“Can you conceive a more interesting employment than hunting in this wild country for hopeful plants to stock my nursery at Auckland. One of my main employments during this journey has been to collect the children of the native settlements and examine them; and where I found anyone who especially pleased me, to invite his father to bring him up to my school. In no case have I met with a refusal.... I have no doubt that I can have as many as we can afford to maintain from all parts of the island. My Eton experience I hope will be of use to me in this search, for nothing used to interest me more than to form opinions of the character of the boys from their physiognomy, and then watch their progress through the school. I think that I have heard you say as a dahlia fancier that Brown, of Slough, is in the habit of growing thousands of seedlings in the hope of raising one rare and valuable flower; and so people, in the hope of rearing some few who may hereafter be admitted to the ministry. That they have intellectual powers of a high order I have no doubt; what they want is an entire correction of habits.” The Maoris had learned confidence in him, and men, old, prejudiced and bloodstained had come to desire a better training for their children. He had well advanced plans for a second College in the Southern Island, but this he was not able to establish owing to the pressure of other calls. The Bishop’s desire was to educate the sons of the settlers and the Maoris together, and this was done at first. He wrote in 1849: “I must be a tyrant, and to be a good natured tyrant is the difficulty. The explosive element in all countries having a mixed population, is the disposition of the one to domineer over the other. We are succeeding at last, I hope in amalgamating the two races in an equality of privileges and position; but it is uphill work; it seemed so natural to every English boy and man to have a Maori for his fag. I think that by God’s blessing we shall succeed at last, and if we do it will be a glorious measure of success.” This growing work made the Bishop anxiously eager for more helpers. He wrote urgently to Mr. Abraham who had promised to leave Eton and join him as soon as he could. The work he saw before him was too great for one man. He wrote: “To move my diocese in any perceptible degree, I must multiply my own single force through a multitude of wheels and powers; alone I am powerless. Before me lies an inert mass which I am utterly unable to heave; and there is no engine ready by which I can supply the defects of my own weakness. I am bewildered by the multitude of details, and sometimes doubt whether I am right in complicating the episcopate with all the machinery of the subordinate ministries; and yet I feel that without that pervading influence, the whole system will be powerless.”