o say that his arrival formed an epoch in its history. He is
wonderfully equipped for the work to which he has, under God's
Providence, put his hand, and is the white man best known to all the
natives along the south coast. From the first he has gone among them
unarmed, and though not unfrequently in imminent peril, has been
marvellously preserved. He has combined the qualities of missionary and
explorer in a very high degree, and while beloved as "Tamate" (Teacher)
by the natives, has added enormously to the stock of our geographical
knowledge of New Guinea, and to our accurate acquaintance with the ways
of thinking, the habits, superstitions, and mode of life of the various
tribes of natives.

Notwithstanding various expensive expeditions for the exploration of New
Guinea, he has travelled the farthest yet into the interior. He has been
as far as Lat. S. 9 degrees 2' and Long. E. 147 degrees 42.5'. The
farthest point reached by Captain Armit was about Lat. S. 9 degrees 35'
and Long. E. 147 degrees 38'. Mr. Morrison merely reached a point on the
Goldie River, when he was attacked and wounded by the natives. This
compelled the party to return to Port Moresby.

Mr. Chalmers is still actively engaged in his work on the great island,
and he has placed many of his journals and papers at the disposal of the
Religious Tract Society, in the hope that their publication may increase
the general store of knowledge about New Guinea, and may also give true
ideas about the natives, the kind of Christian work that is being done in
their midst, and the progress in it that is being made.

The prominence which New Guinea has assumed in the public mind lately is
due much more to political than to religious reasons. England is a
Christian nation, and there are numbers who rejoice in New Guinea as a
signal proof of the regenerating power of the Gospel of Christ. Yet, to
the Christian man, it is somewhat humiliating to find how deeply the
press of our country is stirred by the statement that Germany has annexed
the north coast of New Guinea, while it has hardly been touched by the
thrilling story of the introduction of Christianity all along the south
coast. The public mind is much exercised in discussing whether Her
Majesty's Government should annex the whole rather than proclaim a
protectorate over a part; it hardly cares to remember the names of those
who have died in trying to make known to the fierce Papuans our common
brot