THE MELANESIAN MISSION.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1696, 28 July 1879, Page 3

THE MELANESIAN MISSION.

AUCKLAND, July 26. The report of the cruise of the Melanesian mission schooner, Southern Cross, gives generally a hopeful account of the mission. Referring to a visit to Leper Island, Solomon Group, the report says :—“ The part of the island under more special direction of the mission gave many hopeful and promising signs of improvement; but, sad to say, at the other side of the island there was work for the man-of-war as well as for the man of peace, and the massa?re of a labor boat’s crew of six persons, two whites and four blacks, who were cooked and eaten, brought the Wolverine to the island to exact due punishment. The actual instigator, planner, and chief actor in the tragedy was accused and carried prisoner to Fiji, and a heavy fine levied on the people in pigs. It is a matter for much thankfulness that the whole affair was settled without recourse to force of arms, or unnecessary bloodshed. The pacific conduct of the commodore was much appreciated by the natives, when they saw what power he had for destruction, and they are aware that if they perpetrate like deeds of violence they will scarcely get off. The conduct of some whites in these seas is worse and more lawless towards natives than that of the natives towards each other, and in a number of instances the blacks are driven to revenge themselves on ill conducted and bullying whites. But in this case there seems to have been no provocation for so terrible an outrage, the love of slaughter and greed for human flesh being the only reasons assigned for the onslaught. It is awful to think that while at one side of this not very wide island the finger of God is visibly displayed in the reception into the ark of Christ’s flock of four young men, leading daily most good and exemplary lives, standing testimony in themselves of God’s own work, the work of evil is awfully active on the other, prompting such fearful and blood-thirsty deeds as that, unprovoked and without any reason, six human lives could be ruthlessly taken, and the first death blow struck by a tomahawk taken from the boat.”