The Wesleyan missionary Rev. Thomas Williams has been called, with justification, "the principal authority upon the state of society among the Fijians when Europeans first came into contact with them" (Thomson, The Fijians, 1908, p.56). With his wife and a few other dedicated colleagues he conducted his ministry in the considerable hardship and danger of the cannibal islands of Fiji between 1840 and 1852. We are fortunate that not only was he an empathetic, intelligent and acute observer, but also a gifted artist (one of his daughters produced a family of very famous Australian artists, the Lindsays). Many of his drawings were transformed into wood-engravings or lithographs to provide illustrations for his book Fiji and the Fijians: the islands and their inhabitants, and possibly some of those in its companion volume Mission history by his colleague James Calvert. Further reading - G.C. Henderson's books The Journal of Thomas Williams and Fiji and the Fijians (1931, Sydney, Angus & Robertson). Online see the Australian Dictionary of Biography entry on Williams, and also "The Wesleyans Enter Fiji".