He likewise conducted an immense correspondence on behalf
of persons who had not found any other means of communicating with their
homes; and, at the same time, he became personally acquainted with
Wilberforce, and many others of the supporters of the cause of religion.

Above all, it was in this visit to England that Mr. Marsden laid the
foundations of the missions to New Zealand, and prepared to become the
apostle of the Maori race. These great islands of New Zealand had been
discovered and named by Tasman in 1642, and first visited by Captain Cook
in 1769. He found them inhabited by a brave, high-spirited, and quick-
witted set of natives, with as large a proportion of the fine qualities
sometimes found in a wild race as ever savages possessed, but their
tribes continually at war, and the custom of cannibalism prevailing: he
had been on friendly terms with them, and presented them with pigs,
fowls, and potatoes--no small boon in a land where there was no quadruped
bigger than a rat, and very few esculent vegetables. From this time,
whalers occasionally stopped to take in water, &c., and kept up a sort of
intercourse with the Maori, sometimes amiable, and resulting in the
natives taking voyages on board the vessels, but sometimes quarrelsome,
and characterized by mutual outrages, when, if a white man were made
prisoner, he was sure to be killed and eaten, to serve as a sort of
triumphal and sacrificial banquet.

Nevertheless, it was plain that these Maories were of a much higher type
of humanity than the Australian natives, whom Mr. Marsden had found so
far entirely unteachable and untameable, but for whom he was trying to
establish some plan of training and protection. Such a spirit of
curiosity and enterprise possessed some of the New Zealand chieftains,
that they would come on visits to Australia, and on these occasions Mr.
Marsden always gave them a welcome at his parsonage at Paramatta. At one
time there were thirty staying there, over whom he had great influence.
Once, when he was absent from home, the nephew of one of the chiefs died,
and his uncle immediately prepared to sacrifice a slave; nor could Mrs.
Marsden prevent it, otherwise than by hiding the intended victim till her
husband came home, who made the chief understand that it was not to be
done, though the man continued to lament that his nephew was deprived of
his proper attendant in the other world, and seemed afraid to return
home, lest the fat