o pursue it with vigour. At Aneiteum, the first island of
the New Hebrides visited by the missionary ship in 1841, two Samoan
missionaries were landed. These devoted men had much to endure, and it
was not till after years of toil that they saw any really satisfactory
results from their labours. By degrees many came to seek instruction,
some of whom abandoned their heathen practices; and subsequently other
native teachers were introduced; but when, in 1848, the Rev. J. Geddie
arrived at Aneiteum, he still found the great mass of the people
fearfully degraded, and addicted to the most horrible cruelties. Soon
after his arrival eight women were strangled--one, an interesting young
woman whose husband he had been attending till he died; he attempted to
save her, and was very nearly clubbed to death by her relatives in
consequence.

A wonderful change is now evident. In 1858 there were sixty villages on
the island, each of which had a school-house or a chapel, with a
resident teacher. Nearly the whole of the New Testament, and some books
of the Old, had been translated, and a large number of these lately
degraded heathens could both read and write.

Fatuna is a small island, containing about a thousand inhabitants. Here
Williams touched just before his death; but no teachers were left there.
A couple of years afterwards, however, two Samoan evangelists, Samuela
and Apela, were landed, the former accompanied by his wife. They
laboured for four years with some success, when a severe epidemic
breaking out among the inhabitants they were accused of being its cause,
and were killed and eaten. Samuela's faithful wife was offered her life
if she would become one of the wives of the chief. She replied, "I came
to teach you what is right, not to sin amongst you." No sooner had she
uttered the words than she fell beneath the club of a savage.
Notwithstanding this tragedy, missionaries from the lately heathen
Aneiteum have gone to Fatuna, and many of the savages have been
converted.

At Tanna, supposed to possess fifteen thousand inhabitants, Mr Williams
left three missionaries the day before he was murdered at Erromanga; but
two of them soon died, the climate being more injurious to the natives
of Eastern Polynesia than to Europeans. In 1842 Messrs. Turner and
Nisbet were sent to occupy the island, but were driven away by the
savages, and sought shelter in Samoa. Native teachers from Aneiteum,
however, took their place