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THE STORY OF JOHN G. PATON

Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals

by

REV. JAMES PATON, B.A.

Illustrated







A. L. Burt Company,Publishers, New York





PREFACE.


EVER since the story of my brother's life first appeared (January 1889)
it has been constantly pressed upon me that a YOUNG FOLKS' EDITION would
be highly prized. The Autobiography has therefore been re-cast and
illustrated, in the hope and prayer that the Lord will use it to inspire
the Boys and Girls of Christendom with a wholehearted enthusiasm for the
Conversion of the Heathen World to Jesus Christ.

A few fresh incidents have been introduced; the whole contents have been
rearranged to suit a new class of readers; and the service of a gifted
Artist has been employed, to make the book every way attractive to the
young. For _full_ details as to the Missionary's work and life, the
COMPLETE EDITION must still of course be referred to.

JAMES PATON.
GLASGOW, _Sept,_ 1892.

CONTENTS.
CHAP.

 1. Our Cottage Home
 2. Our Forebears
 3. Consecrated Parents
 4. School Days
 5. Leaving the Old Home
 6. Early Struggles
 7. A City Missionary
 8. Glasgow Experiences
 9. A Foreign Missionary
10. To the New Hebrides
11. First Impressions of Heathendom
12. Breaking Ground on Tanna
13. Pioneers in the New Hebrides
14. The Great Bereavement
15. At Home with Cannibals
16. Superstitions and Cruelties
17. Streaks of Dawn amidst Deeds of Darkness
18. The Visit of H.M.S. "Cordelia"
19. "Noble Old Abraham"
20. A Typical South Sea Trader
21. Under Axe and Musket
22. A Native Saint and Martyr
23. Building and Printing for God
24. Heathen Dance and Sham Fight
25. Cannibals at Work
26. The Defying of Nahak
27. A Perilous Pilgrimage
28. The Plague of Measles
29. Attacked with Clubs
30. Kowia
31. The Martyrdom of the Gordons
32. Shadows Deepening on Tanna
33. The Visit of the Commodore
34. The War Chiefs in Council
35. Under Knife and Tomahawk
36. The Beginning of the End
37. Five Hours in a Canoe
38. A Race for Life
39. Faint yet Pursuing
40. Waiting at Kwamera
41. The Last Awful Night
42. "Sail O! Sail O!"
43. Farewell to Tanna
44. The Floating of the "Dayspring"
45. A Shipping Company for Jesus
46. Australian Incidents
47. Amongst Squatters and Diggers
48. John Gilpin in the Bush
49. The Aborigines of Australia
50. Nora
51. Back to Scotland
52. Tour through the Old Country
53. Marriage and Farewell
54. First Peep at the "Dayspring"
55. The French in the Pacific
56. The Gospel and Gunpowder
57. A Plea for Tanna
58. Our New Home on Aniwa
59. House-Building for God
60. A City of God
61. The Religion of Revenge
62. First Fruits on Aniwa
63. Traditions and Customs
64. Nelwang's Elopement
65. The Christ-Spirit at Work
66. The Sinking of the Well
67. Rain from Below
68. The Old Chief's Sermon
69. The First Book and the New Eyes
70. A Roof-Tree for Jesus
71. "Knock the Tevil out!"
72. The Conversion of Youwili
73. First Communion on Aniwa
74. The New Social Order
75. The Orphans and their Biscuits
76. The Finger-Posts of God
77. The Gospel in Living Capitals
78. The Death of Namakei
79. Christianity and Cocoa-Nuts
80. Nerwa's Beautiful Farewell
81. Ruwawa
82. Litsi
83. The Conversion of Nasi
84. The Appeal of Lamu
85. Wanted! A Steam Auxiliary
86. My Campaign in Ireland
87. Scotland's Free-will Offerings
88. England's Open Door
89. Farewell Scenes
90. Welcome to Victoria and Aniwa
91. Good News from Tanna, 1891



THE STORY OF JOHN G. PATON.



CHAPTER I.
OUR COTTAGE HOME.

MY early days were all spent in the beautiful county of Dumfries, which
Scotch folks call the Queen of the South. There, in a small cottage, on
the farm of Braehead, in the parish of Kirkmahoe, I was born on the 24th
May, 1824. My father, James Paton, was a stocking manufacturer in a
small way; and he and his young wife, Janet Jardine Rogerson, lived on
terms of warm personal friendship with the "gentleman farmer," so they
gave me his son's name, John _Gibson_; and the curly-haired child of the
cottage was soon able to toddle across to the mansion, and became a
great pet of the lady there. On my visit to Scotland in 1884 I drove out
to Braehead; but we found no cottage, nor trace of a cottage, and amused
ourselves by supposing that we could discover by the rising of the
grassy mound, the outline where the foundations once had been!

While yet a mere child, five years or so of age, my parents took me to a
new home in the ancient village of Torthorwald, about four and a quarter
miles from Dumfries, on the road to Lockerbie. At that time, say 1830,
Torthorwald was a busy and thriving village, and comparatively populous,
with its cottars and crofters, large farmers and small farmers, weavers
and shoemakers, doggers and coopers, blacksmiths and tailors. Fifty-five
years later, when I visited the scenes of my youth, the village proper
was extinct, except for five thatched cottages where the lingering
patriarchs were permitted to die slowly away,--soon they too would be
swept into the large farms, and their garden plots plowed over, like
sixty or seventy others that had been blotted out!

From the Bank Hill, close above our village, and accessible in a walk of
fifteen minutes, a view opens to the eye which, despite several easily
understood prejudices of mine that may discount any opinion that I
offer, still appears to me well worth seeing amongst all the beauties of
Scotland. At your feet lay a thriving village, every cottage sitting in
its own plot of garden, and sending up its blue cloud of "peat reek,"
which never somehow seemed to pollute the blessed air; and after all has
been said or sung, a beautifully situated village of healthy and happy
homes for God's children is surely the finest feature in every
landscape! Looking from the Bank Hill on a summer day, Dumfries with its
spires shone so conspicuous that you could have believed it not more
than two miles away; the splendid sweeping vale through which Nith rolls
to Solway, lay all before the naked eye, beautiful with village spires,
mansion houses, and white shining farms; the Galloway hills, gloomy and
far-tumbling, bounded the forward view, while to the left rose Criffel,
cloud-capped and majestic; then the white sands of Solway, with tides
swifter than horsemen; and finally the eye rested joyfully upon the
hills of Cumberland, and noticed with glee the blue curling smoke from
its villages on the southern Solway shores.

There, amid this wholesome and breezy village life, our dear parents
found their home for the long period of forty years. There too were born
to them eight additional children, making in all a family of five sons
and six daughters. Theirs was the first of the thatched cottages on the
left, past the "miller's house," going up the "village gate," with a
small garden in front of it, and a large garden across the road; and it
is one of the few still lingering to show to a new generation what the
homes of their fathers were. The architect who planned that cottage had
no ideas of art, but a fine eye for durability! It consists at present
of three, but originally of four, pairs of "oak couples" (Scottice
_kipples_) planted like solid trees in the ground at equal intervals,
and gently sloped inwards till they meet or are "coupled" at the ridge,
this coupling being managed not by rusty iron, but by great solid pins
of oak. A roof of oaken wattles was laid across these, till within
eleven or twelve feet of the ground, and from the ground upwards a stone
wall was raised, as perpendicular as was found practicable, towards
these overhang-wattles, this wall being roughly "pointed" with sand and
clay and lime. Now into and upon the roof was woven and intertwisted a
covering of thatch, that defied all winds and weathers, and that made
the cottage marvelously cozy,--being renewed year by year, and never
allowed to remain in disrepair at any season. But the beauty of the
construction was and is its durability, or rather the permanence of its
oaken ribs! There they stand, after probably not less than four
centuries, japanned with "peat reek" till they are literally shining, so
hard that no ordinary nail can be driven into them, and perfectly
capable of service for four centuries more on the same conditions. The
walls are quite modern, having all been rebuilt in my father's time,
except only the few great foundation boulders, piled around the oaken
couples; and parts of the roofing also may plead guilty to having found
its way thither only in recent days; but the architect's one idea
survives, baffling time and change--the ribs and rafters of oak.

Our home consisted of a "but" and a "ben" and a "mid room," or chamber,
called the "closet." The one end was my mother's domain, and served all
the purposes of dining-room and kitchen and parlor, besides containing
two large wooden erections, called by our Scotch peasantry "box beds";
not holes in the wall, as in cities, but grand, big, airy beds, adorned
with many- counterpanes, and hung with natty curtains, showing
the skill of the mistress of the house. The other end was my father's
workshop, filled with five or six "stocking-frames," whirring with the
constant action of five or six pairs of busy hands and feet, and
producing right genuine hosiery for the merchants at Hawick and
Dumfries. The "closet" was a very small apartment betwixt the other two,
having room only for a bed, a little table and a chair, with a
diminutive window shedding diminutive light on the scene. This was the
Sanctuary of that cottage home. Thither daily, and oftentimes a day,
generally after each meal, we saw our father retire, and "shut to the
door"; and we children got to understand by a sort of spiritual instinct
(for the thing was too sacred to be talked about) that prayers were
being poured out there for us, as of old by the High Priest within the
veil in the Most Holy Place. We occasionally heard the pathetic echoes
of a trembling voice pleading as if for life, and we learned to slip out
and in past that door on tiptoe, not to disturb the holy colloquy. The
outside world might not know, but we knew, whence came that happy light
as of a new-born smile that always was dawning on my father's face: it
was a reflection from the Divine Presence, in the consciousness of which
he lived. Never, in temple or cathedral, on mountain or in glen, can I
hope to feel that the Lord God is more near, more visibly walking and
talking with men, than under that humble cottage roof of thatch and
oaken wattles. Though everything else in religion were by some
unthinkable catastrophe to be swept out of memory, or blotted from my
understanding, my soul would wander back to those early scenes, and shut
itself up once again in that Sanctuary Closet, and, hearing still the
echoes of those cries to God, would hurl back all doubt with the
victorious appeal, "He walked with God, why may not I?"



CHAPTER II.
OUR FOREBEARS.

A FEW notes had better here be given as to our "Forebears," the kind of
stock from which my father and mother sprang. My father's mother, Janet
Murray, claimed to be descended from a Galloway family that fought and
suffered for Christ's Crown and Covenant in Scotland's "killing time,"
and was herself a woman of a pronouncedly religious development. Her
husband, our grandfather, William Paton, had passed through a roving and
romantic career, before he settled down to be a douce deacon of the
weavers of Dumfries, like his father before him.

Forced by a press-gang to serve on board a British man-of-war, he was
taken prisoner by the French, and thereafter placed under Paul Jones,
the pirate of the seas, and bore to his dying day the mark of a slash
from the captain's sword across his shoulder for some slight disrespect
or offense. Determining with two others to escape, the three were hotly
pursued by Paul Jones's men. One, who could swim but little, was shot,
and had to be cut adrift by the other two, who in the darkness swam into
a cave and managed to evade for two nights and a day the rage of their
pursuers. My grandfather, being young and gentle and yellow-haired,
persuaded some kind heart to rig him out in female attire, and in this
costume escaped the attentions of the press-gang more than once; till,
after many hardships, he bargained with the captain of a coal sloop to
stow him away amongst his black diamonds; and thus, in due time, he
found his way home to Dumfries, where he tackled bravely and wisely the
duties of husband, father, and citizen for the remainder of his days.
The smack of the sea about the stories of his youth gave zest to the
talks round their quiet fireside, and that, again, was seasoned by the
warm Evangelical spirit of his Covenanting wife, her lips "dropping
grace."

On the other side, my mother, Janet Rogerson, had for parents a father
and mother of the Annandale stock. William Rogerson, her father, was one
of many brothers, all men of uncommon strength and great force of
character, quite worthy of the Border Rievers of an earlier day. Indeed,
it was in some such way that he secured his wife, though the dear old
lady in after days was chary about telling the story. She was a girl of
good position, the ward of two unscrupulous uncles who had charge of her
small estate, near Langholm; and while attending some boarding school
she fell devotedly in love with the tall, fair-haired, gallant young
blacksmith, William Rogerson. Her guardians, doubtless very properly,
objected to the "connection"; but our young Lochinvar, with his six or
seven stalwart brothers and other trusty "lads," all mounted, and with
some ready tools in case of need, went boldly and claimed his bride, and
she, willingly mounting at his side, was borne off in the light of open
day, joyously married, and took possession of her "but and ben," as the
mistress of the blacksmith's castle.

Janet Jardine bowed her neck to the self-chosen yoke, with the light of
a supreme affection in her heart, and showed in her gentler ways, her
love of books, her fine accomplishments with the needle, and her general
air of ladyhood, that her lot had once been cast in easier, but not
necessarily happier, ways. Her blacksmith lover proved not unworthy of
his lady bride, and in old age found for her a quiet and modest home,
the fruit of years of toil and hopeful thrift, their own little
property, in which they rested and waited a happy end. Amongst those who
at last wept by her grave stood, amidst many sons and daughters, her son
the Rev. James J. Rogerson, clergyman of the Church of England, who, for
many years thereafter, and till quite recently, was spared to occupy a
distinguished position at ancient Shrewsbury and has left behind him
there an honored and beloved name.

From such a home came our mother, Janet Jardine Rogerson, a
bright-hearted, high-spirited, patient-toiling, and altogether heroic
little woman; who, for about forty-three years, made and kept such a
wholesome, independent, God-fearing, and self-reliant life for her
family of five sons and six daughters, as constrains me, when I look
back on it now, in the light of all I have since seen and known of
others far differently situated, almost to worship her memory. She had
gone with her high spirits and breezy disposition to gladden as their
companion, the quiet abode of some grand or great-grand-uncle and aunt,
familiarly named in all that Dalswinton neighborhood, "Old Adam and
Eve." Their house was on the outskirts of the moor, and life for the
young girl there had not probably too much excitement. But one thing had
arrested her attention. She had noticed that