In the face of incredible difficulties she got a Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the health of the army and then got its recommendations carried out. Army barracks and hospitals were remodelled, properly ventilated, warmed, lighted. The whole army medical department was re-organized. Then she got a sanitary commission to do the same thing in India. She built hospitals, trained nurses, gave advice to all the governments of Europe. She was nearly ninety-one when the light of her lamp went out. Longfellow has said it all for us:
A noble type of good Heroic Womanhood.
CHAPTER III. THE GREAT WHITE MA: MARY SLESSOR OF CALABAR
To begin life as an uneducated factory girl in a Scottish town and end it as the “uncrowned queen” of an African principality — that is Mary Slessor’s life in a sentence. And yet, when she was asked, near the close of her career, to write her autobiography, she couldn’t think what she had done that was worth being put in a book. To this woman, of the soft voice and bright, dancing, deep-set eyes, high adventure and jungle explorations, rivers where crocodiles swam, trails where snakes glided, dark, mysterious forests where leopards prowled and elephants trumpeted and boa constrictors roamed at their own sweet will, tornadoes sweeping down from the heights of the Cameroons, the overthrowing of immemorial customs, the rescue of girls who came to her, bleeding and quivering from whips of alligator hide, chumming with and advising and scolding black African kings, brow-beating witch-doctors, building houses and schools and little mud churches with her own hands, cowing mobs, giving six-foot negroes castor oil and Epsom salts and slapping their faces smartly if they objected, solving trade problems, beating off, with a tin basin, hippopotamuses that attacked her canoe, — all these things were such commonplaces of existence that they didn’t seem worth writing of! Was there ever such a woman and such a career in the world before?
Mary Slessor was born in a suburb of Aberdeen in December, 1848. Her father was a shoemaker — an intemperate one at that, and she was the second of seven children. Not a great deal is known of her infancy and girlhood. There was poverty, struggle, and hardship in her bare, comfortless home. But the mother sent her children to church every Sunday and saw that they had clean handkerchiefs and knew their catechism. Mary in later life said that she was a “wild lassie.” Judging from her career, this probably meant that she saw the funny side of everything, indulged in mischievous pranks now and then, and had a tongue of her own.
The family had moved to Dundee and she worked half-time in a factory until she was fourteen and then she worked full time. Up every morning at five; in the factory weaving monotonously from six to six, with one hour off for breakfast and one for dinner. One wonders how the future pioneer and administrator could endure it.
At this time she had only a slight knowledge of reading and arithmetic. But Mary meant to have an education. She stole time from sleep for study. She read on her way to and from the factory; she worked in a church and taught a class of girls.
Later on she taught in a mission for the rough boys and girls of the slums. She taught the “toughs” their place and made them keep it, just as in after years she made chiefs and medicine men toe the mark; and, like the chiefs, if not the witch-doctors, they soon came to love and respect her. She would not tolerate insubordination; but she had a passionate love, even then, for all children, and all the weak and oppressed. The little girl, who often ran sobbing out into the dark, cold streets when her drunken father came home at night, had learned sympathy and understanding in a hard school and its lessons were never forgotten. But her tact and her cheery ways and her unconventional handling of problems were all her own. Some said she was not easy to understand. Geniuses never are. Some said she was eccentric. This meant that she was one of those who “walk where their own nature would be leading.”
“Life is so great and grand,” she wrote years afterwards. Life is always great and grand to girls with the flame in their souls that was in the soul of Mary Slessor, factory girl in Dundee.
Mary had always been interested in missions, especially in the Calabar mission on the west coast of Africa. Suddenly she began to hope that she might be a missionary herself. At first it seemed a hope impossible of fulfilment. She had to help support her family. For fourteen years she toiled in the factory, studied, prayed, dreamed. And one day the dream came true. Her two sisters became able to support their mother. Mary was free at last, and in 1876 she went to the foreign field as a missionary of the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland.
Of course, some of her friends discouraged her. Or rather, tried to discourage her. There are always people like that. They told her Calabar was frightfully unhealthy — a land of swamps and forests; that it was inhabited by the most lawless and degraded people in Africa; that it was a land of witchcraft and slave markets and skull worshippers and human sacrifices and devil-houses; a land of burning heat and torrential rains and terrific thunderstorms; a land where ants ate your clothing and furniture and cannibals ate you; a land of hunger and fever and death; a land, in short, that was “the white man’s grave.” What a future for Mary!
“The post of danger is the post of honor,” said Mary Slessor; and at the age of twenty-eight she went to seek it.
Green banks — white sands upon which the surf beat — long, grey, dreary levels of mangroves — hot whiffs of tropical odors — brilliant-hued parrots — mud banks — rank, colorful vegetation — flowering trees — tall palms — orchids — pathless forests — georgeous butterflies — broiling sunshine — luxuriant beauty — filth — vermin — the faint blue Cameroons in the background — this was Calabar. It was peopled by naked blacks, most of whom had never seen a white face; it was not owned or governed by any European power; it was divided into numberless tribes, each one speaking a different dialect, and all perpetually at war with their neighbours. To this land came the plucky little Scotch girl, with her gift of repartee, her inspired common sense, her unyielding determination, her love for all God’s creatures. At first very homesick, very timid, often discouraged. At least, we have her own word for it; nobody would guess it from her history.
She learned the language of the natives around her first station at Duketown very soon. From the start she realized that she must minister to the bodies as well as to the souls of these people if she were ever to win them and that the women and children would be her greatest problem. Mary tackled it as only Mary Slessor could. In a very brief time the influence she gained over them was tremendous. On the surface they were not attractive. Lazy, immoral, quarrelsome, dirty, living in hovels surrounded by pools of filth, sending out pestilential odors. Nevertheless, they were women and Mary’s heart ached over their sorrows and trials. She entered into all the romance and tragedy of her dark sisters. She bent every energy to alleviating their lot in a land where a man could — and did — do exactly what he liked to his wife — bite her, beat her, divorce her, sell her, kill her. Nobody cared.
To read of Mary Slessor’s activities is to feel one’s head whirl. She dispensed medicine, she preached, she had a prayer meeting every evening; she taught school to which young and old came, battle-scarred chiefs sitting side by side with little children; she adopted and reared and trained — and loved — uncounted numbers of black babies that had been cast out into the jungles to die; she prescribed and bandaged, she taught the girls how to wash and iron and make clothes; she presided over “palavers,” she nursed patients covered from head to foot with loathsome sores; she waged war against ants; she saved lives from the “poison” ordeal, she fought with and worsted witch-doctors; she settled all kinds of disputes, she pacified drunken or panic-stricken mobs, she reconciled runaway wives to their husbands, she settled tribal and domestic quarrels; she vaccinated people and married them; and all with unfailing tenderness and good humor, throwing in a little sarcasm and plenty of jokes. Perhaps the natives thought her broad Scotch accent was some peculiarly strong kind of magic. Once when a chief who was a friend of hers died in a smallpox epidemic she made a co
ffin for him with her own hands, dug his grave, and buried him. No wonder the natives believed she possessed superhuman powers. And may they not have been right?
Much as Mary Slessor was loved by the women and children of that dark land her influence over and success with men were even more marked. She had a wonderful knack of winning the confidence of these wild creatures. She won over the chiefs by her frankness and fearlessness. She won over old men who growled — as old men in all countries and in all times have growled — that “the old customs were better than the new.” The young men adored her and called her their “great white ma.” Always she was treated by them gallantly and courteously. And when she had finally succeeded in persuading husbands that when twin babies were born one of them was not a demon her victory over them was complete.
Yet this indomitable creature, who bossed native kings and fought witch-doctors to a finish in their own stamping grounds, when she went home to Scotland on furlough, was too timid to speak in public if there were any men in the audience and ran like a hunted thing when she met a harmless cow on the road.
In spite of her spirit her body was a frail tenement. She was often bitterly homesick and hungry for letters from home. She was subject to frequent attacks of fever and rheumatism. And she never took care of herself. Sometimes at night “her only shelter was a mud hut and her only bed a bundle of filthy rags.” She starved herself to feed her hungry black babies; she walked barefooted along jungle trails in spite of snakes and “jiggers.”
“I often had a lump in my throat,” she said, “and my courage repeatedly threatened to fly away though nobody guessed it.”
No, nobody would ever have guessed it. Mary was one of those who
... always marched breast forward
Never doubting clouds would break.
She never troubled about conventions but dressed as she liked — lucky woman! She went hatless and bobbed her lank brown hair long years before it became the fashion; she received callers composedly sitting on the roof of her house, repairing it. But those who met her declared she was the most fascinating woman they had ever known.
When Mary Slessor had spent twelve years in and around her first station a great change had come over the people. The local gods were banished, baby murder and human sacrifices were unknown; the people were comparatively civilized and many had become Christians. She might have spent the rest of her life there, still finding plenty to do.
But Mary Slessor was essentially a pioneer. She was one of the order of spirits to which Livingstone belonged. In answer to her plea she was sent to the Okoyong district. “The great adventure of my life,” she called it. But in spite of that she didn’t sleep very well the night before she left.
Small wonder. The Okoyong people were more deeply sunk in devilry than any she had encountered yet. All kinds of horrors were rampant among them. The teacher who had preceded her had had to flee for his life. Mary has admitted that her heart failed her. She felt a desire to turn and flee. But did she? Not Mary. Like the drummer boy of the immortal story her drum had never learned to beat a retreat. She went to the Okoyong — she spent fourteen years there — she subdued and civilized and Christianized it.
When she had been in Okoyong three years she was appointed by the British government to organize and supervise a native court. Her wonderful mastery of the native language was a great asset. It was said she could talk it better than the natives themselves — joke in it, scold in it, harangue in it, as well as preach and pray in it. She had an amazing grip of the most intricate native and political problems of the country. By 1903 she had civilized the Okoyong. Then she went and did it all over again in the Enyong Creek district.
In passing we may note that at the age of sixty she found it would be convenient to ride a bicycle, so she promptly learned to ride one.
The British Government made her a magistrate at Enyong Creek. Behold our Mary sitting on the bench with three local chiefs, deciding murder cases, investigating suicides, dealing with men brought up for branding their wives all over the face and body with a red-hot iron — something they could have done with impunity before her advent. If one of the chiefs who presided with her was obstreperous she thought nothing of giving him a sound cuff on the side of the head. And he bore it meekly.
But even devoted missionaries and fearless pioneers must grow old. She was gradually coming to the end of her strength. And yet, in 1910, when she went to another new place, she said she was the happiest woman in the world. The fire of youth still burned in her eyes. It burned on till 1915, when she died in the little hut she had built for herself on a hill-top, with only her wee black babies and “girls” around her.
Faith — hope — love. These were the secret springs of Mary Slessor’s life. “And the greatest of these was Love.”
CHAPTER IV. A BRAVE DEED: LAURA SECORD
A band of Indian braves, decked out in war-paint, weird and frightful in the flickering moonlight, suddenly appeared through the trees. With fierce shouts they ran forward, brandishing their tomahawks.
“Woman!” they cried, “woman!”
Early the previous morning, before dawn had tinged the fleecy summer clouds in the eastern sky, Laura Secord had slipped away from the sleeping village of Queenston. Neither fires nor lights had been allowed in the homes since the Americans had occupied Queenston and Niagara; a picket had been thrown out to prevent anyone getting through the lines with information concerning the movements of the troops. It was with beating heart she had neared the sentry. Would he forbid her to pass?
“Halt! Who goes there?”
“Mrs. James Secord,” she had replied. “My brother, Charles Ingersoll, lies at the point of death in St. David’s and I am on my way thither.”
This answer satisfied the soldier and he permitted her to proceed.
The night before, a party of American officers had been quartered at her home in Queenston. She gathered from their remarks that an attack had been planned against Fitzgibbon at Beaver Dams. If it was successful the enemy would hold the strategic key to Upper Canada. She told her husband, who was ill in bed, suffering from wounds received in battle, what she had heard and expressed her intention of trying to warn Fitzgibbon.
“Somebody has to go,” she replied, when he had pointed out the dangers of the journey. “You are not able and there is no one else. I must do the best I can.”
She was well aware of the difficulties which lay before her. Her way led through a district infested with wild animals and rattlesnakes, and what she dreaded even more, savages under the American command. She would have to avoid the main road and detour through swamps and woods, across ravines and streams, for she must run no chance of being captured by the enemy.
At break of day she reached St. David’s and, after a short stay with her brother, started out again, in spite of her relatives’ remonstrances. She was determined to continue, no matter what befell.
Owing to recent rains the creeks were swollen and the fields heavy with mud. She could not follow the beaten track because hostile forces might be encountered. Many times she had to cross and recross the streams. Sometimes she waded the stream; once she crawled on hands and knees over a fallen tree which served as an improvised bridge.
She lost one shoe in the swamp, and her dress was torn by briars and brambles.
All day long she walked, up hill and down, through trackless swamp and dense woods, in the heat of a late June day. Wearied and footsore, she paused at intervals, to rest a moment, then on again she sped. An indomitable will and dauntless courage enabled her to persevere although almost exhausted from bodily fatigue.
“I must not give up,” she said to herself, pressing her hand to her throbbing brow and staggering up from the log where she had sat down to ease her swollen feet, “Fitzgibbon and his men must not be taken unawares.”
Night fell and the moon arose and still she struggled onward. At last she reached the neighborhood of Beaver Dams and there, to her dismay, had stumbled upon an enc
ampment of Indians.
Though surrounded by yelling savages she did not lose her presence of mind. Putting on as bold a front as possible she endeavoured to explain to the chief, who knew only a few English words, that she must see Fitzgibbon immediately. At first the chief hesitated but by dint of signs Laura Secord made him understand she had an important message for the white commander and at last was conducted to him.
The Canadian forces were only a handful compared to the enemy but their leader was a brave, resourceful man. He stationed his few men and the Indian allies in the woods and surprised the invaders; they surrendered, terrorized by the thought that they were outnumbered and at the mercy of war-whooping Indians.
Fitzgibbon never forgot Laura Secord’s memorable walk. She treasured among her possessions in later life a letter he wrote which stated: —
“I do hereby certify that Mrs. Secord... did in the month of June, 1813, walk from her house near the village of St. David’s, to DeCou’s house in Thorold, by a circuitous route of about twenty miles, partly through the woods, to acquaint me that the enemy intended an attempt, by surprise, to capture a detachment of the 49th Regiment, then under my command, she having obtained such knowledge from good authority as the event proved. Mrs. Secord was a person of slight and delicate frame, and made the effort in weather excessively warm, and I dreaded at the time she must suffer in health in consequence of fatigue and anxiety, she having been exposed to danger from the enemy through whose lines of communication she had to pass...
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 775
