CHAPTER II
THE LAND OF THE MOA AND THE MAORI
“I arrive where an unknown earth is under my feet ;
I arrive where a new sky is above me ;
I arrive at this land, a resting-place for me.
O Spirit of the Earth ! the stranger humbly offers his heart to Thee !”
Old Maori Song.
WE shall not be so negligent of the common courtesies of life as to accompany Mr. and Mrs. Selwyn on their honeymoon, but, leaving them to their felicity, we shall take an imaginary tour of a very different kind. It is to a land so far away across the seas that the simplest way of visiting it, having in view the exigencies of ocean currents and trade winds, is to make a complete circle of the earth, going out by way of the Cape of Good Hope, and returning by way of Cape Horn. New Zealand consists in reality of a group of islands, the total area of which is only very slightly smaller than that of the United Kingdom. It was discovered by Abel Tasman in 1642, but only the most transitory interest was taken in the country, until the historic and adventurous voyages of Captain Cook opened up the conception of new empires to the imagination of the old world. It is truly a realm of wonder, this Pacific group to which we have so swiftly flown. We step ashore, and astonishing revelations unfold themselves. We are in a land of luxurious vegetation and of broad and fertile plains ; a land of sky-piercing mountains, thickly covered with eternal George snows ; a land of rushing rivers and of thundering cataracts ; a land of boiling springs and of icy glaciers ; a land of silvern sounds and of burning volcanoes ; a land of mossy dells and of fern-clad valleys ; a land of hills and dales, draped with evergreens of all tints and shades, picked out with brilliant patches of colour and a glorious profusion of bloom. Here are grouped, in strange proximity, the marvels of which many nations boast. We find here the sunny skies of Italy, and the great blue lakes of Switzerland ; the snow-capped heights of Asia, and the prairies of the Far West ; the hissing geysers of Iceland, and the lovely fjords of Norway. Here from daybreak till twilight a new choir of feathered songsters maintains a constant carnival of melody. And then, at dusk, strange constellations globe themselves into the dome above our heads, until the whole vault is bespangled with glowing jewels ranged round the Southern Cross. Everything around us strikes us as being extravagant, prodigal, prolific, profuse. Nature lets herself go. There is no sense of restraint. Giant trees and tiny saplings, matted thickets and climbing creepers, twisting vines and impudent parasites all intertwine, and interweave, and intertangle themselves in the most glorious confusion of green. Beneath your feet, ferns and mosses carpet every inch of soil ; overhead, trees growing upon trees, layer upon layer, each weighing the other down by the burden of this bewildering tangle of vegetation, greet your eye everywhere as you explore these novel phases of forestry. The traveller stands amazed at the teeming and fantastic forms of life on every side.
Moreover, Nature has shown her kindness to this land, not merely in the superabundance of her favours, but in the judicious selection of her gifts. Just across the sea, on the broad Australian continent, and on the tight little island of Tasmania, the bush, though not so dense a jungle as is this, is rendered perilous by the presence of carnivorous beasts and of deadly serpents. But into this Paradise no wolfish eyes have ever peered. Upon these swinging boughs no hideous snake has ever twined himself. Both in her givings and in her withholdings Nature has betrayed a singular favouritism towards this happy land. It is not strange that British subjects in this most remote outpost of empire invariably speak of their island home with manifest pride, and with sincere affection. They know why the wandering imagination of the dying Selwyn could find no lovelier glades through which to ramble than those bush solitudes which, in better days, he had loved so well. Even the sadness of farewell in New Zealand is tempered for those who remain, by their unwavering conviction that the prodigal, overborne by fond recollections of the lovely land he is leaving, will quickly tire of other climes and return to his earlier love.
The tourist who visits this southern wonderland to-day finds there a great nation. He whirls from city to city in fast expresses ; or, preferring to travel by coastal steamer, lounges in sumptuously furnished saloons. In each city he discovers handsome streets, stately architecture, bustling commerce, imposing institutions, first-class newspapers, electric tramcars, and a perfect network of telephones. He misses no comfort ; he is asked to deny himself no luxury to which he has been accustomed in London or in Edinburgh. Everywhere he witnesses the signs of immense industries. He sees great and busy factories ; he glides in and out of ports crowded with shipping; he observes, as he hurries through the country, that the far-stretching plains are covered with heavy crops ; he notices that the most rugged hills are dotted with sheep ; and, even in the bush country, the curling columns of smoke, rising from among the trees, tell him of smiling homesteads and of prosperous countries. He finds that, in this new land, about a million souls of his own kith and kin have made their home ; whilst, every week, steamers from the “old country” pour their hundreds of immigrants into the Dominion. He observes, too and perhaps this surprises him most of all that, so far from having lost their national spirit, these colonists display, if possible, an even more ardent patriotism than that to which he has been accustomed. The very first news to which they turn in the paper is to the cablegrams from the Homeland. The birthdays of the King and of the Prince of Wales are celebrated as public holidays, all shops being closed and the day abandoned to appropriate festivities. And, when Great Britain became embroiled in hostilities in South Africa, the stalwart sons of this young nation trooped forth in their thousands that they, in their regiments of rough-riders, might take their places beside the historic battalions that fought at Agincourt, Blenheim, and Waterloo.
But, although only a few years have intervened, it is a far cry from the New Zealand of to-day to the New Zealand of 1840. The settlers then were few and far between. They consisted principally of whalers, attracted by the abundance of their huge game for which these seas were famed, supplemented by a handful of immigrants who had drifted across from the Australian mainland. To all intents and purposes the land was still in the undisturbed possession of the Maori; and as it is with him that much of our time must be spent, it may be well if, without delay, we seek a formal introduction.
The Maori is a bundle of contradictions. Of all aboriginal peoples he is quite easily the most attractive and the most interesting. For ages he was at once the most ferociously savage and, in many respects, the most highly cultured of all the dark races. The men are tall and stalwart, of sinewy frame and handsome bearing. The women are comely and graceful, of shapely form and pleasing face. And these exterior charms are but the natural reflection of a certain beauty and refinement in the very soul of the race. For the Maori is a born poet. The spirit of romance stirs in his blood. His folklore is a perfect fairyland of fascination. His myths, legends, and traditions abound in stories of exquisite pathos and beauty. His love-stories are as chaste and as graceful as anything in Western literature. The twinkling stars, the crystalline lakes, the snow-capped heights, the beetling cliffs along his rugged coast, and the scarped crags of his romantic valleys, have all been woven into these charming fancies. Ask a Maori, for instance, how it comes about that his land is a place of smoking mountains and of boiling springs, and he will tell you that, once upon a time, there came to this country, from the wonderful isle of Hawaiki, our great chief and magician, Ngatoro. He brought with him his favourite slave, and they landed from their canoe on the shores of the Bay of Plenty. Pressing inland, they cut a way for themselves through the bush, guiding their course by the stars, until they descried against the skyline the snowy summit of Mount Tongariro. When they reached the mountain, they determined to make the ascent. But as they mounted higher and still higher, the intense cold numbed every limb, and at last the poor slave lay in the snow, paralysed, and sick unto death. Turning towards the sea, Ngatoro shouted to his sisters to bring fire. His cry reached them in their home across the ocean, and, snatching up a bowl of fire, they hastened to his relief. Wherever, in the course of their pilgrimage, they halted, geysers sprang up through the sand. Wherever sparks or ashes fell from the bowl, hot springs or hissing steam-jets burst through the fern. When at last they reached Ngatoro, they found to their dismay that they had come too late ; the slave was dead. In his wrath, Ngatoro seized the burning bowl and hurled it at Mount Tongariro. And, from that day to this, the mountains of Taupo have smouldered with volcanic fires, which sometimes slumber, and sometimes break out in terrific and destructive eruption.
Yet, incongruously enough, side by side with this lofty strain of poetry and romance were to be found the most revolting and persistent savagery. When Tasman, on first discerning the land, ventured to effect a landing, the natives celebrated their introduction to pale faces by killing and eating as many as they could capture. The intrepid Dutchman named the spot “Massacre Bay,” and sailed gloomily away, not at all proud of his latest discovery. More than a century later, Marion du Fresne, a French navigator, was, with sixteen members of his crew, brutally butchered and made the victims of a cannibal orgy. Ship after ship shared the same horrible fate. These sickening stories soon became the property of mariners all the world over, and in every cabin and forecastle on the high seas, the natives of New Zealand were discussed with terror as the most atrocious and bloodthirsty monsters on the face of the earth. For more than a century captains kept a wary eye upon the skyline for the first glimpse of the New Zealand coast, and, on its appearance, ordered boarding-nets to be immediately lowered to prevent the dreaded savages from coming to close quarters.
Nor must it be supposed that the Maori was displaying towards the white men a ferocity to which he was ordinarily a stranger. For ages the soil of New Zealand was literally drenched in blood as a result of his furious and devastating tribal feuds. And the captives, taken in these pitiless campaigns, were invariably devoured by their conquerors.
All this makes gruesome reading, but the facts need to be kept steadily in mind, as a dark background to the picture which we seek to paint, if we would duly appreciate, and accurately appraise, the work of those fearless pioneers of the Gospel of Christ, who led this wild and barbarous people into the emancipating light of the kingdom of God.
But as, in negotiating a tunnel, we plunge from daylight into darkness only to emerge as suddenly into the sunshine again, so here a brighter gleam claims our attention. It is a strange study in light and shade. For the Maori may justly claim to be ranked alongside the most enterprising pathfinders of our modern civilisation. The records of his daring voyages would have stirred the blood of Sir Francis Drake, and kindled the admiration of Sir Walter Raleigh. Long before our own hardy navigators had fired the imagination of the world with visions of Western empires and Southern continents, these dauntless explorers, in large and shapely canoes, capable of accommodating and provisioning 150 men, had found their way across the immense spaces of the southern oceans. Long before the Vikings of the North had turned their frowning figure-heads seawards, these Vikings of the South had completed voyages as wonderful as any in the history of the world. From island to island, and from continent to continent, they groped their way, deterred neither by the equatorial fervours of the tropics, nor by the biting snowstorms of the south, until the vast Pacific could withhold no secret from them. Through “the long wash of Australasian seas,” on across the silent waste of waters, steering their course among volcanic isles and coral reefs, they made their way to the great American continent. Monuments of these early voyages have been found along the coasts of Chile and Peru ; up the banks of the Rio Negro, a great river of Patagonia, which discharges its waters into the Atlantic ; and even up the slopes of the Andes, and on the great plains of Argentina.
One other word remains to be said by way of introduction to this most attractive people. But that word is the saddest word of all. For, even at the time of which we write, the Maoris were a dying race. This fact is worth noting. The decay of aboriginal peoples has been so often, and in some cases so justly, attributed to their contact with civilisation, that it is well to recall the fact that, in the case of the Maori, the mournful process of disintegration had asserted itself before the white man landed on his shores. This lamentable condition had been reached owing to two main causes. The cradle of the race the fabled Hawaiki has been lost in obscurity, but it is certain that the pilgrim fathers of the Maori people had come from a much more genial latitude ; and the later generations were slow in adjusting themselves to the more rigorous climatic conditions. The early discoverers found that consumption and kindred diseases were even in their time working fearful havoc among the tribes. In 1790 a devastating epidemic swept over the country, demanding heavy toll at every settlement.
The other main cause of their persistent tendency to extinction lay in the terrific and depopulating nature of those sanguinary feuds to which reference has already been made. It cannot be wondered at that a people, who can never have been particularly numerous, should have been swiftly decimated and diminished by a policy of slaughter so relentless and unceasing. The real marvel, on the other hand, must surely be that a race, disfigured by instincts of such incorrigible brutality, should, under the spell ofChristian influences, have laid aside so quickly the hideous customs to which it had been so long addicted, and that, within the lifetime of a single generation, many of the sons and daughters of that ferocious people should have distinguished themselves in all departments of scholarship, and in all the arts of peace.
This must forever rank among the real wonders of the world.
History abounds in amazing coincidences ; and this history is no exception to the rule. During those very years, in the course of which George Selwyn was being equipped for his life’s great destiny, strange movements were afoot at the other end of the world. The whole attitude of public thought and of official policy towards that remarkable land which we have just visited underwent a complete and radical change within the brief period represented by Selwyn’s childhood and youth. Whilst, on the one hand, the sower was being taught and trained, and whilst his seed-basket was being stored with precious grain, the distant field, in which he was to fling that seed broadcast, was being simultaneously ploughed and harrowed, and prepared for his early coming.
When Selwyn was born, the average Englishman, if he had heard of New Zealand at all, thought of it as an insignificant cannibal island somewhere in the wide Pacific, and felt no inclination for a closer acquaintance. Very excellent people shuddered at the mention of its name. In 1814 Selwyn being a boy of five, and making the old nursery at Hampstead echo with his merry peals of laughter His Majesty’s Ministers of State became so dubious of the wisdom of Captain Cook in planting the Union Jack on these frightful shores that they gravely repudiated the annexation, and formally disowned the territory. It was not long, however, before the tidings of strange happenings on those far-off islands led the authorities to retrace their steps.
For in 1809 the very year of Selwyn’s birth the first missionary had landed in New Zealand. And he, strangely enough, was a Maori boy. It happened that the Rev. Samuel Marsden, a chaplain near Sydney, had heard the thrilling stories that the sailors told of the extraordinary people on the islands across the Tasman Sea. He became possessed of an irresistible desire to secure their evangelisation ; and, in the course of a visit to England, he pleaded with the Church Missionary Society to turn its thoughts to so heroic an enterprise. His eloquence was so persuasive, and his arguments so convincing, that the Society immediately committed itself to the undertaking. On the ship on which he returned to Sydney, Mr. Marsden was surprised to discover a young Maori sailor named Tuatara ; and in him the zealous evangelist recognised a sublime opportunity. At every leisure moment he sought out the dark-skinned sailor-lad, told him the wonderful story of the Gospels ; and pleaded with him with such success that Tuatara promised to hurry back to his own people and reveal to them the story of redeeming love. He kept his word. The Maori chiefs sat with open eyes and open mouths as Tuatara described to them the astonishing sights that met his gaze in the white man’s country. The Maoris looked at each other incredulously. He told them how the white man sowed his crop, and ground his corn, and made his bread. Then they rose in derisive laughter and refused to believe a word. But Tuatara had prudently provided himself with a tiny bag of wheat and a coffee-mill. The sceptical natives stood around the little plot whilst Tuatara prepared his soil and sowed his seed. They nudged each other, tapped their heads, and exchanged significant glances. Much travel, they evidently thought, had wrecked poor Tuatara’s brain, or brought him under the witchery of an evil spirit. But when there appeared first the blade, and then the ear, and then the full corn in the ear, the fashion of their countenances changed. They crowded round, and watched Tuatara grind his corn in his coffee-mill. And they ate, with wonder, of his bread. For awhile they listened with more respect to that still more wonderful story of which Tuatara loved to speak.
But the young evangelist spoiled it all by telling one wild and impossible tale which his brethren could never believe. Over the sea, he said, the white man had an animal a thousand times as big as a rat, and the white man sat upon its back and made it bear him, and harnessed it to his heavy burdens and made it drag them. They awoke the echoes of the hills with their laughter as they derided this ridiculous story. But when, some years after, they saw Mr. Marsden ride his horse upon the beach, they remembered Tuatara’s words. The vindication of all his statements powerfully inclined the minds of his people towards the missionaries. He was a forerunner; and, like another forerunner, it was said of him : “He did no miracle, but all things that he spake were true.”
Then, in 1814 the year in which George Selwyn had celebrated his fifth birthday, and in which the British Government had solemnly abandoned its claim upon New Zealand territory Mr. Marsden himself arrived. And it was on Christmas Day of that memorable year memorable for the shortsightedness of British statesmanship in repudiating the land on behalf of Britain, and memorable for the farseeing sagacity of the Christian missionary in claiming the land on behalf of Christ that the first service was held. How proudly Tuatara made all the preliminary arrangements, prepared the pulpit, and acted as interpreter. That first service was conducted, on that glorious midsummer day, beneath a cloudless sky. There were present three scarred old chiefs, attired in all the glory of some old uniforms which had found their way out from England. Swords dangled by their sides, and they held native switches in their hands. “I stood up,” says Mr. Marsden, “and began by singing the Old Hundredth Psalm, while my soul melted within me as I looked round at the people and thought of their state. It was Christmas Day, and my text was in every way appropriate to the situation: ‘Behold, I bring you glad tidings of great joy!’” Mr. Marsden repeatedly visited New Zealand during the following years, and greatly endeared himself to his native hearers. When, in 1838, he came for the last time, accompanied by his daughter, the Maoris carried the old man he was then seventy-two from place to place through the bush in a hammock supported on their shoulders.
But by this time the people of England had awakened to the fact that they had enormously underestimated the value of those islands, of which they had spoken so flippantly. Thoughtful men rubbed their eyes in amazement, as it dawned upon them that the coral reefs of their earlier fancy were, in reality, a group of islands almost as large as those on which they were themselves living. The stories of sea-captains, and the letters of missionaries and of whalers, gave an entirely new impression of the extraordinary magnificence and amazing fertility of this distant land. The British Government was brought to a better state of mind; and in 1833 it determined to appoint a British resident to be stationed in New Zealand.
THE OLD CHURCH AT REMUERA, BUILT BY BISHOP SELWYN
After bidding them a pathetic farewell, he returned to Sydney, where he shortly afterwards died. That was only a few months before Selwyn’s marriage.
At about the time of Selwyn’s wedding New Zealand absorbed a vast amount of public attention. The members of Her Majesty’s Cabinet never met at Westminster, and the great dignitaries of the Church never assembled at Lambeth, but the engrossing claims of New Zealand pressed themselves importunately upon their consideration. At length, in 1841, the Archbishops and Bishops “declared it to be their duty to undertake the charge of the Fund for the endowment of Colonial Bishoprics, and to become responsible for its application.” They immediately made out a list of those colonies which they regarded as in most urgent need of episcopal appointments. And at the very top of the list, compiled in order of urgency, stood the name of New Zealand. In view of the fact that New Zealand was one of the youngest of British dependencies, this prominence is impressive. It reflects the conviction, that was rapidly growing upon the popular mind, that this new country, away in southern seas, was a land of splendid promise and magnificent possibilities. It was therefore decided to appoint without delay a pioneer Bishop of New Zealand.
But the man! Whom should they send? So much depended upon that decision. One member of the Committee of the Church Society of New Zealand had been conspicuous on account of the intense interest he had displayed in these distant islands. Upon him the choice fell, and the call was accordingly addressed to William Selwyn, George’s elder brother. Upon mature consideration he felt it his duty to decline the appointment, and afterwards earned for himself a high reputation as the Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity. By some happy thought or shall we say by some providential instinct? someone suggested that perhaps they had chosen the right family, but the wrong brother. The thought of the vigorous young Windsor curate made a powerful appeal to every mind ; and it was instantly resolved to invite the Reverend George Augustus Selwyn to become the first Bishop of New Zealand.
Selwyn’s attitude towards the call may be easily stated. He was descended from distinguished military ancestors, and all the instincts of a soldier stirred within his veins. It was often said of him in New Zealand that he was “a General spoiled.” He held strongly all through life that a clergyman should be absolutely at the disposal of his ecclesiastical superiors. Like Newman, his old schoolfellow, he hated to be consulted, and loved to be commanded. It is impossible to appreciate either the spirit in which he went to New Zealand, or the motives from which nearly thirty years later he left it, unless this peculiarity be clearly grasped. He found that it was the sincere wish of the Bishops that he should go ; and he felt that no option remained to him.
Vexatious delays followed. Oddly enough, the real cause of these irritating procrastinations was, that the Government then in power, as well as its predecessors in office, entertained grave doubts as to Mr. Selwyn’s fitness for the position. It is singular that whilst, in 1814, one Government should have doubted the value of the land, another, in 1841, should have entertained similar apprehensions as to the fitness of the man. Both New Zealand and George Selwyn have amply vindicated themselves since then. As the Times, in reviewing the situation years afterwards, pointed out, he was emphatically and preeminently the man, “A Christian, yet a man of the world ; a scholar, yet an athlete ; first and foremost in all the tests of English skill and courage ; wise and witty as well ; with a word, a look, and a deed for everybody ; holding his own, yet denying to no one else that privilege ; it was by a happy venture that he was chosen at the age of thirty-two to found a See at the Antipodes, when the people he had to convert were still fresh from banquets on the flesh of their murdered fellow men.”
In drawing up the Letters Patent, the Crown solicitors made a number of unhappy blunders, the correction of which absorbed a deal of precious time. One astounding and egregious mistake, however, they made which has become historic. Selwyn instantly noticed it, but whispered not a word. The new See should of course have been defined as lying between the 34th and 50th degrees of south latitude. But the clerk, his mind intent on stating accurately the northern and southern limits of the new episcopate, declared that the territory lay between the 34th degree of north latitude and the 50th degree south! According to this geographical definition, New Zealand may be said to extend its inordinate length across the whole Western hemisphere! Selwyn saw, however, that this broad and Catholic interpretation of his duties would afford him the coveted opportunity of visiting and evangelising the scattered islands of the Pacific. He therefore smiled up his sleeve, and kept his own counsel.
At last the Ministers of State decided to content themselves with the selection of their ecclesiastical brethren; the Queen approved the nomination; Selwyn in so many words accepted” the appointment; and the Crown solicitors had, so far as they knew, drafted with accuracy the tiresome official documents. With all his wonted sprightliness and energy, Selwyn then threw himself into the work of preparing for his daring enterprise. “I remember,” says his sister, “sitting up half the night helping him to make a waterproof belt for his watch and pedometer. He meant to swim the rivers, pushing his clothes in front of him. He was wonderfully skilful in providing for his intended New Zealand life.”
One of the first orders that he gave was for the construction of a church tent, a tabernacle which, folded within moderate compass, he could take with him, and, immediately on his arrival, erect as the first “Cathedral” of his island see. In all these preparations, Mrs. Selwyn also worked with a will. Most cordially had she adopted the New Zealand project as her own as well as her husband’s. In relation to her, however, Selwyn remarked to a friend that he could never have brought himself to accept the call, but for the fact that Sir John Richardson had recently breathed his last. “For,” he asked, “how could I have taken away that old man’s daughter?”
Before his consecration Bishop Selwyn asked the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to entrust him with an annual grant for the purpose of endowment, in preference to giving annual salaries for clergymen. “What I most of all deprecate,” he said, “is the continuance of annual salaries, which leave a church always in the same dependent state as at first, and lay upon the Society a continually increasing burden.” During the next ten years S.P.G. grants for endowment alone amounted to £7000.
His Consecration Service now began to occupy all his thoughts, and a profound and touching gravity pervaded his spirit whenever his mind recurred to this impressive event. It was conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, at Lambeth Chapel, on 17th October, 1841, the Bishop of Barbados preaching the sermon. The chapel was uncomfortably crowded, many of his own friends being unable to secure admission.
Nine days later another imposing ceremony took place, this time at Cambridge. The young Bishop went down to his old university to receive his degree as a Doctor of Divinity. “When he knelt down before the Vice-Chancellor,” the record runs, “it was a noble sight! Dr. Turton, the Regius Professor of Divinity, made an admirable speech in Latin, alluding to Constantine, to the missionary labours of England, to the Bishop’s own zeal, to his high qualifications, and to the fine prospects before him.” Cambridge spared no effort that day to prove that the university was proud of her valiant and distinguished son. Oxford followed suit by conferring a similar degree, and his investiture on that occasion was scarcely less enthusiastic or impressive.
The next few weeks were naturally monopolised by a long series of private and semi-public farewells. During these last days in England, he spent as much time with his parents and sisters as he could possibly steal from these valedictory engagements. Some of these functions were of exceptional interest and significance, as testifying to the lofty place which Selwyn commanded in the esteem of the greatest and the wisest men. Here, for example, we find him the central figure of a dinner-party assembled in his honour. It is being held in the house of his old friend, Mr. Edward Coleridge. Among the guests it is easy to recognise Mr. Gladstone and Mr. (afterwards Lord Chief Justice) Coleridge. Yonder, too, sit two other occupants of judicial benches in the persons of Mr. Justice Patteson and Mr. Justice Cotton. And at least three future bishops are here Archdeacon Wilberforce (who later on became Bishop, first of Oxford, and then of Winchester); Mr. Durnford, afterwards Bishop of Chichester; and Mr. Chapman, who, four years later, became the first Bishop of Colombo.
The farewell service at Windsor was one which no one present ever forgot. The parish church was crowded to the very doors. The youthful prelate preached from the prophetic and triumphant words: “The abundance of the sea shall be converted unto Thee ; the forces also of the Gentiles shall come unto Thee.” The people who, to the end of life, cherished every memory of their young minister with a personal and tender regard, leaned forward in strained and breathless silence, as he outlined his ambitions amidst the strange and savage scenes towards which he was turning his face. And when he said that, having successfully established a vigorous and aggressive Church on those distant shores, he would be content to die there neglected and forgotten, tears trickled down all faces, and the pent-up emotions of his devoted hearers found expression in audible, though stifled, sobs.
Farewells are trying ordeals, especially to natures as sensitive and transparent as those of the Bishop and Mrs. Selwyn. The last few weeks in England were a painful experience for both of them, and it was with a sigh, almost of relief, that they reached the last of those exacting days. Berths had been secured on board the Tomatin, bound for Auckland via Sydney; and when the last fond look had been given, the last broken word spoken, and the last hand wrung, the Bishop and his wife took their places on board. A few weary days including Christmas Day were spent in idly waiting for a wind. And then, on 26th December, 1841, a favourable breeze sprang up, the Tomatin stood out to sea, and in a few hours the watchers at Plymouth could but faintly descry the white sails of the vanishing ship, like the fluttering wings of a small sea-bird, on the wide and watery horizon.
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