It may be mentioned, as a circumstance of melancholy interest, that, besides Kallihirua, the late Venerable T. F. H. Bridge, Archdeacon of Newfoundland, was to have accompanied and assisted the Bishop in this voyage, which it was proposed should have extended to the Moravian settlement. Moravian Missions have been established in Greenland for more than a century. [Pg 48] But the expedition contemplated by the Bishop was more particularly designed to open Sandwich and Esquimaux Bays to the much-needed Missionary.
These projects it was determined, in the good providence of God, were not to be realized. Archdeacon Bridge was prematurely carried off, in the midst of his zealous and successful labours, at the end of February, 1856. "He worked himself to death!" said the Bishop. "His death was felt in the colony as a public loss."
Intelligence from Newfoundland
The author of this memoir had written to Kallihirua, whilst he was at St. Augustine's, and had received from him a letter shortly, and plainly expressed, which the Warden stated to have been composed and written by the youth himself, and which proved how anxious he was to do well that which was given him to do. The author afterwards often thought of the amiable Kalli, and was in hopes of soon hearing from him in his new abode in Newfoundland. But man proposeth, and God disposeth. A St. John's paper, The Newfoundland Express, taken up casually in July, 1856, conveyed the intelligence that Kallihirua had passed away from this busy anxious [Pg 49] world to another, and, we humbly and reasonably hope, a better and happier.
A melancholy interest generally attaches to the history of individuals dying in a foreign and strange land, far from friends and home. The separation from all they have known and loved is, in their case, so entire, the change of their circumstances, habits, and associations, so great, that such a dispensation specially appeals to the sympathy of all Christian hearts.
Allusion to Prince Le Boo
Feelings of this kind are excited by the narrative of the early death of Prince Le Boo, a youthful native of the Pelew Islands, who was brought over to this country in July, 1784, and who, in the spring-time of life, after little more than five months' stay in England, fell a victim, to the small pox. In the memoir of that young prince, who died at Rotherhithe, and was buried in the church-yard there, in December, 1784, there are some points of resemblance to the case under our notice. The natural and unforced politeness of the youth, his aptness at conforming, in all proper things, to the habits and customs of those to whose hospitality he was intrusted; his warm and single-hearted [Pg 50] affection for such persons, in whatever station, as showed him kind offices, his desire for mental improvement; his resignation and submission in his last illness to the will of God, these are features which remind us of the subject of our present memoir. Many are the tears which have fallen over the story of the young and amiable Prince Le Boo.