New England in the Life of the World

brought to the Hawaiian Islands the first group of New Englanders impelled the Board which sent them and the Christianized Hawaiians themselves to unite in seeking to uplift the inhabitants of the principal islands among the two thousand that make up Micronesia. The nearest of these islands is twenty-five hundred miles southwest of Hawaii.

The Binghams were assigned to the Gilbert Islands, which lie close to the equator, with a temperature that never drops below seventy-six degrees. There these two New Englanders, the only Christian white persons on the islands, established at Apaiang a home as nearly conforming to the New England ideal as circumstances permitted. Though it was only twenty-four by sixteen feet, it was dignified with the title "Happy Home."

Fish, cocoanuts and pandanus fruit constituted the staples of their diet. For a New England woman with her inherited sense of neatness, it must have been hard for Minerva Clarissa Bingham at first to endure the visits of the natives, who would squat on the mat at her home, leaving a huge grease spot from their well-oiled bodies. Only once a year did the Morning Star with her precious cargo of mail put in at the port. When the first budget arrived, it was appropriated by the natives, who thought it was some new kind of food. Some of the dearly-prized letters were

Born of New England stock in Honolulu, August 16, 1831

A REGENERATOR of the Gilbert Islands, where he began the

noteworthy task of reducing a barbarous language to writing, providing a translation of the Scriptures, hymns and music in Gilbertese, and building up a Christian community.

found later torn into fragments in the huts where the Binghams visited.

Hiram Bingham at once set himself to become master of the Gilbert Islands language. The task involved gathering a vocabulary and constructing a grammar. Despite the enervating climate and his poor eyesight, he was able to produce in the course of twenty years the New Testament in the Gilbertese. Several years later, on his fifty-second birthday, assisted by his scholarly and devoted wife, he began work on the Old Testament. Though still frail in body and embarrassed by the difficulties which the Hebrew tongue presented to his weak eyes, Bingham persevered until, one morning in the spring of 1893, after an absence of nearly thirty years from the United States, he and his wife, with a small group of friends, stood in the Bible House, New York, watching the last verse of the book of Revelation being put into type. A proof was taken and Dr. Bingham read the words aloud in Gilbertese, his voice trembling with emotion. The little company adjourned to the big pressroom, the type was placed in form, the wheels revolved and the last page of the first Bible in Gilbertese was printed. A prayer of thanksgiving and the singing of the Doxology followed.

His next effort was a Gilbertese dictionary. When ready for publication, he loaned the precious manuscript to an Englishman who returned it by a careless

- Erwan Islands the first group LALT Ped the Board which seat the

FLEIRA Hawaiians themselves to unite : life minabitants of the principal A Thousand that make up MienIS DRAPES & these islands is twenty-fr