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Samoa Under the Sailing Gods

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John Williams died a martyr's death. He was clubbed or speared upon a beach of Eromanga, in the New Hebrides, in 1839. In the old print upon that subject, his stove-pipe hat is shown as floating in the lagoon, while, frock-coated, he is staggering in the water. It was in the New Hebrides, of course, as well as at Savage Island, that the missionaries were known to the benighted heathen as "the bringers of disease." It was not for a quarter of a century—for a similar offence—that they were bombarded by a warship with a missionary aboard—the only occasion, it was recorded, that the man of God had ever been known to smile.1

1 VideJ. L. Brenchley.