“YACHTING IN MELANESIA. 209 
cuits, but one is inclined to think that the following story, if true, shows 
hardness run to the death. The Bishop had called in at Norfolk 
Island and on Sunday a roast turkey appeared on the table. The cook 
was called and was asked by the Bishop where he got the turkey. 
“‘Norfolk Island, my lord,” he replied. Then said the Bishop, ‘‘Have 
you got no salt beef on board? MHeave that thing over the side.”’ 
Perhaps the most marvelous feat of endurance on the part of 
Bishop Selwyn was the compilation, while at sea in the Undine on the 
Melanesian trips, of his ‘‘Verbal Analysis of the Bible,’ which was 
intended to facilitate the translation of the Scriptures into foreign 
languages. Of this work it may be said that the scope of it is as 
yet too great for our present standards of scholarship. We are too 
parochial and confined in our thoughts, our efforts are too small and 
insignificant, our horizon is always so limited, and our efforts are too 
puny to allow us to work on such broad and comprehensive lines as 
the Bishop suggests. The greatness of his ideas fairly makes us stagger, 
so accustomed are we to puddling along in our own little corners. 
The book had a twofold object; it was intended to act as a manu- 
script note-book to assist in the translations of the Scriptures, and also 
to provide a complete course of annual instruction on the whole subject- 
matter of the Bible. All the words of the Bible can be classified under 
less than 250 heads, and these are arranged alphabetically in the 
analysis, and provision is made for 60 subheadings in each case. _ Ref- 
erences are given showing where each word occurs, either in the Old 
or in the New Testament. ‘The book is so arranged as to supply a 
course of annual lessons on the Bible for every Sunday in the year and 
two or more of a less strictly religious character for every week. ‘These 
are to be used for spelling and reading lessons, then with the references 
as lessons on the words of the Bible, then as the heads of catechetical 
instruction. ‘The missionary is to write down in one of the columns 
the native equivalents for the various English words, thus enabling him 
to gain an accurate knowledge of the language of the people among 
whom he is working, so that the translations may be idiomatic and accu- 
rate, and so that as full and complete a list of words may be compiled 
as the language affords. With the assistance of others the Bishop 
hoped to expand the book into a complete polyglot dictionary of all 
languages and a universal cipher for international communication. 
And all the manuscript was prepared in the cabin of a 20-ton schooner 
in the tropics! A veritable triumph of mind and spirit over matter! 
Bishop Selwyn’s powers of body were equally on as large a scale as 
those of his mind. His feat of diving and examining the copper sheath- 
ing on the bottom of the Undine, after she had been aground on a reef 
at Nouméa, well merited the generous applause of the British and 
French men-of-war’s men anchored near by. 
