The report said: “The girls’ school has had no interruption through the past year.” But the girls’ school and all Mrs. Lewis’s work in San Salvador were destined to suffer serious interruption full soon. At the end of March, 1893, she records that her husband has been seriously ill, and that all things are packed up for a voyage to Grand Canary, where it is proposed that they shall spend five or six weeks, in the hope that so much rest and change may effect such restoration as will enable him to resume his work without a return to England. She is thankful that her own health has been preserved, and the general concern displayed by the natives in her husband’s illness is noted with grateful appreciation. The chiefs of neighbouring towns have been assiduous in their inquiries, and carriers, many more than they would need, have eagerly volunteered for the journey to the coast, that they might serve those whom they esteem highly, though it is the middle of the wet season.
Mrs. Lewis had received news in advance of a plum-pudding which had been despatched in honour of her birthday, and says in a postscript to the letter containing the foregoing particulars, that they are hoping to meet the plum-pudding at Tunduwa. They did meet the plum-pudding at Tunduwa, but no immediate intimacy ensued. It was handed to them just before their steamer sailed, and they handed it back to Mr. John Pinnock, to be taken care of till the first week in July, when they hoped to share the joy of it with him, and maybe others.
On May 10th they arrived at Grand Canary, having made the voyage in the steamer Lulu Bohlen, which they hoped to catch again upon her return from England, as they well liked her appointments and her officers. Two days after landing Mrs. Lewis reports that Mr. Lewis is much better, and that they are comfortably housed in an hotel which is made charming by spacious gardens ablaze with flowers. The island is not so pretty as Madeira, but much drier, and therefore more suitable to their health requirements. Her letter continues:—
“This island is, of course, Spanish, and terribly priest-ridden. The people are wretched and dirty. Oh, the contrast between the miserable shanties of Canary, with their dirty, half-naked children, and the clean, sweet cottages of Wales! We went into the cathedral the other day, a strange, uninteresting building, where the priests were droning the service. The only thing we admired was a series of pictures, of more than life-size, illustrating “The Way of the Cross.” I was glad to see them there, and hoped that some poor people would derive from them knowledge of Christ’s love and suffering, which they might not otherwise obtain.
“There are crowds of lazy, sleek priests about, who grind every possible penny out of these poor people. Next to no mission work seems possible among them, the restrictions are so many. There is the Sailors’ Institute, for English sailors especially, and the English church, recently opened, for English visitors. I think the Searles do a little, and perhaps the English clergyman does; I do not know. But it is very little. There is one comfort, we shall have somewhere to go on Sunday. There will be the church in the morning; we have promised to go down to tea with the Searles; and in the evening there will be the Gospel Service for sailors. I have promised to do my best to play the hymns for them. There is a man-of-war lying here now, so the sailors, or many of them, will be present. I was asked to speak, as they say the sailors listen better to ladies; but I begged off for next Sunday at least. I am not comfortable in speaking to men only.”
As Mr. Lewis grew stronger they were able to make interesting excursions into the heart of the island, and in the course of a journey to an extinct crater received beautiful hospitality at the hands of a venerable peasant couple, of which Mrs. Lewis gives an idyllic picture.
The first day of June brought the sojourners no little joy in the appearing of Mr. W. C. Parkinson, who had so timed a flying visit to Grand Canary that he might spend a few days with Mr. and Mrs. Lewis. Mr. Parkinson was and is an honoured and devoted member of the Committee of the Baptist Missionary Society; he was the Superintendent of Camden Road Sunday School, under whom Mrs. Lewis served in earlier years, and withal an intimate personal friend. Mr. Parkinson was accompanied by his daughter May, who, as a child, had known Mrs. Lewis in the Sunday School, and in the class conducted by Thomas Comber. She also was inspired by missionary ideals, and has since served the cause of Christ for many years on the hard field of Morocco.
The four following days were golden days glowing with the glad, free intercourse of kindred minds, maintained amid delightful physical conditions. The happiness passed into memory on June 5th, when their friends left, but Mrs. Lewis’s remark: “We did just enjoy the Parkinsons’ visit. It was splendid, hearing all about everybody, and I think they enjoyed it too,” indicates how keen the happiness had been.
The stay in Grand Canary had done all that was hoped for in mending the health of Mr. Lewis, and on June 13th, when the Lulu Bohlen was hourly expected, to take them back to Congo, Mrs. Lewis wrote a letter to her friend, Miss Hartland, which bubbles over with high spirits and pulsates with laughter. It contains a long, humorous account of an equestrian picnic expedition, made by the Lewises and certain acquaintances, to a distant part of the island. The use of the convenient epithet “equestrian” involves a certain economy of truth, for most of the horses were donkeys, and one of them was a mule. In fact, there was only one horse, but the reader will pardon the inexactitude for the sake of euphony. The letter was accompanied by a pencil sketch of the cavalcade. Candour compels me to confess that the artistry is of the nursery order, and that the names written beneath the figures in the picture are necessary for identification, save in the case of Mr. Lewis, whose long beard, black spectacles, and big helmet would enable the reader of the epistle to be sure of him at once. I quote one paragraph:—