We must now describe the present state of other solitary islands and groups discovered by Captain Cook. In the course of his second voyage (1774) he fell in with a low, solitary island, which, from the ferocity of the inhabitants, he called Savage Island. The inhabitants, numbering between three and four thousand, for very many years remained in the condition in which Cook found them. The first attempt to leave native missionaries was made by the Rev. John Williams, in 1830. But the natives refused to receive them. In 1840, and in 1842, other attempts were made. In the latter year the Rev. A. Buzacott nearly lost his life.
Still these visits had a good effect on the younger part of the population, who desired to see more of the strangers. Several found their way to Samoa, where they embraced the Gospel, and two of them, after a course of instruction at the training college in Samoa, were found well fitted to return, and to spread its glad tidings among their benighted countrymen. They were accordingly conveyed to Savage Island in the John Williams, missionary ship, but were received with a good deal of suspicion by the natives, and only one remained. He narrowly escaped being put to death, but undauntedly persevered, and, by degrees, gathered converts around him. When visited in 1852 by the Rev. A.W. Murray, he had upwards of two hundred sincere believers gathered into a church, and many heathen practices had been abandoned by others.
In 1861 the John Williams conveyed Mr and Mrs Lawes to Savage Island. They were the first European missionaries appointed to labour there. Hundreds of men and women, all well clothed, were assembled on the shore to receive them. Outwardly, not a vestige of heathenism remained among them. There were five good chapels in the island, one of which held eleven hundred, but it was too small for the congregation. Prayer meetings were frequently held, at which all the people in the district attended. On each occasion when they were held by Mr Lawes not less than eight hundred were present. The whole of the inhabitants are now professing Christians, and a very large proportion are earnest and enlightened believers.
The reader will call to mind the incidents of Captain Cook’s visit to the Tonga, or Friendly group, the high state of cultivation in which he found the islands, the apparently friendly reception he met with from the chiefs, and their treacherous purposes to cut off the ship, as they shortly afterwards did a merchantman which visited their shores, murdering most of the crew.
In consequence of Captain Cook’s too favourable report, a number of missionaries were sent out by the London Missionary Society, in the ship Duff, already mentioned, under the command of Captain Wilson. These pious men landed on the islands in 1797, but they made no apparent progress, and war breaking out, three of them lost their lives, and the rest escaped to Sydney. This was in the year 1800.
In 1802, Mr Lawry, of the Wesleyan Missionary Society, commenced a mission at Nukualofa, in Tongataboo. Though compelled for a time to abandon it, he returned in 1826, and, through his instrumentality, Tubou, the king, and many of his chiefs and people embraced Christianity. It is worthy of remark that, just before this time, the London Missionary Society had commenced a mission on the island; but they yielded up the field to the Wesleyans, while the latter retired from Samoa, where they had commenced a mission. The Wesleyans have since then laboured exclusively, and with most encouraging success, in the Friendly and Fiji Islands and New Zealand, leaving to the London Missionary Society the wide scope of the Pacific.
In 1827 the Revs. Nathaniel Turner and William Cross took up their residence at Nukualofa. At that time Josiah Tubou was king in Tonga. Taufaahau, now King George, was king only of Haabai, and Feenau was king of Vavou. The first became a Christian, as did his queen, and was baptised on January 10, 1830. He died in 1845, Feenau having previously died; thus George became king in chief, and reigns over the three groups, Tonga, Haabai, and Vavou, or the whole of the Friendly Islands. The labours of the two zealous missionaries just mentioned were largely blessed, and when Tubou was baptised the congregation amounted to six hundred professing Christians.
King Josiah’s reign was not altogether free from difficulties. The heathen party was strong, and took up arms against him, being supported by some French Roman Catholic priests who had settled in the islands. They tried to embroil him, as they had already done Queen Pomare, of Tahiti, with their own government, but were unsuccessful, and with the assistance of King George the rebels were put down.
King George had himself become a Christian and a preacher, and contributed greatly to the spread of the Gospel among his countrymen. He is thus described by Mr Lawry, after he had become sovereign of the whole group; it was in the large chapel of Nukualofa: “The king was in the pulpit. The attention of his audience was riveted while he expounded the words of our Lord, ‘I am come that ye might have life.’ The king is a tall, graceful person; in the pulpit he was dressed in a black coat, and his manner was solemn and earnest. He held in his hand a small bound manuscript book, in which his sermon was written, but he seldom looked at it. His action was dignified, his delivery fluent and graceful, and not without majesty. His hearers hung upon his lips with earnest and increasing interest. Much of what he said was put interrogatively, a mode of address which is very acceptable among the Tongans. It was affecting to see this dignified man stretching out his hand over his people, and to observe that one of his little fingers had been cut off: this was formerly done as an offering to a heathen god, a custom among his people before they became Christians. But while he bore this mark of Pagan origin, he clearly showed that to him was grace given to preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.”