The Hawaiian gazette. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1865-1918, 1908-11-06


When the San Francisco newspapers
arrived ON the Siberia yesterday Homo
lulu was confronted with the news of
the death of the Rev. Hiram Bingham,
The aged missionary of Honolulu, known
to the Christian world as the great
missionary to the Gilbert Islands. The
dispatch was dated Baltimore, October
&c, and stated that DIR. Bingham died
from an operation at the Johns Hopkins
hospital. No previous intimation had
been received here of his death and
even at the Hawaiian Board of Mis-
sions, the officers were 10th to believe
the report to be true.
Theodore Richards said he had read
the report but inasmuch as no cable
gram had been received of such an i'm
portant event in Christian circles, he
could not say whether it might be true
or not. He stated that he had received
4 postal dated October %, from DR..
Bingham, in which the writer stated
he would be operated on the following
day. The dispatch reads:
BALTIMORE, October 26.--Rev. DR..
Hiram Bingham, the noted Congrega-
tional missionary, who underwent sur
gical operation at Johns Hopkins hos
pital last week, died there yesterday.
DIR. Bingham was born in Honolulu in
1881, to which place his parents had
gone from America in 1920 as pioneer
missionaries. In 1856 he went to the
Gilbert Islands as missionary.
Hiram Bingham was born in Honou-
IN August l6, 1881, his parents being
pioneer missionaries to the Hawaiian
Islands. Three years after his gradua-
ron from Yale in 1853 he was married
to Miss Minerva c. Brewster of North
hampton, Massachusetts,, and the young
couple took passage almost Immediately
on the first Morning Star for the Gilbert
Islands. The group lies nearly on the
NHtit utNNi hlbPo
below 76 Thei house, 24x16, received
the significant name of Happy Home
Their food was almost as meager as
John the Baptist's, consisting of fish
eoeoanuts and pandanus lruit. Once g
year the Morning Star brought othel
supplies, but her most precious cargo
was the mailbag.
'fIt was pretty hard" said DIR
Bingham, in an photographed sketch
"to have our first mail appropriated b.
the natives, who thought it was som,
kind of new food. As we visited thei
hints, we found fragments of letters
which we purchased with a hsh-hook Of
some trifle equally dear to the savage
heart, either bopelessly mutilated oil
lost"
There in the tropics, the only white
man ON the island, amid uncongenia
surroundings, he began to "do some
thing" At his ordination his fathel
said to him: "Make yourself mastel
of their language. Translate anC
publish the Scriptures. The Difficult
ties were stupendous. The climate wa
eneryating, his eyesight poor, and aftei
few years he was compelled by i'll
health to remove to Honolulu. But
encouraged by his wife, who was fin'
linguist, he entered upon the task o
actually making language.
He had to collect his own voeabular,
and construct his own grammar. Thi
achievement has not been parallele'
since John Eliot prepared his Bible 70
the Indians. Some ludierous mistake
occurred, as in trying to find Gilbert
csc equivalent for "prayer. " Tn
word used meant "to practise mean
tations," precisely what they were ex
peeted not to dol AT length, in thu
summer Of 1873, they sailed with gla'