Double Centenary in New
p. 47 · Read in the full issue
Hebrides
A KRANGEMENTS to celebrate in 1939 a double centenary—the foundation of the New Hebrides Presbyterian Mis sion and the martyrdom of Rev. John Williams —were made at the last meeting of the N.H. Presbyterian Synod.
Williams, perhaps the greatest of the early Pacific missionaries, was murdered on November 30, 1839, at Dillon’s Bay, on Erromanga Island. Arriving from Rarotonga (Cook Group) in his own ves sel, the Camden , he went ashore with two Europeans and a number of L.M.S.
Samoan teachers. Apparently in revenge for previous outrages suffered at the hands of marauding sandalwood traders, the uncivilised natives attacked the party. Williams and James Harris fell under club blows, but the other European and the Samoans escaped to the ship.
Erromanga is know as the “Martyr Isle” —four other missionaries also met their death at the hands of the savages.
They were George Gordon and his wife, Ellen (May, 1861), James Macnair (July, 1870), and James Gordon (May, 1872).
Mr. Norman Ernest Ash has been appointed a warrant officer in the Euro pean Constabulary at Rabaul, New Guinea.
Mr. M. J. Healy, of the Papuan Public Service, left Port Moresby with his wife on long leave by the September Maet suycker. He is A.R.M. at Kerema.