d Henry Williams
volunteered to go himself. But his brethren and converts, fearing the
removal of his great influence, voted against the proposal, and there
was no other volunteer. The chiefs retired to their cabin in utter
despair: "Oh! dark, very dark, our hearts were." A fortnight they stayed
in their cabin, when a sailor announced that the missionary's boat was
approaching. Henry Williams called out from it, "Friends, do not be
angry with me any more; here is your missionary." It was the slight and
consumptive Hadfield. This young recruit had not been able to understand
the language of the visitors, but after they had gone he asked the
purport of their errand. "I will go with them," he exclaimed; "as well
die there as here." The older men were loth to let him make the venture,
but he would not be kept back. It was at length resolved that Henry
Williams should accompany him to the south, and help him to settle among
the Ngatitoas. "We were all very happy that day," wrote Tamihana; "our
hearts cried, we were very happy!"

This southward journey of Williams and Hadfield, which began on October
21st, 1839, was like that to the Thames six years before, in that it
inaugurated a great step forward in the work of the mission, and led the
missionaries into regions which they had only dimly known before. Yet
its fateful significance, both for New Zealand and for the individual
travellers, could hardly be even guessed at the time by the two men
themselves. To the one it was to bring life; to the other, troubles
almost worse than death.

After ten days' voyage down the eastern coast, the schooner which
conveyed Henry Williams, Hadfield, and their Maori retinue rounded Cape
Palliser; but, meeting there the full force of the west wind through the
straits, was unable to make direct for Kapiti, and took shelter in a
harbour which opened out on their starboard bow. "Very different from
what is represented in the map of Captain Cook," remarked Williams, thus
showing how little had hitherto been known about this magnificent inlet
of Port Nicholson. But once inside its capacious recesses, he found that
others had just discovered its value before him. Two Wesleyan
missionaries had been there during the year, and had left a native
teacher behind them; while a still more important visitor had arrived
even more lately in the person of Colonel Wakefield, advance agent for
the New Zealand Company, whose emigrant ships were every day expecte