It seemed as though the time were come for calling on the Baurese to cease to be passive, and sixty or seventy men and women having come together, Mr. Patteson told them that he did not mean to go on merely taking their boys to return them with heaps of fish-hooks and knives, but that, unless they cared for good teaching, to make them good and happy here and hereafter, he should not come like a trader or a whaler.  That their sons should go backwards and forwards and learn, but to teach at home; and that they ought to build a holy house, where they might meet to pray to God and learn His will.

Much of this was evidently distasteful, though they agreed to build a room.

‘I think,’ he writes, ’that the trial stage of the work has arrived.  This has less to attract outwardly than the first beginning of all, and as here they must take a definite part, they (the great majority who are not yet disposed to decide for good) are made manifest, and the difficulty of displacing evil customs is more apparent.’

In fact, these amiable, docile Baurese seemed to have little manliness or resolution of character, and Sumaro, a scholar of 1857, was especially disappointing, for he pretended to wish to come and learn at Lifu, but only in order to get a passage to Gera, where he deserted, and was well lectured for his deceit.

The Gera people were much more warlike and turbulent, and seemed to have more substance in them, though less apt at learning.  Patteson spent the night on shore at Perua, a subsidiary islet in the bay, sleeping in a kind of shed, upon two boards, more comfortably than was usual on these occasions.  Showing confidence was one great point, and the want of safe anchorage in the bay was much regretted, because the people could not understand why the vessel would not come in, and thought it betokened mistrust.  Many lads wished to join the scholars, but of those who were chosen, two were forced violently overboard by their friends, and only two eventually remained, making a total of twelve pupils for the winter school at Lifu, with five languages between them —­seven with the addition of the Nengone and Lifu scholars.

‘You see,’ writes Patteson on June 10, on the voyage, ’that our difficulty is in training and organising nations, raising them from heathenism to the life, morally and socially, of a Christian.  This is what I find so hard.  The communication of religious truth by word of mouth is but a small part of the work.  The real difficulty is to do for them what parents do for their children, assist them to—­nay, almost force upon them—­the practical application of Christian doctrine.  This descends to the smallest matters, washing, scrubbing, sweeping, all actions of personal cleanliness, introducing method and order, habits of industry, regularity, giving just notions of exchange, barter, trade, management of criminals, division of labour.  To do all this and yet not interfere with the offices of the chief, and to be the model and pattern of it, who is sufficient for it?’