’My dear Uncle,—­I can hardly keep awake for the unusually great heat.  The wind is northerly, and it is very light, indeed we are almost becalmed, so you will have a sleepy letter, indeed over my book I was already nodding.  I think it better to write to you (though on a Sunday) than to sleep.  What a compliment!  But I shall grow more wakeful as I write.  Perhaps my real excuse for writing is that I feel to-day much oppressed with the thought of these great islands that I have been visiting, and I am sadly disappointed in some of my scholars from San Cristoval.

’Leaving New Zealand on June 20th, I sailed to Norfolk Island, where I held my first Confirmation.  By desire of the Bishop of Tasmania, I act as Bishop for the Norfolk Islanders.  This was, as you know, a very solemn time for me; sixteen dear children were confirmed.  Since that time I have visited very many islands with almost unequalled success, as far as effecting landings, opening communication, and receiving native lads are concerned.  I have on board natives from many places from which we have never received them before.  Many I have left with Mr. Dudley and Mr. Pritt on Mota Island at school, but I have now twenty-one, speaking eleven languages.  At many places where we had never landed, I was received well.

’The state of things, too, in the Banks Islands is very encouraging.  What do you think of my having two married (after their fashion) couples on board from the Solomon Islands (San Cristoval and Contrariete)?  This was effected with some difficulty.  Both the men are old scholars, of course.  I ought therefore to be most thankful; and yet my heart is sad because, after promises given by Grariri and his wife, Parenga and Kerearua (all old scholars, save Mrs. Garm), not one came away with me yesterday, and I feel grieved at the loss of my dear boys, who can read and write, and might be taught so much now!  It is all very faithless; but I must tell it all to you, for indeed I do not feel as if I had any right to expect it otherwise, but in the moment of perceiving and confessing that it is very good for me, I find out for the first time how much my heart was set upon having them.

’And then San Cristoval, sixty miles long, with its villages and languages, and Malanta over eighty miles long, and Guadalcanar, seventy!  It is a silly thought or a vain, human wish, but I feel as if I longed to be in fifty or a hundred places at once.  But God will send qualified men in good time.  In the meanwhile (for the work must be carried on mainly by native teachers gathered from each island), as some fall off I must seek to gain others.  Even where lads are only two, or even one year with mer and then apparently fall back to what they were before, some good may be done, the old teaching may return upon them some day, and they may form a little nucleus for good, though not now.