The voyage on the _Dido_ was a voyage of observation. The Bishop had to discover how the problems presented by Melanesia could best be met. There were already missions of various denominations at work in the islands. Heroic work had been done especially by the London Missionary Society. Both missionaries and Christian natives had suffered death for their faith. At Tonga he visited a Wesleyan station and made friends with Mr. Thomas, the senior missionary who had spent twenty years in the islands. Selwyn was charmed with his schools full of smiling children, and with the beautiful mission chapel, which he described as “a noble building, without nails, bound together with the cocoa nut rope, beautifully arranged in variegated patterns.” In visiting the missions of other denominations, the Bishop did not feel it right to join in their public services, but was glad, when their guest, to share their family prayers. In one island he found a village divided into rival factions by the rivalry of two native teachers, “separate chapels, services and systems attesting the power of Satan, even in this peaceful island, in dividing the house of Christ against itself.... This is one instance out of many, and it will surely strike every thoughtful Christian, that I, who have been charged with bigotry and intolerance for advocating unity and opposing dissent, should have had the evils of schisms again and again brought under my notice by members of the English Independent body and of the Scottish secession.” How to avoid adding to the confusion caused by religious differences, was one of the chief problems which the conditions in Melanesia presented to him, but he seemed to see the future development clear before him. He was determined not to encroach on islands already occupied by other missions nor to “inflict upon those simple islanders all the technical difficulties of English dissent.” He wrote: “Nature has marked out for each missionary body its field of duty. The clusters of islands together like constellations in the heavens seem formed to become new branches of the Church of Christ, and each a Church complete in itself. It is of little consequence whether these babes in Christ have been nourished by their own true Mother, or by other faithful nurses provided that they have been fed by the sincere milk of the word. The time must come, I think, when they will be no longer under tutors or guardians, for this present government by English Societies is admitted to be preparatory to the introduction of self-government by native Churches, and then I shall be free to communicate with every branch of the great Polynesian family as with bodies in no respect liable to the imputation of dissent or schism.” Another problem was presented by the great variety of dialects spoken, sometimes more than one in the same small island. Selwyn wrote: