Page:Williams and Calvert, Fiji and the Fijians, New York, 1860.djvu/466

 434 FIJI AOT) THE FUIANS. at Ono vas sent for, to undertake this distant and difficult Station. He was to be accompanied by a Fijian, of whom Mr. Hmit, shortly before his death, said, " Ay, poor Benjamin ! I brought him here a poor afflicted lad. I was sailing in the Viwa canoe with the Viwa people. We could not lay our course, or reach any place that we considered safe. Night came on, and we were obliged to put in at a Tillage. The people at towns on each side of us were enemies to Viwa. I then wondered why we had to put in at such a dangerous place. Since then I have seen the design. It was the Lord's doing, for us to bring that afflicted lad away, that he might hear the Gospel, be saved, and pre- pared for our work at Nandronga. He has got on wonderfully." Already this young man had been preaching with zeal and power at Yiwa and other places. Previous to the departure of the two Teach- ers with Mr. Lyth, the Missionaries assembled to commend them to God in prayer. They were afterwards left under the care of Lua, whom Mr. Lyth describes as being " a kind, intelligent, and particularly mod- est man, who showed himself very zealous to recommend to others the religion he had embraced." Mr. Lyth then visited the north-east coast, and found at Nakorotumbu thirty-seven members. He married the two head Chiefs, aAd found the congregation large and attentive. At Nairara, he found the Chief a professed Christian, but a polygamist, and careless about religion. The cause, of course, was low. The Teacher had been nobly faithful. Food being scarce, he and his family had often starved on one slender meal a day, and, in one instance, when he had gone out in search of food, his family had eaten nothing for two days. Yet he would not leave his charge. Natokea, a town high up on the rocky sides of a mountain, was visited by Paul Vea, a Native Assistant, who found ten persons that worshipped the Lord. The poor people heard him gladly, and six more were added to their number. They were anxious for a Teacher. Their chaplain was a hump-backed lad, who conducted family worship every morning and evening. His anxiety to hear the Gospel led him, when the nearest Teacher was from home, to go to a village eight miles distant, to hear the Gospel preached on the Sabbath day. Paul was delighted with this youth, " well re- ported of," and gained the consent of his mother to have him at Nako- rotumbu, that he might learn to read, and be under Christian instruc- tion. Mr. Lyth next visited Rakiraki, a place famous for being the residence of the notorious cannibal, Ra Undreundre.* Thence he went to Mba, the last Station on this coast, and then sailed to Rotumah, a
 * See page 167.