ate; he found his friend
past hope. Thus was the life of this staunch ally--a life which might
have been of the first value to the Maori race--thrown away. Though
the missionary's friend, Ruatara died a heathen, and his head wife
hung herself in customary Maori form.

Such was the setting up of the first mission station. Its founders
were sterling men. Kendall had been a London schoolmaster in good
circumstances. King, a master carpenter, had given up L400 a year to
labour among the savages. Marsden, though he made seven more voyages
to the country, the last after he had reached threescore years and
ten, never settled there. Henry Williams, however, coming on the
scene in 1823, became his chief lieutenant. Williams had been a naval
officer, had fought at Copenhagen, and had in him the stuff of which
Nelson's sailors were made. Wesleyan missionaries, following in the
footsteps of Marsden's pioneers, established themselves in 1822, and
chose for the place of their labours the scene of the _Boyd_ disaster.
Roman Catholic activity began in 1838.

It took ten years to make one convert, and up to 1830 the baptisms
were very few. After that the work began to tell and the patient
labourers to reap their harvest. By 1838 a fourth of the natives
had been baptized. But this was far from representing the whole
achievement of the missionaries. Many thousands who never formally
became Christians felt their influence, marked their example, profited
by their schools. They fought against war, discredited cannibalism,
abolished slavery. From the first Marsden had a sound belief in the
uses of trade and of teaching savages the decencies and handicrafts
of civilized life. He looked upon such knowledge as the best path to
religious belief. Almost alone amongst his class, he was far-sighted
enough to perceive, at any rate in the latter years of his life, that
the only hope of New Zealand lay in annexation, and that any dream
of a Protestant Paraguay was Utopian. Quite naturally, but most
unfortunately, most missionaries thought otherwise, and were at the
outset of colonization placed in antagonism to the pioneers. Meanwhile
they taught the elements of a rough-and-ready civilization, which the
chiefs were acute enough to value. But the courage and singleness of
purpose of many of them gave them a higher claim to respect. To do the
Maoris justice, they recognised it, and the long journeys which the
preachers of peace were able to make from t