say that “in accordance with the practice of the Catholic Church to destroy by fire all sacred objects when worn out, the Catholic sisters had filled one kerosene-case with soiled and useless Wesleyan Testaments, which had been exchanged for Catholic books.” Some bystanders, however, contrived to rescue several Testaments which, except for having had the covers violently torn off, were in perfect condition, as well they might be, seeing that they were copies of Dr. Langham’s new translation, printed by the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1901. One copy bears an inscription proving that it was bought by the owner on May 23, 1902, less than nine months before it was so ruthlessly dealt with.

The circumstances which led to this very distressing occurrence are as follows:—When New Zealand refused to join the new Australian Commonwealth, some of her politicians strove to form a New Zealand Commonwealth by incorporating South Sea Islands, especially Fiji, in which a special crusade was started against the “crown colony” form of government, and especially the stringent regulations against selling liquor to natives, which hitherto have done so much to save the Fijian race.

The promise of free trade in drink, and of a general time of glorious liberty, found favour with sundry discontented white men, and some of the chiefs, amongst others the Chief of Namosi. The Wesleyan native minister excited his anger by using all his influence in support of the existing government, whereupon the chief said that he and his people would join the “Seventh Day Adventists,” who have now secured a small footing in Fiji. These refused to receive him, telling him that as soon as his anger subsided, he would return to his old church.

Then, in still greater dudgeon, he applied to Father Rougier for admission to the Roman Church, into which, needless to say, he was forthwith received, together with several hundreds of his people, who, whatever their real religious convictions, believe that federation with New Zealand will mean getting rid of all the restrictions and necessary taxation imposed upon them by their present government.

It is one of the saddest things I know to note how, in all the different groups of beautiful Pacific isles, the first whole-hearted conversion to a simple Christian faith and life becomes tarnished after much contact with merely nominal Christians of other nationalities, especially when, as in New Zealand, political matters and land-grabbing come into play.

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