“Southward Ho!”

WHEN Captain James Cook, R.N., sail ed round half the world in the Whitby barque Endeavour to found an empire at the end of the 18th century, Britain sat up at night to read about the unknown South Seas. Twenty years later, inspired by Cook’s journal, a London merchant, Joseph Hardcastle, and his friend, the Rev. Thomas Haweie, established the Lon don Missionary Society to venture into the remote Pacific isles “to claim them for the Lord.”

The romantic story of the enterprise of the L.M.S. in the Pacific is now again told in a vivid, modern way in “South ward Ho!” by the Rev. Cecil Northcott, M.A. From the River Thames in 1796, when the little Duff, with Captain James Wilson pacing the quarter-deck, slipped into the open Channel bound for Tahiti, the adventurous tale is traced up to the present day.

The hardships of the Tahiti mission, the forlorn attempts to fan the flame of Christianity in Tonga, and the evangelis tic wanderings of the sea-minded John Williams, all have their place in the his tory of the South Seas, and are retold here with gusto.

Mr. Northcott deals enlighteningly with the church and its future in Samoa and the Gilbert and Ellice Group. In those islands the L.M.S. is deep-rooted, and the Society is endeavouring to build up self-supporting churches. The author pays tribute to the devotion and work of native pastors, and to the indispensa bility of the schooner John 'Williams V., which is the London Missionary Society’s greatest weapon in the outer islands in the struggle against revivals of heathen ism and secular indifference. —S.H, SOUTHWARD HOI, by the Rev. Cecil North cott, M.A. Published by the Livingstone Press, London. Price 1/-.