Letters from Fijian missionaries and other news items concerning them copied from the Methodist Fiji-language journal Ai Tukutuku Vakalotu.

Mrs McHugh, d.1969, was a daughter of the Rev. A.J. Small, a Methodist missionary to Fiji.

There are two documents, both by Mrs McHugh. The first is an 89pp. typescript entitled 'Memoirs of Rev. A.J. Small, Fiji, 1879-1925', which was produced in a roneoed edition of eight copies. The other, a typescript of eight pages, is entitled 'Some Reminiscences'. It bears the pen-name 'Gone ni Bua' and refers to the period 1891-1925.

John C. Dorrence (pseudonym James Hartley) spent a term as U.S. consul in Fiji. He wrote this study of J.B. Williams and the American claims in Fiji while at the University of Hawaii, basing it largely on unpublished letters in the Peabody Museum, Salem, Massachusetts. A full bibliography is included. The study is dated March 20, 1966.

A study of J.B. Williams' claims against the Fijian chief Cakobau and their impact on Fiji's history in the mid-19th century. Williams (1810-1860) was an official United States representative in Fiji from 1846 until his death in 1860. His claims led ultimately to the Chiefs' Cession of Fiji to Queen Victoria.

Dr William Henry Harvey was a botanist, becoming professor and chair of Botany at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, from 1856 until his death in 1866.

The letters, four in number, give vivid accounts of Dr Harvey's visits to Tonga and Fiji in the latter half of 1855 during the course of a world tour. The letters are addressed to Harvey's sister Hannah (Mrs Hannah Harvey Todhunter) and his niece Mary (Mary Christy Harvey). Dr Harvey was particularly interested in algae; but he also investigated other aspects of the natural history of Tonga and Fiji, and wrote at length of a religious revival in Tonga and cannibalism in Fiji. (Twenty-six other letters of Dr Harvey, dealing with other aspects of his world tour, which took in Gilbraltar, Malta, Ceylon, Australia and New Zealand, are deposited in the library of Trinity College, Dublin). See also the Bureau's newsletter PAMBU, March 1968: 8, pp.1-4.

Captain William Driver (1803-1886) was born Salem, Massachusetts, USA. He went to sea aged 14, and made his first voyage to Fiji in quest of beche-de-mer in September, 1872, in the ship Clay under Captain Benjamin Vanderford. He spent 49 months in the South Seas beche-de-mer trade before returning to Salem. Given command of the Charles Doggett, he sailed for the Pacific again in January, 1831. He remained at sea until 1837 when he retired to Nashville, Tennessee.

The logbook is for the voyage of the Charles Doggett. It begins on January 30, 1831, when the ship was 2,098 sea miles from Salem en route to New Zealand, and ends in March, 1832, when the ship was gathering a cargo of beche-de-mer in Fiji. In the interval, calls were made at Tubuai, Tahiti (French Polynesia), Pitcairn Island, Samoa, Tahiti and Niuatoputapu (Tonga). Driver's visit to Pitcairn Island from Tahiti was for the purpose of returning 65 descendants of the Bounty mutineers, who had been moved from Pitcairn to Tahiti four months earlier as it was feared that their island was becoming overpopulated. Driver describes this episode in some detail in an 1871 memoir accompanying his logbook of the Charles Doggett.
See also the Bureau's newsletter Pambu, December 1969:17.

Isobel Whippy was in Fiji from 1963. She wrote several short plays for school children from 1968 onward. 'Pritchard' was her first major drama, which won a $100 prize in a drama contest for the South Pacific Festival of Arts in Suva in May 1972.

The play concerns the first British Consul in Fiji, William Thomas Pritchard, who arrived in Levuka in September 1858 and was dismissed from his post in January 1863. It is based on a theory that the Consul lost his job because of a love affair with a young woman - possibly a part-European - who gave birth to two children by Pritchard, before he married her in the British Consulate in Levuka a few days after his dismissal. The play is in two acts - the first covering the period from September 1858 to June 1859; the second from November 1859 to July 1862. There is an epilogue concerning the year 1864.

All Saints School, Labasa, on the island of Vanua Levu in Fiji, was established by the Anglican Mission in Fiji around 1904.
The logbooks are chronicles of the notable events in the day-to-day affairs of the school.

James Valentine Tarte (1837-1918) was born in England and migrated to Ballarat, VIC, Australia in 1857. He went to Fiji in 1869 and took up land on Taveuni where he remained until his death. Some of his descendants still have plantations on Taveuni (1972).

The document is a duplicate typescript. The reminiscences were probably written by hand originally, but the whereabouts of a manuscript is not known. Nor is it known where the original typescript is. The last page(s) of the present copy are missing, and there is nothing to indicate exactly when the document was written. However, the author states on P.17 that he wishes he could 'put the clock back 50 years'; on p.13 he indicates that he was writing in Brisbane; and on p.30 he says; 'I am writing this for my two sons ...' It is an entertaining account of Tarte's early life in England, his journey to Australia, the early years of Ballarat, financial losses and departure for Fiji, his purchase of land on Taveuni and establishment of a cotton plantation, his marriage to Clara Berry in March, 1871 (the first European wedding in Fiji), his purchase of additional land and construction of a sugar mill, his venture into coffee and cattle, and the vicissitudes of plantation life.