Solomons

Pioneers In The

What The Missionaries Accomplished

This interesting letter to the editor is from Rev. C. G. Harper, who has had a lifetime’s prominent associa tion with the work of the Melane sian Mission, and who actually was in the Solomons, himself, 55 years ago.

IN your admirable and interesting journal, the “P.1.M.” of December, 1939, on page 55, I find the remark able statement: “As every schoolboy knows, the Solomons had long been settled by white traders, before any mis sionary set foot in this group.”

I do not gather, from your note, on whose authority this is made. Of course, it is absolutely untrue.

Our missionaries were as far north as New Georgia—though not settled on that island —between 1860 and 1870. when there were no other resident whites at all. I, as a visitor in “Southern Cross III”, was as far north as Isabel, near New Georgia, where I slept ashore in the house of our missionary, the Rev. Alfred Penny, in 1885; and at that time there was one white trader on the island of Ugi—and I believe he was the only white resident in the Solomons except our missionaries.

In fact, I do not think I am over stating the case when I say that it was the fearless, often hazardous, and always self-sacrificing lives and work of our missionaries, in the middle of last cen tury, that opened the way for white traders to find it safe and comparatively easy to become residents in the Solo mons.

I am, etc.,

C. C. Harper.

Tudor House, Fairford, Glos., England. 4/3/1940.