The missionaries, aided by Professor Lee, of Cambridge, gave the Maori a written language.  Into this the Scriptures were translated, chiefly by William Williams, who became Bishop of Waiapu, and by Archdeacon Maunsell.  Many years of toil went to the work, and it was not completed until 1853.  In 1834 a printing press was set up by the Church Mission Society at the Bay of Islands, in charge of Mr. William Colenso.  Neither few nor small were the difficulties which beset this missionary printer.  At the outset he got his press successfully from ship to shore by lashing two canoes together and laying planks across them.  Though the chiefs surveyed the type with greedy eyes and hinted that it would make good musket-balls, they did not carry it off.  But on unpacking his equipment Colenso found he had not been supplied with an inking-table, composing-sticks, leads, galleys, cases, imposing-stone, or printing-paper.  A clever catechist made him an imposing-stone out of two boulders of basalt found in a river-bed hard by.  Leads he contrived by pasting bits of paper together, and with the help of various make-shifts, printed on February 21, 1835 the first tract published in New Zealand.  It consisted of the Epistles to the Ephesians and Philippians in Maori, printed on sixteen pages of writing-paper and issued in wrappers of pink blotting-paper.  Much the most capable helpers whom the lonely printer had in his first years were two one-time compositors who had turned sailors and who, tiring of foc’sle life under Yankee captains, made up their minds to resume the stick and apron in the cannibal islands.  Impish Maori boys made not inappropriate “devils.”  With such assistants Colenso, working on, had by New Year’s Day, 1838, completed the New Testament and was distributing bound copies to the eager Maoris, who sent messengers for them from far and near.  Pigs, potatoes, flax were offered for copies of the precious volume, in one case even that rarest of curiosities in No Man’s Land—­a golden sovereign.

Not the least debt, which any one having to do with New Zealand owes the missionaries and Professor Lee, is a scholarly method of writing Maori.  In their hands the spelling of the language became simple, systematic, and pleasant to the eye.  What it has done to save the names of the country’s places and persons from taking fantastic and ridiculous shapes, a few examples will show.  For sixty years after Cook’s discovery every traveller spelt these names as seemed good to him.  The books of the time offer us such things of beauty as Muckeytoo (Maketu), Kiddy-Kiddy (Keri-Keri), Wye-mattee (Waimate), Keggerigoo (Kekerangu), Boo Marray and Bowmurry (Pomare), Shunghee and E’Ongi (Hongi), Corroradickee (Kororareka).  The haven of Hokianga figures alternately as Showkianga, Sukyanna, Jokeeangar and Chokahanga.  Almost more laughable are Towackey (Tawhaki), Wycaddie (Waikare), Crackee (Karakia), Wedder-Wedder (Wera-Wera), and Rawmatty (Raumati).