[Gordon, James D.]

The Last Martyrs of Eromanga [Erromango]. Being a Memoir of the Rev. George N. Gordon and Ellen Catherine Powell, His Wife.

Halifax. N. S. MacNab and Shaffer, 15 Prince St. 1863. First edition. 8vo (7.5 x 5 inches), original blind-stamped green cloth, gilt lettering, viii, 294 pages. Frontis portrait of the couple. Binding a bit cocked and worn, with nibbling to the joints and a few early thread repairs; some foxing and light bumping and rubbing; a good copy. Item #20424

Posthumous memoirs drawn in part from letters and reports of this missionary and native of Prince Edward Island, who had been killed in 1861 (along with his wife) on the island of Erromango in the Vanuatu archipelago—the killings in part prompted by anger over a measles outbreak. George Gordon had evidently managed to print a catechism in the native Netiyi Tagkeli in 1859 (see Ferguson’s Bibliography of the New Hebrides and a History of the Mission Press), and had at the time of his death been working on translations from the Bible with an eye to publication on a more substantial press in Auckland. George’s brother James (who put together this memoir) himself joined the mission in Erromango in 1864 and was killed by native residents in 1872.

Price: $50.00