A letter to Arthur Coleridge is of the same date:—­

’Mota Island:  August 6, 1871-

’My dear Arthur,—­I have had a busy day, having baptized thirty-two persons, of whom twenty-five are adults; and then the crowd, the incessant talking, teaching, and the anxious feeling which attend any step of so much importance as the Baptism from heathenism.  Fourteen of the men are married, two are elderly, several are middle-aged, five women are among the number.  I believe that God’s spirit is indeed working in the hearts of these people.  Some twelve or thirteen years have passed, and only now have I felt that I could take the step of baptizing the infants and young children here, the parents promising that they shall be sent to school as they grow up.  About 200 young children have during the past month been baptized:  things seem hopeful.  It is very happy work; and I get on pretty well, often very tired, but that doesn’t matter.

’I could wish all my good friends were here, that those who have been enabled to contribute to this end might see for themselves something of the long hoped for beginning of a new state of things in this little island.

’August 11.—­In a little more than a month 248 persons have been baptized here, twenty-five of them adults, the rest infants and young children.  I am very sorry to think that I must leave them soon, for I expect the “Southern Cross” in a few days; and I must go to the Solomon Islands, from them to Santa Cruz Island, and so to Norfolk Island, calling here on the way.  Then I am off to the Fiji Islands for, I suppose, a month or six weeks.  There are some 6,000 or 7,000 white people there, and it is assumed by them and the Church people in this part of the world that I must be regarded as their Bishop.  Very soon a separate Bishop ought to be at work there, and I shall probably have to make some arrangement with the settlers.  Then, on the other hand, I want to look into the question of South Sea Islanders who are taken to the Fiji plantations.

’How far I can really examine into the matter, I hardly know.  But many of the settlers invite me to consider the matter with them.

’I believe that for the most part the islanders receive good treatment when on the plantations, but I know that many of them are taken away from their islands by unfair means.

’The settlers are only indirectly responsible for this.  The traders and sailing masters of the vessels who take away the islanders are the most culpable.  But the demand creates the supply.

’Among all my multifarious occupations here, I have not much time for reading; I am never alone night or day.  I sleep on a table, with some twelve or more fellows around me; and all day long people are about me, in and out of school hours.  But I have read, for the third time I think, Lightfoot’s “Galatians”—­and I am looking forward to receiving his book on the Ephesians.  He doesn’t lay himself out to do exactly the