The Boy Travellers in Australasia / Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey to the Sandwich, Marquesas, Society, Samoan, and Feejee Islands

by Thomas Wallace Knox

LANDING ON AN ATOLL OF THE HERVEY GROUP.

In 1821 Mr. Williams decided to send a mission from Raiatea to the Hervey Isles, of which very little was known beyond the bare existence of such a group, and that it was inhabited by fierce cannibals. Several native converts from Raiatea were landed on the island of Aitutaki; they were well received by the chief and his people, but Mr. Williams had great fears for their safety, owing to the bad character of the cannibal inhabitants.

In the following year, when the mission ship went there again, great was the joy of Mr. Williams to learn that all the inhabitants had abandoned idolatry, burned their temples, and decided to be Christians; they had built a large church, kept the Sabbath religiously, and on the day following the arrival of the mission ship two thousand of them assembled on the beach in solemn prayer, which was led by the delighted missionary. After the service they brought their idols and carried them on board the mission ship, so that the people of the other islands might see for themselves that they had discarded altogether the worship of the worthless images.

The story of the conversion of the inhabitants of the island of Raratonga, of the Hervey group, sounds like romance. So little was known of this island that Mr. Williams had great trouble in finding it, as its latitude and longitude had not been established. Among the converts on another island were six natives of Raratonga; one of these men told Mr. Williams that if he would sail to a given point on the island of Aitutaki, he could take bearings that would carry him where he wished to go. So, taking the six Raratongans on board, he steered for the point indicated, and by following the directions of the man the island they sought was reached.

The young King came on board, and agreed to take the six natives ashore, and also a Tahitian teacher, who had volunteered to remain. The King, Matea, a handsome fellow six feet high, and with every inch of his skin elaborately tattooed, was one of the first converts. Within a year the whole population had become Christian, and there was not a house on the island where the family did not assemble morning and evening for divine worship. Mr. Williams and another missionary went there with their families in 1827, and were met at the shore by several thousands of natives, who shook hands with them so vigorously that their arms ached for hours afterwards. A few days after their arrival the people came in procession, bringing fourteen enormous idols, for which they had no further use, the smallest of them being fifteen feet high.

A new church was erected capable of containing three thousand people; some of the idols were used as pillars of this building, and the rest were burned. The railing of the pulpit stairs of this church was made of spears which the chiefs contributed, and all the heathen temples, and even their foundations, were completely broken up.

The Hervey Islands are now a centre of missionary work in the South Pacific. The islanders have a theological college, which has sent out nearly two hundred trained teachers and preachers of their own, and about half this number are scattered among the isles of the Pacific where the inhabitants have not yet renounced heathenism or their cannibal practices. In 1881 four of these missionaries, with their wives and children, twelve persons in all, were murdered by the natives of New Guinea, and several others narrowly escaped with their lives.

Shortly after settling in the Hervey Islands Mr. Williams determined to carry the Gospel to the Navigator's, or Samoan group. Having no ship, he built a boat, sixty feet long and eighteen feet wide, with the aid of the Raratonga natives. He wanted a blacksmith's bellows to shape the iron-work, and in order to make it he killed three of his four goats to obtain their skins. In a single night his bellows was devoured by the rats, the only quadrupeds indigenous to the islands, and he then invented a pump by which air could be forced.

His boat took fifteen weeks for its construction. Its sails were of native matting, the cordage was of the bark of the hibiscus, the oakum for calking the seams was made from banana stumps and cocoanut husks, and the sheaves were of iron-wood. To obtain planks, trees were split with wedges, and then cut up with hatchets. One anchor was of stone, and another of iron-wood, and the provisions consisted of pigs, cocoanuts, bananas, and other tropical products. In this vessel he sailed during the next four years to many islands of the Pacific, distributing teachers among them, and doing everything in his power for the good of the people. In 1834 he visited England, and returned in the missionary ship Camden, which had been purchased by the London Missionary Society.