Page:A Lady's Cruise in a French Man-of-War.djvu/166

142 grief, but to slay the medicine-man who had arrived too late. One blow from his tomahawk added yet another to the grievous list of the martyrs of Eromanga.

At the mission station at Apia, on the isle of Upolu, on the very spot where John Williams first landed in Samoa, and where he stood to bid what proved to be his last farewell to the people—two graves lying side by side contain some bones brought to Samoa in 1840 by H.M.S. Favourite, in the belief that they were those of the martyrs. It is now, however, known that they were bones taken at random by the natives from a cave where they are wont to deposit their own dead, under the impression that the foreign ship wished to purchase human bones. The skull of John Williams is buried beneath a palm-tree on Eromanga, which is doubtless as quiet a resting-place as a foreign grave in turbulent Apia. Near it, was buried a small bit of red sealing-wax, about an inch and a half in length, which was found by the natives in his pocket, and supposed to be a foreign idol. This relic was afterwards disinterred and sent home to his children.

I think the attempt to recover the remains of the dead from their savage murderers is at best very unsatisfactory. We had a fair example of it in Fiji, where great efforts were made to recover the bones of the Rev. Baker, who was there killed and eaten. So successful was this endeavour that one mission station alone has received three skulls, all positively declared to be his!

While both the London Mission and the Wesleyans have done such excellent work in Samoa, it is to be regretted that a corner of rivalry should have contrived to creep in—a rootlet of bitterness—not very serious perhaps, but still a corner of contention. It appears that at the time when Mr Williams first landed in Samoa, in 1830, several native teachers from the Wesleyan Mission in Tonga had already begun to work there, and the promise of white teachers had already been made to expectant congregations. When, therefore, in 1835, the Rev. Peter Turner, of the Wesleyan Mission, reached the isle of Manono, he was received with open arms by a zealous flock; and when, shortly afterwards, he travelled round the isles of Savaii and Upolu, he found more than 2000