Australia s Heritage. 67 
sudden convulsion, and a fresh pillar of inky 
smoke shoots high in the air. 
Erromanga will always be associated with the 
name of John Williams, the pioneer missionary 
to the South Seas, who was there murdered 
with his colleague, Mr. Harris, in 1839. In 
later years four other missionaries yielded up 
their lives to the savage inhabitants, the last 
being Mr. Gordon, who was killed there in 
1872. At the present time the Erromangans 
are, with the exception of the people of the 
little island of Tongoa, the most thoroughly 
Christianised inhabitants of the group. 
At Vate, the entrepot of the whole group, 
is established the principal trading centre of 
the New Hebrides, and here live the greater 
portion of the English and French settlers 
established in the group. Vate is thirty-five 
miles long by eight broad, of moderate eleva¬ 
tion, has some noble harbours, a fertile soil, 
splendid banana plantations, and, in a small 
way, is the Ceylon of the South Seas. 
