acher for themselves; now they had gone to the
extreme south in order to teach others. Travelling in an open boat for
more than one thousand miles, these two intrepid men had coasted down
the east of the South Island, and had visited all the _pas_ in what are
now Canterbury and Otago. Their lives were in jeopardy, for the very
name of Rauparaha was enough to arouse a thirst for vengeance among
people whom that conqueror had harried and enslaved; but the earnestness
of the young men was so transparent that they were received peacefully
in every place, and their message was welcomed and accepted.
Such were the tidings which the bishop heard when he reached Otaki.
Rauparaha himself was an "enquirer" into the Christian verities;
Rauparaha's son had evangelised along the line which he himself was
about to travel, and, moreover, was willing to proceed thither again
with the bishop as his guide and companion.
With the same Tamihana, then, and nine other Maoris, the bishop left
Wellington on January 6th, 1844, in a miserable coasting schooner. When
opposite Banks Peninsula the little vessel was forced to put into the
bay of Peraki for supplies, and as a strong contrary wind sprang up at
this juncture, Selwyn determined to walk to Otago instead of going on by
sea. Through this change in his plans, he seems to have been the first
white man to discover that Lake Ellesmere was a freshwater lake, and not
an extension of Pegasus Bay. It was at the point where the hills of the
Peninsula slope steeply down to the end of the Ninety-Mile Beach that
the traveller realised this fact, and it was from this point that he
gained, at sunset, his first view of what were afterwards to be known as
the Canterbury Plains. With his Maoris he spent his first night on shore
at a small _pa_ which then stood at the outlet of Lake Forsyth. After a
supper and breakfast of eels, the party proceeded next day along the
shingle bank which separates Lake Ellesmere from the sea, and at Taumutu
found about forty Maoris, some of whom could read, and "many were
acquainted with the Lord's Prayer, the Belief, and portions of the
Catechism." Here then was the first evidence of Tamihana's previous
visit. The service which the bishop held at this place next morning
(Jan. 11) may be looked upon as the beginning of Church of England
worship in the province of Canterbury.
At Arowhenua more than 100 Maoris were found, but these showed the
effects not only of Tamihana's
|