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Updated: June 23, 2025
Raiatea was his first home, Rarotonga his second. There he placed his family, which long consisted of his one boy, John, born in Tahiti, all Mrs. Williams's subsequent babes scarcely living to see the light, until, in the sixteenth year of her Polynesian life, another son rejoiced her.
Chalmers left on a schooner for Samoa, and during the voyage Mrs. Chalmers' health improved. After a six weeks' stay at Samoa Chalmers and his wife sailed for Rarotonga, and on May 20, 1867, arrived there. In that beautiful island Mr. and Mrs. Chalmers settled down at once to work. 'The natives, Mrs. Chalmers wrote, 'have to be treated in all things more like children at home than men.
He only felt himself there on sufferance till the promised deputation should come from Rarotonga from the London Mission, to decide whether the island should be reserved by them, or yielded to the Church. Meantime he says on Sunday: 'Tutoo has had a pretty hard day's work of it, poor fellow, and he is anything but strong.
"I is capin," he answered, taking off his straw hat and making a low bow. "You!" said our captain, in surprise. "Where do you come from, and where are you bound? What cargo have you aboard?" "We is come," answered the man with the swallow-tail, "from Aitutaki; we was go for Rarotonga.
They soon get weary and discouraged in any work, but a few words of praise or encouragement put fresh spirit within them. Missionaries had laboured at Rarotonga before the arrival of the Chalmers, and the work was not exactly the type which James Chalmers desired.
Finding out at last the Rev. A. Buzacott, then retired, but formerly the successful and honored representative of the London Missionary Society on Rarotonga, considerable light was let in upon the mystery of my last week's experiences.
Later in the day a native warned Chalmers that he, his wife, and his teachers from Rarotonga had better get away to the ship during the night, as the natives had decided to murder them early in the following morning. Chalmers told his wife what the native had said, and added, 'It is for you to decide.
They gathered together in the hut and with anxious faces talked of what they might do. They knew that far off to the southwest lay the islands of Samoa, and Rarotonga. So they set the bows of their craft southward.
Other Polynesian races also claim to have come thence. Mr. Percy Smith gives good reasons for the suggestion that the ancestors of the Maoris migrated from the Society Islands and from Rarotonga, and that their principal migration took place about five hundred years ago. It seems likely enough, however, that previous immigrants had gone before them.
They are of the same race as the courteous, handsome people who inhabit the South Sea Islands from Hawaii to Rarotonga, and who, in Fiji, mingle their blood with the darker and inferior Melanesians of the west. All the Polynesians speak dialects of the same musical tongue. A glance at Tregear's Comparative Maori-Polynesian Dictionary will satisfy any reader on that point.
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