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 I do? 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 " cumbered 

 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 fi'om 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 

 affah-s. 



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 



