Pioneers and Founders / or, Recent Workers in the Mission field

by Charlotte M. Yonge

After distributing presents to the friendly Patagonians, he embarked, and making a weary passage, reached the Falkland Islands, where he found the two ships Erebus and Terror anchored, in the course of their voyage of Antarctic discovery. The presence of the two captains and their officers was a great pleasure and enlivenment to the Gardiners, who received from them many comforts very needful in that inclement climate to people lately come from some of the hottest regions of the southern hemisphere.

Whalers continually put in, but not one, even though Captain Gardiner’s offers rose to 300l., would undertake to go out of his course to Patagonia to convey him and his family, and he would not trust his wife and children on board that wretched craft the Montgomery, so he waited on at the Falkland Islands, doing what good he could there, and expecting the answer of a letter he had despatched to the Church Missionary Society, begging for the appointment of a clergyman to this field of labour. After six months’ delay, the letter came, and proved to be unfavourable; there was a falling off in the funds of the Society, and a new and doubtful mission was thought undesirable.

The Captain believed that nothing but personal representations could prevail, and therefore decided on going home to plead the cause of his Patagonians. He sailed with his family for Rio in a small vessel, and the voyage could not have been one of the least of the dangers, for the skipper was a Guacho who had been a shoemaker, and knew nothing about seafaring, and there was not a spare rope in the ship. From Rio Gardiner took a passage home, and safely arrived, after six years of brave pioneering in three different quarters of the globe.

He found, however, that the Church Missionary Society could not undertake the Patagonian Mission, and neither could the London nor Wesleyan Societies. He declared that every one grew cold when they heard of South America, and viewed it as the natural inheritance of Giants Pope and Pagan; and for this very reason he was the more bent upon doing his utmost. Failing in his attack on Pagan he made an assault on Pope, obtaining a grant of Bibles, Testaments, and tracts from the Bible Society, and in 1843 sailed for Rio to distribute them; this time, however, going alone, as his children were of an age to require an English education and an English home.

He undertook this mission, in fact, chiefly for the purpose of continuing his attempts to reach the Indian tribes. His journey was, as usual, wild and adventurous, and its principal result was an acquaintance with the English chaplains and congregations at several of the chief South American ports, from whom he received a promise of 100l., per annum for the support of a mission to Patagonia.

With this beginning he returned home, and while residing at Brighton, his earnestness so stirred people’s minds that a Society was formed with an income of 500l., and Mr. Robert Hunt, giving up the mastership of an endowed school, offered himself to the Church Missionary Society. A clergyman could not immediately be found, and it was determined that these two should go first and prepare the way. In 1844, then, they landed in Oazy Harbour in Magelhaen’s Straits, and set up three tents, one for stores, one for cooking, and one for sleeping. One Fuegian hut was near, where the people were inoffensive, and presently there arrived a Chilian deserter named Mariano, who said that he had run away from the fort at Port Famine with another man named Cruz, who had remained among the Patagonians. He reported that Wissale had lost much of his authority, and

that San Leon was now chief of the tribe; also that there was a Padre Domingo at Port Famine, who was teaching the Patagonians to become “Catolicos.”

To learn the truth as soon as possible, the Captain and Mr. Hunt locked up two of their huts, leaving the other for Mariano, and set off in search of the Patagonians; and a severe journey it was, as they had to carry the heavy clothing required to keep up warmth at night, besides their food, gun, powder, and shot. The fatigue was too much for Hunt, who was at one time obliged to lie down exhausted while the Captain went in search of water; and after four days they were obliged to return to their huts, where shortly after Wissale arrived, but with a very scanty following, only ten or twelve horses, and himself and family very hungry; but though ready to eat whatever Captain Gardiner would give him, his whole manner was changed by his disasters. He was surly and quarrelsome, and evidently under the influence of the deserter Cruz, who was resolved to set him against the new-comers, and so worked upon him that he once threatened the Captain with his dirk. Moreover, a Chilian vessel arrived, bringing Padre Mariano himself, a Spanish South American, with a real zeal for conversion, though he was very courteous to the Englishmen. An English vessel arrived about the same time, and Gardiner, thinking the cause for the present hopeless, accepted a homeward passage, writing in his journal, “We can never do wrong in casting the Gospel net on any side or in any place. During many a dark and wearisome night we may appear to have toiled in vain, but it will not be always so. If we will but wait the appointed time, the promise, though long delayed, will assuredly come to pass.”

But if he was not daunted his supporters were, and nothing but his intense earnestness, and assurance that he should never abandon South America, prevented the whole cause from being dropped. His next attempt was to reach the Indians beyond Bolivia, in the company of Federigo Gonzales, a Spaniard, who had become a Protestant, and was to have gone on the Patagonian Mission. Here fever became their enemy, but after much suffering and opposition Gonzales was settled at Potosi, studying the Quichuan language, and hoping to work upon the Indians, while the unwearied Gardiner again returned to England to strain every nerve for the Fuegian Mission, which lay nearest of all to his heart.

He travelled all over England and Scotland, lecturing and making collections, speaking with the same energy whether he had few or many auditors. At one town, when asked what sort of a meeting he had had, he answered, “Not very good, but better than sometimes.”