’It is not only that very many islands throughout the South Pacific, from the Loyalty Islands on to the northwest as far as Ysabel Island in the Solomon group, are now yielding up scholars and affording openings for Mission stations, though this indeed is great matter for thankfulness; but there is, thank God, a really working staff gathered round us from the Banks Archipelago, which affords a definite field, already partially occupied with a regular system at work in it; and here young persons may receive the training most needed for them, actually on a heathen island, though soon not to be without some few Christians amongst its population.  Now I can say to anyone willing and qualified to help me:—­

’In the six summer months there is the central school work in “New Zealand, where now there are with me fifty-one Melanesians from twenty-four islands, speaking twenty-three languages; and in the six winter months there is a station regularly occupied on Mota Island, where all the necessary experience of life in the islands can be acquired.

’I am not in any hurry for men.  Norfolk Island has given me five young fellows from twenty-one to sixteen years of age, who already are very useful.  One has been with me a year, another four months.  They are given unreservedly into my hands, and already are working well into our school, taking the superintendence of our cooking, e.g., off our hands; with some help from us, they will be very useful at once as helpers on Mota, doing much in the way of gardening, putting up huts, &c., which will free us for more teaching work, &c., and they are being educated by us with an eye to their future employment (D.V.) as missionaries.  I would not wish for better fellows; their moral and religious conduct is really singularly good--you know their circumstances and the character of the whole community.  But I should be thankful by-and-by to have men equally willing to do anything, yet better educated in respect of book knowledge.  No one is ever asked to do what we are not willing to do, and generally in the habit of doing ourselves—­cooking, working, &c., &c.  But the Melanesian lads really do all this kind of work now.  I have sixty mouths to fill here now; and Melanesian boys, told out week by week, do the whole of the cooking (simple enough, of course) for us all with perfect punctuality.  I don’t think any particular taste for languages necessary at all.  Anyone who will work hard at it can learn the language of the particular class assigned to him.  Earnest, bright, cheerful fellows, without that notion of “making sacrifices,” &c., perpetually occurring to their minds, would be invaluable.  You know the kind of men, who have got rid of the conventional notion that more self-denial is needed for a missionary than for a sailor or soldier, who are sent anywhere, and leave home and country for years, and think nothing of it, because they go “on duty.”  Alas! we don’t so read our