island.  At Curtis Island, indeed (should it answer and supply plenty of food), we might hope to have a school some day of 300 or 400, and then thirty or forty from each island could be educated at once; but it can’t be so in New Zealand.  And a good school on an island before a certain number are trained to teach could not, I think, be managed successfully.  I feel that I must concentrate more than hitherto.  I must ascertain—­I have to some extent ascertained—­the central spots upon which I must chiefly work.  This is not an easy thing, nevertheless, to find out, and it has taken years.  Then using them as centres, I must also find out how far already the dialect of that spot may extend, how far the people of the place have connections, visiting acquaintances, &c. elsewhere, and to use the influence of that place to its fullest extent.  Many islands would thus fall under one centre, and thus I think we may work.  My mind is so continually, day and night, I may say, working on these points, that I dare say I fill up my letters with nothing else.  But writing on these points helps me to see my way.’

On July 7, an expedition to Aroa seems to have overtired Bishop Patteson, and a slight attack of fever and ague came on.  One of his aunts had provided him with a cork bed, where, after he had exerted himself to talk to his many visitors, he lay ‘not uncomfortably.’  He was not equal to going to a feast where he hoped to have met a large concourse, and after a day of illness, was taken back to Mota in the bottom of the boat; but in another week more revived, and went on with his journal, moralising on the books he had been reading while laid up.

’I looked quite through Bishop Mackenzie’s life.  What a beautiful story it is! what a truthful, simple, earnest character, and that persuasiveness that only real humility and self-forgetfulness and thoughtfulness can give.  Then his early desire to be useful, his Cambridge life, the clear way in which he was being led on all through.  It is very beautiful as an illustration of the best kind of help that God bestows on His children.  Here was one so evidently moulded and fashioned by Him, and that willingly, for so it must be, and his life was just as it should be, almost as perfect perhaps as a life can be.  What if his work failed on the Shire?  First, his work has not failed to begin with, for aught we know; and secondly his example is stimulating work everywhere.  I shall indeed value his Thomas a Kempis. [A copy sent home from the Zambesi stained with the water of the Shire, and sent to the Bishop by Miss Mackenzie].

The ship returned with tidings that the more important scholars would be ready to come back after a short holiday with their friends, and the Bishop embarked again on the 29th.  At Mai he landed, and slept ashore, when little Petere, the son of the young man whose death had so nearly been revenged on the Bishop, a boy of eight years old, did the honours as became a young chief, and announced, ’I am going to New Zealand with you.’  No one made any attempt to prevent him; but the old scholars did not show themselves helpful, and only one of them, besides three more new ones, came away.  The natives were personally friendly, but there was no sign of fighting being lessened among them.