REMARKABLE CAREER

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21949, 5 November 1934, Page 10

REMARKABLE CAREER

DEATH OF REV. A. DON

WORK AMONG THE CHINESE BORN IN GOLDFIELDS TENT [BY TELEGRAPH —PRESS ASSOCIATION] DUNEDIN, Saturday The death of the Rev. Alexander Don,a veteran missionary of the Presbyterian Church, occurred yesterday in a train in Otago Central when he was returning to Dunedin.

Mr. Don, who was 77 years of age, had retired from active service in the ministry. Born at Ballarat, he was educated at schools in Victoria, and at Otago University. In the course of his career ho was farm hand, hush-fcller, foundry boy, miner and schoolteacher. He became a missionary to the Chineso in Otago and later was the originator of the Canton Village Mission, which was opened in .1901. lie had been Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in New Zealand, also secretary of the Foreign Missions Board. Mr. Don's parents came from Scotland. His father left his home in Auchterarder in the early "fifties,' when the reputation of Ballarat had reached almost every corner of the world. In a digger's tent in Plank Road, Ballarat, Alexander Don, who was the eldest of a family of 10, was born on January 22, 1857. Variety oI Occupations

Before he was 10 years old he left school and for IS months was employed on his grandfather's farm. He followed this with a year's prop-cutting in the Bullabrook forest. Then came six months in a foundry, after which nearly three years were spent in stampfeeding at a mining battery on one of tho Bendigo deep leads. At the age of 15 he returned to school, and after three months' study passed an examination which entitled him to become a pupil teacher. From that stage he went on through the different courses until ho was licensed to teach. He became an assistant teacher in the largest school in Bendigo at the age of 21 years.

A year later Mr. Don came to Dunedin,'and found immediate employment as second assistant in the Port Chalmers District High School. He learned that the Foreign Missions Committee had for two years been seeking a young man who was willing to go to Canton and, aft£r studying there, _ return to work among the Chinese immigrants in Otago, and ho gladly offered his services to the committee.

Great Capacity lor Work For 18 months he worked in Canton and then returned to Otago, being ordained at Lawrence in 1886. He worked in various parts of the province and, in 1889, took up his residence in Dunedin. From that year until his retirement from the position of Chinese missionary. in 1914, the headquarters of the mission were in Dunedin.

Mr. Don's capacity for work was one of his best known characteristics. He tramped thousands of miles over mountain heights and through lonely gullies in search of Chinese to whom to minister, and at the end of a weary day's journey he would sleep in the hut of n Chinese and eat Chinese fare. Year after year he pursued these labours with a fervour that never flagged.

In 1897 and 1898 he made a tour of inspection of Chinese missions in the Sandwich Islands, California, British Columbia, Japan, Shanghai, Hongkong, "Canton, Sydney and Tasmania. From 1914 till 1923 he was secretary of the Foreign Missions Committee of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand. In 1883 he was a member of the Wallace Licensing Committee, and in 1912-13 was on the High Street School Committee in Dunedin. In recognition or his services in China he held the Chinese Seventh Council insignia of the Excellent Crop. Mr. Don was tho author of "Light in Dark Islands," a history of the New Zealand Missions to the New Hebrides.