Life of John Coleridge Patteson : Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian Islands eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,026 pages of information about Life of John Coleridge Patteson .

Life of John Coleridge Patteson : Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian Islands eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,026 pages of information about Life of John Coleridge Patteson .
not be well to take them with the expectation of their becoming teachers to their people.  But the other section of the school will consist of young men whose behaviour we have watched during the winter in their own homes, whose professions we have had an opportunity of testing—­ they may be treated as young men on the way to become teachers eventually to their countrymen.  One learns much from living among a heathen people, and only by living in our pupils’ homes shall we ever know their real characters.  Poor fellows! they are adepts in all kinds of deceitfulness at a very early age, and so completely in our power on board the schooner and at Kohimarama, that we know nothing of them as they are.’

The very paper this is copied from shows how the stores were failing, for the full quarto sheets have all failed, and the journal is continued on note paper.

Not till October 1 was Mr. Patteson’s watch by a poor dying woman interrupted by tidings that a ship was in sight.  And soon it was too plain that she was not the ‘Southern Cross,’ though, happily, neither trader nor French Mission ship.  In a short time there came ashore satisfactory letters from home, but with them the tidings that the little ‘Southern Cross’ lay in many fathoms water on the New Zealand coast!

On her return, on the night of the 17th of June, just as New Zealand itself was reached, there was a heavy gale from the north-east.  A dangerous shoal of rocks, called the Hen and Chickens, stands out from the head of Ngunguru Bay; and, in the darkness and mist, it was supposed that these were safely passed, when the ship struck on the eastern Chicken, happily on a spot somewhat sheltered from the violence of the breakers.  The two passengers and the crew took refuge in the rigging all night; and in the morning contrived to get a line to land, on which all were safely drawn through the surf, and were kindly received by the nearest English settlers.

So, after five years’ good service, ended the career of the good ‘Southern Cross’ the first.  She had gone down upon sand, and much of the wreck might have been recovered and made useful again had labour not been scarce at that time in New Zealand that the Bishop could find no one to undertake the work, and all he could do was to charter another vessel to be despatched to bring home the party from Mota.  Nor were vessels fit for the purpose easy to find, and the schooner ’Zillah’—­welcome as was the sight of her—­proved a miserable substitute even in mere nautical capabilities, and her internal arrangements were of course entirely inappropriate to the peculiar wants of the Mission.

This was the more unfortunate because the very day after her arrival Mr. Dudley was prostrated by something of a sunstroke.  Martin Tehele was ill already, and rapidly became worse; and Wadrokala and Harper Malo sickened immediately, nor was the former patient recovered.  Mr. Dudley, Wadrokala and Harper were for many days in imminent danger, and were scarcely dragged through by the help of six bottles of wine, providentially sent by the Bishop.  Mr. Dudley says:—­

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Life of John Coleridge Patteson : Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian Islands from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.