The Black-Bearded Barbarian : The Life of George Leslie Mackay of Formosa

by Mary Esther Miller MacGregor

A Hoa needed all his kind new friend's help in the first days after his conversion. For family, relatives, and friends turned upon him with the bitterest hatred for taking up the barbarian's religion. So, driven from his friends, he came to live in the little hut by the river with Mackay. While at home these two read, sang, and studied together all the day long. It would have been hard for an observer to guess who was teacher and who pupil. For at one time A Hoa was receiving Bible instruction and the next time Mackay was being drilled in the Chinese of the educated classes. Each teacher was as eager to instruct as each pupil was eager to learn.

The Bible was, of course, the chief textbook, but they studied other things, astronomy, geology, history, and similar subjects. One day the Canadian took out a map of the world, and the Chinese gazed with amazement at the sight of the many large countries outside China. A Hoa had been private secretary to a mandarin, and had traveled much in China, and once spent six months in Peking. His idea had been that China was everything, that all countries outside it were but insignificant barbarian places. His geography lessons were like revelations.

His progress was simply astonishing, as was also Mackay's. The two seemed possessed with the spirit of hard work. But a superstitious old man who lived near believed they were possessed with a demon. He often listened to the two singing, drilling, and repeating words as they marched up and down, either in the house or in front of it, and he became alarmed. He was a kindly old fellow, and, though a heathen, felt well disposed toward the missionary and A Hoa. So one day, very much afraid, he slipped over to the little house with two small cups of strong tea. He came to the door and proffered them with a polite bow. He hoped they might prove soothing to the disturbed nerves of the patients, he said. He suggested, also, that a visit to the nearest temple might help them.

The two affected ones received his advice politely, but the humor of it struck them both, and when their visitor was gone they laughed so hard the tea nearly choked them.

The missionary was soon able to speak so fluently that he preached almost every day, either in the little house by the river, or on the street in some open square. There were other things he did, too. On every side he saw great suffering from disease. The chief malady was the terrible malaria, and the native doctors with their ridiculous remedies only made the poor sufferers worse. Mackay had studied medicine for a short time while in college, and now found his knowledge very useful. He gave some simple remedies to several victims of malaria which proved effective. The news of the cures spread far and wide. The barbarian was kind, he had a good heart, the people declared. Many more came to him for medicine, and day by day the circle of his friends grew. And wherever he went, curing disease, teaching, or preaching, A Hoa went with him, and shared with him the taunts of their heathen enemies.

But the gospel was gradually making its way. Not long after A Hoa's conversion a second man confessed Christ. He had previously disturbed the meetings by throwing stones into the doorway whenever he passed. But his sister was cured of malaria by the missionary's medicine, and soon both sister and mother became Christians, and finally the stone-thrower himself. And so, gradually, the lines of the enemy were falling back, and at every sign of retreat the little army of two advanced. A little army? No! For was there not the whole host of heaven moving with them? And Mackay was learning that his boyish dreams of glory were truly to be fulfilled. He had wanted always to be a soldier like his grandfather, and fight a great Waterloo, and here he was right in the midst of the battle with the victory and the glory sure.

The two missionaries often went on short trips here and there into the country around Tamsui, and Mackay determined that when the intense summer heat had lessened they would make a long tour to some of the large cities. The heat of August was almost overpowering to the Canadian. Flies and mosquitoes and insect pests of all kinds made his life miserable, too, and prevented his studying as hard as he wished.

One oppressive day he and A Hoa returned from a preaching tour in the country to find their home in a state of siege. Right across the threshold lay a monster serpent, eight feet in length. A Hoa shouted a warning, and seized a long pole, and the two managed to kill it. But their troubles were not yet over. The next morning, Mackay stepped outside the door and sprang back just in time to escape another, the mate of the one killed. This one was even larger than the first, and was very fierce. But they finished it with sticks and stones.

When September came the days grew clearer, and the many pests of summer were not so numerous. The mosquitoes and flies that had been such torments disappeared, and there was some relief from the damp oppressive heat. But he had only begun to enjoy the refreshing breaths of cool air, and had remarked to A Hoa that the days reminded him of Canadian summers, when the weather gave him to understand that every Formosan season has its drawbacks. September brought tropical storms and typhoons that were terrible, and he saw from his little house on the hillside big trees torn up by the root, buildings swept away like chaff, and out in the harbor great ships lifted from their anchorage and whirled away to destruction. And then he was sometimes thankful that his little hut was built into the hillside, solid and secure.

But the fierce storms cleared away the heavy dampness that had made the heat of the summer so unbearable, and October and November brought delightful days. The weather was still warm of course, but the nights were cool and pleasant.