Missions -- New Guinea; New Guinea -- Description and travel
In 1872, Mr. Murray returned in the _John Williams_ with thirteen
additional teachers, and for the next two years superintended the mission
from Cape York. In 1874, he was joined by the Revs. S. McFarlane and W.
G. Lawes--who have both ever since that time laboured hard and
successfully on behalf of the natives--and the steamer _Ellengowan_ was
placed at the service of the mission by the liberality of the late Miss
Baxter, of Dundee. The native teachers experienced many vicissitudes.
Some died from inability to stand the climate, some were massacred by the
men they were striving to bless; but the gaps were filled up as speedily
as possible, and the map recently issued (Jan. 1885) by the Directors of
the Society shows that on the south-eastern coast of New Guinea, from
Motumotu to East Cape, no less than _thirty-two native teachers_, some of
them New Guinea converts, are now toiling in the service of the Gospel.
In 1877, the Rev. James Chalmers joined the mission, and it is hardly too
much to say that his arrival formed an epoch in its history. He is
wonderfully equipped for the work to which he has, under God's
Providence, put his hand, and is the white man best known to all the
natives along the south coast. From the first he has gone among them
unarmed, and though not unfrequently in imminent peril, has been
marvellously preserved. He has combined the qualities of missionary and
explorer in a very high degree, and while beloved as "Tamate" (Teacher)
by the natives, has added enormously to the stock of our geographical
knowledge of New Guinea, and to our accurate acquaintance with the ways
of thinking, the habits, superstitions, and mode of life of the various
tribes of natives.
Notwithstanding various expensive expeditions for the exploration of New
Guinea, he has travelled the farthest yet into the interior. He has been
as far as Lat. S. 9 degrees 2' and Long. E. 147 degrees 42.5'. The
farthest point reached by Captain Armit was about Lat. S. 9 degrees 35'
and Long. E. 147 degrees 38'. Mr. Morrison merely reached a point on the
Goldie River, when he was attacked and wounded by the natives. This
compelled the party to return to Port Moresby.
Mr. Chalmers is still actively engaged in his work on the great island,
and he has placed many of his journals and papers at the disposal of the
Religious Tract Society, in the hope that their publication may increase
the general store of knowledge about New Guinea, and may also give true
ideas about the natives, the kind of Christian work that is being done in
their midst, and the progress in it that is being made.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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