CHURCHES ( continuation )
However, sickness, particularly malaria ( a commentary on the conditions existing in the Eighties ) soon came to try these pioneers. In a concluding article on the missions we shall see how these troubles were overcome and the work consolidated.
The commencement of the Nazareth Mission in Pokfulam was dealt with yesterday, and its subsequent history is given below forming a useful commentary on conditions during the past fifty years or so.
When " Clanmore " the former Butterfield and Swire residence was purchased in 1885, its formal blessing took place in April that year. Two Bishops Mgr. Raimondi of Hongkong and Mgr. Foucard of Kwangsi, all the confreres of the Procuration and of the Sanatorium and French missionaries from Kwangtung, who had been forced to leave their missions by persecutions, and were then taking refuge in Hongkong participated.
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Very soon after the new installation, the famous Printery ( the first type-founding institution out here ) was installed in a special building, the presses being on the ground floor and the setting rooms on the upper storey. Fr. Monnier was given a free hand, and little by little brought his work to a high degree of perfection. He made successive trips to Shanghai in order to enrich his printery with the Chinese characters, to Japan in order to study the chemical process of the manufacture of character matrices, and to France to secure an oil motor then unknown in the Far East. Long would be the list of works of all kinds issued from the Nazareth Press. These have included works published in Latin, French and in various native languages - Chinese, Annamite, Tibetan, Laotian and so forth.
The future Nazareth would appear to have been assured when a new trial visited the little community. It was known that " Clanmore " ( in Chinese " Tai Ko Lau" ) had left something to be desired under the heading of salubrity, but in establishing it, sanitary measures were taken - clearing, draining the waters, cutting undergrowth, planting of eucalyptus and camphor trees, which it was hoped would lead to some amelioration of the adverse health conditions so that fever would gradually disappear. Unhappily, it was not to be so, and in spite of daily doses of quinine, absorbed courageously by the inmates, they could not succeed in chasing away the fever: it was the fever which chased them away.
When Fr. Rousseille saw his two principal helpers, Fr. Monnier, the working peg of his printery, and Fr. Gaztelu ( hospital-attendant of the House after Fr. Holhann had left to become Superior for the time being of Bethany ) taken in their turn and forced to retire into the Sanatorium, he proceeded to look for another domicile. Fr. Rousseille, however, fell sick in his turn: broncho-pneumonia forced him to keep to his bed and to request, also, the hospitality of the Sanatorium where he passed all the Lent of 1890.
A new location sufficient for the work of Nazareth was being looked for. Mr. John D. Humphreys agreed to let for five years a house he owned at the entrance into the town of Victoria, above the quarter called Kennedy Town, and in April 1891 the Community transferred to its new centre, which was known as Richmond Terrace. (See 28-11-33).
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