Hybrid Beauty

New Guinea Of

The Future

(Condensed Jrom an article by the Rev. G. J. Patten in the Methodist Missionary Review.”)

rnHREE great Eereema trees still, per ± haps, grace our head station in New Britain. But, if so, they are the sole survivors of a host of mighty trees which gave their name to that part of the Weberhaven foreshore which we selected to become the educational centre of our New Guinea District. Long before the coming of the European, those giants of the primeval forest were caressed by the south-east trade winds and were gather ing the strength of the north-west mon soons which thundered over the Baining Mountains and roared across the open bay to Vunairima—“the home of the Eereemas.” * But even before the war those lovely trees were slowly pining away, and per haps war has now destroyed them, since the blast of bombs shows no discrimina tion, and bull-dozers are no respecters of beauty, as the uprooting of far-famed Norfolk Islands pines elsewhere testifies.

And yet, even if war has left those stately landmarks unscathed, their fate

was sealed merely by our peaceful coming.

WHEN Vunairima was chosen, in 1926, as the new site of our George Brown College, the whole area was called “Blackwater-fever Bay,” because of the prevalence of that dreaded form of malaria. In fear, the natives had avoided the area. Only thus was its virgin land available for us.

As a prelude to progress, fetid malarial swamps had to be drained and the jungle had to be cleared to make room for houses and gardens, for schools and hos pitals, and also to admit the sun and the ground breezes for “wind-drainage.” This was the first essential if men and women were to live and to prepare themselves as pastor-teachers and mother-and-child welfare nurses.

But as soon as we hacked away the close, steamy jungle, those trees began to die. Unfortunately, such is the nature of the Eereema, that once it stands divorced from the jungle, and light and air play all around, it is doomed to pass away.

In their solitary and passing grandeur, those Eereema trees symbolise some aspects of native life. Although some of the unique and picturesque things in Melanesian society are entirely desirable in themselves, they are bound to pass away. It is beyond our power to save them once they are dissociated from the jungle-growth of primitive belief.

Here Vunairima is a parable of warning.

In performing the first essential task, we made a serious mistake. No one with understanding was there to direct the students who cleared the site. Their enthusiasm was tremendous. And not only the jungle with its fierce-thorned creepers, and not only the sensitive Eereemas, which would inevitably go in time, but, with few exceptions, all the great trees which could have braved the changes of the years also fell before un bounded zeal. The tall, straight Iting canoe-trees, the mighty Calophylum nut trees, whose leaves at times turn blood red, the gigantic Kamarerees, whose trunks often yield mill-logs nearly 200 feet in length, were hewn down.

The birds and butterflies retired in pro test. Fire-flies no longer bespangled their favourite trees, flashing rhythmic ally through the night. And no restful shade refreshed the first generation of scholars as they/planted and tended and struggled to prevent the coarse kunai grass from taking possession. Headache and sun-lethargy were their lot. If only zeal had been tempered with discretion, rows and groups of the finest native trees could have been spared to blend with the lovely things we brought in, to create a hybrid beauty now beyond our power to create or to recall.

AND so it was in the romantic life of the Pacific. Although some things, by their very nature, could not be saved even by foresight, nevertheless, much of the loss sustained could have been avoided.

A fact we sometimes overlook, how ever, is that natives themselves frequently inflict serious injury upon the pattern of the primitive. New converts, especially of the first generation, find it difficult to distinguish between the undesirable and the worthy elements in their cul ture. Naturally, the spectacular achieve ments of modern science tend to make them disparage their own admirable handcrafts. In a steamy, tropical cli

mate their light-chocolate coloured bodies, and massaged with oil, are becomingly clothed with merely a loin cloth or neat grass skirt. A false sense of shame makes them despise their ‘nakedness” and hustles them, unless we restrain them, into our garments, which are ugly and unsuitable in the tropics.

In their new zeal, some natives would make a clean sweep of everything which is distinctively theirs. For example, about the year 1920, a tremendous enthu siasm for a new and better way of life swept through the Gulf Division of Papua. The Government Anthropologist, Dr. F. E. Williams, whose death on Empire service occurred recently, in calm judgment called the movement ‘‘The Vailala Madness” because of the wilful “destruction of the existent culture,” which accompanied it. “Ceremonial and material emblems of the religious life,” he says, “drums and dancing . . . and many other things were cast away in the fury of revivalism.” To that “suicidal urge” many things fell victim just because they happened to be “New Guinea fashion.”

Williams added that although there were sporadic attempts at restoration, many things in the ceremonial life received their death blow in almost every village which experienced that wave of fanaticism.

IN view of the new opportunity that will soon be ours in the war-devastated areas of New Britain and New Ire land, it is wise to review the wide and varied experience of our Church, includ ing our mistakes, so that, in the rebuild ing, all the lessons of the past will be borne in mind. And as we think of the days that lie ahead, Vunairima then comes to us as a parable of hope.

After the schoolboys had made a clean sweep of the new site, they set fire to the place and completed the task. When the new station was black and bare, the architect-builder and the landscape gardener came. Hundreds of feathery Casuarinas, brilliant Cape African Tulips, flaming Poinciana Regias, pink and mauve Rain-trees and other spreading Acacias, besides occasional Jacarandas, Cedars, Mangoes and Coral trees, quickly grew in that volcanic soil and moist heat.

In an incredibly short time they became magnificent avenues. Velvety lawns soon clothed the undulating landscape. Colour ful crotons, hibiscus of almost every known variety, and splashes of zinnias and balsams completed a picture of entrancing loveliness. Tourists found the station, while still yet young, resembling a botanical garden beside a cobalt sea.

OUTSIDE contacts, in the future, are likely to be increasingly more and varied; but we shall seek to blend only such compatible strains as will pro duce desirable combinations and lovelier varieties. The new synthesis is bound to include also the people’s physical inherit ance. Most of the children bom there to-day are probably half-Japanese. Ulti

mately, this, too, may not be a misfor tune to the race. In the past it was noticed that often half-European children had a beauty and vitality possessed by neither of the forebears in a full tropical and malarial climate.

What will be the result of the present contact, however, is beyond us to deter mine and remains yet to be seen. But soon, ours will be the privilege and responsibility of seeing that only the best in our way of life will blend with their way of life so that there may yet emerge a thoroughly Christian culture of a hybrid beauty and vigour which will blossom abundantly in the waste places of New Guinea.