align="right">65.  

The Christ-Spirit at Work 66.   The Sinking of the Well 67.   Rain from Below 68.   The Old Chief's Sermon 69.   The First Book and the New Eyes 70.   A Roof-Tree for Jesus 71.   "Knock the Tevil out!" 72.   The Conversion of Youwili 73.   First Communion on Aniwa 74.   The New Social Order 75.   The Orphans and their Biscuits 76.   The Finger-Posts of God 77.   The Gospel in Living Capitals 78.   The Death of Namakei 79.   Christianity and Cocoa-Nuts 80.   Nerwa's Beautiful Farewell 81.   Ruwawa 82.   Litsi 83.   The Conversion of Nasi 84.   The Appeal of Lamu 85.   Wanted! A Steam Auxiliary 86.   My Campaign in Ireland 87.   Scotland's Free-will Offerings 88.   England's Open Door 89.   Farewell Scenes 90.   Welcome to Victoria and Aniwa 91.   Good News from Tanna, 1891

---

MY early days were all spent in the beautiful county of Dumfries, which Scotch folks call the Queen of the South. There, in a small cottage, on the farm of Braehead, in the parish of Kirkmahoe, I was born on the 24th May, 1824. My father, James Paton, was a stocking manufacturer in a small way; and he and his young wife, Janet Jardine Rogerson, lived on terms of warm personal friendship with the "gentleman farmer," so they gave me his son's name, John Gibson; and the curly-haired child of the cottage was soon able to toddle across to the mansion, and became a great pet of the lady there. On my visit to Scotland in 1884 I drove out to Braehead; but we found no cottage, nor trace of a cottage, and amused ourselves by supposing that we could discover by the rising of the grassy mound, the outline where the foundations once had been!

While yet a mere child, five years or so of age, my parents took me to a new home in the ancient village of Torthorwald, about four and a quarter miles from Dumfries, on the road to Lockerbie. At that time, say 1830, Torthorwald was a busy and thriving village, and comparatively populous, with its cottars and crofters, large farmers and small farmers, weavers and shoemakers, doggers and coopers, blacksmiths and tailors. Fifty-five years later, when I visited the scenes of my youth, the village proper was extinct, except for five thatched cottages where the lingering patriarchs were permitted to die slowly away,—soon they too would be swept into the large farms, and their garden plots plowed over, like sixty or seventy others that had been blotted out!

From the Bank Hill, close above our village, and accessible in a walk of fifteen minutes, a view opens to the eye which, despite several easily understood prejudices of mine that may discount any opinion that I offer, still appears to me well worth seeing