long for Curtis Island merely to get away from New Zealand!  I feel as if I should never do anything here.  Everything is in arrears.  I turn out of a morning and really don’t know what to take up first.  Then, just as I am in the middle of a letter (as yesterday) down comes some donkey to take up a quarter of an hour (lucky if not an hour) with idle nonsense; then in the afternoon an invasion of visitors, which is worst of all.  That fatal invention of “calling”!  However, I never call on anyone, and it is understood now, and people don’t expect it.  I have not even been to Government House for more than a year!

’There, a good explosion does one good!  But why must idle people interfere with busy men?  I used to make it up by sitting up and getting up very early indeed; but somehow I feel fit for nothing but sleeping and eating now.’

After an absence of three weeks at the General Synod at Christchurch, the Bishop took up such of his party as were to return, and sailed home, leaving those whom he thought able to brave the winter with Mr. and Mrs. Pritt, on one of the first days of June.  The first visit was one to the bereaved family at Norfolk Island, whence a brief note to his brother on the 9th begins:—­

’Nothing can be more comforting to me than the loving patient spirit of these dear people.  Poor Mr. and Mrs. Nobbs and all the brothers and sisters so good and so full of kindness to me.  It was very trying when I first met them yesterday.  They came and kissed me, and then, poor things, fairly gave way, and then I began to talk quietly about Edwin and Fisher, and they became calm, and we knelt and prayed together.’

After landing the Bishop at Mota, the others crossed to Port Patteson where they found Fisher Young’s grave carefully tended, kept clear of weeds, and with a fence round it.  After establishing Mr. Palmer at the station at Mota, the Bishop re-embarked for Santa Maria, where, at the north-east—­Cock Sparrow Point, as some one had appropriately called it—­the boat was always shot at; but at a village called Lakona, the people were friendly, and five scholars had come from thence, so the Bishop ventured on landing for the night, and a very unpleasant night it, was—­the barrack hut was thronged with natives, and when the heat was insufferable and he tried to leave it, two of his former scholars advised him strongly to remain within.

It was bad weather too, and there was some difficulty in fetching him off, and he was thankful that the wet had hindered more than 300 or 400 natives from collecting; there was no possibility of speaking to them quietly, for the sight of the boat suggested trading, and they flocked round as he was fetched off, half a dozen swimming out and begging to go to New Zealand.  He took three old scholars and one new one, and sent the others off with fish-hooks, telling them that if they would not behave at Lakona as he liked, he would not do as they liked.  However, no arrows were shot.