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Updated: June 29, 2025
They don't sing at all well, but nevertheless, though apt to get flat, and without good voices, there is a certain body of sound, and I like it. Brooke plays the harmonium nicely. 'The Norfolk Island people, two or three only, have been here at evening service, and are extremely struck with the reverence of the Melanesians.
'My dear Miss Neill, Thanks for your £21. 2s., and more thanks still for your prayers and constant interest in this part of the world. After nearly seventeen weeks at sea, we returned safely on Sunday morning the 15th, with thirty-three Melanesians, gathered from nine islands and speaking eight languages.
The island voyage was coming near, and was to be conducted, on a larger scale, after the intermission of a whole year. Mr. Brooke was to make some stay at Florida, Mr. Atkin at Wango in Bauro, and the Bishop himself was to take the party who were to commence the Christian village at Mota, while Mr. Codrington and Mr. Bice remained in charge of twenty-seven Melanesians.
About forty of our Melanesians here are Solomon Islanders, from seven different islands; a few came from the New Hebrides, the rest from the Banks Islands. We are already pretty well settled down to our work. Indeed, it took only a day or two to get to work; our old scholars are such great helpers to us. Ten or twelve of the sixth form are teachers.
Unlike most of the big chiefs, Nau-hau was young, and, unlike most of the Melanesians, he was handsome, even beautiful. "Hello, King o' Babylon," was Van Horn's greeting, for so he had named him because of fancied Semitic resemblance blended with the crude power that marked his visage and informed his bearing. Born and trained to nakedness, Nau-hau trod the deck boldly and unashamed.
Young New Zealanders are often more attracted by China and Japan than by the Maoris and Melanesians at their own doors. What does this show but that the English Church in New Zealand must widen its outlook and expand its sympathies, till it feels itself lifted up and inspired to attempt greater things than anything yet achieved?
True, he is the oldest of the party, he can hardly be less than twenty-six years old, for he had been married a year when first we saw him; but it is his character rather than his age which gives him his position. For a long time he has been our link with the Melanesians themselves whenever there was something to be done by one of themselves rather than by us strangers.
Nevertheless, I doubt very much whether other Melanesians live in the same familiarity with their missionaries e.g., Carry, wife of Wadrokala, writes thus: "I tremble very much to write to you, I am not fit to write to you, because, does an ant know how to speak to a cow? We at Nengone would not speak to a great man like you; no, our language is different to a chief and a missionary."
The negritos who penetrated to the Philippines are another extreme instance of isolation. The Melanesians of the islands of the Indian and Pacific Ocean are less low, because those islands have been slowly crossed by a much higher race, the Polynesians. This not only explains the higher condition of the Maoris, etc., but also shows why they have not advanced like their European cousins.
With this year the Eucharist was administered weekly, the Melanesians still attending fortnightly; but it proved to have been a true foreboding that a sorrow was on its way: 'January 8th. A very joyful Christmas, but a sad Epiphany! I had noticed that he was not like himself, and spoke to him and warned him.
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