John G. Paton, Missionary to the New Hebrides, Volume 3 (of 3)

The Autobiography of my brother, Dr. John G. Paton has now, at my urgent entreaty, been continued by him, and carried on to the present year.

It tells the Story of the Life during the twelve years that have elapsed since Part First and Part Second were completed by the Author, and separately given to the world.

The following words from the Preface to an early Edition of the Autobiography are equally applicable to present circumstances: — “The Public hailed it from the first with a welcome so uncommon, and God has in many ways so signally owned and blessed it, that it would be no modesty, but sheer stupidity, on my part, to fail in recognizing that it has been voted a Missionary Classic by the great and free Community of Readers. I have therefore spared no pains in making it as perfect as it is in my power to do, with the help of many minute corrections from friends here and abroad, and also happy suggestions as to matters of detail from the honored Missionary himself.”

In the original Preface when the book was first published in 1889, I said: “The Manuscript of this Volume, put together in a rough draft amid ceaseless and exacting toils, was placed in my hands and left absolutely to my disposal by my beloved brother, the Missionary. It has been to me a labor of perfect love to re-write and revise the same, pruning here and expanding there, and, preparing the whole for the press. In the incidents of personal experience, constituting the larger part of the book, the reader peruses in an almost unaltered form the graphic and simple narrative as it came from my brother’s pen. But, as many sections have been re-cast and largely modified, especially in those Chapters of whose events I was myself an eyewitness, or regarding which I had information at first hand from the parties concerned therein, — and as circumstances make it impossible to submit these in their present shape to my brother before publication, — I must request the Public to lay upon me, and not on him, all responsibility for the final shape in which the Autobiography appears. I publish it because Something tells me there is a blessing in it.”

That belief was abundantly justified. The book has had a great circulation, not only in Great Britain, but also in America, and in the Colonies; and it has been translated, in whole or in part, into many Modern Languages.

JAMES PATON.

Glasgow, February, 1898.

Balboa, governor of Santa Maria, discovered the Southern Ocean in 1513, named it the South Sea, and took possession in the name of the king of Spain. Six years later Magellan sailed through a large portion of it, and called it the Pacific Ocean. In 1569 Mendana discovered and named the Solomon group, and in 1595 the Queen Charlotte group. The New Hebrides were discovered in 1606 by Quiros, who thought he had discovered a great southern continent, and called it the Land of the Holy Spirit. He anchored in port Philip Santo, and tried to establish a city (New Jerusalem) on the bank of the large river Yor, which runs into the bay. But the Spaniards quarrelled with the natives and left it. Quiros sailed to Mexico, but Torres, the senior officer in command, sailed west, discovered and passed through Torres Straits, which bear his name, between Queensland and New Guinea. Boginville discovered that it was not a continent, but a group of islands, that Quiros had discovered, and he named them the Great Cyclades. Bent on discovering new lands, about that period many eminent navigators sailed in the South Sea, but we hear nothing more of the New Hebrides till, in 1767, the famous Captain Cook sailed on his first voyage to observe the transit of Venus at Tahiti. In 1773 Captain Cook returned, and sailed twice through the group, spending forty-six days in exploring and describing every island and the natives with an accuracy scarcely yet surpassed. Believing he had discovered the most westerly group in the South Sea, he gave it its present name, the New Hebrides; but 200 miles southwest he afterward discovered another large island, and called it New Caledonia. He took possession of it in the name of his sovereign, King George the Third; but in 1854, when Britain was engaged in the Crimean war, France took possession of it, and turned it into a large convict station at the door of Australia, to which, by escaped convicts, it is a source of danger and pollution. — J. G. P.

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