e natives served them as a welcome excuse for a system of
extermination. The horrors of slave-trade were added to piracy, so
that in a few decades the native race of the New Hebrides and Banks
Islands was so weakened that in many places to-day its preservation
seems hopeless.

Thus, for the financial advantage of the worst of whites, and from
indolence and short-sighted national rivalry, a race was sacrificed
which in every respect would be worth preserving, and it is a shameful
fact that even to-day such atrocities are not impossible and very
little is done to save the islanders from destruction.

The only factor opposing these conditions was the Mission, which
obtained a foothold in the islands under Bishop John Williams. He
was killed in 1839 by the natives of Erromanga, but the Protestant
missionaries, especially the Presbyterians, would not be repulsed,
and slowly advanced northward, in spite of many losses. To-day the
Presbyterian mission occupies all the New Hebrides, with the exception
of Pentecoste, Aoba and Maevo. To the north lies the field of the
Anglican mission, extending up to the Solomon Islands.

In 1848 Roman Catholic missionaries settled in Aneityum, but soon
gave up the station; in 1887 they returned and spread all over the
archipelago, with the exception of the southern islands and the
Banks group.

Of late years several representatives of free Protestant sects have
come out, but, as a rule, these settle only where they can combine
a profitable trade with their mission work.

Owing to energetic agitation on the part of the Anglican and
Presbyterian Churches, especially of Bishop Patteson and the
Rev. J. G. Paton, men-of-war were ordered to the islands on police
duty, so as to watch the labour-trade. They could not suppress
kidnapping entirely, and the transportation of the natives to
Queensland continued until within the last ten years, when it was
suppressed by the Australian Government, so that to-day the natives
are at least not taken away from their own islands, except those
recruited by the French for New Caledonia.

Unhappily, England and France could not agree as to who should annex
the New Hebrides. Violent agitation in both camps resulted in neither
power being willing to leave the islands to the other, as numerical
superiority on the French side was counter-balanced by the absolute
economical dependence of the colonists upon Australia. England put
the group under the jurisdiction o