CANNIBALISM TO CHRISTIANITY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10037, 6 May 1910, Page 7

CANNIBALISM TO CHRISTIANITY.

"When I went to the New Hebrides over 40 years sgo the inhabitants were all heathens and cannibals. Now they are all Christians, and life and property are perfectly safe," In these words an old patriarch rearing his 80th birthday summed up his life's work in the islands. Eighteen years have elapsed since he last visited Sydney, and when he stepped a shore from the stamur Malaita recently in Sydney he was unable to recognise the city as he had known it. The Rev. Peter Milne chose tlie life of a missionary when in Scotland, and left his native shore ber, 1868, in a sailing ship, which occupied four months on the voyage to New Zealand. He had been chosen for work in the mission field by the Presbyterian Church of Otago, and was the first missionary sent out by that body, in 1869 he arrived at Erromanga,—the scene of the mas-5 sacrecf John Williams- and in the following year he settled in Nguna, in Undine Bay, where he has remained ever since.

"I am on my way to the old world" he explained, "to superintend the printing of the complete Mew Testament in the dialect of my district. This work is to be undertaken by the British and Foreign Bible Society in London. Then I propose to go on to Edinburgh, where other works will be printed. This will be the first time that the New Testament will be printed in the dialect of Nguna, which from the south of Efate to the south-east end of Epi, including Tongca. Portions of the New Testament have been printed at different times during the past thirty years." "Yes, if 1 am spared, I intend to again return to the islands," he said. "1 shall be two years at home, and am getting on in years, but I look forward to resuming my work. This is but the third trip I have had since I commenced my labours in Nguna forty years ago."