There was the more time for recreation with the Pere’s French books, and the serious work of translating St. Mark’s Grospel and part of the Litany into Lifu, as the inhabitants were all called off from school in the middle of August ’by a whale being washed ashore over a barrier reef—­not far from me.  All the adjacent population turned out in grass kilts, with knives and tomahawks to hack off chunks of flesh to be eaten, and of blubber to be boiled into oil; and in the meantime the neighbourhood was by no means agreeable to anyone possessing a nose.’

Meanwhile Sarawia, the best of the Banks pupils, had a swelling on the knee, and required care and treatment, but soon got better.  Medical knowledge, as usual, Patteson felt one of the great needs of missionary life.  Cases of consumption and scrofula were often brought to him, and terrible abscesses, under which the whole body wasted away.  ‘Poor people!’ he writes, ’a consumptive hospital looms in the far perspective of my mind; a necessary accompaniment, I feel now, of the church and the school in early times.  I wish I could contrive some remedy for the dry food, everything being placed between leaves and being baked on the ground, losing all the gravy; and when you get a chicken it is a collection of dry strings.  If I could manage boiling; but there is nothing like a bit of iron for fire-place on the island, and to keep up the wood fire in the bush under the saucepan is hard work.  I must commence a more practical study than hitherto of “Robinson Crusoe,” and the “Swiss Family.”  Why does no missionary put down hints on the subject?  My three months here will teach me more than anything that has happened to me, and I dare say I shall get together the things I want most when next I set forth from New Zealand....  I find it a good plan to look on from short periods to short periods, and always ask, what next?  And at last it brings one to the real answer:—­Work as hard as you can, and that rest which lacks no ingredient of perfect enjoyment and peace will come at last.’

Among the needs he discovered was this:—­’By the bye, good cheap Bible prints would be very useful; large, so as to be seen by a large class, illustrating just the leading ideas.  Schnorr’s Bible prints by Rose and Bingen are something of the kind that I mean, something quite rude will do.  Twenty-four subjects, comprising nothing either conventional or symbolical, would be an endless treasure for teachers; the intervening history would be filled up and illustrated by smaller pictures, but these would be pegs on which to hang the great events these lads ought to know.  Each should be at least twenty-four inches by ten.

’Try to remember, in the choice of any other picture books for them, that anything that introduces European customs is no use yet.  Pictures of animals are the best things.  One or two of a railway, a great bridge, a view of the Thames with steamers rushing up and down, would all do; but all our habits of social life are so strange that they don’t interest them yet.