BUSH SAFER

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 June 1930, Page 9

BUSH SAFER

CANNIBAL TAMER KILLED Bl LAR

“Abel of Kwato,” the pioneer missionary who had delied death at the hands of the fierce cannibals of New Guinea, returned to England to be fatally injured by a motor car at Leatherhead. He died in Woolwich Hospital at the age of 68. It was in 1890 that Charles Abel went out to New Guinea for the London Missionary Society. His earliest duty was the draining of a. swampy island for a new mission station. He taught the natives how to build, how to make furniture and how to construct boats. Abel also preached the gospel of play, for he was a great athlete. Ao •> student at Cheshunt College, Herts, he skipped an examination to play in ;i county cricket match. He never achieved his ambition of taking a Papuan native team to Australia. but he had the pride of seeing Mr. Bruce, the famous Australian batsman, bowled first ball by one of his boys. Mr. and Mrs. Abel had many hairbreadth adventures. Once they went pioneering with James Chalmers, the famous New Guinea pioneer, up the Aivai River. They were surrounded by war canoes, and 500 arrows were levelled at. the missionaries on the open deck of the launch. Medical work also fell to Mr. Abel’s lot. He once had to amputate a man’s arm with a, hand-saw and three lancets. The patient recovered from the anaesthetic before the job was done, but he smoked a pipe while Mr. Abel bound up the arm and inserted drainage tubes of quills plucked from a live goose. Mrs. Abel, who is an Australian,’is at Kwato with her two sobs and daughter.