’We must try to follow these islanders into Fiji or Queensland.  But how to do it?  On a plantation of, say, one hundred labourers, you may find natives of eight or ten islands.  How can we supply teachers at the rate of one for every fifteen or twenty people?  And there are some 6,000 or 7,000 islanders already on the Fiji plantations, and I suppose as many in Queensland.

’Some one knowing several languages, and continually itinerating from one plantation to another, might do something; but I don’t think a native clergyman could do that.  He must move about among white people continually in the boats, &c.  I ought to do it; but I think my day has gone by for that kind of thing.

’I hope to judge of all this by-and-by.  It might end in my dividing my year into Melanesian work as of old, and Melanesian work in Fiji, combined with the attempt to organise the white Church of England community, and only a month or two’s work in Norfolk Island.  To do this I must be in pretty good health.  I may soon find out the limit of my powers of work, and then confine myself to whatever I find I can do with some degree of usefulness.  We ought to make no attempt to proselytise among the Fiji natives, who have been evangelised by the Wesleyans.  But there is work among our Western Pacific imported islanders and the white people.

’Norfolk Island could be quite well managed without me.  Mr. Codrington could take that entirely into his own hands.  I might spend a month or two there, and confirm Melanesians and Norfolk Islanders, and quietly fall into a less responsible position and be a moveable clergyman in Fiji or anywhere else, as long as my strength lasts.

’Norfolk Island certainly was rather my resting-place.  But I think I am becoming more and more indifferent to that kind of thing.  A tropical climate suits me, and Fiji is healthy—­no ague.  Dysentery is the chief trouble there.  These are notions, flying thoughts, most likely never to be fully realised.  Indeed, who can say what may befall me?’

Never to be fully realised!  No.  He, who in broken health so freely and simply sacrificed in will his cherished nook of rest on earth for a life so trying and distasteful, was very near the ’Rest that remaineth for the people of God.’

On June 26, the first public baptism in Mota took place, of one man, the Bishop and Sarawia in surplices in front of their verandah, the people standing round; but unfortunately it was a very wet day, and the rush of rain drowned the voices, as the Bishop made his convert Wilgan renounce individually and by name individual evil fashions of heathenism, just as St. Boniface made the Germans forsake Thor and Odin by name.  There were twenty-five more nearly ready, and a coral-lime building was finished, ’like a cob wall, only white plaster instead of red mud,’ says the Devonshire man.  It was the first Church of Mota, again reminding us of the many ‘white churches’ of our ancestors; and on the 25th of June at 7 A.M., the first Holy Eucharist was celebrated there.  It is also the place of private prayer for the Christians and Catechumens of Kohimarama.