CHAP. XXIII.] NATIVE CATECHISTS. 319 



memory ; his class sat around him in a circle. 

 The females were interrogated by a very intelligent- 

 looking young woman ; and I was much surprised 

 and gratified to see what progress they had made 

 in so short a time. Nearly all of them were pro- 

 ficients in reading and writing, which they had 

 been taught by mutual instruction. The chiefs, a 

 few only of whom had become converts, sat at some 

 distance, and contemplated the whole in silence. 

 Slaves and the lower classes are always the first 

 among the New Zealanders to embrace Christi- 

 anity, the doctrines of which are so effectual in 

 consoling the oppressed and the unhappy. 



We started from Otawao in the afternoon of the 

 28th, having obtained the guidance and safeguard 

 of a chief named Titipa, who, with his whole 

 family and about eighteen of his followers, was 

 proceeding to pay a visit to their friends and 

 relations at Taupo. We halted at a plantation 

 belonging to our guide, near a kahikatea-forest, 

 where a pig was killed for our entertainment, and 

 where, on account of heavy rains, we were obliged 

 to stay the following day. The time passed, how- 

 ever, quickly, as I obtained from the natives much 

 information about themselves and their tribe. The 

 country around was too monotonous to offer much 

 inducement to explore it, even had the weather 

 rendered my doing so possible. 



On the 30th our direction was easterly, leaving 

 the river Waipa, the source of which lay towards 



