CHAPTER IV 

THE GARDEN IN THE WILDERNESS 

“He stood upon the world’s broad threshold; wide
The din of battle and of slaughter rose ;
He saw God standing on the weaker side
That sank in seeming loss before its foes.
Therefore he went
And humbly joined him to the weaker part;
Fanatic named, and fool, yet well content
So he could be the nearer to God’s heart,
And feel its solemn pulses sending blood
Through all the widespread veins of endless good.”
LOWELL.

THE days which the Bishop spent in the congenial atmosphere of his northern home were by no means devoted to rest or relaxation. His first extensive tour through but one of the islands of his enormous diocese had but deepened his sense of responsibility. He felt that he was laying the foundations of a mighty nation. And every moment of the time that intervened between one long expedition and another was invested in the equally important task of organisation and consolidation. Dr. Selwyn had implicit faith in New Zealand. He dreamed radiant dreams of its splendid future. Even when the hills were everywhere draped with virgin bush, he deliberately laid his plans in confident anticipation of the time when those same landscapes should be smothered with an intricate network of crowded streets ; when those very hills should echo to the scream of railway engines ; and when that clear air should be murky with the smoke of many factories. He heard afar off the tramp of millions of feet, the roar of heavy traffic, and the whirling of myriad wheels. And he set himself to prepare for the day that he saw dawning. Into two movements, especially, the Bishop threw all his energy from the very first. He felt that, as the future centre of his work, it was essential that a site for a Cathedral should be purchased in Auckland ; and as he looked with gratitude and delight upon the hundreds of native converts at the various mission-stations, he was confirmed in his conviction that a College, for the training and equipment of a native ministry, was absolutely indispensable.

 He had only been a few months in the country when he selected and purchased a site for the Cathedral. Macaulay has made all the world familiar with his gloomy vision of the New Zealander standing on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul’s. But Mr. Swainson, the first Attorney-General of New Zealand, has painted a companion picture in somewhat livelier colours. Referring to the site selected for the Auckland Cathedral, he says : “By the provident foresight of Bishop Selwyn, this commanding position has been secured for the Metropolitan Cathedral of New Zealand. And at some remote period, in the far distant future, when the projected Cathedral shall have become a venerable pile, it will be a matter of no little interest to its then ministers (should the tradition be so long preserved) to read how, in the dark or early ages of New Zealand, A.D. 1843, its founder, the first bishop, returning from a walking visitation of more than a thousand miles, attended by a faithful companion of a then, it may be, extinct race, his shoes worn out and tied to his instep by a leaf of native flax, travel-worn but not weary, once more found himself on this favoured spot, arrested for a moment by the noble prospect presented to his bodily eye, and cheered by the prophetic vision of a long line of successors, Bishops of New Zealand, traversing the same spot, better shod and less ragged than himself. Such a scene, illustrative of the hour and the man, in the hands of a true artist, would afford a fitting subject for a painting to adorn the walls of the future Chapter-house.”

  But the coup-de-grace of the Bishop’s faculty for organisation, and the finest reflection of his own practical ingenuity, was undoubtedly the establishment of the College of St. John the Evangelist. Founded on “the best precedents of antiquity,” and intended for both natives and European colonists, St. John’s College was frequently declared by the Bishop to be the “key and pivot” of all his operations, and the only regular provision for its support was an annual grant of £300 from the S.P.G. For the first two years the College really consisted of two or three small tents, grouped around the Cathedral tent which the Bishop had brought from England. Then when the Bishop removed to Auckland, the tents gave place to wooden houses, thatched with reeds, on the banks of the stream at Purewa. And from those modest beginnings the work has persisted, the methods have developed, and the buildings have grown to the much more elaborate and imposing proportions which characterise the institution today.

  The College was designed according to the original documents: (i) as a place of religious and useful education for all classes of the community, and especially for candidates for Holy Orders ; (2) as a temporary hostelry for young settlers on their first arrival in the country ; and (3) as a refuge for the sick, the aged, and the poor. The Bishop, with that practical sagacity which never failed him, ordained that each student should devote a definite portion of his time daily to some useful pursuit, in aid of the purposes of the Institution. He reminded his young enthusiasts of the apostolic precept : “Let him labour, working with his own hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.” Arrangements were made by which the students should be taught and exercised in the crafts of gardening, forestry, farming, carpentry, turning, printing, weaving and in other equally useful arts and remunerative occupations.

  “Our little College assumes a regular form,” the Bishop wrote to his sister in July, 1843, “and already gives me promise of a supply of men duly qualified to serve God in the ministry of His Church. We have already nine students, three of whom will, I hope, be admitted to deacon’s orders in September. I suppose that Sarah has given you an account of our mode of life which will amuse you. Mrs. Watts is College cook, and bakes and cooks for the whole body so that ladies as well as gentlemen are free to attend to reading and teaching. The College kitchen is regulated upon the plan of a kitchen at Cambridge supplying regular ‘commons’ to every member, and providing extras to those who like to order. Each person’s ‘commons’ including tea, sugar, meat, bread, and potatoes, amounts to one shilling per diem, which is the uniform expense of every person in the establishment.

  “At the end of seven years, if we may look forward to so distant a period, we hope to send William to England. I used to think of bringing him, but the more I see of my diocese, the less prospect I have of being able to absent myself for a year within the next ten or fifteen years. If I could get some good Arch-deacons from England the case would be altered, but there seems to be a conspiracy of papas and mammas against New Zealand and me, four of my personal friends, if not five, being prevented by such interference from following the leading of their own hearts and joining me.

  “Sarah is in high favour with the natives, who love a cheerful eye and friendly manner. Her name is ‘Matta Pihopa,’ — Mother Bishop. They all say that her atawai (grace) is great.

  “Our native school on board the Tomatin has been of the greatest possible service to us all, though I regret to say that our schoolmaster, Rupai, my native boy, has fulfilled the predictions of Sir William Hooker and others, and returned to his native habits.

  “We have also a little printing-press in constant operation, printing native lessons and skeleton sermons for the native teachers, college regulations, bills, receipts ; in fact, doing everything that we require for the routine of our business.

  “I have held two ordinations, one at Wellington, at which Mr. Mason was admitted to priest’s orders in the presence of 400 natives, the other at the Waimate, when Mr. Davis, one of the senior catechists of the Church Mission, was ordained deacon. I have also held six confirmations, at which 700 natives and a few English have been confirmed.

  “You will gather from this letter that we are very happy and beginning to feel settled for life, with roots striking deeper and deeper into the soil of this loveable country.”

  A great deal of time was spent in planning the division of his huge and unwieldy episcopate into separate sees, a step which the Bishop saw to be inevitable at no distant date. A thorough scheme of preliminary organisation was drafted, and a common Diocesan Fund was established. Into this Fund, with characteristic unselfishness, the Bishop threw half of his own stipend.

  Mrs. Selwyn’s health, which had for some time given much anxiety, improved somewhat towards the end of 1843, and the Bishop felt that he could leave her in the care of their old friends, Mr. Chief Justice Martin and his excellent wife, and set out on his deferred visitation of the South Island. He left Auckland as the sun was setting, on i8th October, 1843, accompanied by his chaplains, Mr. Cotton and Mr. Nihill, and by the “chief protector of Aborigines,” Mr. Clark.

  We shall make no attempt to follow him in detail throughout this second long journey. The tour which we have already described is typical of all such nomadic excursions. He determined, on this second expedition, to cross the North Island diagonally, from north-east to south-west, to visit the settlements at New Plymouth, Wanganui, and Wellington, and to sail thence for the South Island, on which he had not yet set foot.

  In the course of this pilgrimage he penetrated the volcanic region, and stood amazed at the awe-in-spiring phenomena by which he was everywhere surrounded. Magnificent geysers hurled their immense volumes of boiling water to the skies; hot springs foamed and bubbled in every direction. Through every crack and cranny and crevice fierce jets of steam rushed hissing out. Here and there, the very mud was seething and spluttering in a furious ferment of heated agitation. The entire area was weird, awful, desolate, yet possessing a grandeur of its own. The very earth shuddered as though in the grasp of a relentless monster who could crush it if he would. Every inch of soil, and every drop of moisture, gave fearful witness to the fiery forces that slumbered beneath the surface, and ominously hinted at wild possibilities should they awake in anger. The Bishop gazed, too, with a delight approaching to ecstasy, on the radiantly beautiful pink and white terraces, both of which have since suffered complete demolition in the fearful eruption of 1886.

  Pressing towards the south, his letters afford us glimpses of him, now hewing for himself a way through a trackless jungle of bush; now up to his arm-pits in some extensive swamp or lagoon ; and, again, swimming the Wanganui river, or crossing it at the flood on his air-bed, which he had by this time dignified with the title of “the episcopal barge.” On 15th November he reached Wanganui, then a tiny settlement of about a hundred people ; on 4th December he left New Plymouth ; and on 8th December he effected, at Nelson, his first landing on the South Island.

  A deep gloom enshrouds the records of this tour, for at every place the Bishop detected evidences of that smouldering hatred and festering discontent which, not long after, burst out into actual war. Everywhere natives and settlers were looking askance at each other, and regarding one another with ill-disguised suspicion. Here and there massacres had already taken place, and at every turn Dr. Selwyn’s happy faculty for reconciling antagonists and adjusting grievances was laid under heavy requisition. He had no sooner landed on the South Island than he discovered, to his sorrow, that the North held no monopoly in this unfortunate matter. The church at Nelson is prettily perched upon a picturesque knoll in the centre of the town. The Bishop found the hill converted into a fort, and was compelled to enter the building by way of a drawbridge. On the Sunday he preached in the church, making tactful and conciliatory reference to the painful dissensions and shocking atrocities which had recently occurred, and a few days later left for Wellington. Here, also, a tumultuous state of feeling prevailed. A Maori had been charged with theft and sentenced to two months’ imprisonment. The natives in Court made a hostile demonstration, furiously hissing the judge ; they then retired to their pa to consider further action, and arrange a rescue of the prisoner. Taking with him Mr. Hadfield (afterwards Bishop of Wellington) and Mr. Cotton, Dr. Selwyn strode off to the pa. Greenstone hatchets and iron weapons were angrily flourished in his face, and with many threats and imprecations he was commanded instantly to depart. He persisted, however, in quietly remaining among them, speaking, as opportunity presented itself, an occasional word of dispassionate counsel or friendly persuasion. Mr. Hadfield also addressed the Maoris in “a quiet vein of raillery which is always effective with native assemblies.” Before midnight the storm had subsided, and next morning the chiefs professed the utmost goodwill.

  If, as we have seen, the North Island expressed, in 1843, but a remote hint, an almost imperceptible whisper, of the remarkable transformation of the immediate future, it may be fearlessly affirmed that the prophecy of a coming civilisation in the South Island was even less audible. Where the busy province of Canterbury now stands, with its hundreds of thriving towns, and even where its stately capital now converges upon its lofty Cathedral spire, a great and silent prairie was all that greeted the eye of Bishop Selwyn. He landed from the schooner Richmond, on which he had run down from Wellington, on 6th January, 1844. The coast he found dotted by one or two whaling stations ; but the broad areas of the Canterbury plains, now a perfect panorama of pastoral and agricultural activity, waved, far as the eye could reach, with brown tussock and with yellow grass. He would have been a daring seer who, looking upon that trackless prairie as it met the eye of Bishop Selwyn, would have hazarded the prediction that, within the lifetime of a single generation, great ocean liners would be smoking on every skyline, bearing the wealthy products of those unbroken plains to all the markets of the world.

  Farther south, where now the prosperous province of Otago stands, the silence was even more intense. Here, to a greater extent than in the north, the Maoris had been decimated by tribal warfare, and swept off by pitiless disease. At the opening of the nineteenth century a native settlement near the Otago Heads had consisted of about 2000 souls. Half a century later only fifty of these survived. Men with whom Dr. Selwyn conversed could tell how, within their memory, a settlement of a thousand had dwindled down to a dozen. The colder climate and the fiercer feuds had combined with diseases, introduced from over the seas, to work the most fearful havoc. “At one small bay,” we are told, “about three hundred died of measles. Some of the parents, are dying, are said to have buried their children alive rather than leave them to linger on through the disease to its fatal end.”

  At the time of the Bishop’s arrival in Otago, the scene was preparing for a radical change. The old race had almost expired, the new race had not yet arrived. It was not until four years later that the John Wycliffe and the Philip Laing brought out, from their highland homes and quiet kirks, those sturdy pioneers who, before they had so much as built a hut or felled a tree, kneeled upon the shore and, mingling their voices in psalms and supplication, prayed that they might find grace to establish a colony in the love of righteousness, and in the fear of God. Through these lonely lands the Bishop made his way, ministering to such human life as he could discover, and always preparing to-day for the spiritual needs of the millions who were coming to-morrow. On one day he is being entertained by the great chief, Te Rehe, who lived, with his wife, in a hut curiously constructed of the bones of whales, thatched with reeds. On another he is making himself perfectly at home in a deserted and dilapidated old whaling station, where broken boilers, decayed oil-barrels, and the ruins of once snug little cabins mutely told of busy times in still earlier days. For, from the time of the first discovery of New Zealand, her waters swarmed with whales ; and these extremely southern seas were especially the happy hunting-ground of those adventurous spirits who scorned the isolation, and braved the perils, of cannibal islands in the exciting pursuit of their gigantic prey. Many a night did the Bishop spend at these southern whaling stations. Sitting with the whalers round a blazing fire, he loved to listen to the thrilling stories that these earliest settlers could tell of their hairbreadth escapes, both by sea and land. They had often returned from the dangers of the chase upon the waters, only to confront an attack from hostile natives on the shore. And many a good story did these same whalers afterwards tell of the excitement with which the Bishop would follow breathlessly the unfolding of their adventures, often capping their most stirring tales by the recital of some equally fearsome experience through which he himself had passed.

  Having journeyed as far as Stewart Island in the extreme south, the Bishop hastened home. On the way he was entertained by the captain and officers of a French corvette which chanced to be lying at anchor in Akaroa Harbour. “I dined on board,” he tells us, “in a style which contrasted amazingly with my life on the native schooner, as I was received with a salute, the crew drawn up in order, and a variety of other formalities.” He reached Auckland after a speedy passage, having, however, very narrowly escaped shipwreck off the Banks Peninsula.

  Immediately upon his return, the Bishop resolved to transfer his residence from Waimate to Auckland. Upon him devolved now the care of many churches, and it became absolutely essential that he should be in touch with things at their centre. Moreover, his days were dark with gloomy foreboding. Every messenger brought news of the alarming spread of disaffection among the natives, and of deplorable outbreaks of hostilities. He was eager, too, to press on with his great work of ecclesiastical reorganisation, and this could be far more expeditiously effected from Auckland than from a remote settlement in the far north. The Church Missionary Society had also committed itself to a readjustment of its forces in New Zealand ; and all these factors in combination rendered the Bishop’s removal imperative. He therefore appointed the Rev. Henry Williams, his old friend and early host, Archdeacon of the Waimate, and removed his own home, his episcopal headquarters, and St. John’s College to the rapidly rising town of Auckland, the then capital of the colony. Lady Martin, the wife of the Chief Justice, thus vividly describes the departure:

  “The Bishop, Mrs. Selwyn, and the children were off by 7 A.M. Mrs. Selwyn and her little boy of five (William) rode ; the Bishop was on foot, with his infant son (John, afterwards Bishop of Melanesia) securely swathed in a plaid which was thrown over his shoulder and wound round his waist. Friends bade farewell ; and the Maori children came swarming to the top of the lane singing: ‘O that will be joyful, When we meet to part no more.’ We rowed across the harbour, and before sunset landed at the little town of Kororeka. We then went up to the small wooden parsonage near the church on a hill above the town and found the garden gay with shrubs and flowers. Ere long the large party from the Waimate, composed of English and natives, was encamped in tents near Auckland till the new St. John’s College was ready to receive them.”

  Without further delay the Bishop decided to put into actual operation some of those abstract ideas which he had conceived and formulated at Windsor. In September, 1844, he summoned a Synod of the clergy of his diocese to “frame rules for the better management of the mission, and the general government of the church.” It is difficult now to discern the grounds on which such a gathering could be justly censured ; but the fact remains that, when the news reached England that such a Synod had been convened, it was greeted with a storm of angry criticism. New Zealand has, in a most marked way, been a land of political and ecclesiastical experiments.

  Many abstract principles of political economy have there been subjected to the stern test of practical experience; and on having vindicated themselves on that limited theatre, have become the commonplaces of statesmanship among the older nations. Very few modern Churchmen, it may be, adequately recognise the enormous influence which Bishop Selwyn exerts upon the religious life of our own day as a direct outcome of these early experiments at the Antipodes.

  He tested and improved his methods, most carefully revising and pruning them at every stage, until the finished result conformed precisely to his original ideal. Then, on his elevation to Lichfield, he transplanted the perfected organisation into the unpromising soil and atmosphere of the conservative church-life of the Homeland. Here, again, it abundantly justified itself; and it is not too much to claim that the imposing Synods and Pan-Anglican Congresses to which modern eyes have grown accustomed are the direct fruit and natural outcome of those early experiments on the distant shores of New Zealand.

  During the next few years the Bishop worked night and day at the development of his institutions. As a result of these titanic labours he was able, in an incredibly brief space of time, to look around upon a group of activities of which any man might pardonably be proud. St. John’s College grew into a large and prosperous centre of manifold, beneficent enterprises. Tutors and students devoted themselves with equal energy to the exacting tasks of the class-room as well as to those industrial pursuits by which the establishment was supported. The hands that clasped the text-book and the pencil in the morning awoke the echoes of the neighbourhood with hammer and saw in the afternoon. The greatest pride was taken not only in the intellectual progress of the students, but in the ploughing of the land, in the swarming of the bees, in the feeding of the cattle, and in those departments of the estate in which the printing-press, the shoemaker’s last, the tailor’s needle, and the weaver’s loom were kept in constant employment. Around the College there flourished a cluster of kindred beneficent organisations. Quite an array of schools sprang up. There was a natives’ adult school, a native boys’ school, a native girls’ school, a half-castes’ school, and an English primary school. Then, too, there was an elaborate teaching staff ; there were the lay associates ; and there was a visitor for Household and Hospitality.

  But, perhaps, the beautiful simplicity and apostolic devotion which characterised all these institutions will be most easily comprehended by a reference to the St. John’s Hospital. Side by side with the College, the Bishop founded this most excellent establishment, from the beds of which none who were sick or in pain were by any means excluded. The staff consisted entirely of voluntary helpers, who cheerfully bound themselves to render medical attendance and nursing care without any remuneration whatever. The Bishop issued an appeal, based upon the Divine precept : “Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.” And in response to that challenge there was found no lack of willing workers who pledged themselves “to minister, so far as health would allow, to all the wants of the sick of all classes, without respect of persons or reservation of service, in the hope of excluding all hireling assistance from a work which ought, if possible, to be entirely a labour of love.”

  Such time as could be snatched from the immense labour involved in this work of consolidation was devoted to further tours of visitation through the islands. In making these lengthy and tedious excursions, the equestrian skill which the Bishop had acquired in his cross-country steeple chases at Eton often served him in good stead. At Wellington he won the undying admiration of the Maoris by the way in which he rode a certain horse along the beach. At every step he was greeted with shouts of “Tena korua ko!” (“There you go, you and the buck-jumper!”). He dismounted and inquired the cause of these unwonted demonstrations. Whereupon he was informed that the chief who had lent him the horse had deliberately placed at his disposal an animal of particularly vicious propensities, and the natives were applauding the skill with which he was managing the worst buck-jumper in the country!

  On another occasion the Maoris introduced him to a horse which they called Rona, or, The Man in the Moon. It was, they said, impossible to manage him. The Bishop took a pack-saddle, and for two long hours he wrestled patiently, but persistently, with the knotty problem. He succeeded at last in covering the horse’s eyes with a pocket-handkerchief. Then, holding up a foreleg with one hand, he adjusted the pack-saddle with the other, the Maoris beholding his triumph with mingled expressions of amazement and delight.

  Sir George Grey, who assumed the Lieutenant-Governorship in 1845, and who was through all his term of office a most staunch and sympathetic friend of Bishop Selwyn’s, brought a number of zebras into the country. Many attempts were made to ride them, but always without success. At last an old Maori chief, who had witnessed the prowess of the Bishop, asked if he had ever tried to break them in. He was assured that such a feat was impossible. The chief, however, sceptically shook his head, and replied : “Impossible! how so? he has broken us in, and tamed the Maori heart, why not the zebra ?”

  The confident old chief was probably thinking of the services which the Bishop was constantly rendering as peacemaker in the native pas. Many a sanguinary conflict was averted by his timely and fearless intervention. On one occasion he entered a pa, where all was turmoil and confusion on account of the fact that a chief had murdered his cousin. War was instantly declared between the friends of the two parties; the adherents of the murdered man loudly proclaiming, with fierce gesticulations, their thirst for revenge. In a very short time the two little armies were drawn up in battle array. Bishop Selwyn, accompanied by Mr. Abraham, interviewed the leaders, first on this side and then on that, attempting to bring about a peaceful understanding. At last the Bishop approached the murderer, who shamelessly recited the details of his crime, and concluded the ghastly narrative by demanding: “What do you think of that?” Near by, the friends of the man were lying fingering the triggers of their rifles, and quite prepared to fire if the slightest danger threatened him. The Bishop, however, looked the man full in the face and replied: “I have no hesitation in saying that, on your own showing, you have committed the crime of which Cain was guilty when he slew his brother Abel!” Quivering with anger, the man sprang forward and screamed: “Say that again if you dare!” The Bishop stood without a tremor and deliberately repeated the words. Mr. Abraham confessed that he thought the Bishop’s hour had come, for he saw the man’s hand tighten on his tomahawk hidden under his tartan plaid. At that critical moment, however, a great cry arose among the warriors: “The Bishop is right! the Bishop is right!” Thereupon the guilty chief, confronted with his crime, convicted by his conscience, and deserted by his friends, slunk off, ashamed, to his ivhare.

  It was only too evident by this time that the work which the Bishop and his colleagues had so patiently and painfully built up was destined to be subjected to a fearful and fiery ordeal. The dissensions and disputes which had smouldered for years had at last blazed out into actual war. The slumbering savagery of the native race revived with the outbreak of hostilities. Every fierce passion was inflamed by a sense of injustice, and every barbarous instinct was quickened by the sight of blood. No greater calamity could have overtaken the Bishop’s heroic labours than this tragic and deplorable convulsion. The sickening horrors of war are sufficiently gruesome and revolting anywhere and at any time ; but for a war between the nation, represented by the missionaries on the one side, and the dark race which they had come to evangelise on the other, to break out just as the first Christian institutions were being tremblingly founded, was a calamity aggravated by every possible circumstance of time and of place.

  Yet so it was British men-of-war were riding at anchor in the lake-like harbours of New Zealand. British regiments were encamped in those quiet valleys which had for ages been the home of the kewa and the tui. Maoris and Europeans flashed at each other glances of hatred, and hurled at each other angry threats and taunts of defiance. And soon the tree-draped hills of this lovely land were echoing to the clash of steel, the crack of rifles, the cry of men in anguish, and the deep booming of heavy guns.

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