The party that was to accompany the Bishop and his wife and child to New Zealand, consisted of his two chaplains, Mr. Cotton, Student of Christ Church, Oxford and Mr. Whytehead, Fellow of St. John’s, Cambridge, three missionary clergy, three catechists and two school teachers. Mrs. (afterwards Lady) Martin, wife of the first Chief Justice of New Zealand, travelled with them to join her husband. The Chief Justice, who had gone out a few months before, came to be one of Selwyn’s chief helpers and friends. The spirit in which he had entered upon his work is shown by the fact that he had impressed upon his wife that “the aborigines of their new country were to be worked for and cared for.” The voyage to New Zealand was in those days of course undertaken in a sailing ship, and the party were delayed some days at Plymouth waiting for a favourable wind. Those relatives and friends who had come to see them off were obliged one by one to leave. The Bishop settled himself in the ship on Christmas eve and held his first service on board on Christmas day. On the next day after prayers with those friends that remained, the last farewells were said and the little ship _Tomatin_ was off on its long voyage. CHAPTER II EARLY MISSIONS IN NEW ZEALAND Selwyn might speak of New Zealand as a land of promise, but he knew well that it had not yet emerged from barbarism. Its inhabitants, the Maoris, were a race splendidly gifted both physically and intellectually, but they were constantly involved in internecine warfare, tribe fighting against tribe, and all alike delighting to feast on the bodies of their captured foes. New Zealand had been discovered by Jasman, the Dutch navigator, in 1642, but no European had landed on the islands till Captain Cook sailed round them in 1769. His reports led to visits from traders, whose treacherous treatment of the natives was followed by cruel retaliations, so that the Maoris got a very bad reputation for barbarism. Their intercourse with some of the settlers in New South Wales, brought them to the notice of Samuel Marsden, a Government chaplain sent out to the convicts in Botany Bay. Marsden was a true evangelist, labouring under most adverse conditions and in face of bitter opposition, to do what he could for the unhappy convicts. His heart was large enough to make him wish to help the Maoris also. He welcomed such of them as came over to New South Wales to his house in Paramatta, and put up huts for them in his garden, where sometimes he had as many as thirty at once. One of the Maori chiefs struck by what he saw of more civilized ways, implored Marsden to send someone to teach his countrymen, and when Marsden Visited England in 1806 he went to the office of the Church Missionary Society and told the committee of the rich field that New Zealand offered for their work. The C.M.S. was then in its infancy. So far it had only sent out five missionaries, who had