CHAPTER IX.
When I first landed in Fiji in 1875, nothing amazed me so much as the wonderful work which has there been done by the Wesleyan Mission—a work of which the outside world literally knew nothing. Now that my wanderings have led me further east, I see that different regiments of the great Christian army have each been doing their part in forwarding their Master's cause; and so strangely interesting are many details of their work, which I have now heard for the first time, that I think I cannot do better than note them down, feeling quite convinced that you will find them as new and as full of interest as I myself have done.
The extraordinary success of the South Sea missions is certainly to be attributed in a great measure to that triumph of commonsense which made the various societies agree, almost at the outset, in a great measure to divide the field of labour, and so endeavour to avoid distracting the minds of the simple islanders, by allowing them to perceive that their teachers could possibly disagree among themselves.
In the North Pacific some good working power has doubtless been lost by the establishment in the Sandwich Isles of both an English Episcopal Mission and American Congregationalists. The Dowager Queen Emma is a stanch adherent of the English Church, as was also her husband, who himself translated the prayer-book into the Hawaiian language. But the majority of the people there (as throughout Polynesia) find the less ceremonious forms of religious observance better adapted to their needs.
So the American Board of Foreign Missions, which commenced its work in 1820, met with such success, that within half a
