Life of John Coleridge Patteson : Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian Islands

by Charlotte M. Yonge

'The next morning (Sunday) at ten, we dropped anchor in Port Patteson, the harbour which you know the Bishop would call after my father. The first person who came off to us was Sarawia, my old Lifu pupil, from this island! Then came a good many men. I told them there would be no going ashore and no trading till the next day. Palemana, your friend Matawathki, &c., were at church, all dressed and well-behaved. What nice orderly people they are, to be sure!

'The next day we bought lots of yams, and gave away seeds and fruit-trees, or rather planted them; and looked for a place for a station, and fixed at last on the rising-ground which forms the east side of the harbour, and the Bishop, arming himself with an axe, led a party to clear the bush, which was very thick. They made a fair path through in one afternoon to the top, and a healthy place might be found now with little trouble to return to at night from the schools, &c. in the village below, and so shirk the malaria.

'But the next day, as I had anticipated, rather changed his intentions as to the principal station being formed at Vanua Lava. We landed at Sugar Loaf Island, and with something of pride I showed off to him the beauties of the villages where I slept in May last—the dry soil, the spring of water, the wondrous fertility, the large and remarkably intelligent, well-looking population, the great banyan tree, twenty-seven paces round—and at once he said, "This is such a place as I have seen nowhere else for our purpose."

'The Bishop had seen this island before I was with him, during one of the "Border Maid's" voyages, and knew the people, of course, but had not happened to have walked in shore at all, and so the exceeding beauty and fitness of the island for a Mission station had not become so apparent to him. We know of no place where there seems to be such an unusual combination of everything that can be desired, humanly speaking, for such an institution. So that is settled (D.V.) that next winter I should be here, if alive and well; and that the Banks Islands should be regarded as the central point of the Mission.

'Such boys! Bright-eyed, merry fellows, many really handsome; of that reddish yellow tinge of colour which betokens affinity with Polynesian races, as their language also testifies. The majority of the people were pleasing in their appearance and manner. Well, all this was very hopeful, and we went off very happy, taking Eumau, the boy who first met us at Port Patteson when we found it out, and old Wompas (who was with me at Lifu), and another from Mota, to see the Northern Islands.

'I think our work is more likely now to revolve upon a fixed centre—Sugar Loaf Island in the Banks group—that we shall make the occupation of the group the first ohject, and do all with reference to that as the necessary part of the work to be attended to first. In the choice of scholars, e.g., we have considered whether we should not limit our selection to such as might pass the next winter with me at Sugar Loaf Island, and so that the vessel need not run down to leeward of it. Solomon Islands are the extreme verge. In the East Island, where there would be merely a question of nothing or something, we may take very young men who would perhaps not be easy to keep out of harm at Sugar Loaf, because there will be no difficulty about returning them to their homes....

'November 11th.—We found in the Santa Cruz group that the news of Captain Front's and his two men's death in Vanikoro, and (as we suppose) the news of the "Cordelia" having been at that island to inquire into the matter, had made the people anxious, uneasy, noisy, and rather rude. That poor man went to make a station at Vanikoro in the usual way, taking three poor New Caledonian women with him. The Vanikoro people killed the three English and took away the women.

'We did not land at Sta. Cruz, but we had a more pleasant intercourse than heretofore with thirty or forty canoes' crews.

'Timelin Island we ascertained to be identical with Nukapu, an old familiar place whose latitude we had not ascertained correctly before. The small reef (Polynesian) islands did not give us so good a reception as last year, though there was no unfriendliness. The news about Vanikoro had made them suspicious of visits from white men. But they will be all right by next time....

'We saw a pleasant party at Bligh Island, brought away one young man from that island, and two lads belonging to a neighbouring small island called Eowa. The next day we watered on the north side of Vanua Lava, and in the evening went across to Santa Maria. Here we landed on the next day among two hundred or more people, shy and noisy. We bought a few yams, and I detected some young fellows stealing from our little heap I would not overlook this, but the noticing it made them more suspicious that we meant to hurt them. As the Bishop and I, after some twenty minutes, turned to rejoin the boat, the whole crowd bolted like a shot right and left into the bush. Evidently they must have had some trading crew tire a parting shot in mere wantonness at them from their boat. I expected some arrows to be shot at us; but they did not shoot any.