SANTA CRUZ. 
The grave Spaniard Mendana, the discoverer of the Santa Cruz 
group, little knew how prophetic was this name of Holy Cross, which, 
in his religious zeal, he had bestowed on the island of Ndeni. To- wwe 
memorial crosses reaTie in Carlisle Bay and in Graciosa Bay on Ndeni, 
and on the beach at Nukapu, facing the setting sun. 
What a host of memories the name Santa Cruz calls up to the 
student of Melanesian history! ‘The ill-fated Spanish admiral Don 
Alvaro de Mendana, after sailing twice across the Pacific, found his 
last home in the bay which he had named Graciosa, on the island of 
Ndeni. ‘Three hundred years later the noble-hearted James Good- 
enough, commodore of Her Britannic Majesty’s squadron on the 
Australian Station, met his death at the hands of the natives of Ndeni. 
“Poor Santa Cruz! poor people!” was the exclamation of Edwin Nobbs 
and Fisher Young, the faithful Norfolk Island lads in the company of 
Bishop Patteson, as they writhed in the agonies of tetanus brought 
on by wounds from those terrible Santa Cruz arrows. Mano Wad- 
rokal, the native deacon from the Loyalty Islands, the first missionary 
to Santa Cruz, braved the fury of these excitable people time and 
again in his efforts to win them for Christ and for’peace. Mr. Lister 
Kaye’s name will go down to posterity as that of the first white man 
to live on Santa Cruz after Mendana and his company. Mr. Forrest 
was the next white man to live there and for the whole of his time his 
life was constantly in danger. Dr. John Williams was content to 
sacrifice his worldly prospects and to devote himself to the healing of 
ulcers and the curing of ringworm on Santa Cruz bodies. Mr. O’Fer- 
rall and Mr. Nind endured innumerable dangers and perils by waters, 
visiting the islands in their whaleboats. ‘The last victim claimed by 
Santa Cruz was the mission priest Guy Bury, who died in rg11 after 
a short residence of a few months, the victim not of poisonous arrows, 
but of malignant island ulcers. 
Forty miles north of Santa Cruz lies the Swallow Group, commonly 
called the Reef Islands, and on the smallest of these, Nukapu, there 
perished the great mission hero Bishop Patteson. On the island of 
Vanikolo, 60 miles south of Santa Cruz, the famous French explorer 
La Pérouse, who just failed of annexing Australia to the French crown, 
was ingloriously cast away. 
A brilliant galaxy of names—explorers, sailors, missionaries, admirals, 
bishops, priests, deacons—and still to-day Santa Cruz and its neigh- 
boring islands are mainly Heathen. 
Santa Cruz was discovered and named by Mendafa in 1595, sailing 
from Callao in his endeavor to reach again and colonize the isles of 
Solomon, which he had himself discovered on a previous voyage in 
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