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John Williams and his young Missionary companion Harris, under the auspices of the London Missionary Society, landed on Erromanga on the 30th of November 1839. Alas, within a few minutes of their touching land, both were clubbed to death; and the savages proceeded to cook and feast upon their bodies.
As he thought of the fierce men of Erromanga he thought of the waving forests of brown hands he had seen, the shouts of "Come back again to us!" that he had heard as he left his own islands. He knew how those people loved him in the Samoan Islands, but he could not rest while others lay far off who had never heard the story of Jesus.
It had been christened John Williams after the great hero missionary who gave up his life on the beach of Erromanga. This boy, who loved the sea and breathed deep with joy in the face of adventure and peril, had set his face towards the deep, long breakers of the far-off Pacific.
They placed their standard on our chosen island of Tanna, the nearest to Erromanga. In less than seven months, however, their persecution by the savages became so dreadful, that we see them in a boat trying to escape by night with bare life.
The poor Heathen knew not that they had slain their best friends; but tears and prayers ascended for them from all Christian souls, wherever the story of the martyrdom on Erromanga was read or heard. Again, therefore, in 1842, the London Missionary Society sent out Messrs. Turner and Nisbet to pierce this kingdom of Satan.
I had since obtained at Aneityum the remains of one from Erromanga, that had belonged to the murdered Gordon. But the supply of letters, in some cases, was so deficient that I could print only four pages at a time; and, besides, bits of the press were wanting, and I had first to manufacture substitutes from scraps of iron and wood.
They had labored four years on Erromanga, amidst trials and dangers manifold, and had not been without tokens of blessing in the Lord's work. Never more earnest or devoted Missionaries lived and died in the Heathen field. IMMEDIATELY thereafter, a Sandal-wood Trader brought in his boat a party of Erromangans by night to Tanna.
Mr Williams was accompanied by several European, and a considerable number of native missionaries, who were to be landed as opportunities might offer, to preach the Gospel. Having landed missionaries at the island of Tanna and elsewhere, with every prospect of success, the Camden proceeded to Erromanga, off which island she arrived on November 20, 1839.
Gordon on Erromanga, requesting an investigation into the sad event, and the removal of a Sandal-wood Trader, a British subject, who had incited the Natives to it, the Missionaries gave the Commodore a memorandum on the loss of life and property that had been sustained by the Mission on Tanna, Erromanga, and Efate.
MAY 1861 brought with it a sorrowful and tragic event, which fell as the very shadow of doom across our path; I mean the martyrdom of the Gordons on Erromanga. Rev. G. N. Gordon was a native of Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and was born in 1822. He was educated at the Free Church College, Halifax, and placed as Missionary on Erromanga in June 1857.
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