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Letters Home

To the Congregation of Mill Hill Chapel.

When the time drew near for my leaving you, doubts began to assail me as to whether I should not have done more wisely to have declined the honour of being the representative of English Unitarians to our Australasian brethren, and suggested the choice of some younger man with more enterprise, and fewer home ties. It is to no purpose that we go back upon our acts and question whether we might not have done better, but we cannot help doing it, and happy is it for those who can sincerely approve what they have once committed themselves to. But when for better or for worse the choice is made, we must needs abide by it and do our best, if it be only a second best to what some other man would have done. I am here among strangers, as I shall be for months to come, and I feel how little capable I am of holding my own and doing credit to my mission. I am at home at Mill Hill, and in Leeds, and among Unitarians; outside of the third circumference I am lost, as in a foreign land of which I can very imperfectly speak the language. It is a pity, but so it is, and age does not improve me in this respect, as I hope it may do others.

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It is a superstition among sailors that a parson on board brings ill luck, but they cannot accuse me this time, for as long as I was the only parson all went well. Our voyage from Marseilles to Port Said was simply perfect; clear skies, calm sea and a pleasant wind were such as might have been ordered by special providence in approval of our purpose, such as Jonah might have looked for if he had been ordered to go to Tarshish instead of Nineveh and straightway found his ship. At Port Said, which we reached on Monday night, a bishop came on board returning to his diocese of North Queensland, and then truly our luck changed. Through the Canal we were beset by hindrances and interruption, such as officers say they had never met with before. Four times before we got to the salt lakes we had to "tie up" to the bank to let ships pass us; three of them carrying pilgrims home and flying the yellow quarantine flag, so that we had perforce to give the road to them as no one of their crew would have been allowed to land with the rope. On board we saw devout Mahommedans at prayer in public, their faces turned to Mecca and their souls regardless of the infidel onlookers. Then at night we had trouble and delay in the navigation of the shallow lakes, and awoke in the morning to find ourselves moored in the canal because of an obstruction by some sunken boat further down. So here we lie as in a broad ditch with banks of bare dry mud. To left of us stretches to the furthest horizon and on beyond to the Euphrates, a plain of sand, broken by the wind into mounds and ridges, with bright patches where the sea water has dried up and page 3 left its white salt, but without a sign of life—save now and again for the sand-martins, who perhaps deem it a Paradise, for what could martin's heart desire beyond sun and soft rock and flies and no enemies, man or cat or bird, and such a home is this for their nurseries. To the right the only difference is that here and there at rare intervals there may be seen far away on the plain a knot of palm trees, or a streak of dark desert verdure, sage trees or tamarisks, and a hut where presumably some one or more Arabs live, but bow they can live, or why they live there, I can find no one to tell me. Beyond are the pink mountains of Egypt which form the Eastern boundary of the fertile Nile valley—the only fertile land I suppose between Algiers and the Persian Gulf, or beyond—but I sadly want my books, and have to more or less guess at the facts, which is easy, but unsatisfactory to writer and readers.

In spite of Episcopal luck I hope to post this at Suez in the afternoon, so that it will be printed in the May Record I have kept my watch up to now at English time, some two hours behind the clock here, and I am looking forward to being with you in thought on the first Sunday in May, when the Chapel is bright with English flowers, and the three schools crowd in. Leeds is not beautiful, and Mill Hill Chapel is very black, but what a heaven it would seem to one condemned to live in this land of utter desolation, as are of necessity those whose business it is to look after the Canal!

We are on our way at last, and have got past the big cargo ship bound to Hartlepool, which lies half-full of water, narrowing the channel so that only one ship can page 4 pass at a time, and so at either side to North and South of it, a line of ships have been waiting as the cars have to do when one has broken down and there is an obstruction on the road.

Suez is near and we bid good bye to the desert and to the Canal, I suppose, up to the present the most gigantic work of men. The desolation it traverses makes it the more imposing. It is an intrusion of man into the solitude where life seems forbidden; it is the assertion of his sovereignty over the sands of the wilderness as over the waters of the trackless sea.

I hope, dear friends, to write next from Colombo, and tell you of a more fortunate, it cannot be of a more comfortable voyage.

Charles Hargrove.