When the first wooden sailing ships arrived here there were 500,000 natives living there. They called it the land of fire because of all of the camp-fires lighting up the night. When we arrived there was just one left. The others had been killed off by disease, fighting, starvation and the missionaries. She was in her eighties.
The sea and land was teeming with life. The sailors killed everything in sight. We’re left with the tattered remnants.
It felt like a frontier town.
