’While I was wading through the stream, the Hane men gathered up and advanced; I turned back with them.  They rushed, brandishing their spears, to within ten or twelve paces of the Wango party, who had joined into a compact body, and so seated themselves as soon as they saw the movement.

’Kara, a Hane man, made his speech, first running forwards and backwards, shaking his spear all the time; and at the end, he took out four strings of Makira money, and gave it to Taki.  Hane went back across the stream; and Wango went through the same performance, Taki making the speech.  He seemed a great orator, and went on until one standing by him said, “That’s enough,” when he laughed, and gave over.  He gave four strings of money, two shorter than the others, and the shortest was returned to him, I don’t know why; but in this way the peace was signed.’

After nineteen days, during which the Bishop had been cruising about, Mr. Atkin and his scholars were picked up again, and likewise Mr. Brooke, who had been spending ten days at Florida with his scholars, in all thirty-five; and then ensued a very tedious passage to the Banks Islands, for the vessel had been crippled by the gale off Norfolk Island, and could not be pressed; little canvas was carried, and the weather was unfavourable.

However, on September 6, Mota was safely reached; and great was the joy, warm the welcome of the natives, who eagerly assisted in unloading the vessel, through storms of rain and surf.

The old station house was in entire decay; but the orange and lemon trees were thirty feet high, though only the latter in bearing.

The new village, it was agreed, should bear the name of Kohimarama, after the old home in New Zealand, meaning, in Maori, ’Focus of Light.’  After landing the goats, the Bishop, Mr. Atkin, and five more crossed to Valua.  They were warmly welcomed at Ara, where their long absence had made the natives fancy they must all be dead.  The parents of Henry, Lydia, and Edwin were the first to approach the boat, eager to hear of their children left in Norfolk Island; and the mother walked up the beach with her arm round Mr. Atkin’s neck.  But here it appeared that the vessels of the labour traffic had come to obtain people to work in the cotton plantations in Queensland, and that they had already begun to invite them in the name of the Bishop, whose absence they accounted for by saying his ship had been wrecked, he had broken his leg, he had gone to England, and sent them to fetch natives to him.  No force had been used as yet, but there was evident dread of them; and one vessel had a Mota man on board, who persuaded the people to go to Sydney.  About a hundred natives had been taken from the islands of Valua, Ara, and Matlavo, and from Bligh Island twenty-three were just gone, but Mota’s inaccessibility had apparently protected it.  It will be remembered that it has a high fortification of coral all round the beach, with but one inconvenient entrance, and that the people are little apt to resort to canoes.  This really has hitherto seemed a special Providence for this nucleus of Christianity.