John G. Paton, Missionary to the New Hebrides : an
Autobiography. Edited by his Brother. (Hodder and Stoughton.)—This volume opens with a very pleasant picture of Scottish peasant-life and Scottish piety in the opening years of the century. So pleasant is it, indeed, that one is tempted to suppose that distance which lends enchantment to the view has led the writer unintentionally to exaggerate the fine qualities of his parents and the happiness of his youthful days. As a missionary to the New Hebrides, Mr. Paton fought one of the hardest of battles. His life appears to have been in daily and almost hourly danger, and again and again he owed his safety to the splendid courage of his faithful dogs. An unloaded revolver was also of service. After a struggle of four years to maintain his post on the island of Tanna, Mr. Paton, with other missionaries, had to flee for his life, and amply justifies himself for doing so. His greatest obstacle to success was the atrocious conduct of the white traders, whose acts in some instances were like those of fiends rather than of human beings. Men ill with measles were landed on the islands in order, as one Captain said, to sweep the natives away so that white men might occupy the soil. On one occasion they allured a chief on board with the promise of a present, confined him in the hold amongst natives ill with measles, and kept him there with- out food for four-and-twenty hours. Then he was put on shore, having caught the disease, which spread rapidly through the country. So terrible was the plague, that the natives feared to give food or water to the sick, and were afraid sometimes even to bury the dead. " It need not be surprising," Mr. Paton writes, "though we did everything in our power to relieve and save them, that the natives associated us with the white men who had so dreadfully afflicted them, and that their blind thirst for revenge did not draw fine distinctions between the traders and the mis- sionaries. Both were whites,—that was enough." Several mis- sionaries, the best known, perhaps, being John Williams, have died for their faith in the New Hebrides. The autobiography closes with the year 1862 ; but Mr. Paton proposes to con- tinue his narrative, and to relate what has been done since that time towards spreading Christianity and civilisation in these islands, and especially in Aniwa, the whole population of which, owing to the writer's ministrations, has, he says, become
Christian. The book is an interesting record, and would be still more interesting had the writer chiefly confined himself to a statement of facts, and left it to the reader to estimate the faith and self-denial that prompted his labours. He protests too much, and the passages which express the greatest humility are those which we read with the least pleasure. At the same time, it is im- possible to say for how much of this Mr. Paton is responsible, since his brother, who edits the work, writes that he has pruned here and expanded there, and largely modified and recast some sections. This is a mistake, and detracts from the value of the book. If Mr. James Paton wished to rectify mistakes, or to describe events of which he was himself an eye-witness, he might have done so in an appendix.
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