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Ngunese Version of the Scriptures

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Ngunese is a language spoken on the island of Nguna, one of the Sandwich Island group, which lies six miles north of Efate, and has a population of about a thousand souls; but from Nguna fourteen islands are visible, with a population of about seven thousand five hundred souls, who use the 'same language, or dialects of the same. The islands, with their population, are as follows: Efate, 3000; Lelapa, 100; Mosa, 200; Pele, 200; Nguna, 1000; Emau, 500; Mataso, 100; Emae, 800; Ewose, 80; Valea, 20; Tongariki, 200; Buninga, 150; south end of Epi, 450. On Emae and the Tonga group different languages are spoken on each side of the islands, but the Ngunese is understood throughout them all. In 1881, at the request of the New Hebrides Mission Synod, the British and Foreign Bible Society published an edition of two thousand copies of the gospels of Matthew and John. The translation was made from the Greek by the Reverend Peter Milne, a missionary of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand, and who for ten years has labored chiefly on Nguna, Pele, and Mataso, each of these islands having a church and a school, with a church attendance of one hundred and fifty, and an attendance at school of one hundred. (B.P.)