At Whitsuntide there was a brisk trade in yams, but no scholars were brought away; the parents would not part with any young enough to be likely to be satisfactory pupils, nor would the one last year’s scholar come.  Here intelligence was received that a two-masted ship had been at Leper’s Island, a quarrel had taken place and some natives had been shot.  It was therefore decided that it would not be safe to land, but as the vessel sailed along the coast, numerous canoes came out, bringing boars’ tusks for sale.  Three boys who had been taken on a cruise of six weeks the year before, eagerly came on board, and thirty or forty more.  All the parents were averse to letting them go, and only two ended by being brought away:  Itole, a young gentleman of fourteen or so, slim and slight, with a waist like a wasp, owing to a cincture worn night and day, and his hair in ringlets, white with coral-lime; his friend a little older, a tall, neat-limbed fellow, not dark and with little of the negro in his features.

A letter to me was written during this cruise, from which I give an extract:—­

’It was a great delight to me to receive a letter from Mr. Keble, by the February mail from England.  How kind of him to write to me; and his words are such a help and encouragement.

’I dare say I shall see Merivale’s Lectures soon.  Nothing can well be so wonderful, as a proof of God’s hand controlling and arranging all the course of history to those who need it, as a subject for adoration and praise, to those who need not such proof, than the vast preparation made for the coming of Christ and the spreading of the Gospel.  To popularise this the right way, and bring it home to the thought of many who have not time nor inclination for much reading, must be a good work.  I suppose that all good Church histories deal with that part of the subject; it is natural for the mere philosopher to do so.

’And think how the early Alexandrian teachers used the religious yearnings of the East to draw men to the recognition of their wants, supplied and satisfied only in Christianity.  Often it is the point d’appui that the Missionary must seek for.  There is an element of faith in superstition; we must fasten on that, and not rudely destroy the superstition, lest with it we destroy the principle of faith in things and beings unseen.  I often think, that to shake a man’s faith in his old belief, however wrong it may be, before one can substitute something true and right, is, to say the least, a dangerous experiment.  But positive truth wins its way without controversy, while error has no positive existence, and there is a craving for truth deep down in the heathen heart.

’Do you remember that grand passage of Hooker, where he says that he cannot stand to oppose all the sophisms of Romanism, only that he will place against it a structure of truth, before which, as Dagon before the Ark, error will be dashed in fragments?