Why Hurry?

THE islanders have an infinite capacity for patience; it is pre-eminently a native virtue. The whole scheme of life is adapted to its cultivation. No delirium of speed here. The natives are never pressed for time and remain in blissful ignorance of the bustle and hustle of express locomotion. No need for time-tables; there is no bus or train to catch or office enforcing punctuality.

Why hurry? All time is before you.

The classic answer which was made to a request for a time-table in Skye, Wes tern Hebrides, Scotland, is every whit as appropriate to the New Hebrides: “Weel, she’ll be coming sometimes sooner, and whiles earlier, and sometimes before that again”.

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A daughter has been born each to Mrs. A. Wagner, Mrs. Emil Wagner, and Mrs. C. Kirsch, of the New Guinea Lutheran Mission, who were evacuated to Adelaide, South Australia, a short time ago. Their husbands are still in the Territory.

Only during the seven months of the garden season are they really busy. For the rest of the year, time lies heavy on their hands.

Before the advent of the white man, when the claims of industry were not recognised, the natives, during the off season, were experts at doing nothing.

Grown-up men were content to pass their time drawing meaningless scrawls on the sand and chattering aimlessly.

Now, however, their hoary traditions are breaking down before the advance of “civilisation”, and the altered condi tions are obliging the natives to work in order to meet their share of communal expenses and furnish their homes with what are now necessities of life.

The world calls them lazy, but that is a mistaken epithet. Laziness is a deliberate thing. Their idiosyncracy is not so much a matter of choice and temperament as of native climate. In industry and agriculture they are already proving capable and diligent workmen.

In their savage environment endurance went hand in hand with patience. In the old days when blood feuds and rapine were every day features of Islands life, patience and endurance were endow ments sorely needed. In the peaceful days in which they now live, these quali ties are still strikingly reproduced in times of sickness. Pain is endured patiently and unflinchingly. To see a man, with feet twisted and lacerated with yaws, limping along a ragged bush track without a groan, is to see patience and endurance personified. I do not suppose they feel pain and fatigue as Europeans do, but they have their own share of the ills that flesh is heir to and they bear them resolutely. The advent of civilisation has brought them many gains, and by no means the least is the care and treatment of a medical hos pital.

Indifferent To Pain

WHILE patient under pain themselves, they are extraordinarily indifferent to pain in others and callous to the sufferings of animals. They are very clannish and extremely sensitive to trouble in their own tribe, but their sympathy seldom crosses the border. One would not like to say they are deliber ately harsh, but they have an animal indifference to pain which does not touch them.

Their treatment of animals is notorious.

Lameness in dog or cow or horse awakens no feelings of compassion nor makes them eager to alleviate the suffering, except in the most casual way. A native ser vant thinks nothing of tying a string of fowls to the end of a bamboo carrier and letting them hang for hours head downwards in the blazing sun. The misery and distress of the birds do not give them the slightest concern. Re prove them as you like, they have diffi culty in understanding your point of view, and think you foolish to trouble about it. The Mission schools are con fronted with a big and commendable task in instilling into the minds of the rising generation a new and compassion ate attitude to the sufferings of the lower animals. In the New Hebrides, among aborigines who have an unyield ing clutch of the past, one learns that the tender graces of sympathy and com passion are virtues of slow and gradual growth.

They are proud, but not with the cheap pride of arrogance. Theirs is the pride that is easily offended, almost childishly, but not a pride that willingly offends.

They rarely cherish rancour and do not

keep up ill-will for long. Enemies of yesterday will meet to-day the best of friends. They quickly forget past troubles and treat them as though they never existed.

The natives have achieved consider able dexterity in wood-carving, the best examples of which may be seen in the figures decorating their canoes, images and fighting clubs. Compared with their style of carving, their efforts in drawing are quite primitive and childlike. They are ignorant of perspective and sym metry and cannot draw a straight line Among European residents it is a fre quent remark that the native is com pletely lacking in a straight eye. They find it difficult to put a blanket on a bed straight, and to find a route between two points they would be sure to choose a roundabout rather than a direct way.

This characteristic appears in the af fairs of everyday life. They delight to approach an objective from an angle, and, no matter how trivial the affair may be, make a business of it. They will not go straight to the goal if there is a roundabout way of getting there.

Were the end sought of great import ance, their methods might savour of policy, but even where the object is one of everyday occurrence and perfectly harmless, the means employed would be indirect to please them; possibly, what appears indirect to us may be to them the most likely method.

The Native Mind

rpHE native is the slave of precedent.

X Each succeeding generation follows its predecessor in the track of a long line of ancestors, trodden down by cen turies of bare feet. The whole of native philosophy is summed up in their roads.

The Oxford Dictionary is of little value when you want the definition of a road in New Hebrides. It is not a substantive thing but only a trail or goat-track.

Travelling is simply a question of “Follow the leader”. The islander’s way of doing a thing is to do it as the man who went before him did it. Precedent, not principle, is the time-honoured law.

Among natives there is a real com radeship, most apparent when Europeans are involved. Unless they have a par ticular purpose to serve, they will not willingly get each other into trouble. The boat’s crew of an Islands steamer, when summoned before the captain for delin quency, are like schoolboys in the pre sence of a master. They show a united front against the common enemy. They will not let each other down. In this they are real sports.

They have wonderful memories and have no need of extraneous aids like Pel manism. Their system of life tends to develop the memory. Unable to read or write, their fathers trusted their memories where we depend on note books. They can recall incidents that happened years before and give details like a newspaper. Not through books, but through the living tales of racon teurs around the camp fire, history and mythology were transmitted from gener ation to generation with scarcely any variation in the process.

I have often wondered at the reten tive memories of natives who accom panied me on island journeys. They will tell you the names of all the birds, trees and fruits you meet in the bush. Very few European youths could do the same.

The native mind is capable of great ex pansion, and the teaching and training of the schools will yet fit them for tak ing a larger and more responsible place in the industry and councils of their island world.

The native is incurably religious. Like men of every race and place he has been moved to explain in myth the origin of himself and the world in which he finds his home. He lives in a world filled with spirit powers, between whom and himself there is constant communi cation. Everything around him is charged with mystic properties which may at any moment come into his life for good or evil. Even when travelling in the lonely bush, the crackling of a twig is an indication of the presence of some spirit seeking to communicate with him, and he responds to the gesture by throwing an answering twig in the direc tion of the sound.

Whatever he may be, the native is no materialist. Pierce down beneath the happy, careless demeanour of the New Hebrides native and you will find that the things that move him most are not the things that are seen, but the things that are unseen. These unseen forces are the determining factors in his life.