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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 9

"Tongoa

"Tongoa,

the largest of the Shepherd's group. We arrived there on Sunday morning, the 31st of October. The Flirt, a brigantine, belonging to Auckland, was anchored there. The object of her visit to the New-Hebrides was to get laborers for Fiji. She had on board about twenty natives of Three Hills Island, and three natives of Tongoa. A Tongoa man (a chief) who came on board of the Dayspring, told us that a little before our arrival he went to the Flirt in his canoe to try to get his countrymen off, and that as one of them was attempting to get into the canoe, a white man on board of the Flirt presented a musket and said that if he took that man away he would shoot him. Soon after this, Captain Fraser went on board of the Flirt to see the captain, who told him that he was not kidnapping natives, and that he was not going to take the Three Hills and Tongoa men that he had on board to Fiji, but that he was merely taking them, at their own request, to the neighboring island Epi, to see their friends, and would return them again to their own islands three days after. Their passage to the Epi and back, we were told, they paid with pigs. That afternoon the Flirt weighed anchor and went in the direction of Epi.

"On Monday, November 1st, we had a good deal of intercourse with page 74 the Tongoa people; found them very friendly, and willing to receive either a missionary or teachers. Dr. Geddie promised to bring them two or three Rarotongan teachers ten months hence. Tongoa is a lovely little island, exceedingly fertile, and would form a good station for a missionary. By his boat he could visit all the other islands of the group, and also Three Hills and Epi. Part of the people of Three Hills, and also part of those of Epi speak the same langnage as the Tongoa people. It is a dialect of the Fate language. On Tuesday morning we left Tongoa and came to