Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/180

 114 DEATH OF TEENMINNE. help of kind friends in Adelaide managed to finish our chapel. It cost £148. We then built more houses, and called the village which thus arose around us Reid Town, in memory of the missionary who lost his life in seeking the welfare of the natives. Our great want at the present time is houses for the Christian natives. Although we have a native stonemason, the demand for houses greatly exceeds the supply. Two or three more extracts are all I shall trouble the reader with. They relate to the close of the life of one often mentioned in these pages. llth September, 1869. Teenminne is very ill. Dysentery has set in. I fear she cannot recover. 18th. Teenminne has been continually getting worse. Her faith continues unwavering. I often talk and pray with her, and listen to her expression of firm faith in Jesus. She asks me to read to her in the native language, because she feels it fatigue her attention less than English. 19th. My poor sick friend is gradually sinking. She cannot last long. She begs me to have her body buried and not dried. Of course I promised to comply with her wishes. There is no fear of death, but no rapturesonly a sort of anxious waiting for departure, all the while resting on Jesus to bear up against fear. 21st. To-day, at three p.m., our dear friend Teenminne departed to her everlasting rest. She was a little delirious this morning, but that passed off; then deafness came on, and the restlessness which precedes dissolution. I prayed with her, but she heard very little. Her husband was attentive and kind to her. She went off at last quite suddenly. Teenminne was my first friend among the natives. She was a truly excellent womankind-hearted, intelligent, faithful, courageous, devout. She was a good loving wife, and a good mother. I feel we have lost a dear friend. To die was gain to her, but grief to us. She possessed more of what we call character than any woman I ever met amongst the natives. She was goodlooking for an aborigine, although she had lost an eye in her childhood. There was a cheerful merry way with her which