“You would be surprised at the comparative comfort which I enjoy in my encampments. My tent is strewn with dry fern and grass. My air-bed is laid upon it. My books, clothes and other goods lie beside it; and though the whole dimensions of my dwelling do not exceed eight feet by five, I have more room than I require and am as comfortable as it is possible for a man to be when he is absent from those he loves most. I spent October 17th, the anniversary of my consecration, in my tent on the sandhills, with no companion but three natives.... I was led naturally to contrast my present position with the very different scenes at Fulham and Lambeth last year. I can assure you that the comparison brought with it no feelings of discontent; on the contrary, I spent the greater part of the day, after the usual services and readings with my natives, in thinking with gratitude over the many mercies and blessings granted to me in the past year.” After a night spent in Mr. Hadfield’s house, service was held in the chapel: “more than 500 had come from various parts, so that the chapel and the space outside the walls was quite full.” Later on during this journey, he was met by William Williams, whom he had decided to appoint Archdeacon of Waiapu, so that he might have the oversight of the eastern half of the Island. All that he had seen had strengthened his conviction of the need that from the first the Church should be organized on a firm basis, and as he could not be everywhere and oversee everything himself, he wished to have the help of archdeacons working under him. In spite of the large congregations of natives, he wrote that: “This people is a very wicked people, and if ‘civilized’ without the influence of the Gospel upon it, they will not be benefited in any way. The influence of the immoral English living in the land is the greatest difficulty I have to contend with.” At Ahuriri he found “a very numerous Christian community though they had only once been visited by a missionary. The chapel was a substantial building capable of containing four hundred people. In the evening our canoe having stuck fast, we were left without tents or food till midnight; we then procured one tent, in which the first Chief Justice, the first Bishop and the first Archdeacon of New Zealand huddled in their blankets for the night. Surely such an aggregate of legal and clerical dignity was never before collected under one piece of canvas.” He describes a Sunday on their tour a few day’s later: