The half-caste too often comes into the world with no father willing to attend the baptism. Bishop Boismenu, a fighting priest, carried this question to the Government; his persistence was responsible for a law requiring the registration of every half-caste child’s white parent. And, my word, what a hullabaloo! Major Jones-Smith and Judge Brown-White had to do some tall explaining when sons or daughters suddenly materialized at the Mission of the Sacred Heart. One high Government official had a hard time facing his wife and his public; one rich American decided that he had loitered too long and had pressing engagements back in the States.
The half-caste problem is increasing in Papua. When the Melanesian was 100 per cent cannibal his women were chaste; the husband carried an ironwood club, and the tribe was never lax in enforcing blue laws. Poaching lovers were firmly lashed together with vines and laid across the liveliest ant-heap in the neighborhood. Or experienced tormentors would hobble the wandering bride permanently; they would just tie a hot stone under one of her knees. Nevada in the early days was almost as rough with domestic incontinence (if female). And look at Nevada today.
It was a strict mission rule that half-caste children should speak no language but English. Britishers they were; the law had acknowledged them. When they came of age the girls and boys were encouraged to marry each other, or to go into orders. They were to have a respectable place in society, and no handicaps.
I take off my old white helmet to the men and women of the Sacred Heart. There was Sister Magdalena, aged seventy-six. I found her sweet old face bent over a busily clicking typewriter. She had been stone blind for two years. “It was hard at first,” she said, “learning the touch system. But it’s like playing a musical instrument. I write poetry when I have time, and letters home. I’m useful too. One of the girls dictates to me, and I keep accounts for the mission.”
And there was Brother Heinrich, the jolly undertaker. Sallow and malarial, he had the smile of the artist who loves his work and has plenty of orders. Papuan fevers never bothered him so long as he had coffins to build. Bang, bang went his lusty hammer, doing a neat hardwood job. “Don’t forget a solid lid,” I said, coming up to him. Brother Heinrich chuckled and said, “I try not to forget anything. For instance, Doctor, you’ll need lots of brass nails on those shoes, if you’re going up to Mafulu. Won’t you send that pair to me before you go? I’m a cobbler too.”
Mother Ligouri, who presided over the neat little hospital, was another jolly one, round and rosy in spite of hell and high water. Her housekeeping was immaculate; she isolated typhoid cases, and was always in comic despair over sanitary arrangements, primitive latrines, flies and mosquitoes that infected her patients. Brother Heinrich was one of her favorite pests. “I have to shoo him away,” she said. “When anybody’s sick he gets the measurements somehow. I never knew him to fail to have a coffin ready, and a perfect fit. That man Heinrich!”
The day before we set out for the mountains I let Brother Heinrich have my shoes, and asked him if he had me on his list of measurements. “Oh, I can tell your size from your shoes,” he said with a glow of professional pride. That night he presented me with a remarkably fine job of hobnailing.
During the week I had talked to the half-castes, and it gave me pleasure to lecture in English. Already I was looking forward to my surveys in New Guinea Territory, where, I was told, the people understood pidgin English. I carelessly believed that pidgin would be easy to pick up. I little knew.
All I saw of that enterprise on Yule Island, and of its far-flung stations among the peaks and gorges of Mafulu, never failed to remind me of what Herman Melville, who didn’t like missionaries as a class, had said of the South Sea Catholics a hundred years ago. They were to him the great missioners. And they are the great missioners still, as long as they live in the purity of self-sacrifice.
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