In  former  days  a  drinking  meeting  on  the  Sabbath
would  frequently  number  as  many  as  four  hundred."

Their  life  there  was  a  happy  one,  though  not  at  all
devoid  of  hard  work.  Mrs.  Chalmers  engaged  in
active   and    efficient   work,    conducting   classes   of


James  Chalmers  265

women  In  Bible  study,  arithmetic  and  sewing,  visit-
in  the  people  in  their  homes,  and  in  all  things  prov-
ing herself  to  be  what  Chalmers  called  her,  "a  whole-
hearted missionary."

Chalmers'  time  was  filled  up  by  his  classes  for  the
training  of  native  teachers,  visits  to  the  dififerent
stations  on  the  island  and  preaching,  drawing  about
him  and  lifting  up  to  a  higher  life  a  constantly  in-
creasing number  of  natives,  who  grew  to  love  their
Tamate  with  a  love  which  ever  after  made  him  a
cherished  figure  in  their  memories.
But  during  all  the  years  at  Raratonga  he  was  look-
ing forward,  almost  impatiently  at  times,  to  the  day
when  he  might  strike  out  for  the  lands  where  heath-
enism and  savagery  were  rampant,  to  take  the  Gospel
of  Christ  to  those  who  had  never  heard  his  name
and  who  knew  not  of  his  love  for  them.  New  Guinea
had  long  been  the  field  he  had  looked  to.  New
Guinea,  almost  unknown  save  for  a  strip  along  the
coast,  a  coast  fringed  by  treacherous  reefs  over  which
the  waves  of  a  tempestuous  sea  dashed  and
which  seemed  to  forbid  any  attempt  to  reach  that
shore,  a  land  steeped  in  cannibalism  and  unspeakable
degradation,  that  was  the  land  to  which  he  had
longed  to  go.  For  the  task  of  enlightening  its  gloom
with  the  light  of  salvation,  he  considered  his  work
at  Raratonga  but  as  a  course  of  preparation.
