A Narrative of Missionary Enterprises in the South Sea Islands

London: Published for the author by G. Snow, 1837. First edition. Color frontispiece of Chief of Rarotanga, folding map and numerous plates and textual engravings by G. Baxter. xviii, [ii], 589, [1]pp. 1 vols. 8vo. Bound in three quarters polished mottled modern calf and. First edition. Color frontispiece of Chief of Rarotanga, folding map and numerous plates and textual engravings by G. Baxter. xviii, [ii], 589, [1]pp. 1 vols. 8vo. An enormously popular work appearing in many editions during the nineteenth century.
Hill: "[Williams] was the ablest missionary to the Polynesian people, and his book was the most often printed and widely read of all the contemporary accounts. Williams was sent . . . to the Society Islands in 1816. He traveled about the island, converting the native populations. . . . He made his headquarters at Raiatea, but also visited the Cook Islands and discovered Rarotonga, where he sojourned for a considerable time. He voyaged to Samoa, Tonga and the neighboring islands. He returned to England in 1834 for a four-year period where he commissioned a printing of the New Testament and then translated it into Rarotongan . . . where he sojourned for a considerable time. After a successful speaking tour of England during which time he oversaw the printing of his translation of the New Testament into Rarotongan, he returned to the Pacific in 1838 and while visiting the island of Erromanga he was murdered by cannibals." Hill (2004 ed.) 1875