MELANESIAN GROUP

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 104, 27 January 1931, Page 10

MELANESIAN GROUP

What it Comprises

AIMS OF THE MISSION ' Having aroused considerable interest in England in connection with the Melanesian Mission, the Rt. Rev. F. M. Molyneux, Bishop of Melanesia, returned to New Zealand, where he will remain until April, when he will once more set Sail for the headquarters of his diocese, at Siota, in the Solomon Group. While in New Zealand, Bishop Molyneux hopes to obtain further assistance for mission work in Melanesia, and also funds for a new ship to replace the Southern Cross, which makes the trip to Melanesia twice a year.' Although members of the public frequently see references to Melanesia, many have only a vague idea as to where and what it really is, and what the Melanesian Mission does. Melanesia, "the islands of the black people,” is a name given to a succession of groups of islands beginning with the New Hebrides in the south and extending to the neighbourhood of New Guinea, from about 14 degrees to 7 degrees S. latitude, following the trend of the north-eastern coast of the Australian continent at a distance of about one thousand miles from it. The missionary diocese of Melanesia in its present development comprises three islands of the New Hebrides, the Banks, Torres, Santa Cruz, and Reef Island groups, and the Solomon Islands as far to the north-west as Choiseul, but a further development to include Bougainsville and New Britain is under consideration. The possibility of such advance into unoccupied territories depends almost entirely upon the support vouchsafed by the Home Churches of England, Australia, and New Zealand. The Melanesian -Islands are mostly volcanic, girt by coral reefs, except the Reef Islands, ■which are coral reefs pure and simple, on which vegetation and soil have accumulated. They vary in size from one hundred and twenty miles in length to the smallest dimensions. Groves of cocoanut grow near the beach; the interior is generally a tangle of luxuriant tropical vegetation. Between the shore and the higher ground are often dark swamps overgrown with mangroves, in which the poisonous malarial mosquito is generated. There are scarely any indigenous wild animals, but parrots —green, blue, red, and yellow —abound, and in the Solomon Islands vast flocks of white cockatoos are noisily in evidence. In the Solomon Islands also the swanaps and mouths of streams are infested' by crocodiles. The Melanesians are not black, but bronze, their complexions varying much; many of them being of a very light tint. Their features also vary very much, and there is no doubt that they are a very mixed race. How the Mission Began. The beginning of the Melanesian Mission dates from 1849. when George Augustus Selwyn, first Bishop of New Zealand. visited the islands in his little schooner the Undine, of 22 tons, and had five native boys entrusted to him, whom he brought back to train in his school at •Auckland. Bishop Selwyn started on the principle of making the natives, after they had been trained by him iir Christian truths and baptised and confirmed, missionaries to their own people, with the help and supervision of- English missionary clergymen. “The white corks were to float the black net.” according to the Bishop’s saying. This — ineiple has been followed ever since, w I the result that Christianity has been an indigenous growth, entwining itself with the life of the people. It has never been the aim of the Melanesian Mission to make natives copy European civilisation in dress and mode of life, which are unsuited to them; but to give them, with Christianity the power of true progress, while allowing them to retain everything in-the native life that is not inconsistent with their Christian profession.