the spectacle of missionaries engaging in public controversies, and
of semi-savage converts wrangling over rites and ceremonies and
discussing points of theology which might well puzzle a Greek
metaphysician. Such incidents were but an efflorescence on the surface
of what for a number of years was a true and general earnestness.

The missionaries, aided by Professor Lee, of Cambridge, gave the Maori
a written language. Into this the Scriptures were translated, chiefly
by William Williams, who became Bishop of Waiapu, and by Archdeacon
Maunsell. Many years of toil went to the work, and it was not
completed until 1853. In 1834 a printing press was set up by the
Church Mission Society at the Bay of Islands, in charge of Mr. William
Colenso. Neither few nor small were the difficulties which beset this
missionary printer. At the outset he got his press successfully from
ship to shore by lashing two canoes together and laying planks across
them. Though the chiefs surveyed the type with greedy eyes and hinted
that it would make good musket-balls, they did not carry it off. But
on unpacking his equipment Colenso found he had not been supplied
with an inking-table, composing-sticks, leads, galleys, cases,
imposing-stone, or printing-paper. A clever catechist made him an
imposing-stone out of two boulders of basalt found in a river-bed hard
by. Leads he contrived by pasting bits of paper together, and with the
help of various make-shifts, printed on February 21, 1835 the first
tract published in New Zealand. It consisted of the Epistles to the
Ephesians and Philippians in Maori, printed on sixteen pages of
writing-paper and issued in wrappers of pink blotting-paper. Much the
most capable helpers whom the lonely printer had in his first years
were two one-time compositors who had turned sailors and who, tiring
of foc'sle life under Yankee captains, made up their minds to resume
the stick and apron in the cannibal islands. Impish Maori boys made
not inappropriate "devils." With such assistants Colenso, working
on, had by New Year's Day, 1838, completed the New Testament and was
distributing bound copies to the eager Maoris, who sent messengers for
them from far and near. Pigs, potatoes, flax were offered for copies
of the precious volume, in one case even that rarest of curiosities in
No Man's Land--a golden sovereign.

Not the least debt, which any one having to do with New Zealand owes
the missionaries and Professor Lee, is a sc