However, I had quite a large congregation in the neat little school but the ladies preponderated in point of numbers. We had quite a nice hearty little service, and they listened patiently to an address from myself. I wish from my heart I had a good teacher to place here, for I know he would be the means of doing much good work to God’s glory. The present teacher is a very good, conscientious fellow, but his own knowledge is not much above that of his own countrymen, and they grow weary of hearing continually the same thing. I was quite pleased with my visit, and amply rewarded for any discomfort I experienced in the journey. I do not expect that any immediate result will issue from such spasmodic efforts, but there is no knowing the power of grace, and God’s ways are not as our ways. Often it is that the last becomes first, and the first last. At all events I keep the door open, and I hope before long someone else may be raised up to settle among them as a permanent teacher. After resting awhile I took my homeward journey, escorted according to custom by the denizens of the village beyond their own boundary. I returned by way of “Na Ruru,” where “Anthony” one of our Norfolk Island trained boys has a school. He seems to be doing fairly well there, and has a nice school. After sitting with him for some time, the shades of evening began to close in, and I to feel somewhat famished, having had but little since morning. Bidding him goodbye I started for Tanrig, where I arrived in due course. After dinner I baptized three children, Maida, Victoria and Matthew respectively. The Font was very prettily arranged and decorated by Arthur Huqe, and the service generally, very nice. Later on we had Evensong, quite a refreshing and stirring service, at which I preached, and never before do I remember to have secured more attention. These children I Baptized this evening make up the number of Christians here to 100, under God, the fruits of my own, and my teacher’s work, and I feel that by the orderly and consistent lives of most of them, I can thank God and take courage.
I took as the basis of my remarks, our Lord’s last command to His Disciples, and I urged those who had already been admitted into the fellowship of Christ’s religion, to eschew all those things which were contrary to their profession, and to follow all such things as were agreeable to the same, and those still without the pale to lose no time in applying for that rite, the absence of which our Lord declared must be condemnation. Those words have a strong sound here for Missionary and heathen—“He that believeth and is Baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be dammed.” One realizes here their full weight, and solemnity, and power. Quite three parts of the congregation have dropped in to wish me good night, and by the hushed stillness over the place I can tell that God’s Word has not fallen to the ground. God grant that it may minister grace to hearer and preacher.
Monday, August 16th.—The night was made perfectly hideous by the howling of the fiendish curs which are dignified with the name of dogs, the squealing of hungry swine, and the cackling of a poor forlorn goose whose kith and kin have left her a solitary representative of her species, and who seems to find her only solace in sitting outside my door and calling to her lost companions. The dogs are simply a pest to the place, they keep up their incessant bark all the day long, and all night they howl and prowl around. They are hideously ugly, undersized creatures, and are the more loathsome because they are the acknowledged scavengers of the place. They are not worthy to be called dogs, and any one except he was assured of the fact, would scarcely believe that they were dogs. They are supposed to be useful in catching wild pigs, but from their appearance you would fancy that it must be a poor specimen of a pig they would dare to tackle. It was a beautiful moonlight night, and all these sounds rending the still night air simultaneously drove sleep from my eyes, and produced such inward irritation and disgust that if a thought could have killed the lot, none of them would have troubled the world again with their noises. A most glorious morning enticed me up very early, and certainly the early dawn was very fresh and beautiful. We had Prayers very soon after daylight and even then the blue bottles had collected in great numbers and were by no means a help to devotion. These pests spring into existence at once as soon as any number of human bodies are congregated together, and are particularly active in church and school. The idea of them apart from their propensities is very nasty and disgusting, and when in a country like this without the concomitants of devotion, one wants all the solemnity one can possibly obtain, their presence and irritation are the more odious and nauseating.
To-day, according to custom, we kept the Christening Feast of the children who were Baptized last night. The parents of the children gave a most beautiful pig, and the women attended to the cooking, the men dispersing in many directions each in quest of his own business or pleasure. I went with a party to Ruosi where we bathed, and got back in time for the opening of the ovens, and the division of the feast. I said grace and then each one partook of his or her share of the plentiful repast, all eating together in the most harmonious fashion, and not as in old days the sexes keeping religiously apart. This middle wall of separation has been almost entirely broken down, and family life and sociability have taken the place of the old seclusion and division. It was a most glorious night but the people were too tired to dance, and we all retired early to our houses. I kept busy till very late writing up arrears of correspondence and reading, and was the last in the village out of bed.
Tuesday, August 17th.—The most glorious day from earliest morning till now at night, the evening one of the most beautiful I ever saw, when the moon rose it was a most perfect night above and below, the sky studded with myriads of stars and absolutely cloudless, here everything hushed in peaceful slumber, except the restless, ever-singing crickets, whose buzz is continuously kept up by night and day. At the heathen end of the village there was a sort of Irish wake kept up to-day, but there was no “tangi” or any ceremony except a pig being killed, and a great feast being prepared. Formerly, death days were kept with great strictness, and the day of death and the 100th were observed with great festivities. I have seen nothing of the kind now for years, and I fancied the custom had quite died out. It was supposed in old days when the people were still heathen, that the disembodied spirit, after it left its earthly tenement, hung about hungry and restless on the thick creepers in the bush, and on the day of death a great feast was prepared for it, after which it retired to the place of departed spirits called Banoi. This same Banoi is near Tasmouri, but I have never seen it. The idea, I believe, is that when the spirit is at length at rest, its stone is placed in a certain cave or pit there exists there, and the people who have seen the place, tell me that certainly there far inland are smooth seaside stones laid in wonderful regularity, and in old days supposed to be put there by successive spirits in order as they died. Until quite recently, no one ventured into this ghostly place, and it was regarded as eminently sacred. Some day I hope to go there and examine it for myself.
I cannot find out the rationale of the subsequent death days, but they seem to have more to do with the living than the dead, and are supposed to show the departed one that he or she is still kept in faithful and affectionate memory.
In old days everyone was careful to have one good pig at least, in readiness for the day of his death, and any others which he might possess at the time of his departure, his friends were careful to kill in his honour.
They carefully kept the days, principally the tens, I think, and religiously observed the 100th, after which remembrance seemed no longer necessary, but before that, I am afraid, there was a large amount of selfishness about the death days, and more was thought of the living in them than of the dead. The people tell me how strictly these days were kept formerly, they dispensed with their regular ordinary food sometimes for the whole 100 days, and ate only such roots and fruits as grow wild in the bush, religiously abstaining from all garden produce until the full time had expired. Some went even beyond this when a very particular person died, and for the whole 100 days ate only one kind of root, and that the most difficult to obtain, strenuously refusing to partake of food in common with others. I have known a man myself adhere to this rigid, self-imposed abstention, in the case of the death of a son, and of a wife, not here however, but at Opa. A man once came into my house over there, tired and hungry after a long fast and a laborious journey, but he strictly refused a biscuit or other food which I ventured to offer him, and when or where he ate I do not know, for the particular food he had chosen to eat was most rare in the neighbourhood, I doubt even if it was obtainable at all. Yet no privation or distress would force him to break his rule, and eat promiscuously until the proper time had elapsed. In the keeping of their days they are wonderfully accurate, and you seldom find them wrong in their calculations. Their fingers are their ready reckoners, and they have to do a great deal more work than ours in assisting a weak memory, where the use of slate and pencil are unknown. I very often ask people to count over the names of persons in the place or neighbourhood, just to see how clever and correct they are with their numbers. Here the whole ten fingers are used, at Opa only the left hand, five fingers down being five, the first finger up and the rest down six, and so on until all are up which makes ten, then two tens, three tens, up to ten tens or one hundred. In the distribution of food, too, it is wonderful how accurate they are, and it is very rarely that any one is left out of the count. Of course, where the science of numbers is unknown, nature teaches by a more roundabout, but scarcely less accurate process. For all practical purposes and uses, their fingers help them a great deal, indeed almost as far as their requirements go, for their lives are very simple and their ways uncomplicated. The leaves of a certain palm, however, lends them some assistance, especially in the distribution of food, and as the person is seen, or his name thought of, a leaf is broken off, and then the broken leaves are counted. I have never heard of the toes being used as assistants, although one might fancy their being of service.
Wednesday, August 18th.—About midnight as I lay reading in bed, and a perfect stillness reigned around, we experienced a very sharp shock of an earthquake. My house shook so uncomfortably, that I really feared it was coming down, and I had the sort of feeling as of some one trying to upset it, and I felt as if I must say “Oh! do not, please leave off, you will have it down.” My neighbour’s fence was shaken so, that I fancied some considerable damage had been done. The vibration lasted a good long time, some seconds I should say, after the real shock was over, and I felt myself, a sort of palpitation for some considerable period. I was not afraid, but no one can feel an earthquake without some instinctive dread. Nothing, I think, makes one feel one’s littleness and helplessness and insecurity more, and there is such a solemnity attached to it, that you are very thankful when it is fairly over. Man, bird and beast were roused into action at once, and there was quite an excitement here for a time. Curiously enough, in the evening there was a very bright and exceedingly beautiful after-glow, and I remarked to the boys how like it was to the time when the terrible destruction was caused in the gulf of Sunda, and I said casually, that I should not be surprised if we had more earthquakes soon. The natives have a firm idea that they are the precursors of rain, and certainly this morning we have had a very heavy downpour. This is the first rain we have had for the whole month I have been here, and the first day I have been kept to solitary confinement. Most of the day I have been absolutely alone, and my pen has been kept very busy writing letters and hymns and songs. With the latter I have been very successful, and have managed four. One, particularly successful, goes to the chorus of “Wait till the clouds roll by,” and is as follows:—
| Ge togatoga ririkqa. | Gana sako na usu maraga, |
| Mati ni van ran̈ai, | Gana toura na gabe tar, |
| A lan̈i ni rowo na wia, | Gana tura goro na masi |
| Tavi dago na tasgoro. | Gana koko betegag. |