Appeal on Behalf of the Natives of Turtle Island and the Islands in the South Seas & the Pacific.

Ms. in ink. Bifolium with intgral blank & address. Cambridge, Naval Academy, November 1st,

Peter Bays is best known for his 1831 work, A Narrative of the Wreck of the Minerva... He was part of the crew when the Minerva was wrecked in 1829 en route to the Solomon Islands from Port Jackson. Here, a decade later, the Pacific islands are still very much on his mind.

 

Addressed to Wesleyan Mission House, Bays presents a draft of his appeal which he hopes "to present copies of to about 200 friends to the cause, but not without some authority signifying that approbation ... also to insert it as a letter to one of our Editors of Newpapers."

 

Bays makes note of his own gratitude to the Indigenous of Turtle Island, who "spared his life when in most imminent danger and surrounded by murderers and cannibals; to wit, the Feejee Islands, whereon, at that time if a man set his foot he would instantly be felled to earth with a club or spear and devoured - But about a year ago some fifteen native women of LeKemba were butchered and eaten and some of the bones thrown into the Missionary's hut."

 

Here Bays hopes to repay the kindness of the Fijians. Having discovered that "for the trifling sum of £10 a year a native missionary from the Friendly Islands may be procured who will read and expound the scriptures already translated into their own language," his appeal is to give this scheme every chance of success, noting that for "one shilling a year - a penny a month - a farthing a week may be supplied with a native teacher ... would support 14 such missionaries."

Stock Code: 213489