500,000 Documents.

Preservation of Early L.M.S. Archives.

THE Trustees of the Pilgrim Trust have granted £1,138 for the preservation and cataloguing of the archives and records of the London Missionary Society, which are housed in London at Living stone House, Broadway, Westminster.

Lord Macmillan, chairman of the Trust, has taken a personal interest in the pre servation of the original letters and docu ments relating to the Society’s work in Africa, India, China, South Seas, Mada gascar, Papua, and the West Indies. The archives consist of personal journals and letters from missionaries to officers of the Society.

Some of the most valuable of the ar chives relate to early days in the South ern Pacific. The first missionaries of the Society arrived at Tahiti on board the ship “Duff” in 1797, and their closely written but still legible journals are the only source of knowledge of the happen ings for many years in the Society Is lands.

The African records date from 1799, when J. T. Vanderkemp began to write home. Afterwards Dr. John Philip and others sent dispatches which are import ant for the early history of South Africa, and the Society’s notable stand on behalf of the Hottentots. Robert Moffat’s let ters describe his pioneer journeys into what is now Southern Rhodesia. His first visit was in 1829, many years before the arrival of other white settlers.

Perhaps the most valuable part of the collection is a batch of sixty letters from David Livingstone, written during the

period 1840 to 1857, when he was a mis sionary of the London Missionary Society in Africa. At this time Livingstone was spelling his name without the final “e”, and his writing has a curious backward slope. Writing from Lattako on October 30, 1843, he describes the founding of a new mission station among the Bakhatla people:— “No one out of this country can imag ine how grievously slow everything in it moves except time. But it cannot be otherwise so long as the heavy Dutch wagon and tedious pack-ox are the only permanent conveyances. This disadvan tage has a great effect on most mission ary movements, and not infrequently presses heavily on our spirits ... for though I believe the spot selected is the very best at present inhabited in the in terior . . . and although I should be de lighted to call it the centre of my labour, I shall try to hold myself in readiness to go anywhere provided it be forward”.

Other letters tell the story of those mis sionaries who lived among the slaves of British Guiana from 1807 onwards; with them is the original journal of John Smith, the Demerara martyr, whose death gave an impetus to the emancipation movement. A 4,000 miles’ sledge ride across Russia to Siberia, where the So ciety had a mission to the Mongols before 1841, is described in a series of letters from the hardy men who made the jour ney.

From 1807, Robert Morrison’s bold, clear handwriting records the early days in Canton, and how, while his life was in danger, he was preparing for his great work of translation. Other notable mis sionaries represented in the archives are James Chalmers, the Papuan mar tyr, John Williams, of the South Seas, and James Gilmour, of Mongolia.

The records are specially rich in ma terial relating to the early days of many parts of the Empire. South Africa, Southern and Northern Rhodesia, and the Bechuanaland Protectorate have been the subject of continual correspondence since the first days of white settlement, and the importance of the original letters is increasingly recognised by professors of history and research students.

The history of white settlement in the Territory of Papua is preserved in the archives through the letters of Lawes, the first white man to live on the main land, and Chalmers, who joined him in 1877. India, too, from the days of John Company onwards, provides a large pro portion of the documents; while much interesting light is thrown on the great French possession of Madagascar, where Protestant missionaries settled in 1820.

The gift of the Pilgrim Trust will en sure that the letters and Journals in the archives are classified under expert ex amination and carefully preserved in fireproof rooms. Altogether, some 500,000 documents will be re-arranged, and made easy to handle by students and research ers. It is expected that the scheme will be completed within two years.

Yen. H. Mayo Harris, Archdeacon of Fiji and Vicar of Holy Trinity Pro- Cathedral, Suva, who has been on long leave with his wife in Great Britain, is expected to return to Suva at the end of January. Mrs. Harris will remain in New Zealand until early in March.

Mr. H. O. Littlechild, Travelling Medical Assistant in the Papuan Ad ministration, arrived in Australia by the December “Montoro”. He is on long leave, at the end of which he will retire from the service.