'Immediately after service clinks out the breakfast bell, and, with marvellous promptitude and punctuality, whites and blacks, lay and clerical, are seen flocking to the mess-room. The whites sit at the upper end of the table, but beyond the special privilege of tea, all fare alike, chiefly on vegetables: yams or sweet potatoes, and carrots or vegetable marrows, as may suit the season, with plenty of biscuit for more ambitious teeth, and plenty of milk to wash it down. Soon afterwards comes school for an hour and a half. Then work for the boys and men, planting yams, reaping wheat, mowing oats, fencing, carting, building, as the call may be, only no caste distinction or ordering about; it is not go and do that, but come and do this, whether the leader be an ordained clergyman, a white farm bailiff, or a white carpenter. This is noteworthy, and your readers will gain no clear idea of the Mission if they do not seize this point, for it is no matter of mere detail, but one of principle. The system is not that of the ship or the regiment, of the farm or the manufactory of the old country, but essentially of the family. It is not the officer or master saying "Go" but the father or the brother saying "Come." And to this, I firmly believe, is the hearty cheerful following and merry work of the blacks chiefly due. At 1 P.M. is dinner, much the same as breakfast. Meat, though not unknown, is the weak point of the Mission dietary. In the afternoon, work. At 6, tea. In the evening, class again for an hour or two; this evening class being sometimes a singing lesson, heartily enjoyed by the teacher. I forget precisely when the boys have to prepare matter arising out of the lessons they have received viva voce.
'There are evening prayers, and bed-time is early. Noteworthy are the happy conjunctions of perfect discipline with perfect jollity, the marvellous attainment of a happy familiarity which does not "breed contempt."
'I presume I need scarcely say to your readers that besides education in reading, writing, and arithmetic, through the medium of the Mota language, instruction in the Holy Scriptures and the most careful explanations of their meaning and mutual relation, forms a main part of the teaching given. The men and boys of the senior classes take notes; notes not by order expressly to be inspected, but, so to say, private notes for the aid of their memories; and from the translation given to me by Bishop Patteson of some of these, I should say that few, if any, of the senior class of an English Sunday School could give anything like so close, and sometimes philosophical, an explanation of Scripture, and that sometimes in remarkably few words.
'There remains to be noticed one most effectual means of doing good. After evening school, the Bishop, his clergy, and his aides, retire mostly into their own rooms. Then, quietly and shyly, on this night or the other night, one or two, three or four of the more intelligent of the black boys steal silently up to the Bishop's side, and by fits and starts, slowly, often painfully, tell their feelings, state their difficulties, ask for help, and, I believe, with God's blessing, rarely fail to find it. They are not gushing as negroes, but shy as Englishmen; we Englishmen ought, indeed, to have a fellow-feeling for these poor black boys and help them with all our hearts.
'Such is the routine for five of the six work days. Saturday is whole holiday, and all hands go to fish if the sea permits; if not, to play rounders or what not. Merry lads they are, as ever gladdened an English playground.
'On Sunday, the early Chapel is omitted. The full Liturgy is divided into two services-I forget the laws-and a kind of sermon in Mota is given; and in the afternoon, the Bishop, or one of the ordained members of the Mission, usually goes down to the town to relieve Mr. Nobbs in his service for the Pitcairners.
'As regards the manual work of the station, this general principle is observed-women for washing and house-work; the men for planting and out-of-door work; but no one, white or black, is to be too grand to do his share. The Bishop's share, indeed, is to study and investigate and compare the languages and necessary translations, but no one is to be above manual labour. No one, because he is a white man, is to say, "Here, black fellow, come and clean my boots." "Here, black people, believe that I have come to give you a treasure of inestimable price. Meantime, work for me, am I not your superior? Can I not give you money, calico, what not?"
'This Christian democracy, if I may so call it, has worked well in the long run.'
This observer does seem to have entered well into the spirit of the place; and there can be no doubt that the plan and organisation of the Mission had by this time been well tested and both found practicable, and, as at present worked, more than ordinarily successful. The college was in full working order, with a staff of clergy, all save one formed under the Bishop, one native deacon and two teachers living with their wives in a population that was fast becoming moulded by the influence of Christianity, many more being trained up, and several more islands in course of gradual preparation by the same process as was further advanced in Mota.
Such were the achievements which could be thankfully recounted by the end of 1869.
CHAPTER XII. THE LAST EIGHTEEN MONTHS. 1870-1871.
The prosperous days of every life pass away at last. Suffering and sorrow, failure and reverse are sure to await all who live out anything like their term of years, and the missionary is perhaps more liable than other men to meet with a great disappointment. 'Success but signifies vicissitude,' and looking at the history of the growth of the Church, it is impossible not to observe that almost in all cases, immediately upon any extensive progress, there has followed what seems like a strong effort of the Evil One at its frustration, either by external persecution, reaction of heathenism, or, most fatally and frequently during the last 300 years, from the reckless misdoings of unscrupulous sailors and colonists. The West Indies, Japan, America, all have the same shameful tale to tell-what wonder if the same shadow were to be cast over the Isles of the South?
It is one of the misfortunes, perhaps the temptations of this modern world, that two of its chief necessaries, sugar and cotton, require a climate too hot for the labour of men who have intelligence enough to grow and export them on a large scale, and who are therefore compelled, as they consider, to employ the forced toil of races able to endure heat. The Australian colony of Queensland is unfit to produce wheat, but well able to grow sugar, and the islands of Fiji, which the natives have implored England to annex, have become the resort of numerous planters and speculators. There were 300 white inhabitants in the latter at the time of the visit of the 'Curacoa' in 1865. In 1871 the numbers were from 5,000 to 6,000. Large sheep farms have been laid out, and sugar plantations established.