into a character of light and beauty. I lost, in losing
him, one of my best friends and most courageous helpers; but I knew that
day, and I know now, that there is one soul at least from Tanna to sing
the glories of Jesus in Heaven--and, oh, the rapture when I meet him
there!

CHAPTER XXXI.
MARTYRDOM OF THE GORDONS.

MAY 1861 brought with it a sorrowful and tragic event, which fell as the
very shadow of doom across our path; I mean the martyrdom of the Gordons
on Erromanga. Rev. G. N. Gordon was a native of Prince Edward Island,
Nova Scotia, and was born in 1822. He was educated at the Free Church
College, Halifax, and placed as Missionary on Erromanga in June 1857.
Much troubled and opposed by the Sandal-wooders, he had yet acquired the
language and was making progress by inroads on Heathenism. A
considerable number of young men and women embraced the Christian Faith,
lived at the Mission House, and devotedly helped him and his excellent
wife in all their work. But the hurricanes and the measles, already
referred to, caused great mortality in Erromanga also; and the degraded
Traders, who had introduced the plague, in order to save themselves from
revenge, stimulated the superstitions of the Heathen, and charged the
Missionaries there too with causing sickness and all other calamities.
The Sandal-wooders hated him for fearlessly denouncing and exposing
their hideous atrocities.

When Mr. Copeland and I placed the Native Teachers at Black Beach,
Tanna, we ran across to Erromanga in the _John Knox,_ taking a harmonium
to Mrs. Gordon, just come by their order from Sydney. When it was opened
out at the Mission House, and Mrs. Gordon began playing on it and
singing sweet hymns, the native women were in ecstasies. They at once
proposed to go off to the bush and cut each a burden of long grass, to
thatch the printing-office which Mr. Gordon was building in order to
print the Scriptures in their own tongue, if only Mrs. Gordon would play
to them at night and teach them to sing God's praises. They joyfully did
so, and then spent a happy evening singing those hymns. Next day being
Sabbath, we had a delightful season there, about thirty attending Church
and listening eagerly. The young men and women living at the Mission
House were being trained to become Teachers; they were reading a small
book in their own language, telling them the story of Joseph; and the
work every way seemed most hopeful. The Mission House had been re