Jubilee for Dr. Fox
pp. 83-84 · Read in the full issue
[?]ervice and Adventure With Melanesian Mission
HHE Rev. Dr. C. E. Fox who has 1- just completed 50 years of active rvice as a Melanesian Missionary the Solomons, will receive a suit )le presentation at a Missionary lly in Auckland, this month.
Dr. Fox, when he first joined the lission in 1902, seemed of a delicate mstitution and unequal to the strain t life in the tropics; but now, after ) years’ work—mostly in the mala al regions of the Solomons—he still active and looking forward to iany more successful years as a mis onary and scientist. For not only he a cleric but also a scientist, hose knowledge of the Melanesian iople—their customs, folklore and nguages—has gained him renown.
The chief reason which created in >r. Fox the desire to know more aout his Melanesian friends was the isit of Dr. Rivers, a Cambridge "ofessor, who went out to the iission to study the kinship systems : the Melanesian peoples. Dr. ivers was helped over the language arrier by Dr. Fox, who acted as his iterpreter, and, in his turn, Dr. Fox as thus able to acquire a vast know
ledge of hitherto unsuspected native lore and customs—and a wish to learn more.
Dr. Fox’s subsequent research reached a climax when he went com pletely native, and exchanged places and all his worldly goods with a San Cristoval man. As he has written: “Got an old razor for my Gillette,
lost my pipes, hat, shoes, clothes, European food, cooking utensils, to bacco, gun and money. On the other hand 1 gained the aforesaid razor, sufficient clothes, 2/6, a clay pipe, a yam garden, various coconut trees and property in hand.”
Thenceforth, he lived completely on native food, smoking their to
bacco and wearing neither hat nor shoes. He was even employed, for one month, as cook on a plantation, living with the boys and receiving the same food and conditions.
All these things happened many years ago; but they have filled Dr.
Fox with a deep understanding and love of his Melanesian friends. His
writings on their customs and the vocabularies of their most obscure dialects which he has compiled, bear witness to this.
Now that he is growing old, and his eyesight has lost its keenness, his friends are arranging a presentation to commemorate his jubilee of self less service.