The Hawaiian Gazette

The News From the Colonies. By the arrival of the "City of Melbourne" on Friday last we obtain little of interest, with the exception of the sad news of the tragical death of Commodore Goodenough and two seamen of H. M. S. Pearl at Santa Cruz. We quote the following interesting account: Her Majesty's ship Pearl arrived in Sydney Harbor on Monday Aug 23, with the startling intelligence of the massacre of Commodore Goodenough on the island of Santa Cruz. The facts, so far as they may be gathered from the brief official report with which we have been furnished, are that on the 19th of August the Commodore, with some men and officers, landed on Santa Cruz Island, and, encouraged by a friendly reception on five adjacent islands, entered a village, mixed freely with the natives, and were received with apparent friendliness. On preparation being made to embark, however, a single arrow was fired, which wounded the Commodore in the side. After this, several flights of arrows were discharged on the party, five of whom were wounded, the Commodore being wounded a second time in the head. It appears that at first no danger was anticipated from the wounds of the Commodore and the five men; but on Friday evening last the Commodore died from the effects of his wounds, one of the men having died the day before, and another the day after. It is scarcely necessary to inform our readers that it was at Santa Cruz group that Bishop Patteson met his fate. The savages that have just taken the life of the Commodore took the life of the Melanesian Bishop just four years ago. Not only did these two distinguished men receive their fate at the hands of the same race of savages, but there is a remarkable similarity of circumstances connected with the massacres of the Bishop and the Commodore. The Bishop was desirous of visiting the group as a messenger of peace, and the object of the Commodore was the establishment of friendly intercourse. The Bishop it will be remembered, trusted himself in a canoe with the natives, unprotected, as he had always found that the entering one of the native canoes was a sure way of disarming suspicion; and the Commodore and his men trusted themselves in a native village unarmed, the party having left all their arms in the boats. Both the Bishop and the Commodore fell by the deadly arrow, which the savage uses with such perfect skill and with such fatal effect. Two men fell with their chief at the massacre of Bishop Patteson, and two have fallen with Commodore Goodenough. The public sorrow that was created by the intelligence of the murder of the Bishop will still be fresh in many memories; and we need not say that a sorrow as genuine and as deep was felt throughout the city on the publication of the fate that has befallen the Commodore. In some respects Bishop Patteson and Commodore Goodenough occupied two different spheres and exercised two different missions, but both were engaged in the service of humanity, both have been slain by savages whom they sought to conciliate and serve, and both, though dead, will live in the memories and affections of thousands as among the foremost benefactors of men. Other islands in the South Seas have been dishonoured and stained by cruel massacres, but the Santa Cruz group has acquired for itself a savage pre-eminence as the place of the inhuman massacre of both Bishop Patteson and Commodore Goodenough. -Sydney Herald.