IN THE MIDST OF SAVAGERY 101 
“In Fotuna, though the first island in the western Pacific 
visited by missionaries, and the first to which the earliest 
New Hebridean converts were sent as evangelists, the con- 
flict with heathenism has been one of the longest and most 
trying in the South Seas. Despite its healthful climate, no 
island in the group, in proportion to its size, has more graves 
of Christian workers. Here, side by side, lie teachers from 
Polynesia, Aneityum, Aniwa, and Fotuna, who gave their 
lives for the work of Christ. Here are the graves of two 
missionaries’ wives—Mrs. Copeland and Mrs. Murray of 
Ambrym. And here also, in the garden where they played, 
underneath the flowers they loved, lie two of our own dear 
children who both died in one week. Aneityum, though much 
larger, with a greater population, was a Christian island 
twenty years after the landing of.the first teachers in 1841. 
It took seventy years to Christianize Fotuna. 
“The worshipers called themselves the ‘people of light;’ 
the heathen were not ashamed to be called ‘the people 
of darkness.’ ... The former were as full of heathen 
superstition as if they had never come in contact with 
Christianity.” | 
One night a loud rifle report was heard, and the next in- 
stant men were shouting and women were wailing, while 
voices close at hand were heard yelling, “Basula is shot.” 
Mr. Gunn, rushing from his house, found Basula lying on 
his face with a fearful wound in his back, and quite dead. 
He had been sitting with others at a feast when the shot that 
took his life was fired from the bush, and he never spoke 
again. 
Basula was a tall, powerful man of unusually dignified 
and commanding appearance, but whispers had gone abroad 
that it was he who had caused the influenza that had been 
raging for some time. Basula heeded not this talk about 
his death, but his own father ordered him to be shot; and 
thus occurred the death of Basula, an event which hindered 
the gospel on Fotuna for many years. 
