in the cabin.  It is hung round with barometers (aneroids), sympie-someters, fixed chest for chronometers, charts, &c.  Of course, wherever the “Southern Cross” goes I go too, and I am a most complete skipper.  I feel as natural with my quadrant in my hand as of old with a cricket bat.  Then I do rather have good salt-water baths, and see glorious sunsets and sunrises, and star-light nights, and the great many-voiced ocean, the winds and waves chiming all night with a solemn sound, lapping against my ear as I lie in my canvas bed, six feet by two and a half, and fall sound asleep and dream of home.  Oh! there is much that is really enjoyable in this kind of life; and if the cares of the vessel, management of men, &c., do harass me sometimes, it is very good for me; security from such troubles having been anxiously and selfishly pursued by me at home.

’If it please God to give success to our mission work, I may some day be “settled” (if I live) on some one of the countless islands of the South Pacific, looking after a kind of Protestant Propaganda College for the education of teachers and missionaries from among the islanders, but this is all uncertain.

’Now good-bye, my dear Miss Neill.  I never doubt that in all your sufferings God does administer abundant sources of consolation to you.  Even my life, so painless and easy, is teaching me that we judge of these things by a relative standard only, and I can conceive of one duly trained and prepared for heaven that many most blessed anticipations of future rest may be vouchsafed in the midst of extreme bodily pain.  It is in fact a kind of martyrdom, and truly so when borne patiently for the love of Christ.

’Always, my dear Miss Neill,

’Your very affectionate,

‘J.  C. Patteson.’

The Sundays were days of little rest.  Clergy were too scarce for one with no fixed cure not to be made available to the utmost, and the undeveloped state of the buildings and of all appliances of devotion fell heavily and coldly on one trained to beauty, both of architecture and music, though perhaps the variety of employment was the chief trial.  His Good Friday and Easter Sunday’s journal show the sort of work that came on him:—­

’Taurarua, Good Friday.—­I am tired, for walking about in a hot sun, with a Melanesian kit, as we call them, slung round the neck, with clothes and books, is really fatiguing.  Yesterday and to-day are just samples of colonial work.  Thursday, 7.30, prayers in chapel; 10.30, Communion service in chapel.  Walked two miles to see a parishioner of the Archdeacon’s. 1.30, dinner; 2.30, walked to Taurarua, five and a half miles, in a burning sun; walked on to Mr. T.’s and back again, three miles and a half more. 7, tea, wrote a sermon and went to bed.  To-day, service and sermon, for 600 soldiers at 9; Communion service and preached at 11.  Back to Taurarua after three miles’ walk, on to the College, and read prayers at 7.  Not much work, it is true, but disjointed, and therefore more fatiguing.  I do sometimes long almost for the rest of English life, the quiet evening after the busy day; but I must look on to a peaceful rest by and by; meanwhile work away, and to be sure I have a grand example in the Bishop.