130 Transactions.— Miscellaneous, 
As the conversions went on, there came gradually a change over the 
minds of the Maoris. They saw that the low dirty way of life they were 
leading did not agree with their new Christian feeling. They became 
desirous for a better way of living and were willing to work for it, for 
civilization requires a great deal of fresh work. I felt the same for them; 
but what could Ido? Their civilization must commence in the families, as 
will have been seen in the foregoing, and there I could not help. There 
was one way of helping—I must get a wife, one that is ‘‘ eumbered 
about much serving ’”’ the Lord Jesus in “the least of his brethren.” 
Such women there are in civilized Christian communities, but there were 
none of that sort in this obscure corner of the world. Yet there was a 
chance. 
When I had been five years here, it became necessary for me to go to 
Wellington and Nelson to make arrangement with some merchant or 
banker to draw some money from home. In 1849, I set out on that 
journey. Coming to Otago I found that a few settlers had arrived there ; 
but what is now the city of Dunedin, was then an insignificant place with 
a few small houses. Five years before I had seen that place when it was 
an uninhabited wilderness. However, I could find a passage on a schooner 
direct from here to Wellington. 
When I had arranged my money affairs, I looked out for a wife, and in 
Wellington I found a young lady who had a willing mind to carry civilized 
habits into the families of the Maoris in the far south. If these statements 
do not concern science, they concern learning—I mean learning the history 
of civilizing the Maoris in the south. 
The Maoris had already got into the way, of their own accord, of 
calling themselves my children, old and young; and now, when I came 
back to them and brought a wife, she was received at once as the head 
mother of the community ; and she had the talent to establish her authority 
as such, and to be obeyed. She went into the work with her mind in it, 
and with excellent results. When she went to a place and was observed 
on the road, then the children shouted, “ Mother is coming!” Quickly 
the women began to sweep and to put things tidy, so as to pass muster 
at the inspection. Gradually each family was taught to manage its own 
affairs. 
The children could no longer be allowed to have their own perverse 
ways; but as the parents did not know how to correct them, I had to take 
the chastisement in hand. If children were under a sentence of whipping, 
they knew that it would be carried out, and that made them feel unhappy: 
So a conscience was cultivated in them, for which the heathen Maoris had 
not even a word in their language. When those children felt the guilty 
