Mission Work on the group. 193 
teaching the natives 4 want—and when they want they will 
work to supply their wants—work, too, on their own islands. 
Again, where the missionary has settled and laboured, other 
foreigners may safely follow; and though these men are not 
slow to take advantage of the result of the missionary’s work, 
they but seldom give him the credit that is his due. 
This struck me particularly in the case of the author of 
“South-Sea Bubbles.” When on a quiet and civilised island, 
where not the slightest ghost of danger exists, he abuses the 
missionaries right and left, and bravely wishes that he only could 
have been on the island before these obnoxious individuals had 
tainted its primeval freedom. Looking at some women in 
church, he says, “I gazed sadly on them, thinking what much 
better fun I would have had if I had visited the island fifty 
years sooner.” He takes very good care, however, not to risk 
his precious body upon islands which are still as savage as he 
wished that one was, and where he might have enjoyed the fun 
of being killed, and cooked, and eaten. 
Aneityum being the island upon which missionaries first 
settled, is naturally the farthest advancéd, and is the head- 
quarters of the mission in this group. The missionaries upon 
the other islands have not been idle however. Aniwa may be 
said to rank next to Aneityum. Its population of 240 have 
also as a body renounced heathenism, and gradually their 
characters are being formed and their principles elevated by 
the teachings of their missionary, Mr. Paton. On Tana, the 
missionaries’ influence is being felt for some distance round the 
stations ; but the progress on that island is slower than it other- 
wise might have been on account of the large mass of heathen- 
ism, the constant wars among the tribes, and the diversity of 
language. Along the coast between the two mission stations— 
a distance of fourteen miles—teachers are planted, and services 
are maintained on Sundays at several places, with good results. 
ie) 
