Graves Of Early L.M.S. Missionaries

Discovered in French Oceania by Englishman

From Our Own Correspondent.

Papeete, June 12.

DEVOTING his talents during the last few years to the unremitting labour of digging out authentic material con nected with Islands history, Mr. W. W.

Bolton, M.A., a scholarly Englishman who has been a resident of Tahiti for a long time, has collected an enormous mass of material, all of which must find a place in the complete account of events which will one day be written. Possessed by an insatiable lust for details, the curiosity of a true searcher after knowledge, and a remarkable faculty for observation which permits very little to escape his attention, Mr. Bolton has gathered to gether and recorded in his voluminous notebooks a wealth of data which will be of great value to the historian.

Of more immediate interest, however,, especially to English people, is the re discovery by Mr. Bolton of the graves of several of the pioneer English mission aries who died and were buried in Tahiti and Moorea. The locations of all of these, with the exception of Rev. Henry Nott,. the former bricklayer, whose grave at Arue was restored a few years ago by a group of local admirers, had become lost owing to the neglect brought about by political changes, to the final withdrawal from the scene of the English mission aries in 1886, and to the decay and obliteration wrought by an overwhelming growth of tropical jungle.

One of the most important events in Tahiti’s early history was the arrival of the ship Duff, sent out by the London

Mr. W. W. Bolton, M.A. (left), the discoverer of the hitherto lost graves of early missionaries in Tahiti, with Mr. Charles B. Nordhoff (right), the American author, at the site, at Matavai, of the burial place of the Duff arrivals (Messrs. Jefferson and Lewis). The first Christian church in Tahiti was erected in the immediate vicinity, which is not far from Point Venus, where Captain Cook took his historic observations.

Missionary Society in 1797, which landed four ordained ministers, fourteen artisans, five women and two children. These pioneers of the Gospel were well received by the natives but the work of evange lisation was hampered by ancient cus

toms, by the opposition of renegade foreigners, and by the prevalence of Euro pean diseases brought by whalers and others for which the missionaries got the blame. One or two missionaries died of sickness, others fled to New South Wales, and some deserted the cause to marry native women.

As time went on political upheavals and tribal wars disturbed the island to such an extent that the mission establishment at Matavai was destroyed—one of the missionaries was murdered and the rest departed, with the exception of Nott (who remained in Moorea with Pomare II.) and Hayward (who went to Huahine Island in the Leeward Group). Most of the evangelists returned to Moorea in 1811 and 1812, but work was not resumed in Tahiti till 1817, King Pomare having in the meantime accepted Christianity and thus opened the way.

The graves located by Mr. Bolton are those of Rev. T. Lewis (who was mur dered by natives in 1799 and buried at Matavai Bay), Rev. J. Jefferson (who died in 1807 and was also buried at Mata vai Bay), the wheelright, H. Bicknell (who was buried in Moorea in 1820) and two other missionaries who arrived later than the Duff company and who were buried in the Papara district of Tahiti.

The present day directors of the London Missionary Society are much interested in these discoveries and arrangements are now being made to have the graves re stored and suitable commemorative stones erected thereon.

According to the records of the London Missionary Society the original inscrip tion on Rev. Henry Nott’s gravestone at Arue was as follows: ‘‘Sacred to the memory of Rev. Henry Nott missionary, who departed from this life of sin and sorrow and entered into his rest on the 2nd day of May, 1844, after having endured a great fight of afflictions. He had been for 48 years

the faithful servant of the London Missionary Society, having been sent out by them in the ship Duff, commanded by Captain James Wilson in the year 1796. He was translator of the sacred scriptures into the Tahitian language.”