I SHOULD be very glad if I could convey to readers some of the great interest and pleasure which my visit to Norfolk Island has afforded me. It is an ideal place for a holiday; it would be no difficulty to speak of the beauty and attractiveness of the surroundings, the picturesque panorama that each day varied and enriched. There are the hospitable and courteous "Pitcairners," ever ready with some new ride to show you, or reminiscences of lonely Pitcairn Island, where their grandfathers, the mutineers of The Bounty, settled; or they will talk almost for the day together about Bishop Patteson and the two Selwyns. But this is a practical age, and people do not approve of Missions only because their surroundings are romantically beautiful; and the members of the Melanesian Mission would wish interest in their work to rest on something more solid than the fact that pines and graceful tree ferns grow round about. Those who sympathise with, but cannot visit the Mission, would naturally ask of those who sympathise with and have visited it some such questions as these, first of all:--What was the impression given of the methods of the Mission? Did they seem sensible, as well as well-intentioned? And, so far as could be judged without [5/6] knowing the language, what results seemed to be generally produced on the boys and girls who were there to be taught?

One who knows and has seen a good deal of missionary work in different parts of the world, is sure to be familiar with instances of good motive and bad method, of much zeal and actually harmful results. And on a visit to a Mission that one sympathises with, and strongly wishes to find satisfactory and approvable, the eye with which one scrutinises methods, etc., is sharpened and rendered critical, not indulgent. And I would like to say, having come in this spirit to the Melanesian Mission, which for many years had been almost magic ground to me, that the plan and methods of its work seemed to me sensible through and through, based on the sober, solid estimate of the characters to be developed and the aims to be kept in view, and carried out with a sane, energetic enthusiasm that I would pick out as the dominant characteristic of the whole work of the Mission.

Let me speak, first of all, of its methods--of the work as I saw it in St. Barnabas' School, Norfolk Island, the happiest school I know.

Most boys have a journey to take when holidays are over, and journey money to get when the time comes for home again, but few go such a distance as these black-faced merry-hearted lads at school on Norfolk Island, in the Southern Pacific. It is strange that, even when Captain Cook first lighted upon Norfolk Island, he found it rich and fertile and healthy, yet with not a native inhabitant. And all the blacks that are here now are those who are brought--boys and girls [6/9] of about fourteen--from scattered tropical islands far north, near the Equator, where the atmosphere is too poisonous and feverish for the Missionaries, especially ladies, to live long at one time. The furthest distant island of the Solomon group that has furnished its captives to the Christian net is about 1,500 miles from Norfolk Island; so that it will be easily seen that Bishop Wilson's recent appeal, which resulted in the collection of nearly £22,000 and the furnishing of a new Southern Cross free of debt, was not for an unnecessary luxury, diverting the gifts of the charitable from more worthy objects.

Patteson Memorial Chapel, St. Barnabas.
Photo]                            [Beattie, Hobart.

Embarking the Cascades, Norfolk Island.
Photo]                            [Beattie, Hobart.

There could, indeed, be no more beautiful surroundings, and no spot better adapted for its purpose, than the site of the Training College of the Melanesian Mission. During a two months' visit paid by the writer, no less than seven Missionaries out of a staff of about twenty were invalided from their tropical parishes with fever and ague, two so hopelessly broken down that they were ordered to leave the Mission permanently, two others doubtful as to the possibility of return. One came back from Mala looking like a picture of a starved victim of the Indian famine. Norfolk Island is a magical restorative to such: an ideal headquarters for the whites, yet not cold enough to be dangerous to the tender tropical lungs of the blacks. The Missionaries, indeed, say that their black scholars are noticeably torpid in the winter compared with the warmer months; but to the visitor they seem lively and cheerful enough, though the chorus of two hundred simultaneous sniffings in chapel of a winter morning brings it home to him that they do feel the cold! Yet, in the heart of winter, the temperature is 65° or more [9/10] at noon in the shade. The golden lemons and guavas and loquats are growing wild literally by the hundred thousand; the foliage is full and beautiful, and varied in form and colour. "The gem of the Pacific" it has been truly called; and surely the change in its history, inhabited as it was formerly by convicts and their worse gaolers, and now by Pitcairn Islanders and sacrificing Missionaries, is a good type of the work of its school--to bring truth and harmony into these Melanesian natures, which had so many noble features, yet were degraded by devilish activities, murder, sensuality and cannibalism.

More prosaically, the Island is adapted for the school by the fertility of its soil, which enables the farm to grow ample vegetable food for the feeding of the boys and girls, and of the sort they have been used to. Kumaras (or sweet potatoes), yams, bananas and oranges, guavas, arrowroot and onions; only the cocoa-nut is missing, and it is a great treat to the boys when the Southern Cross comes from one of her trips to their homes and brings them hampers of these dainties from their parents and friends. The native at home eats little flesh. Pigs are the only animals he possesses, and in the Banks Islands he will save these up until he can give a big feast, costing, perhaps, about £200--and then starve on roots for the next five years! But by this one feast, perhaps, he has gone up one step in his Freemason Society (the Suqe).

It is a remarkable proof of the uncommon common-sense which Bishop Patteson combined with his heroic saintliness that the lines on which he planned the work of the school have not needed to be changed, only carried on to easy [10/11] and natural developments. The life of a lad at the school on Norfolk Island is calculated, not upon all that it would be desired to teach him, if he were to be there for the rest of his life, but upon the native life he has led, and with remembrance that he is going back to live it again, so far as its outer circumstances go. It will be best, perhaps, to give a short sketch of a native boy's life before the moment (so much more eternally eventful for him than he realises) when a Missionary persuades his heathen, naked parents to let him come away and be taught about the good God, and then to see how he is treated at the school, before he is sent back home again. If his life there were made entirely different to what he had to return to, it is easy to see that when he went back home he would find it hard to keep it all in practice, and might drop the whole thing.

A boy, we will call him for convenience Kaura (frigate bird), lives on an island in the Solomons. He wears no clothes. He is thirteen years old. He wakes in the morning at daylight, and, after a ration of bread-fruit or cocoa-nuts, or of the remains of yesterday's meal, goes off fishing on the rocks, if he be not wanted to work in the yam garden, though his father and mother look after that. His father often nurses the small brother or sister at home, and he himself has to take his turn sometimes. (It is significant that our word "mama," the natural cry of an infant to its nurse, in English means "mother." and in Mota exactly the same sound means "father"!) Kaura brings home his fish, and about four o'clock he has his solid meal of the day; after which he lazes and loafs, or [11/12] practises with bow and arrows, or makes himself a new comb of inlaid work, or a sharp, slender nose-ornament shaped, like a bird, which he thrusts straight into the tip of his nose, half an inch deep, so that it sticks out like the prow of a canoe! Time is abundant--more so than occupation; and he has no school, and no word for "history," and no measure of the passing years. The nearest he gets to all three is--"My grandfather remembers that his grandfather told him so-and-so." It is significant to find that Mota has a word for "food" and another for "snack," which shows that Master Kaura eats when he feels inclined, of bananas or bread-fruit or rich, soft, pulpy cocoa-nut--he may polish off four of these latter at a sitting. When darkness falls he has no light, and he yarns and talks scandal till he sleeps. If he wakes in the night, he will have a smoke or wake a friend or two and share a bread-fruit and yarn not too quietly--and so dawn and, da capo.

But a Missionary has arrived, and has asked Kaura's father to let the lad come away in the Southern Cross and be made a Christian. The Missionary says he is coming back to start a school, and the father consents, though suspiciously and not without heartache, for he loves his children and suspects all strangers. Then the Missionary asks, "Now who is this boy going to marry?" Kaura's father, when he was about three years old, bought for three pigs and some yams and other things the two-year-old daughter of another man to be his son's wife. Her name, say, is Kapua. So the Missionary goes off and gets her to be made a Christian too, so that Kaura, when he comes back, can have a Christian [12/15] household as a help against relapse. It is very difficult to secure girls for the boys at Norfolk Island, and Kaura was fortunate in having had one purchased for, and ready to go to Norfolk Island with him.

Melanesian Girls carrying Firewood.
Photo]                            [Beattie, Hobart.

Bishop Patteson's House and old Chapel.
Photo]                            [Beattie, Hobart.

It is a great help to the girls to know that there are white people elsewhere who take an interest in them personally, and maintain them. Take for instance Mahu, the first girl allowed by her parents to come away from Ugi. She was baptised in 1904 by the name of Hilda, and is the namesake of the little girl in whose name she is supported. This connecting link is of incalculable value to both. It widens the horizon of the little white girl, and steadies the dark one.

But to return to Kaura;--the voyage is over, and he, in trousers and a red shirt, and flannel undervest for winter, is now a "tinqoro," or catechumen at St. Barnabas. The only difference between the school life of a "tinqoro" and of a baptised and confirmed boy is that the former has a separate daily service in Bishop Patteson's old chapel, and is not admitted to service with the rest in the Memorial Chapel until just before baptism. A description of a day's life in the school will show how Kaura lives there both before and after he has become what he now is, a regular communicant, and, it is hoped, soon a volunteer for missionary work himself.

The first bell of the day goes at six o'clock, and the bachelor Missionary in whose house Kaura lives sees that his thirty charges turn out from their plank and blanket beds, which stow away by the wall and leave room for a classroom by day. The discipline of the school is a vast change from native [15/16] life; there are seventeen bells a day, and each of them means to do something promptly! The Missionary in whose house a lad lives is his guide and friend; his rooms are open to the boy at all hours; he invites his free confidence in every way; they are at school and at field work and at play together. There is little talk of punishments; the influence of character over unformed character usually suffices. Yet there is no reason to shrink from candidly owning the difficulties caused by the bad points of the Melanesian character. The strictest watch has to be kept lest the temptations of the flesh lead away these boys and girls, whose natures have behind them centuries of ancestry accustomed to sensual indulgence at will. There is now a remarkable improvement, and it is no small point. And, again, even after a lad has for years been a docile Christian, he is liable to fierce, mad bursts of passionate rage, hot as lava. He is really, for the time, mad-possessed; and it often takes a form that the English nature particularly dislikes; not a straightforward attack, but he will go and pull up his enemy's garden, or burn down his house. There is, even at the school, a constant jealousy between the boys of the Northern and Southern islands. A newly arrived Missionary proposed a game of football--North against South. "Whatever you do, don't suggest it," he was told; "we should have arrows flying before evening." Some years back, for a whole day, a fight went on, with arrows and spears flying, between these factions. Fortunately no one was the worse. Occasionally, but very rarely, a boy will break out against a white man. One morning, in the printing shop, the printer, [16/17] a roughish old sailor, saw a boy meddling with type. He gave him a smart tap on the back, and told him to be off. The boy went off and came back to the door with a spear. "Now, you white man," he said," come out and fight; you use your hand, I'll have my spear." He was deprived of the spear, but he got an axe and went and let off his fury by chopping down the gate-post. He was let alone to cool, and next day was quite right and penitent. The same printer who told the incident had a noble story to tell of Bishop John Selwyn. "He was here, by that very table, in this printing-house one day, and one of the boys that he had said something to up and struck him in the face. He went as white as a sheet--he had a terrible temper by nature; but you could see him get hold of himself, and in ten minutes he had that boy in the chapel, praying together."

At seven o'clock, morning and evening--twilight and dawn--the bell in the graceful new belfry (a memorial to Archdeacon Palmer) rings for chapel. To come across a church like the Bishop Patteson Memorial Chapel in the heart of the wild Pacific is truly a surprise. It is just perfect in every detail; a combination of rich material and artistic skill and quiet, harmonious good taste. There is a passage in one of Bishop Patteson's letters which probably dictated the choice of this form of memorial by his friends. He says he has a dream of some day having just one perfect church for his black lads. Gothic in style, with all the possible riches of stained glass windows and marble and carving and sweet organ. and deep chants. But, said he, it must wait; there is so much else [17/18] that is more necessary to provide. And even the visitor who knows old England and the Continent will find here something admirable. European art enriched with South Sea Island inlaying--tortoise-shell, cowrie, and mother-of-pearl. It is perfect, and it is a memorial to Patteson; and John Selwyn prayed and planned here; and wives intercede here for husbands in the islands; and the air seems hushed and very prayerful.

No roll is kept at chapel, and no compulsion used, though presumably if a lad were seen to be very careless he would be sent home. After service in the morning merry, chattery breakfast, Missionaries and all together, in the hall. It is, perhaps, not the least of their sacrifices that the white people give up their privacy, the married at meal times and most of the day, the bachelors practically at all times. They plan to live together with their charges, to teach them habits of life that are almost universal where Christians live together, and that, therefore, may be fairly identified with the teaching of the Christian religion, and are best taught by example. The plan of the school, from Bishop Patteson's time on, has been to let the life of the pupils there remain in many respects the life of a native, with only the differences necessary to produce two results. First, they must have school hours and be taught lessons, Scripture, reading, writing, arithmetic and a little English (it is the writer's belief that the first Mission to start kindergarten methods will create almost a revolution in Missionary modes of work); secondly, some habits must be insisted upon, and may fairly be said to be essential to any Christian, European or native, and may be taught as [18/21] actual parts of the Christian religion. For instance, a boy must wear clothes--must practise cleanliness--must work. These he can be taught at Norfolk Island. And with any steadiness of character he can carry them out still when he gets home again; and he will learn them best by living with people who are careful with clothes, who do work, and are cleanly. The list of habits one would like him to learn might be made a long one. But if there were too many, no doubt he might practise them at Norfolk Island, but each one of them would be a fresh point of temptation to relapse, when back among his heathen brothers and elders. So the school life at the Mission headquarters is a Christianised native life. For broad spaces of the day the boys are free to do as they like. They have their own gardens, where they grow their own fruit and vegetables. They are allowed to build their own little native houses. The white men's rooms are open to them; intercourse is free and happy and genial; and the atmosphere here probably infects the boys with more Christianity of spirit and instinct than they know.

Patteson Memorial Chapel, St. Barnabas.
Photo]                            [Beattie, Hobart.

Banana Plantation: Melanesian Boys Returning from Work.
Photo]                            [Beattie, Hobart.

School from 8.15 to 9.45, then fall in, in the square before the chapel, for a few minutes' drill, and then off in squads every day for field work--every Missionary goes with them, if in health. No black boy, said Bishop Patteson, shall be asked to do anything that a white man won't do with him. Some boys stop at home to cook, a different squad each week, with a Missionary in command. Some stop with the carpenter, others look after the cows. Every one has work, and it is taught that part of a man's duty to God is to work hard [21/22] and honestly, and not to be a loafer, even if he have the chance. Mr. Woodford, Government Commissioner in the Solomons, says that it is the gospel of work the natives want teaching. We thankfully see that this sensible Melanesian Mission (it really is sensible, through and through; sensible in aim and method, in economy and enterprise, in caution and daring), does not neglect either the gospel of work or the telling of the good news of a loving God.

At 12.40 the squads troop back, laughing and shouting at the top of their voices; then for a good wash. "Why should I wash when I get up in the morning?" the Melanesian asks. "I'm clean then; wait till I get dirty, then I'll wash." (But he has to wash!) And so to hall at 1 p.m. fresh and clean. In the hall are portraits of the Bishops of Melanesia and other of its clergy, black and white; also a model of Bishop George Selwyn's craft, the tiny Undine. A few good pictures would be a welcome adornment here. Dinner is all over in twenty minutes, though the whites meet in one another's houses afterwards for a social cup of tea and fruit, till school at 2. From 3 till 6 the lads are as free as if they were at home. Some will go and fish, and then ask for dripping and cook a little snack in their "nat-imas." These are little native houses which groups of boys are allowed to build for themselves; the word means "son of a house," cubbyhouse. There on wet days they have lively romps, or lounge and smoke (every boy must obtain leave to smoke); but on fine days they prefer football or cricket, or an arrow-throwing game of their own. They have their own gardens, and give presents to their white friends from their private fruit supplies. Saturday is a whole [22/25] holiday, and the boys go off to fish all day, with rations of food, so that they need not return till tea time. Or perhaps they will play a match against the "Pitcairners," or amongst themselves.

Nat-ima of Gela Boys
Photo]  [Beattie, Hobart.

"Under the Pines": Houses of Married Melanesians.
Photo]                                       [Beattie, Hobart.

They take cricket more seriously than football; but chaff flies round in abundance. "You'd run, would you?" said Tuanikokopu when he had run out Hugo; "I'll teach you; why, you can't run more than an old woman." They catch a few English expressions, and it is strange to hear, suddenly, emerging from a torrent of liquid, laughing Mota, "Well-plade," or "Ipipoorah," with the quaintest accent. And at football the fun is rollicking and uproarious. The lads play barefooted and the whites in shoes; and when one of the latter slips on the grass, the whole school sits down and roars with merry-hearted laughter and sheer joy. Their football ground, with stately pines and Mount Pitt behind, is of wonderful and park-like beauty.

In August of 1903 a straying kinematograph turned up on Norfolk Island, and an exhibition was given in the Hall; the enjoyment of the boys and girls, who had never seen civilisation or big cities or Coronation processions, was almost frantic. It was curiously real to them. When Clement Marau was told he would see the King and Queen there that evening, he said, "Had not we better clean up the place?" One comic scene represented a railway, and a thief coming in while two passengers sleep, stealing hat and watch from one and off again, and when the sufferer wakes he begins to pound the other innocent sleeper. The girls especially got quite excited, and one called out aloud, "Don't hit him, he didn't do it, it was another man, and he's gone now."

[26] Tea, and chapel, and school till 8.15, preparation until 8.45, bell to turn in at 9.40, when they say their prayers in the white men's rooms; compline, when they are in bed, at ten. So ends the happy day; it is the happiest school I know. The boys do not show great intellectual capacity or special talent in any way. They are fond of music, and spend wet afternoons picking out hymn tunes on plentiful harmoniums: one or two have risen to being quite good organists. Three hymns composed by Clement Marau were sung at his own ordination to the priesthood in July, 1903. Their minds are very direct and concrete; they take home the stories of the Bible, but cannot follow "if" sentences or a train of reasoning; the Epistle to the Romans is generations beyond their capacities yet. Their type of mind is well shown by the way they will themselves tell a story; it is like a worm--might leave off at any joint and still be complete. Here is a description of a visit, taken from their own little newspaper, O Sala Ususur: "We played football every evening, and had matches three times. A priest from Sydney, W., and also S., came here to see St. Barnabas, and stopped in the new house. W. is a valorous man, as tall as Percy Williams, and knows thoroughly about football and cricket. These two helped the white men here to play against the black men, and the blacks won; they gave five pigs, and John Palmer only ate one. (For the credit of Mr. Palmer's appetite, I must explain. To give a pig means to get a goal; if the other side gets one, then, it is said to eat that pig!) After that we played cricket. W. bowled altogether tremendously, and hit almost anything time after time with the bat. After that cricket began to take the place of football."

[27] If ever we may look for a contribution to the common stock of Christian spiritual riches from these islands, it will be in two ways. First, there are being lived, by the converts of the Mission, lives of a simple unflinching heroism that it is inspiring to hear of. The black has this happy advantage; if a fact has been told him by one he trusts, then difficulties as to how it can be never cause him to doubt that it is. For instance, the trefoil illustration used by St. Patrick of old is quite enough for the Melanesian of to-day in explanation of the mode of the Trinity; it is the fact of the Trinity that he grasps, and in the belief of that fact he is capable of volunteering for and persevering in a life of perilous and glad service; such lives are as the jewels on the brow of the Bride of Christ. And secondly, perhaps we may some day draw from the South Seas many fresh and original and vivid Biblical illustrations. They are fond of drawing. They excel at speaking in parables; if they could acquire the skill, their pencil pictures might furnish Bible illustrations as valuable as their word pictures do now.

At last breaking-up day comes. The Southern Cross is in, and about seventy boys and girls are going home in her. Some are going only for a six months' holiday, which they have every two or three years; others for good, to their homes to live as Christians, or to other islands as volunteers for teaching and missionary work themselves; all such work is as voluntary with a black lad as with the white clergy. So there are "old boys" scattered all over these groups of steaming savage coral islands; one of them, perhaps the best product of the Mission (Clement Marau), has written a little book about his life which is very interesting. [27/28] For a week or two after the Southern Cross leaves, school is a sad place. Those whose chums have gone mope about and draw chalk pictures of them, and scribble messages to them on the house-walls. And the Missionaries are anxious, too. It is the test time of their pupils' career. Will those who have gone down to the islands be able to stand against the weight of customary heathenism at home? There are, indeed, many sad failures, and there is no need to be afraid to own that there are; but by the blessing of God we may thankfully say many and many a lad has gone from here and been faithful even unto death to the Master he here learnt to love, and to the habits of work and prayer he learnt to find natural.

As regards results of the work, one who is only a visitor, and has only seen the headquarters and not the work on the actual tropical islands, and does not know the language, must be very cautious how he draws conclusions; more so than with regard to methods of work. But to balance this there is the feeling that results do not nearly so much matter. The Mission is responsible for showing well-planned and reasonable methods and zealous endeavour; it cannot be demanded that the results produced should be correspondingly abundant. I set myself to answer, or get what indications of answer I could, three questions about my black friends who so charmed and fascinated me. First, what are the special difficulties you and your homes offer to the Mission? Then, what sort of Christians are you in church? and what sort of Christians are you out of church?

There are two special difficulties. First, the unhealthiness of the islands. Not a Missionary ever went down yet who did not get fever and ague. It is not [28/29] a question whether you will get it, but whether you will get over it. Bishop Patteson's practice was to go down there for the winter, live as a native on native food in native houses, and bring away as many as he could to be taught in Norfolk Island for the summer. But a change has now been made; the Missionaries go down and stay till they are unable to stand it any longer, then come back to recruit and down again. Steps are taken to lessen the danger of fever. Instead of living in native huts, European houses are being built; two were sent out ready for erection in the new Southern Cross. Also, tinned meats are largely used to supplement native fare. There is a simple heroism about this plan; "Go till you are a wreck, and then come and get fit to go again!" I had as my companion on my visit to the Mission, a cousin, a solicitor: he had not been at all interested in Missions, and I was curious to see what his impression would be. As we were strolling one evening he gave it to me. "My word, the fellows who do this work are real heroes, no doubt about it; and they are so quiet about it too." And the writer would like to express his opinion in the words of an English judge: " I have work, which I think is important, to do here at home; but I take off my hat to the humblest Missionary. He is a better man than I."

The second great difficulty is the extraordinary number of languages. In Fiji there are 150,000 speaking one language; but when you get into the islands of Melanesia, hardly more than five hundred people speak any one language. We are accustomed to apply the idea of evolution to language, and regard all as variations from an original stock. The state of tongues here makes one pause; it is [29/30] such as can hardly square with any such theory, and it almost demands a supernatural act of confusion such as the Biblical Babel to account for it. In one island, fifteen miles long, there are fifteen languages--not dialects, but languages! We shall be mad to ask from the evangelists to such a sphere rapid results. Patteson, Codrington, and Palmer have cleared the way, being gifted with special "gifts of tongues." The printing house is kept hot producing portions of the Bible and Prayer Book, prayer-sheets and hymns in language after language. Many amusing examples might be given of the way that Missionaries have translated a prayer into a new language, and found afterwards how different the sense was to what they intended.

What sort of Christians are these boys and girls at Norfolk Island, in church and out of it? Everyone who has felt the solemn hush of St. Barnabas' will know how I answered the first question. I was indeed told by one of the staff, when I spoke of the intense listening stillness of that congregation during the sermon, that it did not always mean rapt attention--I was not allowed to retain an impression that might be more favourable than the actual truth. Perhaps, too, in the same way, there may be deductions to be made in other respects. But I can honestly say I never saw any gathering of Christians of more simple and suitable reverence, whose outward behaviour during the services so fittingly seemed to reproduce and testify to a genuine spiritual worship within. I cannot believe that it was either drill, or mechanical ritual, or unmeaning imitation. After seeing daily matins and evensong for six weeks, though I cannot speak to the boys about God I am perfectly ready to believe when the staff tell me that these boys are [30/31] intelligent and reverent Christians. And I do not think I ever heard the Communion service so entirely well taken, tones of voice so perfectly matched to meaning, all so successfully reverent and emotional and quiet, as it is by Clement Marau. I am as sure as I can be that he knows deeply what it means.

And these Christian boys' behaviour out of chapel confirms my opinion that theirs is true religion. They do not throw aside all thought of God when chapel and scripture-class are over; during their uncontrolled hours a full half-dozen harmoniums are wheezing (a musical visitor could give wonderful help) and rolls of scripture pictures are being looked over and talked over. They accept God for all day and all the week. Yet the last thing in the world you would say of them is, that they are gloomy. I feel that a religion which so moulds their behaviour in church, and lets them face the round of the day's doings with merriment and manliness, is solid and genuine Christianity.

And I came away from Norfolk Island with this satisfactory feeling about results, that at any rate the supporters of the Mission may feel that they will not have had the results overstated; they will receive sober scrutinising judgments, not a "juicy view of possibilities." When I am told by the Melanesian Mission that a real result has been produced, in an individual or an island, I know that that estimate is not overcoloured, it is judged by a very high standard, and there are real tangible reasons for thinking it has been effected.

STACY WADDY.

All communications should be addressed to The Secretary, and contributions remitted to The Treasurer, Melanesian Mission, The Church House, Westminster, S.W.

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