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Sudhi R. Sinha
Youngchoon Park

Building an
Effective IoT
Ecosystem for Your
Business
Building an Effective IoT Ecosystem
for Your Business
Sudhi R. Sinha • Youngchoon Park

Building an Effective IoT


Ecosystem for Your Business

Foreword by Scott Guthrie


Sudhi R. Sinha Youngchoon Park
Johnson Controls International Johnson Controls International
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

ISBN 978-3-319-57390-8    ISBN 978-3-319-57391-5 (eBook)


DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57391-5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017942806

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017


This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of
the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation,
broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information
storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the
editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors
or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims
in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Printed on acid-free paper

This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature


The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To my lovely better half Ms. Sohini
Sengupta—the pillar behind all my
adventures and successes. Without your
support, encouragement, and patience,
none of this would have taken shape.
– Sudhi
To my dear wife Ms. Jungeun Kim
and my children Hannah Park and Eugene
Park—you are the force behind my success.
– Dr. Youngchoon Park
Foreword

https://news.microsoft.com/exec/scott-guthrie/#bjRibuwYG4LSbv41.97
The Internet of Things (IoT) represents an opportunity to drive a step-change
improvement in what continues to be the core mission of every company: deliver
great products and delight customers. IoT enables continuous learning from your
customers (and how they use your products) that eventually will give companies
sustainable advantage. At the heart of this process lies the creation of a Digital
Feedback Loop, which is only possible if signals from customers, employees, and
operations are digital. As such, every enterprise must embark on Digital
Transformation to succeed in this new paradigm. IoT is emerging as the foundation
for the digital feedback loop due to the confluence of the continuation of Moore’s
law to provide affordable and progressively advancing compute technology and step
changes in communication technology.

Sudhi Sinha and Dr. Youngchoon Park are close partners to Microsoft in their
official capacity at Johnson Controls and have been working on enabling the digital
feedback loop as a key element of the digital transformation for Johnson Controls
with advanced projects such as connected chillers and others. Their book is written
by practitioners that have embarked on this critical journey for an established and
highly valued company. The lessons learned and their experiences will help you on
your journey to drive digital transformation to deliver great products and delight
your customers.

Microsoft Cloud and Enterprise Group Scott Guthrie

vii
Acknowledgments

We feel incredibly lucky to have worked on this project, our labor of love. This is a
milestone in our quest for learning about and furthering the space of IoT, which we
think will fundamentally transform the way we live and interact in this world. There
are many people who have helped us in this journey, and without their contribution,
none of this would have come to life.
We would first like to thank Mr. Bill Jackson, President of Global Products in
Johnson Controls, who encouraged us, challenged us, and supported us for this
project. You make everybody who comes in your contact a better person and profes-
sional. We would also like to thank Uli Homman, Distinguished Architect at
Microsoft, for being a major supporter for us. We thank Karl Reichenberger,
Director of IP and Legal for Johnson Controls, who painfully went through the
material to ensure that we have the right IP protection and confidentiality for
Johnson Controls; Karl was also a key input provider to our work; he is not only a
brilliant lawyer but an excellent engineer as well. We thank our colleagues in the
academia Prof. AnHai Doan of UW-Madison, Prof. Subbarao Kambhampati and
Prof. Selcuk Candan of Arizona State University, Prof. Jignesh Patel of UW-Madison,
Prof. Mario Berges of Carnegie Mellon University, and Prof. Alexis Abramson of
CWRU for the discussions that helped shape many of our thoughts. We express our
gratitude to Ms. Susan Lagerstrom-Fife of Springer and her associate Ms. Sasikumar
Sharmila from SPi Global for giving us valuable inputs and keeping us on track.
Last but not least, we thank our publisher.

ix
Contents

1 Building an IoT Ecosystem Framework............................................... 1


1.1 IoT Ecosystem Development Framework........................................ 2
1.1.1 Smart Connected Things...................................................... 2
1.1.2 Aggregate and Enrich: Gateway........................................... 4
1.1.3 Network Services................................................................. 5
1.1.4 Device Management............................................................. 7
1.1.5 Data Routing and Real-Time Analysis................................. 8
1.1.6 IoT Data Platform................................................................ 10
1.1.7 Data Service Platform.......................................................... 11
1.1.8 Analytics.............................................................................. 13
1.1.9 Security, Identity, and Privacy Management........................ 15
1.1.10 Delivery................................................................................ 17
1.1.11 Business Support.................................................................. 18
1.2 IoT Partnering Strategy.................................................................... 18
1.3 Summary.......................................................................................... 19
References................................................................................................. 19
2 Making Devices Smart............................................................................ 21
2.1 Defining a Smart Device.................................................................. 22
2.2 Common Hardware Components..................................................... 22
2.2.1 Processing Units................................................................... 22
2.2.2 Storage.................................................................................. 24
2.2.3 Powering Smart Devices...................................................... 25
2.2.4 Sensors................................................................................. 25
2.2.5 Outputs................................................................................. 26
2.3 Edge Computing.............................................................................. 27
2.3.1 Frameworks for Edge Computing........................................ 27
2.4 Making Device Secure..................................................................... 27
2.4.1 Secure Boot.......................................................................... 28
2.4.2 Secure Software Download.................................................. 29
2.4.3 Secure Software Update....................................................... 29

xi
xii Contents

2.5 Different Communication Techniques for Devices.......................... 30


2.6 Building Communication Capabilities in Devices........................... 32
2.6.1 Making Devices Network with Other Devices..................... 33
2.7 Summary.......................................................................................... 34
References................................................................................................. 35
3 Creating Smart Gateway........................................................................ 37
3.1 Hardware Components of a Gateway............................................... 38
3.2 Software Components of a Gateway................................................ 39
3.2.1 Core Software Services of a Gateway.................................. 40
3.3 Types of Gateways and Deployment Topologies............................. 42
3.3.1 Software Update of the Gateway.......................................... 43
3.3.2 Registration of a Gateway to Cloud Service........................ 44
3.4 Summary.......................................................................................... 46
References................................................................................................. 46
4 Building Network Services..................................................................... 49
4.1 Popular Communication Protocols.................................................. 50
4.2 Infrastructure Layer Protocols......................................................... 50
4.2.1 IEEE 802.15.4...................................................................... 50
4.2.2 6LoWPAN............................................................................ 51
4.3 Application Layer Protocols for IoT................................................ 53
4.3.1 Publish and Subscribe Pattern.............................................. 53
4.3.2 MQTT.................................................................................. 54
4.3.3 AMQP (Advanced Message Queuing Protocol).................. 55
4.3.4 CoAP.................................................................................... 56
4.4 Choosing the Optimal Communication Protocols
for Your IoT Devices and Ecosystem............................................... 57
4.5 Interoperability Among Multiple Protocols..................................... 58
4.6 Handling Multi-Carrier Situation..................................................... 58
4.7 Monitoring and Optimizing Network Performance......................... 59
4.8 Summary.......................................................................................... 60
References................................................................................................. 60
5 Managing Devices................................................................................... 63
5.1 Provisioning and Authentication...................................................... 63
5.2 Registration...................................................................................... 64
5.2.1 Device Manifesto................................................................. 65
5.2.2 Gateway Registration........................................................... 65
5.2.3 Claiming Device................................................................... 66
5.3 Configuration Management.............................................................. 68
5.4 Real-Time Monitoring and Management......................................... 70
5.5 Developer Support............................................................................ 71
5.6 Summary.......................................................................................... 71
References................................................................................................. 72
Contents xiii

6 Performing Data Routing and Real-Time Analysis............................. 75


6.1 Data Acquisition Strategy for Connected Products.......................... 76
6.2 Introduction to Stream Processing with IoT Relevant Use Cases.... 77
6.3 System Design Pattern for Stream Processing................................. 80
6.3.1 Lambda vs. Kappa Architecture........................................... 80
6.3.2 Stream Processing Systems.................................................. 81
6.3.3 Stream Processing Framework............................................. 83
6.4 Rule-Based Complex Event Processing........................................... 86
6.4.1 Common Techniques for Identifying Meaningful Events.... 88
6.5 Summary.......................................................................................... 92
References................................................................................................. 93
7 Constructing Data Service Platform..................................................... 95
7.1 Differences in Data Platform Between Traditional Enterprise
Application Systems and IoT Ecosystems....................................... 97
7.1.1 Enterprise Data Warehouse.................................................. 98
7.1.2 Data Lake............................................................................. 98
7.2 Introducing IoT Data Management and Processing
Technologies.................................................................................... 101
7.2.1 Storage Layer....................................................................... 101
7.2.2 Information Management Layer.......................................... 103
7.2.3 Data Access and System Management Layer...................... 103
7.2.4 Data Acquisition: Transformation, Ingress
& Egress Tools and Services................................................ 104
7.3 Storage and Indexing........................................................................ 109
7.3.1 Example: Data Models for an IoT-Enabled Field
Service Applications............................................................. 111
7.4 Unified IoT Data Management and Processing............................... 112
7.4.1 Real-Time vs. Batch Processing........................................... 113
7.4.2 Batch Processing Framework............................................... 114
7.4.3 Real-Time Processing Frameworks...................................... 114
7.5 Data Services.................................................................................... 115
7.5.1 Importance of Master Data Service...................................... 116
7.5.2 Managing Time Series and Common Operations................ 117
7.5.3 Modeling and Managing Metadata...................................... 119
7.6 Monitoring and Managing Data Platform........................................ 120
7.7 Summary.......................................................................................... 120
References................................................................................................. 120
8 Performing Analytics.............................................................................. 123
8.1 Different Types of Data and Analytic Approaches.......................... 124
8.1.1 Qualitative vs. Quantitative.................................................. 124
8.1.2 Descriptive vs. Predictive vs. Prescriptive........................... 124
8.2 Example of Predictive Maintenance in Service Industry................. 126
8.2.1 Data Gathering and Feature Engineering............................. 127
8.2.2 Develop a Failure Prediction Model.................................... 129
xiv Contents

8.2.3 Data Requirements to Build Reliable Models...................... 132


8.2.4 Improving Models and Data Challenges.............................. 132
8.2.5 Merging Domain and Data Context for Building
Powerful Analytics............................................................... 134
8.3 Understanding Why Different Analytical Techniques
Are Required.................................................................................... 134
8.4 Building Your Analytical Platform................................................... 136
8.4.1 Tools and Programming....................................................... 137
8.5 Maintaining Your Analytical Effectiveness...................................... 138
8.6 Summary.......................................................................................... 139
References................................................................................................. 139
9 Closing the Loop for Value Capture...................................................... 141
9.1 Understanding the Needs of an Effective Delivery Ecosystem........ 142
9.2 Defining a Framework for Business Support Ecosystem................. 143
9.3 Delivering Customer Success........................................................... 145
9.4 Selecting Your Tools and Target Systems......................................... 146
9.5 Distributing Data Products Electronically....................................... 147
9.5.1 Demonstrating Value of Current Offerings.......................... 147
9.5.2 Positioning New Offerings................................................... 148
9.5.3 Implementing Monetization Infrastructure.......................... 148
9.6 Creating Systems for Your Channel Partners
to Transact Business......................................................................... 149
9.7 Integrating with Your Enterprise IT Systems Effectively................ 151
9.8 Engaging Your Stakeholders Through Reporting............................. 152
9.9 Summary.......................................................................................... 153
References................................................................................................. 154
10 Dealing with Security, Privacy, Access Control,
and Compliance....................................................................................... 155
10.1 Introduction.................................................................................... 155
10.2 Understanding the Threat Vectors in the World of IoT.................. 156
10.3 Learning About the Various Industry Standards and Available
Resources....................................................................................... 158
10.4 Recognizing Data Privacy and Ownership Concerns..................... 160
10.4.1 Data Ownership................................................................. 160
10.4.2 Rights Around Derivative Use of Data.............................. 161
10.4.3 Dynamic Decision Rights.................................................. 161
10.4.4 Consumer Awareness......................................................... 161
10.4.5 Privacy Rights.................................................................... 161
10.4.6 De-aggregation Standards for Data Privacy....................... 162
10.4.7 Liability.............................................................................. 162
10.4.8 Reliability and Accuracy Standards................................... 162
10.4.9 Trustworthiness.................................................................. 163
Contents xv

10.5 Understanding Popular and Modern Technologies


and Standards................................................................................. 163
10.5.1 Encryption.......................................................................... 163
10.5.2 Malware Analysis............................................................... 164
10.5.3 Intrusion Detection Systems.............................................. 165
10.5.4 Blockchain......................................................................... 166
10.5.5 Context-aware Behavior Analysis...................................... 167
10.6 Implementing Security Policies and Practices............................... 168
10.7 Securing Data and Insights............................................................ 170
10.8 Building Risk Management and Compliance Program.................. 171
10.9 Auditing Security and Privacy Effectiveness................................. 173
10.10 Managing Attacks and Communicating Effectively...................... 174
10.11 Summary........................................................................................ 175
References................................................................................................. 175
11 Strengthening Your Technology and Partner Ecosystem.................... 177
11.1 Introduction.................................................................................... 177
11.2 Defining 3-Dimensional Capability Model.................................... 179
11.3 Deciding Where, When and Why Partners Are Required.............. 181
11.3.1 Partner Classification......................................................... 182
11.3.2 Engagement Drivers........................................................... 183
11.3.3 Engagement Models.......................................................... 184
11.4 Evaluating Technologies................................................................ 186
11.5 Building a Partner Selection Framework....................................... 188
11.6 Engaging with and Onboarding Partners....................................... 190
11.7 Investing in Relationships.............................................................. 194
11.8 Driving Change in Your Organization to Work Effectively
with Partners................................................................................... 195
11.9 Keeping Your Options Open: Elements of Design
in Technology and Services........................................................... 196
11.10 Monitoring Partner Effectiveness................................................... 197
11.11 Summary........................................................................................ 198
References................................................................................................. 199
12 Developing and Improving User Experiences...................................... 201
12.1 Introduction.................................................................................... 201
12.2 Understanding How IoT Drives Design and User Experience
Differently...................................................................................... 202
12.3 Recognizing the Psychology Behind User Expectations............... 206
12.3.1 Drivers for User Expectations............................................ 206
12.3.2 User Research.................................................................... 207
12.4 Implementing Converged Customer Experience........................... 211
12.5 Leveraging User Experience and Design to Drive
Differentiated Growth.................................................................... 213
xvi Contents

12.6 Building Design Language System................................................ 214


12.6.1 Definition........................................................................... 214
12.6.2 Components of Design Language Systems....................... 215
12.6.3 Methodology...................................................................... 217
12.6.4 Socialization and Review Process...................................... 219
12.6.5 IP Review for Design Language........................................ 220
12.7 Training Your Organization on Design Language.......................... 221
12.8 Maintaining Your Design Language System.................................. 223
12.9 Summary........................................................................................ 223
References................................................................................................. 224
13 Marketing Your IoT Initiatives.............................................................. 225
13.1 Understanding the Significance of Marketing
for IoT Initiatives........................................................................... 226
13.2 Introducing the Product-Patent-Publicity Framework................... 228
13.2.1 Products............................................................................. 229
13.2.2 Patents................................................................................ 230
13.2.3 Publicity............................................................................. 231
13.3 Integrating IoT Marketing Efforts with Your Overall
Organizational Marketing Program................................................ 232
13.4 Integrating Marketing into Your Product Strategy and Design...... 233
13.5 Managing Social Media Marketing Effectively............................. 234
13.6 Summary........................................................................................ 237
References................................................................................................. 238
14 Monetizing Your IoT Efforts.................................................................. 239
14.1 Introduction.................................................................................... 239
14.2 Understanding How IoT Creates New Value
and Business Models...................................................................... 240
14.3 Adapting to Unanticipated Opportunities...................................... 245
14.4 Developing a Framework for Determining Value of Data
Insights and Outcome..................................................................... 247
14.5 Organizing Your Business Differently to Leverage
New Business Opportunities.......................................................... 250
14.6 Planning to Safeguard Your Current Economic Models
While Pursuing New Business Models.......................................... 258
14.7 Summary........................................................................................ 260
References................................................................................................. 260
15 Building a Winning Team....................................................................... 261
15.1 Identifying What Is Different About IoT Businesses..................... 262
15.1.1 Product Development and Support.................................... 262
15.1.2 Product Management and Marketing................................. 263
15.2 Understanding the Different Capabilities Required
for Offering Development.............................................................. 263
15.2.1 UX Researcher................................................................... 264
Contents xvii

15.2.2 UX Designer...................................................................... 264


15.2.3 Industrial Designer............................................................. 265
15.2.4 Technology Researcher...................................................... 265
15.2.5 Data Scientist..................................................................... 266
15.2.6 Platform Developers.......................................................... 267
15.2.7 Application Developers...................................................... 268
15.2.8 Hardware Engineers........................................................... 269
15.2.9 Compliance Specialists...................................................... 269
15.3 Organizing Teams for Success....................................................... 270
15.3.1 Functions............................................................................ 270
15.3.2 Review Cadence................................................................. 272
15.3.3 Leadership Attributes......................................................... 272
15.4 Recruiting the Best Talent.............................................................. 273
15.5 Motivating the Team...................................................................... 275
15.6 Tapping into the Educational Ecosystem....................................... 277
15.7 Summary........................................................................................ 278
References................................................................................................. 278
Chapter 1
Building an IoT Ecosystem Framework

“You don't have to be a genius or a visionary or even a college


graduate to be successful. You just need a framework and a
dream.”
—Michael Dell

Transformative technologies have historically revolutionized the way industry


works, not because a single new technology is created, but rather because consensus
around a group of existing and emerging technologies emerges that provides a cohe-
sive way to think about business innovation. We are now at the cusp of such a trans-
formation with technologies around the Internet of Things (IoT) [1–3].
Surprisingly, the raw ingredients that go into composing the DNA of IoT include
the very things that many industries have practiced at smaller scales and higher
costs for decades. These ingredients are embedded sensors, networking, connected
components, cloud computing, data analytics, and reactive services. Arguably,
many industry leaders have silently pioneered many of the core technologies and
innovative business models that are needed to take controls into the IoT era. There
are significant additional opportunities for both technological and business growth
by building on connected products and services. One way to cast this future vision
is to think of evolving business models, establishing new customer relationships,
galvanizing organizational change, and creating new technological core competen-
cies in reshaping the business based on connected products, services and collected
data along the life-cycle of products [4–6].
In this chapter, we present the IoT framework that represents the key components
and technologies to deliver an end-to-end solution for connected products and ser-
vices. In order to understand the framework, we will first look at the generalized
view of IoT from the platform perspective, then the applied framework specific to
industrial equipment service management. This chapter will form the basis of the
next few chapters where each of the components will be explained in great details.

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017 1


S.R. Sinha, Y. Park, Building an Effective IoT Ecosystem for Your Business,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-57391-5_1
2 1 Building an IoT Ecosystem Framework

1.1 IoT Ecosystem Development Framework

As IoT evolves and enables completely new markets, we need to create an ecosys-
tem of alliance partners to help us get to market faster, share risks and create win-­
win situations with them. We need to understand where we can bring value and
where we need help.
Authors believe that IoT will change a way to do business today, current business
value chain in a market and perceived values from connected products and services
will change. Traditional transaction-based product business will be transformed into
life-cycle management. An IoT ecosystem must be able to capture and model them
as they evolve during the product lifecycle [6, 7].
We should be able to capture every event that a connected product will generate
during its life cycle. Each event may lead different values for OEM, a service pro-
vider, a user and other involved entities. IoT ecosystem must able to model such
value distribution dynamics and must provide value protection mechanism (e.g.,
access control and authorization) for parties who are in the value distribution.
As part of the ecosystem design, we have developed a referenceable framework
that helps technology partnering strategy map (see Fig. 1.1). Each vertical repre-
sents technology components that could be developed in-house, purchased from or
co-developed with a vendor or partner.

1.1.1 Smart Connected Things

A smart connected thing or smart device is defined as one which has communica-
tion capabilities, compute power, and can make decisions at a local level in a limited
context [8]. Communication can be through any wireless or wired mechanism.
Typically, wireless methods are preferred because it eliminates the cost of wiring

Fig. 1.1 A proposed IoT ecosystem development framework


1.1 IoT Ecosystem Development Framework 3

and labor associated with it; unless the devices are leveraging already established
wired communication methods like any present IP backbone. Compute power is
enabled by a microprocessor chip with an embedded operating system like Linux,
Android, iOS, RTOS, Windows 10 IoT. The computing power is used to store data
locally and temporarily in the device and execute pre-determined decision trees.
Increasingly we are seeing local level limited isolated fault detection and diagnos-
tics being performed within the devices. Since there is an abundance of computing
power in the devices, basic fault response capabilities might make the device more
adaptive and responsive to changing environmental/operational conditions [9].
They are things like LED lights, mobile phones, smart street lamps, cars, televi-
sions, and actuators with embedded intelligence and communication capabilities.
They connect to other smart things, and remote services. Connected products allow
the OEM to know more about how customers use its products, to broaden the value
proposition beyond the physical product, to include valuable data and value-added
services, and form closer relationships with customers. Manufacturers must con-
sider multiple connection types while developing connected products. A product
could be connected to a home, an infrastructure, an owner, OEM, another service
provider, an enterprise and other smart connected things [6, 10]. Figure 1.2 illus-
trates a software, more specifically an operating system level, an architecture for a
smart thing by [11].

Applications Community Libraries

C++ APIs

Event Framework Communications Management

Threads CoAP, HTTP, MQTT, LWM2M

TLS, DTLS
Device Management
Bootstrap, Security, FOTA IPv4, IPv6 6LoWPAN

Crypto & Device Security


2G
3G

CMSIS Drivers

Cortex-M Sensors Radio

Fig. 1.2 An example of Smart thing architecture. ARM’s reference architecture for IoT
development
4 1 Building an IoT Ecosystem Framework

When devices are not smart but need to be part of an IoT ecosystem, we see
device or field gateways being used as a proxy to allow communication over public
or private networks using fully secure defensible server platforms with high capa-
bility hardware. We will further discuss gateways in the next section.

1.1.2 Aggregate and Enrich: Gateway

The IoT will include not just modern IoT-enabled devices but also systems that are
already in place today and operate outside of the cloud-based IoT solutions such as
legacy controls systems. Those legacy devices that are not IP-based e.g., still most
field control devices in manufacturing industries are based on OPC [12], Modbus
[13], and BACnet [14] that are based on non-Internet based to connect cloud ser-
vices or other devices without full Ethernet or Wi-Fi interface. In order to build
applications on top of those protocols, these protocols have to be converted into
Internet Protocol (IP). The IoT gateway is a soft component or a physical device
with embedded software components that performs such translation.
A typical gateway solution has many functions:
1. Discover and communicate with legacy devices through non-internet based
protocols
2. Translate and transport acquired data and command via Internet protocol
3. Optimize the cost of communication between the device and rest of digital world
4. Identify the resources contained in the devices
5. Perform semantic mediation of the data coming from the devices i.e. naming
translation of data obtained from devices for global consumption in a standard-
ized manner
Smart gateways allow smart devices to make an outbound connection to a public
or private cloud which is used for further storage and processing in your IoT ecosys-
tem. In order for the data to be consumed by the various software applications,
RESTful API, CoAP, HTTP(s), AMQP, MQTT protocols are needed to provide con-
textual information on the data [8, 15]. APIs are definitely widespread today and are
used by many corporations to use their own data for building applications and share
data with the external world using a clean abstraction.
Not only supporting various transmission and application protocols but also, an
IoT gateway often provides network security, access control, unique internet address
(e.g., a RESTful endpoint) of legacy devices’ endpoints for remote access and pro-
tocol mediation services. Pretty much every chip and hardware manufacturers
including Intel, Freescale, Dell and Texas Instruments offer general-purpose gate-
way solutions.
In their implementation, smart gateways will have field gateway aspects which
primarily deal with the devices and cloud gateway aspects that enable high-scale
telemetry ingestion, device identification, device management, and cloud-to-device
commanding (when allowed). When there is a high density of devices in a location,
1.1 IoT Ecosystem Development Framework 5

we have seen one or many field gateways connecting through one cloud gateway. In
your home, several smart devices like the security system, TV, refrigerator, music
systems, printers, computers, washing machine, dishwasher, coffee maker, etc.
could have elements of field gateways built into them and you could use a singular
home automation device to act as the cloud gateway. In a manufacturing or process
plant, individual production line machines will typically have field gateways built
into them and connect via some common cloud gateway organized by production
lines, processes or zones. Similarly in an office building, for the HVAC system,
there will be dozens of devices and hundreds of sensors with smart field gateway
capabilities connected through a common cloud gateway. These are just some of the
examples of how IoT devices will connect. Several device manufacturers are build-
ing direct cloud connectivity and will try to position their own cloud solution for
data and analytics. You need to make decisions based on at what level of aggregation
does your business or needs get best served and who can solve your needs best—
you or a particular solution provider. If you are sourcing IoT devices from multiple
places, look for easy connectivity to your platform; if you are a device manufac-
turer, make connectivity to your device easy to make it attractive for wide
adoption.
In summary, a gateway can be considered as a network router (i.e., bridging the
intranet and the internet) with a legacy and IoT-enabled device integration device to
enable internet-based data exchange as well as to share wide area network connec-
tivity. It must support flexible deployment topologies to accommodate various cus-
tomers’ network constraints and support open IoT protocols such as CoAP, XMPP,
AMQP, MQTT, and web based common data exchange such as HTTP RESTful
APIs to meet standard requirements (e.g., smart home and light commercial markets
are heavily driven by these standards) (Fig. 1.3).

1.1.3 Network Services

These are services that execute the transport of data from devices to the public or
private cloud. Network services also help with the translation of different messag-
ing protocols between different devices and communication networks. The net-
work services include enabling and managing the fixed or wireless communication
with the smart things. Here the vendors include traditional telecommunication
service providers such as Verizon, T-mobile, and AT&T, as well as newcomers
such as Google Fiber, are providing data transmission management services.
Often, the connected device needs multiple device provisioning and registration
steps to establish a connectivity via wide area networks. First, a smart thing needs
to be provisioned and registered into a telecommunication service provider’s net-
work if it has embedded-­SIM or Embedded Universal Integrated Circuit Card to
establish Internet connectivity. Upon a successful provisioning to telco’s system,
a smart thing can register itself to a target application (e.g., manufacture’s cloud
service).
6 1 Building an IoT Ecosystem Framework

Fig. 1.3 IoT connectivity architecture

There are multiple communication protocols which might get used based on your
products and context. Communication could be established over direct wired con-
nections or wireless methods between devices and network. The popular wireless
communication protocols Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, and EnOcean [15]. There are
different types of networks which are established—Near Field Communication
(NFC), Body Area Network (BAN), Personal Area Network (PAN), Home Area
Network (HAN), Wide Area Network (WAN), Local Area Network (LAN), Internet
Area Network (IAN) for direct cloud connectivity [16, 17].
The protocol handlers will facilitate the translation received over these multiple
protocols into common understandable and usable formats; message handlers take
care of the transport of the messages, caching enables faster retrieval of data. The
firewall and proxy components will drive your security and privacy policies. The
following diagram depicts the device to cloud connectivity by leveraging devices,
gateways and network services:
When you are run your operation globally, contract and billing management of
telecommunication services becomes an operational challenge, where we should
have a global operational capability as one of the partnership evaluation criteria.
1.1 IoT Ecosystem Development Framework 7

Software integration with telecommunication service provider’s real-time device


and data usage must be considered in a connected product development.
To advocate and defend “every product and service provider must have network
security story”, it is highly desired to build a partnership with few major network
carriers. Many network carriers pro-vide a secure connection option as a part of
premium services, however, a similar degree of network securities can be achieved
via employing trust platform chip in your connected products and standard encrypted
messaging such as AMQP via IoT secure transport.
Multiple protocol support should be a part of your strategy that enables flexibil-
ity in connecting more devices and services. For example, starting from the sensor
transmitting data over the air, the popular transport layer protocols are WiFi,
Bluetooth, La3G/4G, 802.15.4 and Zigbee [17–19]. Each of them has different
characteristics and they probably will stay in the market for a long time. The key
tradeoff is power vs. bandwidth and what types of use cases the company wants to
build.

1.1.4 Device Management

The biggest transformative aspect about IoT is the multitude and variety of devices
now getting connected to create new opportunities and insights. Managing these
devices requires special focus, infrastructure, and robust policies. There are four key
aspects of managing these myriad devices both from an identity and access
management:
1. Device provisioning—Setup of the device to establish a secure trusted relation-
ship with the digital world. By generating a secure key and assigning it to a
device, the device will be ready to interact with the rest of IoT ecosystem.
2. Device registration—Maintaining a list of provisioned devices and associated
metadata.
3. Telemetry ingestion—Providing a simple, secure path for receiving data from
devices.
4. Command and control—Providing functionality for securely sending data to a
device, while using existing outbound connections.
For complete lifecycle management of the devices, there are several actions
involved like:
1. Tracking devices from manufacturing to install
2. Distributing and licensing device contained software including remote updates
for new features, security, other maintenance type activities
3. Recovering and decommissioning of non-usable devices post useful life
4. Monitoring device health
5. Learning about customer device usage patterns, release levels, and maintenance
protocols to extract additional business value
8 1 Building an IoT Ecosystem Framework

We see different types of business models around devices, connectivity and data
analytics from devices—device as a service, platform as a service, technology
framework led solutions and device sales amongst others.
In terms of device management implementation, we see two major approaches—
one where the edge devices are smart meaning there are adequate electronics for
processing power and outbound connectivity built into the device itself, and the
other where not so smart devices need gateway devices for greater processing capa-
bilities and outbound telemetry connection. Interface agents in these scenarios have
several requirements:
1. Secure end-to-end connectivity
2. Easy integration into embedded products
3. Simple registration workflow
4. Easy diagnosis and remediation of connectivity problems
5. Remote user access for operation (with ability to override at LAN)
6. Fast and reliable software update
7. Time series data push
8. Remote write-backs to device via automation
9. Device location tracking
10. Device time sync (consider time zone and automated changes to time zone in
events like daylight savings)
11. Licensing of device and features within the device
12. Rules engine/scheduling of device actions from cloud
13. Event notification
14. API’s for extension of capabilities in devices, and in the cloud
Device management is one of the most involved and rapidly evolving aspects of
IoT. Almost every organization has some in-house capabilities in this space.
Evaluate your options on how best to leverage internal capabilities and extend them
organically or engage in outsourced partnerships to build stronger and expansive
IoT framework components around device management.

1.1.5 Data Routing and Real-Time Analysis

There are two major aspects of data routing and real-time analysis—distributed
message routing and complex event processing. Distributed message routing refers
to sending the messages and data elements generated from the devices to the right
data platform storage locations. Generally, in IoT environments, real-time message
hub (e.g., Kafka, Storm or Event Hub) act as the front door for event ingestion and
sometimes for also bi-directional control action conduit to the devices or system
from which the message events are received [20, 21]. The storage locations or appli-
cations use listener applications to receive and process the messages. Event Hubs
act as the backend distribution infrastructure [22].
1.1 IoT Ecosystem Development Framework 9

Complex event processing (CEP) also known as hot path data analytics refers to
identifying meaningful events and responding to them quickly. Anomalies or other
interesting patterns trigger an event in the system that can start additional process-
ing or logic.
There are multiple steps involved—data generation from event producers, a col-
lection of the data, queuing of events, the transformation of events, preparation for
and actual long term storage of the events, and finally the multi-format presentation
of the analyzed events for reporting or further action. Think of complex event pro-
cessing as a mini self-contained special purpose IoT ecosystem. There are many
open source and licensed solutions available for complex event processing.
Following diagram depicts the Apache Storm open source solution for CEP
(Fig. 1.4):

In traditional data management and enterprise systems, message routing


and event processing types of activities are sequential and spaced by more
elaborate classification, cleansing, storage and analytical steps. In the IoT
world, they are almost simultaneous events because we want to take the
advantage of early insights from time series data to take immediate remedial
actions. This is the first stage in the framework to take advantage of elemen-
tary machine learning. Today we have solutions like Apache Storm which can
process millions of events per second real-time in different computing envi-
ronments to meet the needs of real-time analysis. Distributed message routing
also involves ingestion, processing and placing back millions of messages in
message distributor for multiple listener applications to pick up. Sometimes
during this activity, we see the occurrence of tasks like data transformation
and validation.

Fig. 1.4 Apache Storm open source solution


10 1 Building an IoT Ecosystem Framework

1.1.6 IoT Data Platform

The IoT platform is the networking, messaging, data management and processing
infrastructure which includes analytics and modeling, the cloud and IT network, all
in one packaged component. This abstraction is to ensure interoperability within
products and among other products. All of them must operate on the same platform.
There are quite a number of vendors on the market that are offering IoT cloud/plat-
form solutions and picking one that fits the company vision and use cases will help
accelerate its efforts in IoT.
Many large IT solution providers such as Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, Google,
Amazon, SAP, Qualcomm, and Oracle offer general-purpose solutions with devel-
oper tools for customization, while ThingWorx, Axeda (now a part of PTC),
ETHERIOS, and GE offers more vertically integrated industry solutions such as
manufacturing sectors [6].
The key question in making platform selection is—“what is the data needed to
transform the business and what do we do with the model?” An important aspect of
an IoT product is that a significant portion of the value will be generated from the
software version of the physical product. Models are created to abstract the func-
tionality of the physical product and analytics should exist for the part, product and
system level. We can then build applications using the models to generate value.
Even a simple app that changes a few key parameters and attributes of the product
e.g. temperature and air flow, can be quite valuable. The software version of the
product is the hearts and the minds of the IoT product that will derive IoT platform
requirements.
Operational Technology has to marry with Information Technology to bring IoT-­
enabled products to life. Today, there are an increasing number of products that have
embedded sensors, actuators and systems on them that provide valuable data about
the product. The company has to determine the capabilities of the sensor being put
on the product and the software support needed e.g. API, setup, installation and
closed-loop updates. The decision is mainly driven by
1. Understanding what information we don’t have today and what sensors are
needed to pull data that can help us generate value.
2. The tradeoffs between costs vs. power and memory needed and how much we
want the sensor to be able to do the analytics on its own.
Analytics is the tool for building the IoT products. The essence is to build statisti-
cal models that keep on bringing more data about the product and infer patterns to
do comparisons, trend analysis, and predictions, or even teach the product to self-­
correct itself. Usage reports can also be created for sales, marketing, and product
development to improve quality and create better pricing and product positioning.
The use of external data can augment the company’s own data and provide extra
information for better decision making. Geolocation of customer address (e.g., lati-
tude and longitude of customer aggress) and census data (e.g., income profile) may
help to develop customer segmentation.
1.1 IoT Ecosystem Development Framework 11

The IoT product is not going to realize its full value if it is not integrated well
with the business systems namely the CRM, SCM, ERP and PLM components to
adapt to changes in the business processes.
In the IoT ecosystems, we frequently see the convergence of structured, unstruc-
tured and streaming data. The amount of data generated by the hundreds, thousands
and sometimes millions of devices becomes quite massive. This environment
requires very robust data platform, and flexible and scalable data services to lever-
age the power of data. This is where a lot of the Big Data technologies come into
play.

1.1.7 Data Service Platform

1. Big Data processing ecosystem—The Big Data processing ecosystem is the


core of the Data Service Platform. Apache Hadoop is a collection of many tools
and data management eco-system [23] from open source releases that deal with
Big Data needs.
The Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) executes distributed parallel
storage using name nodes to track the placement of physical data across various
Hadoop instances and data nodes which actually physically store the data.
Multiple simple consumer grade computing devices can be organized virtually to
store very large amounts of data using Hadoop.
Hadoop MapReduce system is very useful in processing large volumes and
transactions of data—structured, unstructured and streaming. MapReduce uses
parallel distributed algorithms for orchestration of the clustering required for
storage and processing of data.
Data can have different meanings, this is driven by various interpretations of
the data and insights. This requires us to have an abstraction of data into multiple
meanings through a collection of keys and value pairs of the data.
This is achieved through associative arrays. A key-value store; a type of
NoSQL allows for managing associative arrays through dictionary or hash.
Dictionaries contain a collection of objects, or records, which in turn have many
different fields within them, each containing data. These records are stored and
retrieved using a key that uniquely identifies the record, and is used to quickly
find the data within the database. Traditional relational databases have predefined
data structure in the database as a series of tables containing fields with well-
defined data types. On the other hand, key-value systems treat the data as a single
opaque collection which may have different fields for every record. This offers
considerable flexibility and more closely follows modern concepts like object-­
oriented programming. Because optional values are not represented by place-
holders as in most relational databases, key-value stores often use far less
memory to store the same database, which can lead to large performance gains
in certain workloads [24].
12 1 Building an IoT Ecosystem Framework

Graph databases or graph stores use graph structures for semantic queries
with nodes (entities), properties (information about entities) and edges (connec-
tion between nodes and properties) to store data [25, 26]. This is a very time and
resource efficient method to store associative data sets.
Spark [27] is an open source cluster computing framework built using multi-­
stage in-memory primitives. Spark accelerates processing performance by an
order of magnitude and very well suited for machine learning typical of IoT
environments.
There is extensive guidance provided on building your Big Data platform in
the author’s book titled “Making Big Data Work For Your Business”; chapter 4,
deals specifically with the topic of the technology landscape.
2. RDBMS—Usually consumer-end or front-end applications have very low
latency data retrieval needs from the data store. In general Big Data enables low
latency. But if the data structures used by the consuming applications are very
standard, it may be a good idea to have processed data required by those consum-
ing applications be stored in an RDBMS, as RDBMS has natural low latency if
the data is modeled well. When doing so, usually the data is parsed, transformed,
enriched before being stored in RDBMS storage.
3. Data Integration—IoT relies on being able to collect and connect data from any
and every device. There are three parallel forces which influence this—rapid
evolution of communication technologies including protocols and methods,
dynamic evolution overall IoT technology landscape, and finally, changes in the
design/function/capabilities of the devices themselves. Data communication
needs to mirror the purpose and functioning of the device, and not constrained by
the need to make it easy for external usage needs. The data could be structured,
unstructured or streaming. Formats of the data collected will be different owing
to the communication protocols which runs into dozens in any given IoT ecosys-
tem. We need to design our storage and processing in a way that the native state
of data does not get destroyed for it might be used and analyzed differently later.
At the same time, we also need the easy semantic mediation of the data for the
data platform to use it meaningfully. Device manufacturers and technology pro-
viders always talk about APIs as the solution to being able for the world to inter-
act with their device or utility; however, there is al-ways some level of proprietary
adoption required which leads to more than advertised effort for seamless inte-
gration of data and devices. There are few generally accepted standards and
broad consensus on this topic. This is so because, on one hand, the whole indus-
try is still in relative infancy with new opportunities and use cases get-ting dis-
covered every day; on the other hand, different participants in the industry are
trying to influence a position to their advantage. People are also finding new
ways of connecting, collecting and analyzing better every day, so there is con-
stant flux. These factors make data integration acquire new levels of profound
complexities in the world of IoT.
In building the data integration components for your IoT framework, keep in
mind the following:
1.1 IoT Ecosystem Development Framework 13

1. Collect and store the data from devices and other applications in as native state
as possible. Use layers of abstraction for any processing and further storage
2. Use as much of asynchronous communication as possible, this will also help
with the previous goal while making integration simpler
3. Use micro services to build your integration fabric
4. In your technology landscape, do not get over reliant on any particular integra-
tion software or technique, this will limit your future flexibility
5. Make integrations database independent
6. Platform Management

In the IoT framework context, platform management includes a broad set


of activities like device management, network and communication manage-
ment, data management, hosting management, environment management,
and traditional DevOps type activities. Platform management looks at uptime
and performance monitoring, infrastructure optimization, technology
upgrades, cost optimization and future proofing of the IoT ecosystem. This is
a much more involved business management activity compared to traditional
back-office housekeeping of infrastructure. There is no one single tool or
solution provider that can span across managing the entire platform of your
IoT ecosystem. Your framework has to account for the tools, processes, and
organization to address these platform management needs.

1.1.8 Analytics

With the power of all data, now you need to build the infrastructure for running
powerful analytics which actually delivers all the insights. Let us explore the differ-
ent types of analytics common in the IoT ecosystems.
1. Massively parallel data analytics—Massively parallel data analytics or pro-
cessing (MPP) is an extension from traditional data warehousing. In this tech-
nique, similar to MapReduce, multiple processors are employed to run analytical
processing. Large data sets are broken up into smaller chunks and worked upon
by specifically assigned processors with their own operating system and mem-
ory. Messaging interfaces aggregate the results upon completion of analysis by
each individual processor. This allows significant performance improvement in
the processing and flexible scalability. MPP is applied more on structured data
rather than unstructured data. Another drawback of MPP is the need for special-
ized hardware as opposed to any generic hardware used by other Big Data tech-
nologies like MapReduce programming. But MPP is an easy transition for
organizations that are making a transition from data warehousing to Big Data.
2. Time series analysis—IoT has taken forward the capabilities to collect real-time
operational or performance data from devices and machines at very frequent
intervals. This gets us the large quantities of streaming time series data for analy-
14 1 Building an IoT Ecosystem Framework

sis [12, 14]. This type of data is reviewed and analyzed over both time and fre-
quency domain, often to forecast future events and trends. Often multiple
parameters from time series data and other environmental or influence data are
combined for fault detection and diagnostics (FDD). While the principles and
algorithms around FDD have been around for many decades, automated FDD
implementation was limited because the lack of availability of adequate data now
enabled by IoT and storage/processing of that huge quantity of data enabled by
Big Data. There are different types of FDD analysis—rule-based, model-­based
and case based are popular ones. Rule-based techniques use boundary conditions
of observed data to detect faults and isolate them; think of rule-based algorithms
as simple or complex if/then/else/hence logic blocks. Model-based techniques
use different types of statistical models in more applied analysis. Case-based
reasoning uses past situation-solution examples to adapt new solutions. This is
how new behaviors are learned over time by modifying analytical parameters.
3. Machine learning—Machine learning uses data mining techniques and other
learning algorithms to build models of what is happening behind some data so
that it can detect, classify and predict future outcomes. These can be used to solve
complex problems, predict scenarios previously not modeled or develop new
insights. Machine learning helps us here through the use of statistical methods to
self-identify algorithms for analysis and association. The popular machine learn-
ing algorithms used in IoT ecosystems are association rule learning, artificial
neural networks, inductive logic programming, clustering and Bayesian net-
works. Machine learning has been used extensively in medical diagnostics, pre-
dictive maintenance, financial services, and online advertising. Machine learning
can be executed either through custom programming or usage of standard or
open source tools such as SciKit-learn [28], Spark’s machine learning [27].
4. Advanced data mining—Data mining is about using statistical data analysis as
well as other algorithmic methods to find patterns hidden in the data so that we
can explain some phenomenon. Data mining may involve unsupervised knowl-
edge discovery based analysis of very large volumes of data mining is very
exploratory in nature, it resides on the crossroads of data sciences, statistics,
machine learning and artificial intelligence. Usually, it involves popular classical
statistical approaches to regression analysis, neural networks, and decision trees.
Sometimes we see analysts applying specific techniques like association rules
for initial data exploration, fuzzy data mining approaches, rough set models,
support vector machines, and genetic algorithms to solve special problems. Data
mining is applied to a wide array of industries to solve a number of complex
issues or generate insights which usually involves the interplay of multiple dif-
ferent types/classes of data that may not have obvious associations. Data mining
has been applied in the production of salt to the manufacturing of space shuttles;
from creating engineering insights to developing insights in the entertainment
industry. There are methodologies like Cross-Industry Standard Process for Data
Mining (CRISP-DM) and Sample-Explore-Modify-Model-Assess (SEMMA)
used in data mining. Often these methodologies are applied in iterative cycles to
get the best analysis.
1.1 IoT Ecosystem Development Framework 15

5. Business intelligence—Business intelligence (BI) in an IoT environment


involves enabling easy creation and access to dashboards and analytics across
multiple data sources and types for less technical users. Now we can also create
packages which allow one user to distribute her content and analytics to others in
the organization or industry who can then conduct their own analytics and create
dashboards/reports. BI enables IoT analytics and visualization for masses. There
are a number of well-packaged solutions today which have powerful BI capabili-
ties on IoT-enabled Big Data ecosystems; and the output of these can be deliv-
ered through multiple channels around the desktop, mobile, and the web.

1.1.9 Security, Identity, and Privacy Management

IoT has amplified the significance of security, privacy, access control and compli-
ance management.
Cybersecurity is one of the biggest issues in front of the technology industry.
Every day hackers are inventing new methods to penetrate your technology infra-
structure, and companies/technology providers are creating new ways to build bar-
riers against those threat [29–31]. The IT backbone of an organization is not the
only pipeline to penetrate; every device that digitally connects to a business or orga-
nization adds vulnerabilities. With millions of IoT-enabled devices get-ting con-
nected, the problem is exploding. Moreover, the computing capabilities of IoT
devices is very high, which enables malware to independently operate from a device
level. With the fragmentation of the technology component providers in the entire
IoT ecosystem, there are no natural incentives for any specific player other than the
eco-system owner to have end-to-end cyber security responsibilities.
In response, both solution providers and customers of those solutions are imple-
menting multi-layered multi-dimensional intrusion detection and prevention mech-
anisms. You need security at device level, sometimes data level, definitely at network
communication level and usually at the application level. Data and connections
need encryption at every stage. Each device and nearly every data transaction need
a unique identity which will provide easy traceability and enable authentication.
Your security design and policies have to account for perimeter protection, intrusion
detection, response and audit trails—all at real-time warp speed. Either you should
immediately be able to isolate any non-secure device or connection or have a mech-
anism to accept them with calculated risks. You should also have mechanisms to
detect pattern anomalies in device connectivity, network traffic or data communica-
tion; these are instant indicators of a possible intrusion. There are good evolving
standards like ISO/IEC 27001 [32], NIST 800-82 v2 [33], RFC2196 [34], ISA/
IEC-62443 [35] which you can refer to in designing your policies and practices.
With all the advanced analytics now possible, people and businesses are worried
that their behaviors are susceptible to outside scrutiny which might infringe their
privacy. The problem gets accentuated because due to geopolitical concerns,
national governments and security agencies have taken extreme steps in event and
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
CHAPTER V.
THE NEW HEBRIDES.

License and Ordination.—At Sea.—From Melbourne to Aneityum.


—Settlement on Tanna.—Our Mission Stations.—Diplomatic
Chiefs.—Painful First Impressions.—Bloody Scenes.—The
Widow’s Doom.

On the first of December, 1857, the other Missionary-designate and I


were “licensed” as preachers of the Gospel. Thereafter we spent four
months in visiting and addressing nearly every congregation and
Sabbath school in the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland,
that the people might see us and know us, and thereby take a
personal interest in our work. That idea was certainly excellent, and
might well be adapted to the larger Churches, by allocating one
Missionary to each province or to so many presbyteries, sending him
to address these, and training them to regard him as their Missionary
and his work as theirs. On the 23rd March, 1858, in Dr. Symington’s
church, Glasgow, in presence of a mighty crowd, and after a
magnificent sermon on “Come over and help us,” we were solemnly
ordained as Ministers of the Gospel, and set apart as Missionaries to
the New Hebrides. On the 16th April, 1858, we left the Tail of the
Bank at Greenock, and set sail in the Clutha for the Foreign Mission
field.
Our voyage to Melbourne was rather tedious, but ended
prosperously, under Captain Broadfoot, a kindly, brave-hearted Scot,
who did everything that was possible for our comfort. He himself led
the singing on board at worship, which was always charming to me,
and was always regularly conducted—on deck when the weather was
fair, below when it was rough. I was also permitted to conduct Bible
classes amongst the crew and amongst the passengers, at times and
places approved of by the Captain—in which there was great joy.
Nearly thirty years after, when I returned the second time to
Scotland, a gentleman of good position, and the father of a large
family in the West, saluted me warmly at the close of one of my
meetings, and reminded me that he was my precentor in the Bible
class on board the Clutha! He was kind enough to say that he had
never forgotten the scene and the lessons there.
Arriving at Melbourne, we were welcomed by Rev. Mr. Moor, Mr.
and Mrs. Samuel Wilson, and Mr. Wright, all Reformed
Presbyterians from Geelong. Mr. Wilson’s two children, Jessie and
Donald, had been under our care during the voyage; and my young
wife and I went with them for a few days on a visit to Geelong, while
Mr. Copeland remained on board the Clutha to look after our boxes
and to watch for any opportunity of reaching our destination on the
Islands. He heard that an American ship, the Francis P. Sage, was
sailing from Melbourne to Penang; and the Captain agreed to land us
on Aneityum, New Hebrides, with our two boats and fifty boxes, for
£100. We got on board on the 12th August, but such a gale blew that
we did not sail till the 17th. On the Clutha all was quiet, and good
order prevailed; in the F. P. Sage all was noise and profanity. The
Captain said he kept his second mate for the purpose of swearing at
the men and knocking them about. The voyage was most
disagreeable to all of us, but fortunately it lasted only twelve days. On
the 29th we were close up to Aneityum; but the Captain refused to
land us, even in his boats; some of us suspecting that his men were
so badly used, that had they got on shore they would never have
returned to him! In any case he had beforehand secured his £100.
He lay off the island till a trader’s boat came off to see what we
wanted, and by it we sent a note to Dr. Geddie, one of the
Missionaries there. Early next morning, Monday, he came off to us in
his boat, accompanied by Mr. Mathieson, a newly-arrived Missionary
from Nova Scotia; bringing also Captain Anderson in the small
mission schooner, the John Knox, and a large mission boat called the
Columbia, well manned with crews of able and willing Natives. Our
fifty boxes were soon on board the John Knox, the Columbia, and
our own boats—all being heavily loaded and built up, except those
that had to be used in pulling the others ashore. Dr. Geddie, Mr.
Mathieson, Mrs. Paton, and I, were perched among the boxes on the
John Knox, and had to hold on as best we could. On sheering off
from the F. P. Sage, one of her davits caught and broke the mainmast
of the little John Knox by the deck, and I saved my wife from being
crushed to death by its fall through managing to swing her
instantaneously aside in an apparently impossible manner. It did
graze Mr. Mathieson, but he was not hurt. The John Knox, already
overloaded, was thus quite disabled; we were about ten miles at sea,
and in imminent danger; but the Captain of the F. P. Sage heartlessly
sailed away and left us to struggle with our fate.
We drifted steadily towards Tanna, an island of Cannibals, where
our goods would have been plundered and all of us cooked and
eaten. Dr. Geddie’s boat and mine had the John Knox in tow; and
Mr. Copeland, with a crew of Natives, was struggling hard with his
boat to pull the Columbia and her load towards Aneityum. As God
mercifully ordered it, though we had a stiff trade wind to pull
against, we had a comparatively calm sea; yet we drifted still to
leeward, till Dr. Inglis going round to the harbour in his boat, as he
had heard of our arrival, saw us far at sea, and hastened to our
rescue. All the boats now, with their willing native crews, got
fastened to our schooner, and to our great joy she began to move
ahead. After pulling for hours and hours, under the scorching rays of
an almost tropical sun, we were all safely landed on shore at
Aneityum about six o’clock in the evening of August 30th, just four
months and fourteen days since we sailed from Greenock. We got a
hearty welcome from the Missionaries’ wives on the shore, Mrs.
Geddie, Mrs. Inglis, and Mrs. Mathieson, and from all our new
friends, the Christian Natives of Aneityum; and the great danger in
which both life and property had been placed at the close of our
voyage, made us praise God all the more, that He had brought us to
this quiet resting-place, around which lay the Islands of the New
Hebrides, to which our eager hearts had looked forward, and into
which we entered now in the name of the Lord.
Mr. Copeland, Mrs. Paton, and I went round the island to Dr.
Inglis’s Station, where we were most cordially received and
entertained by his dear lady, and by the Christian Natives there. As
he was making several additions to his house at that time, we
received for the next few weeks our first practical and valuable
training in Mission house-building, as well as in higher matters.
Soon after, a meeting was called to consult about our settlement,
and, by the advice and with the concurrence of all, Mr. and Mrs.
Mathieson from Nova Scotia were located on the south side of
Tanna, at Umairarekar, and Mrs. Paton and I at Port Resolution, on
the same island. At first it was agreed that Mr. Copeland should be
placed along with us; but owing to the weakly state of Mrs.
Mathieson’s health, it was afterwards resolved that, for a time at
least, Mr. Copeland should live at either Station, as might seem most
suitable or most requisite. Till the close of the sailing season, his time
was spent chiefly in the John Knox, helping Captain Anderson in
loading and disloading the wood and house-building materials
betwixt Aneityum and Tanna; while I was occupied chiefly with the
house-building and preparatory arrangements.
Dr. Inglis and a number of his most energetic Natives
accompanied us to Kwamera, Tanna. There we purchased a site for
Mission House and Church, and laid a stone foundation, and
advanced as far as practicable the erection of a dwelling for Mr. and
Mrs. Mathieson. Thence we proceeded to Port Resolution, Tanna,
and similarly purchased a site, and advanced, to a forward stage, the
house which Mrs. Paton and I were to occupy on our settlement
there. Lime, for plastering, had to be burned in kilns from the coral
rocks; and thatch, for roofing with sugar-cane leaf, had to be
prepared by the Natives at both stations before our return; for which,
as for all else, a price was duly agreed upon and was scrupulously
paid. Unfortunately we learned, when too late, that both houses were
too near the shore, exposed to unwholesome miasma, and productive
of the dreaded fever and ague,—the most virulent and insidious
enemy to all Europeans in those Southern Seas.
At both Stations, but especially at Port Resolution, we found the
Natives in a very excited and unsettled state. Threatened wars kept
them in constant terror—war betwixt distant tribes, or adjoining
villages, or nearest neighbours. The Chiefs, at both Stations, willingly
sold sites for houses, and appeared to desire Missionaries to live
amongst them; but perhaps it was with an eye to the axes, knives,
fish-hooks, blankets, and clothing, which they got in payment, or
hoped for in plunder, rather than from any thirst for the Gospel, as
they were all savages and cannibals. They warily declined to promise
protection to the Mission families and the Teachers; but they said
they would not themselves do them any harm, though they could not
say what the Inland people might do;—not a bad specimen of
diplomacy, leaving an open door for any future emergency, and
neither better nor worse than the methods by which the civilized
European nations make and break their treaties in peace and in war!
Such promises meant and were intended to mean nothing. The
Natives, both on Tanna, and on my second home at Aniwa, believed
that they had kept their promise, if they inflicted no injury with their
own hands, even though they had hired others to do so. No Heathen
there could be trusted one step beyond what appeared to be his own
self-interest for the nonce; and nothing conceivable was too base or
cruel to be done, if only it served his turn. The depths of Satan,
outlined in the first chapter of the Romans, were uncovered there
before our eyes in the daily life of the people, without veil and
without excuse.
My first impressions drove me to the verge of utter dismay. On
beholding these Natives in their paint and nakedness and misery, my
heart was as full of horror as of pity. Had I given up my much-
beloved work and my dear people in Glasgow, with so many
delightful associations, to consecrate my life to these degraded
creatures? Was it possible to teach them right and wrong, to
Christianize, or even to civilize them? But that was only a passing
feeling! I soon got as deeply interested in them, and in all that tended
to advance them, and to lead them to the knowledge and love of
Jesus, as ever I had been in my work at Glasgow. We were surprised
and delighted at the remarkable change produced on the natives of
Aneityum through the instrumentality of Drs. Geddie and Inglis in so
short a time; and we hoped, by prayerful perseverance in the use of
similar means, to see the same work of God repeated on Tanna.
Besides, the wonderful and blessed work done by Mrs. Inglis and
Mrs. Geddie, at their Stations, filled our wives with the buoyant hope
of being instruments in the hand of God to produce an equally
beneficent change amongst the savage women of Tanna. Mrs. Paton
had been left with Mrs. Inglis to learn all she could from her of
Mission work on the Islands, till I returned with Dr. Inglis from the
house-building operations on Tanna; during which period Mr. and
Mrs. Mathieson were also being instructed by Dr. and Mrs. Geddie.
To the Tannese, Dr. Inglis and I were objects of curiosity and fear;
they came crowding to gaze on our wooden and lime-plastered
house, they chattered incessantly with each other, and left the scene
day after day with undisguised and increasing wonderment. Possibly
they thought us rather mad than wise!
Party after party of armed men, going and coming in a state of
great excitement, we were informed that war was on foot; but our
Aneityumese Teachers were told to assure us that the Harbour
people would only act on the defensive, and that no one would
molest us at our work. One day two hostile tribes met near our
Station; high words arose, and old feuds were revived. The Inland
people withdrew; but the Harbour people, false to their promises,
flew to arms and rushed past us in pursuit of their enemies. The
discharge of muskets in the adjoining bush, and the horrid yells of
the savages, soon informed us that they were engaged in deadly
fights. Excitement and terror were on every countenance; armed
men rushed about in every direction, with feathers in their twisted
hair,—with faces painted red, black, and white, and some, one cheek
black, the other red, others, the brow white, the chin blue—in fact,
any colour and on any part,—the more grotesque and savage looking,
the higher the art! Some of the women ran with their children to
places of safety; but even then we saw other girls and women, on the
shore close by, chewing sugar-cane and chaffering and laughing, as if
their fathers and brothers had been engaged in a country dance,
instead of a bloody conflict. In the afternoon, as the sounds of the
muskets and the yelling of the warriors came unpleasantly near to us,
Dr. Inglis, leaning against a post for a little while in silent prayer,
looked on us and said,—
“The walls of Jerusalem were built in troublous times, and why not
the Mission House on Tanna? But let us rest for this day, and pray
for these poor Heathen.”
We retired to a native house, that had been temporarily granted to
us for rest, and there pled before God for them all. The noise and the
discharge of muskets gradually receded, as if the Inland people were
retiring; and towards evening the people around us returned to their
villages. We were afterwards informed that five or six men had been
shot dead; that their bodies had been carried by the conquerors from
the field of battle, and cooked and eaten that very night by the
savages at a boiling spring near the head of the bay, less than a mile
from the spot where my house was being built. We had also a more
graphic illustration of the surroundings into which we had come,
through Dr. Inglis’s Aneityum boy, who accompanied us as cook.
When our tea was wanted that evening, the boy could not be found.
After a while of great anxiety on our part, he returned, saying,—
“Missi, this is a dark land. The people of this land do dark works.
At the boiling spring they have cooked and feasted upon the slain.
They have washed the blood into the stream; they have bathed there
till all the waters are red. I cannot get water to make your tea. What
shall I do?”
Dr. Inglis told him that he must try for water elsewhere, till the
rains came and cleansed the polluted stream; and that, meanwhile,
instead of tea, we would drink from the cocoa-nut, as they had often
done before. The lad was quite relieved. It not a little astonished us,
however, to see that his mind regarded their killing and eating each
other as a thing scarcely to be noticed, but that it was horrible that
they should spoil the water! How much are even our deepest
instincts the creatures of mere circumstances! I, if trained like him,
would probably have felt like him.
Next evening, as we sat talking about the people and the dark
scenes around us, the quiet of the night was broken by a wild wailing
cry from the villages around, long-continued and unearthly. We were
informed that one of the wounded men, carried home from the
battle, had just died; and that they had strangled his widow to death,
that her spirit might accompany him to the other world, and be his
servant there, as she had been here. Now their dead bodies were laid
side by side, ready to be buried in the sea. Our hearts sank to think of
all this happening within earshot, and that we knew it not! Every new
scene, every fresh incident, set more clearly before us the benighted
condition and shocking cruelties of these heathen people, and we
longed to be able to speak to them of Jesus and the love of God. We
eagerly tried to pick up every word of their language, that we might,
in their own tongue, unfold to them the knowledge of the true God
and the salvation from all these sins through Jesus Christ.
Dr. Inglis and I, with the help of the Natives from Aneityum,
having accomplished all that could be done for lack of lime and sawn
wood to finish the new Mission House on Tanna, made an agreement
with the Natives for knives, calico, and axes, to burn lime and
prepare other things for our return. We then hastened back to
Aneityum, that we might, if possible, get ready for settling on Tanna
before the Rainy Season set in. That was rapidly approaching, and it
brings with it discomfort and unhealth to Europeans throughout all
these Pacific Isles.
CHAPTER VI.
LIFE AND DEATH ON TANNA.

Our Island Home.—Learning the Language.—A Religion of Fear.—


With or Without a God.—Ideas of the Invisible.—Gods and
Demons.—My Companion Missionary.—Pioneers in the New
Hebrides.—Missionaries of Aneityum.—The Lord’s Arrowroot.
—Unhealthy Sites.—The Great Bereavement.—Memorial
Tributes.—Selwyn and Patteson at a Tannese Grave.—Her Last
Letter.—Last Words.—Presentiment and Mystery.

Our little missionary ship, the John Knox, having no accommodation


for lady passengers, and little for anybody else, except the discomfort
of lying on deck, we took advantage of a trader to convey us from
Aneityum to Tanna. The captain kindly offered to take us and about
thirty casks and boxes to Port Resolution for £5, which we gladly
accepted. After a few hours’ sailing we were all safely landed on
Tanna on the 5th November, 1858. Dr. Geddie went for a fortnight to
Umairarekar, on the south side of Tanna, to assist in the settlement
of Mr. and Mrs. Mathieson, and to help in making their house
habitable and comfortable. Mr. Copeland, Mrs. Paton, and I were left
at Port Resolution, to finish the building of our house there, and
work our way into the goodwill of the Natives as best we could. On
landing there, we found the people to be literally naked and painted
savages; they were at least as destitute of clothing as Adam and Eve
after the fall, when they sewed fig-leaves for a girdle; and even more
so, for the women wore only a tiny apron of grass, in some cases
shaped like a skirt or girdle, the men an indescribable affair, like a
pouch or bag, and the children absolutely nothing whatever!
At first they came in crowds to look at us, and at everything we did
or had. We knew nothing of their language; we could not speak a
single word to them, nor they to us. We looked at them, they at us;
we smiled, and nodded, and made signs to each other; this was our
first meeting and parting. One day I observed two men, the one
lifting up one of our articles to the other, and saying,—
“Nunksi nari enu?”
I concluded that he was asking, “What is this?” Instantly, lifting a
piece of wood, I said,—
“Nunksi nari enu?”
They smiled and spoke to each other. I understood them to be
saying, “He has got hold of our language now.” Then they told me
their name for the thing which I had pointed to. I found that they
understood my question, What is this? or, What is that? and that I
could now get from them the name of every visible or tangible thing
around us! We carefully noted down every name they gave us,
spelling all phonetically, and also every strange sound we heard from
them; thereafter, by painstaking comparison of different
circumstances, we tried to ascertain their meanings, testing our own
guess by again cross-questioning the Natives. One day I saw two
males approaching, when one, who was a stranger, pointed to me
with his finger, and said,—
“Se nangin?”
Concluding that he was asking my name, I pointed to one of them
with my finger, and looking at the other, inquired,—
“Se nangin?”
They smiled, and gave me their names. We were now able to get
the names of persons and things, and so our ears got familiarized
with the distinctive sounds of their language; and being always
keenly on the alert, we made extraordinary progress in attempting
bits of conversation and in reducing their speech for the first time to
a written form—for the New Hebrideans had no literature, and not
even the rudiments of an alphabet. I used to hire some of the more
intelligent lads and men to sit and talk with us, and answer our
questions about names and sounds; but they so often deceived us,
and we, doubtless, misunderstood them so often, that this course
was not satisfactory, till after we had gained some knowledge of their
language and its construction, and they themselves had become
interested in helping us. Amongst our most interested helpers, and
most trustworthy, were two aged chiefs—Nowar and Nouka—in
many respects two of Nature’s noblest gentlemen, kind at heart to all,
and distinguished by a certain native dignity of bearing. But they
were both under the leadership of the war-chief Miaki, a kind of
devil-king over many villages and tribes. He and his brother were the
recognised leaders in all deeds of darkness; they gloried in
bloodshedding, and in war, and in cannibalism; and they could
always command a following of desperate men, who lived in or about
their own village, and who were prepared to go anywhere and do
anything at Miaki’s will.
The Tannese had hosts of stone idols, charms, and sacred objects,
which they abjectly feared, and in which they devoutly believed. They
were given up to countless superstitions, and firmly glued to their
dark heathen practices. Their worship was entirely a service of fear,
its aim being to propitiate this or that Evil Spirit, to prevent calamity
or to secure revenge. They deified their chiefs, like the Romans of
old, so that almost every village or tribe had its own sacred man, and
some of them had many. They exercised an extraordinary influence
for evil, these village or tribal priests, and were believed to have the
disposal of life and death through their sacred ceremonies, not only
in their own tribe, but over all the Islands. Sacred men and women,
wizards and witches, received presents regularly to influence the
gods, and to remove sickness, or to cause it by the Nahak, i.e.,
incantation over remains of food, or the skin of fruit, such as banana,
which the person has eaten, on whom they wish to operate. They also
worshipped the spirits of departed ancestors and heroes, through
their material idols of wood and stone, but chiefly of stone. They
feared these spirits and sought their aid; especially seeking to
propitiate those who presided over war and peace, famine and
plenty, health and sickness, destruction and prosperity, life and
death. Their whole worship was one of slavish fear; and, so far as
ever I could learn, they had no idea of a God of mercy or grace.
Let me here give my testimony on a matter of some importance—
that among these Islands, if anywhere, men might be found destitute
of the faculty of worship, men absolutely without idols, if such men
exist under the face of the sky. Everything seemed to favour such a
discovery; but the New Hebrides, on the contrary, are full of gods.
The Natives, destitute of the knowledge of the true God, are
ceaselessly groping after Him, if perchance they may find Him. Not
finding Him, and not being able to live without some sort of god,
they have made idols of almost everything; trees and groves, rocks
and stones, springs and streams, insects and other beasts, men and
departed spirits, relics such as hair and finger nails, the heavenly
bodies and the volcanoes; in fact, every being and everything within
the range of vision or of knowledge has been appealed to by them as
God,—clearly proving that the instincts of Humanity, however
degraded, prompt man to worship and lean upon some Being or
Power outside himself, and greater than himself, in whom he lives
and moves and has his being, and without the knowledge of whom
his soul cannot find its true rest or its eternal life. Imperfect
acquaintance with the language and customs of certain tribes may
easily lead early discoverers to proclaim that they have no sense of
worship and no idols, because nothing of the kind is visible on the
surface; but there is a sort of freemasonry in Heathen Religions; they
have mysterious customs and symbols, which none, even amongst
themselves, understand, except the priests and sacred men. It pays
these men to keep their devotees in the dark—and how much more to
deceive a passing inquirer! Nor need we hold up our hands in
surprise at this; it pays also nearer home, to pretend and to
perpetuate a mystery about beads and crucifixes, holy water and
relics—a state of mind not so very far removed from that of the South
Sea islander, not disproving but rather strongly proving that,
whether savage or civilized, man must either know the true God, or
must find an idol to put in His place.
Further, these very facts—that they did worship, that they believed
in spirits of ancestors and heroes, and that they cherished many
legends regarding those whom they had never seen, and handed
these down to their children—and the fact that they had ideas about
the invisible world and its inhabitants, made it not so hard as some
might suppose to convey to their minds, once their language and
modes of thought were understood, some clear idea of Jehovah God
as the great uncreated Spirit Father, who Himself created and
sustains all that is. But it could not be done off-hand, or by a few airy
lessons. The whole heart and soul and life had to be put into the
enterprise. The idea that man disobeyed God, and was a fallen and
sinful creature,—the idea that God, as a Father, so loved man that He
sent His only Son Jesus to this earth to seek and to save him,—the
idea that this Jesus so lived and died and rose from the dead as to
take away man’s sin, and make it possible for men to return to God,
and to be made into the very likeness of His Son Jesus,—and the idea
that this Jesus will at death receive to the mansions of Glory every
creature under heaven that loves and tries to follow Him,—these
ideas had to be woven into their spiritual consciousness, had to
become the very warp and woof of their religion. But it could be done
—that we believed because they were men, not beasts; it had been
done—that we saw in the converts on Aneityum; and our hearts rose
to the task with a quenchless hope!
The Tannese called Heaven by the name Aneai; and we afterwards
discovered that this was the name of the highest and most beautifully
situated village on the island. Their best bit of Earth was to them the
symbol and type of Heaven; their Canaan, too, was a kind of
prophecy of another country, even a heavenly Canaan. The fact that
they had an Aneai, a promised land, opened their minds naturally to
our idea of the promised land of the future, the Aneai of the Gospel
hope and faith. The universal craving to know the greater and more
powerful gods, and to have them on their side, led them, whenever
we could speak their language, to listen eagerly to all our stories
about the Jehovah God and His Son Jesus, and all the mighty works
recorded in the Bible. But when we began to teach them that, in
order to serve this Almighty and living Jehovah God, they must cast
aside all their idols and leave off every heathen custom and vice, they
rose in anger and cruelty against us, they persecuted every one that
was friendly to the Mission, and passed us through the dreadful
experiences to be hereafter recorded. It was the old battle of History;
light had attacked darkness in its very stronghold, and it almost
seemed for a season that the light would be finally eclipsed, and that
God’s Day would never dawn on Tanna!
My companion Missionary, Mr. Copeland, had to go to Aneityum
and take charge of Dr. Inglis’s Station, during the absence of that
distinguished Missionary and his devoted wife, while carrying
through the press at home the first complete Aneityumese New
Testament. He succeeded admirably in taking up and carrying
forward all their work, and gave vital assistance in translating the
Old Testament into the language of Aneityum, for his was an exact
and scholarly mind. After their return, he similarly occupied the
Station of Dr. Geddie on another part of the same island, while he
sought re-invigoration in Nova Scotia on a well-merited furlough.
Thereafter, he was placed on the island of Fotuna; and there, with
Mrs. Copeland, he laboured devotedly and zealously, till at last she
died and his own health gave way to such an extent as compelled him
to retire from the Mission field. He found congenial employment in
editing, with great acceptance, the Sydney Presbyterian Witness, and
thereby still furthering the cause of the Gospel and of Missions.
A glance backwards over the story of the Gospel in the New
Hebrides may help to bring my readers into touch with the events
that are to follow. The ever-famous names of Williams and Harris are
associated with the earliest efforts to introduce Christianity amongst
this group of islands in the South Pacific Seas. John Williams and his
young missionary companion Harris, under the auspices of the
London Missionary Society, landed on Erromanga on the 30th of
November, 1839. Instantly, within a few minutes of their touching
land, both were clubbed to death; and the savages proceeded to cook
and feast upon their bodies. Thus were the New Hebrides baptized
with the blood of martyrs; and Christ thereby told the whole
Christian world that He claimed these Islands as His own. His cross
must yet be lifted up, where the blood of His saints has been poured
forth in His name! The poor Heathen knew not that they had slain
their best friends; but tears and prayers ascended for them from all
Christian souls, wherever the story of the martyrdom on Erromanga
was read or heard.
Again, therefore, in 1842, the London Missionary Society sent out
Messrs. Turner and Nisbet to pierce this kingdom of Satan. They
placed their standard on this same island of Tanna, the nearest to
Erromanga. In less than seven months, however, their persecution
by the savages became so dreadful, that we see them in a boat trying
to escape by night with bare life. Out on that dangerous sea they
would certainly have been lost, but the Ever-Merciful drove them
back to land, and sent next morning a trading vessel, which, contrary
to custom, called there and just in the nick of time. They, with all
goods that could be rescued, were got safely on board, and sailed for
Samoa. Say not their plans and prayers were baffled; for God heard
and abundantly blessed them there, beyond all their dreams. Dr.
Turner has been specially used of God for educating many native
teachers and missionaries and in translating and publishing edition
after edition of the Bible, besides giving them many other
educational and religious books in their own language;—blessed
work, in which, while I am writing these words, he and his gifted wife
are still honourably and fruitfully engaged in the holy autumn of
their days.
After these things, the London Missionary Society again and again
placed Samoan native teachers on one or other island of the New
Hebrides; but their unhealthiness, compared with their own happier
Samoa or Rarotonga, so afflicted them with the dreaded ague and
fever, besides what they endured from the inhospitable savages
themselves, that no effective mission work had been accomplished
there till at last the Presbyterian Missionaries were led to enter upon
the scene. Christianity had no foothold anywhere on the New
Hebrides, unless it were in the memory and the blood of the martyrs
of Erromanga.
The Rev. John Geddie and his wife, from Nova Scotia, were landed
on Aneityum, the most southerly island of the New Hebrides, in
1848; and the Rev. John Inglis and his wife, from Scotland, were
landed on the other side of the same island, in 1852. An agent for the
London Missionary Society, the Rev. T. Powell, accompanied Dr.
Geddie for about a year, to advise as to his settlement and to assist in
opening up the work. Marvellous as it may seem, the Natives on
Aneityum showed interest in the missionaries from the very first,
and listened to their teachings; so that in a few years Dr. Inglis and
Dr. Geddie saw about 3,500 savages throwing away their idols,
renouncing their heathen customs, and avowing themselves to be
worshippers of the true Jehovah God. Slowly, yet progressively, they
unlearned their Heathenism; surely and hopefully they learned
Christianity and civilization. In course of time a simple form of
family worship was introduced into and observed by every household
on the island; God’s blessing was asked on every meal; peace and
public order were secured; and property was perfectly safe under the
sanctifying and civilizing Gospel of Christ. And by-and-by these
Missionaries lived to see the whole Bible, which they and Mr.
Copeland had so painfully translated, placed in the hands of the
Aneityumese by the aid of the British and Foreign Bible Society—that
noblest handmaid of every Missionary enterprise. But how was this
accomplished? As a boon of charity? Listen!
These poor Aneityumese, having glimpses of this Word of God,
determined to have a Holy Bible in their own mother tongue,
wherein before no book or page ever had been written in the history
of their race. The consecrated brain and hand of their Missionaries
kept toiling day and night in translating the book of God; and the
willing hands and feet of the Natives kept toiling through fifteen long
but unwearying years, planting and preparing arrowroot to pay the
£1,200 required to be laid out in the printing and publishing of the
book. Year after year the arrowroot, too sacred to be used for their
daily food, was set apart as the Lord’s portion; the Missionaries sent
it to Australia and Scotland, where it was sold by private friends, and
the whole proceeds consecrated to this purpose. On the completion
of the great undertaking by the Bible Society, it was found that the
Natives had earned as much as to pay every penny of the outlay; and
their first Bibles went out to them, purchased with the consecrated
toils of fifteen years! Some of our friends may think that the sum was
large; but I know, from experience, that if such a difficult job had
been carried through the press and so bound by any other printing
establishment, the expense would have been greater far. One book of
Scripture, printed by me in Melbourne for the Aniwans, under the
auspices of the Bible Society too, cost eight shillings per leaf, and that
was the cheapest style; and this the Aniwans also paid for by
dedicating their arrowroot to God.
Let those who lightly esteem their Bibles think on these things.
Eight shillings for every leaf, or the labour and proceeds of fifteen
years for the Bible entire, did not appear to these poor converted
savages too much to pay for that Word of God, which had sent to
them the Missionaries, which had revealed to them the grace of God
in Christ, and which had opened their eyes to the wonders and
glories of redeeming love! They had felt, and we had observed, that
in all lands and amongst all branches of the human family, the Holy
Bible is, wheresoever received and obeyed, the power of God unto
salvation; it had lifted them out of savagery, and set them at the feet
of the Lord Jesus. Oh, that the pleasure-seeking men and women of
the world could only taste and feel the real joy of those who know
and love the true God—a heritage which the world and all that
pertains thereto cannot give to them, but which the poorest and
humblest followers of Jesus inherit and enjoy!
My first house on Tanna was on the old site occupied by Turner
and Nisbet, near the shore for obvious reasons, and only a few feet
above tide-mark. So was that of Mr. Mathieson, handy for materials
and goods being landed, and close to the healthy breezes of the sea.
Alas! we had to learn by sad experience, like our brethren in all
untried Mission fields. The sites proved to be hot-beds for Fever and
Ague, mine especially; and much of this might have been escaped by
building on the higher ground, and in the sweep of the refreshing
trade winds. For all this, however, no one was to blame; everything
was done for the best, according to the knowledge then possessed.
Our house was sheltered behind by an abrupt hill from three to four
hundred feet high, which gave the site a feeling of cosiness. It was
surrounded, and much shaded, by beautiful bread-fruit trees, and
very large cocoa-nut trees; too largely beautiful, indeed, for they shut
out many a healthy breeze that we sorely needed! There was a long
swamp all round the head of the bay, and, the ground at the other
end on which our house stood being scarcely raised perceptibly
higher, the malaria almost constantly enveloped us. Once, after a
smart attack of the fever, an intelligent Chief said to me,—
“Missi, if you stay here, you will soon die! No Tannaman sleeps so
low down as you do, in this damp weather, or he too would die. We
sleep on the high ground, and the trade-wind keeps us well. You
must go and sleep on the hill, and then you will have better health.”
I at once resolved to remove my house to higher ground, at the
earliest practicable moment; heavy though the undertaking would
necessarily be, it seemed my only hope of being able to live on the
island.
My dear young wife, Mary Ann Robson, and I were landed on
Tanna on the 5th November, 1858, in excellent health and full of all
tender and holy hopes. On the 12th February, 1859, she was confined
of a son; for two days or so both mother and child seemed to prosper,
and our island-exile thrilled with joy! But the greatest of sorrows was
treading hard upon the heels of that joy! My darling’s strength
showed no signs of rallying. She had an attack of ague and fever, a
few days before her confinement; on the third day or so thereafter, it
returned, and attacked her every second day with increasing severity
for a fortnight. Diarrhœa ensued, and symptoms of pneumonia, with
slight delirium at intervals; and then in a moment, altogether
unexpectedly, she died on the 3rd March. To crown my sorrows, and
complete my loneliness, the dear babyboy, whom we had named
after her father, Peter Robert Robson, was taken from me after one
week’s sickness, on the 20th March. Let those who have ever passed
through any similar darkness as of midnight feel for me; as for all
others, it would be more than vain to try to paint my sorrows!
I knew then, when too late, that our work had been entered on too
near the beginning of the Rainy Season. We were both, however,
healthy and hearty; and I daily pushed on with the house, making
things hourly more comfortable, in the hope that long lives were
before us both, to be spent for Jesus in seeking the salvation of the
perishing Heathen. Oh, the vain yet bitter regrets, that my dear wife
had not been left on Aneityum till after the unhealthy Rainy Season!
But no one advised this course; and she, high-spirited, full of
buoyant hope, and afraid of being left behind me, or of me being left
without her on Tanna, refused to allow the thing to be suggested. In
our mutual inexperience, and with our hearts aglow for the work of
our lives, we incurred this risk which should never have been
incurred; and I only refer to the matter thus, in the hope that others
may take warning.
Stunned by that dreadful loss, in entering upon this field of labour
to which the Lord had Himself so evidently led me, my reason
seemed for a time almost to give way. Ague and fever, too, laid a
depressing and weakening hand upon me, continuously recurring,
and reaching oftentimes the very height of its worst burning stages.
But I was never altogether forsaken. The ever-merciful Lord
sustained me, to lay the precious dust of my beloved Ones in the
same quiet grave, dug for them close by at the end of the house; in all
of which last offices my own hands, despite breaking heart, had to
take the principal share! I built the grave round and round with coral
blocks, and covered the top with beautiful white coral, broken small
as gravel; and that spot became my sacred and much-frequented
shrine, during all the following months and years when I laboured on
for the salvation of these savage Islanders amidst difficulties,
dangers, and deaths. Whensoever Tanna turns to the Lord, and is
won for Christ, men in after-days will find the memory of that spot
still green,—where with ceaseless prayers and tears I claimed that
land for God in which I had “buried my dead” with faith and hope.
But for Jesus, and the fellowship He vouchsafed me there, I must
have gone mad and died beside that lonely grave.
The organ of the Church to which we belonged, The Reformed
Presbyterian Magazine, published the following words of
condolence:—“In regard to the death of Mrs. Paton, one feeling of
grief and regret will fill the hearts of all who knew her. To add a
sentence to the singularly just and graceful tribute Mr. Inglis pays to
the memory of the deceased, would only mar its pathos and effect.
Such language, from one accustomed to weigh carefully every word
he pens, bespeaks at once the rare excellences of her that is gone, as
well as the heavy loss our Mission and our Church have sustained in
her death. Her parents, who gave her by a double baptism to the
Lord, have this consolation, that her death may exert a more
elevating and sanctifying influence for good, than the longest life of
many ordinary Christians. Deep sympathy with Mr. Paton will
pervade the Church, in the sore trial with which he has been visited.”
Dr. Inglis, my brother Missionary on Aneityum, wrote to the same
Magazine:—“I trust all those who shed tears of sorrow on account of
her early death will be enabled in the exercise of faith and
resignation to say, ‘The Will of the Lord be done; the Lord gave and
the Lord hath taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord!’ I need
not say how deeply we sympathise with her bereaved parents, as well
as with her sorrowing husband. By her death the Mission has
sustained a heavy loss. We were greatly pleased with Mrs. Paton,
during the period of our short intercourse with her. Her mind,
naturally vigorous, had been cultivated by a superior education. She
was full of Missionary spirit, and took a deep interest in the native
women. This was seen further, when she went to Tanna, where, in
less than three months, she had collected a class of eight females,
who came regularly to her to receive instruction. There was about her
a maturity of thought, a solidity of character, a loftiness of aim and
purpose rarely found in one so young. Trained up in the fear of the
Lord from childhood, like another Mary she had evidently chosen
that good part, which is never taken away from those possessed of it.
When she left this island, she had to all human appearance a long
career of usefulness and happiness on Earth before her, but the Lord
has appointed otherwise. She has gone, as we trust, to her rest and
her reward. The Lord has said to her, as He said to David, ‘Thou
didst well in that it was in thine heart to build a House for My Name.’
Let us watch and pray, for our Lord cometh as a thief in the night.”
The Mission Synod at Tanna, on April 27th, 1859, passed the
following resolution:—“That this meeting deeply and sincerely
sympathises with Mr. Paton in the heavy and trying bereavement
with which the Lord has seen meet to visit him in the death of his
beloved wife and child; and the Missionaries record their sense of the
loss this Mission has sustained, in the early, sudden, and unexpected
death of Mrs. Paton. Her earnest Christian character, her devoted
Missionary spirit, her excellent education, her kind and obliging
disposition, and the influence she was fast acquiring over the Natives
excited expectations of great future usefulness. That they express
their heart-felt sympathy with the parents and other relatives of the
deceased; that they recommend Mr. Paton to pay a visit to Aneityum
for the benefit of his health; that they commend him to the tender
mercies of Him who was sent to comfort all who mourn; and that
they regard this striking dispensation of God’s providence as a loud
call to themselves, to be more in earnest in attending to the state of
their own souls, and more diligent in pressing the concerns of
Eternity on the minds of others.”
Soon after her death, the good Bishop Selwyn called at Port
Resolution, Tanna, in his Mission ship. He came on shore to visit me,
accompanied by the Rev. J. C. Patteson. They had met Mrs. Paton on
Aneityum in the previous year soon after our arrival, and, as she was
then the picture of perfect health, they also felt her loss very keenly.
Standing with me beside the grave of mother and child, I weeping
aloud on his one hand, and Patteson—afterwards the Martyr Bishop
of Nakupu—sobbing silently on the other, the godly Bishop Selwyn
poured out his heart to God amidst sobs and tears, during which he
laid his hands on my head, and invoked Heaven’s richest
consolations and blessings on me and my trying labours. The virtue
of that kind of Episcopal consecration I did and do most warmly
appreciate! They urged me by many appeals to take a trip with them
round the Islands, as my life was daily in great danger from the
savages; they generously offered to convey me direct to Aneityum, or

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