Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/177

Rh term of 1855 and the Lent term of 1856, he left the University without taking a degree, and sailed for Australia to dig for gold. He was at the diggings when the news of his father's death reached him unexpectedly. It affected him deeply. In his distress he was taken to a mission meeting held in the open air, and there, under the double impression of sorrow and of the solemn words he heard, he fell to the ground and underwent one of those sudden conversions of which we read in religious history. Accordingly he left the gold-diggings in or about 1861, and repaired to the University of Melbourne, where the terms which he had kept at Cambridge were allowed to count, though even then he did not proceed to a degree. At Melbourne he joined the Wesleyan communion, and, hearing that missionaries were wanted in Fiji, he offered himself for the service. The offer was accepted; he was ordained a minister, and sailed for Fiji in 1863. He had previously married a lady of the Wesleyan Church, who survives him, together with a family of two sons and four daughters.

Mr. Fison laboured as a missionary in Fiji from 1863 to 1871, and again from 1875 to 18S4. During the first of these periods he was appointed to the mission stations of Viwa, Lakemba, and Rewa; his name and that of his devoted wife are still household words there. Afterwards he acted as Principal of the Training Institution for natives in Navuloa, and his lectures were highly esteemed and treasured in memory by his students long after he had left Fiji. His frank, manly, cheery nature, ready sympathy, quick intelligence, and sound common-sense won him the love and confidence of natives and Europeans alike. Governors such as Sir William MacGregor and Sir J. B. Thurston treated him as a friend; Government officials in every department of the service regarded him as a safe and trustworthy guide in all matters affecting the relations of the Government with the natives; and