A smile went round the little crowd as the old man glanced at his friends. “Mr. —— he told us to look to God and we looked, while we looked Mr. —— took our land. Then one day he come to us and he say, ‘God wants more land,’ and we gave him more land. Then some time soon he came again and he say, ‘God wants cattle to put on the land.’ And we give him cattle. Then he say, ‘God wants sheep.’ And we give him sheep. Then long time after he come again and he say, ‘God want money to keep the cattle and the sheep.’ But we had no money and so we had no more God.”
It is acts like these, committed by a few of the black sheep, that have made the bushmen, the cattlemen, and the traders sneer at the missionary, and in their ignorance they have condemned the whole for a part.
The trader and the kidnapper of the South Seas have for years fought tooth and nail against the missionaries, and it is they who have spread wild tales of the misconduct and strange practices of these noble men. They had an end in view, as they knew their worst foe was not the savage but the {196} missionary; it is the missionary who has been the means of stopping the ghastly trade in black men; it is the missionary again who has seen that the native was dealt with fairly; and these are the sins he has committed and can never be forgiven.
As early as 1796 the London Missionary Society, then the Missionary Society, undertook the work of sending men to these islands in the hope of winning their inhabitants to better lives. At that time the lives they were living were as bad, if not worse than those of savage beasts, and the publication of Captain Cook’s Voyages in these islands aroused men of Christian feeling, and was the means of the Society sending out men to Tahiti; most of whom eventually died of sickness or were butchered by the natives.
For years these men and others worked their hardest against fearful odds, and for ten years they made little or no progress. Reports show that in 1813 one Tahitian had become a Christian. But this was the beginning, and during the next few years progress was as rapid as it had been slow before. Eventually the king of the island acknowledged the Christian belief, and set to work to destroy the heathen gods.
THE ARTIST’S GUIDE, ON MALEKULA, NEW HEBRIDES
The adjacent islands were next approached, and {197} the Tahitian Missionary Society was formed with the avowed object of devoting all its energies to the conversion of the natives of these islands. Amongst its teachers the Society had a large body of natives, and it was not only assisted in this way but financially also by the very men who a few years before would have nothing to do with it.
Then came one of the greatest of the great men to these islands; John Williams, who was not only a splendid worker but a magnificent organiser. He soon had a boat fitted out in which he was able to visit the adjoining islands; finally confining his labours to New Guinea and the New Hebrides.
In 1823 Williams discovered Raratonga, an island in the Hervey group, and he seems to have devoted more of his time to the natives of this island than any other. It was his island, “dear Raratonga,” as he always called it. The population of it when he landed he estimated as about 7000, and in less than a dozen years he wrote of them in the following way:—