’During the voyage Mr. Patteson’s powers of nursing were severely tried.  Poor Martin passed away before we arrived at Nengone, and was committed to the deep.  Before he died he was completely softened by Mr. Patteson’s loving care, and asked pardon for all the trouble he had given and the fretfulness he had shown.  Poor fellow!  I well remember how he gasped out the Lord’s Prayer after Mr. Patteson a few minutes before he died.  We all who had crawled up round his bed joining in with them.

’Oh, what a long dreary time that was!  Light baffling winds continually, and we in a vessel as different from the “Southern Cross” as possible, absolutely guiltless, I should think, of having ever made two miles an hour to windward “in a wind.”  The one thing that stands out as having relieved its dreariness is the presence of Mr. Patteson, the visits he used to pay to us, and the exquisite pathos of his voice as, from the corner of the hold where we lay, we could hear him reading the Morning and Evening Prayers of the Church and leading the hymn.  These prevented these long weary wakeful days and nights from being absolutely insupportable.’

At last Nengone was reached, and Wadrokala and Harper were there set ashore, better, but very weak.  Here the tidings were known that in Lifu John Cho had lost his wife Margaret, and had married the widow of a Karotongan teacher, a very suitable match, but too speedy to be according to European ideas; and on November 26 the ‘Zillah’ was off the Three Kings, New Zealand.

’Monday:  Nov. 26, 1860. ’"Zillah” Schooner, off the Three Kings, N. of New Zealand.

’You know pretty well that Kohimarama is a small bay, about one-third of a mile along the sea frontage, two-and-a-half miles due east of Auckland, and just opposite the entrance into the harbour, between the North Head and Eangitoto.  The beach is composed entirely of the shells of “pipi” (small cockles); always, therefore, dry and pleasant to walk upon.  A fence runs along the whole length of it.  At the eastern end of it, a short distance inside this N. (= sea) fence, are the three cottages of the master and mate and Fletcher.  Sam Fletcher is a man-of-war’s man, age about thirty-eight, who has been with us some four years and a half.  He has all the habits of order and cleanliness that his life as coxswain of the captain’s gig taught him; he is a very valuable fellow.  He is our extra man at sea.

’Each of these cottages has its garden, and all three men are married, but only the master (Grange) has any family, one married daughter.

’Then going westward comes a nine-acre paddock, and then a dividing fence, inside (i.e. to W.) of which stand our buildings.

’Now our life here is hard to represent.  It is not like the life of an ordinary schoolmaster, still less like that of an ordinary clergyman.  Much of the domestic and cooking department I may manage, of course, to superintend.  I would much rather do this than have the nuisance of a paid servant.