Adventures in New Guinea | Page 2

Christianity has won great victories in Polynesia, but no part of the globe has witnessed fouler crimes or more atrocious wickedness on the part of white men towards savage races.
The history of the work done by members of the London Missionary Society is already a long one. As far back as 1871, the Revs. A. W. Murray and S. McFarlane sailed from Mare, one of the Loyalty Islands, with eight native teachers, inhabitants of that group, with whom to begin the campaign against sin, superstition, and savagery in New Guinea. The first station occupied was Darnley Island, and Mr. Murray gives an incident that well illustrates the spirit in which these men, themselves trophies of missionary success, entered upon their work. Speaking about another island, the natives, in the hope of intimidating the teachers, said, "There are alligators there, and snakes, and centipedes." "Hold," said the teacher, "are there men there?" "Oh yes," was the reply, "there are men; but they are such dreadful savages that it is no use your thinking of living among them." "That will do," replied the teacher. "Wherever there are men, missionaries are bound to go." Teachers were stationed at the islands of Tauan and Sabaii. Later on, Yule Island and Redscar Bay were visited, and the missionaries returned to Lifu.
In 1872, Mr. Murray returned in the John Williams with thirteen additional teachers, and for the next two years superintended the mission from Cape York. In 1874, he was joined by the Revs. S. McFarlane and W. G. Lawes--who have both ever since that time laboured hard and successfully on behalf of the natives--and the steamer Ellengowan was placed at the service of the mission by the liberality of the late Miss Baxter, of Dundee. The native teachers experienced many vicissitudes. Some died from inability to stand the climate, some were massacred by the men they were striving to bless; but the gaps were filled up as speedily as possible, and the map recently issued (Jan. 1885) by the Directors of the Society shows that on the south-eastern coast of New Guinea, from Motumotu to East Cape, no less than thirty-two native teachers, some of them New Guinea converts, are now toiling in the service of the Gospel.
In 1877, the Rev. James Chalmers joined the mission, and it is hardly too much to 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