CHAPTER VIII THE MELANESIAN MISSION A fortnight after Bishop Selwyn reached Auckland on his return from England, the _Southern Cross_, the new mission ship, arrived. She was first sighted on a very wet day, and as soon as the Bishop was sure it was her, he called Patteson to come with him to meet her. Patteson describes the scene: “I hurried on waterproofs knowing that we were in for some mudlarking. Off we went, lugged down a borrowed boat to the water. I took one oar, a Maori another, the Bishop steering. After twenty minutes pull we met her, jumped on board, and then such a broadside of questions and answers. Mudlarking very slight on this occasion, but on Tuesday we had a rich scene. Bishop and I went to the _Duke of Portland_ and brought off our things ... the custom is for carts to go over the muddy sand ... in went our cart, with three valuable horses, while the Bishop and I stood on the edge of the water. Presently one of the horses lost his footing, and then all at once all three slipped up. Instanter Bishop and I had our coats off, and in we rushed to the horses, such a plunging and splashing but they were all got out safe. ‘This is your first lesson in mudlarking, Coley,’ was the Bishop’s remark.” Before Selwyn could sail for his first voyage in the _Southern Cross_, he was called upon by the Governor to go to make peace in a native quarrel, which threatened to lead to trouble with the settlers. The disturbance had arisen in the neighbourhood of Taranaki, called by the colonists New Plymouth. A chief had tried to sell some land, the ownership of which was disputed, to the English, and another chief, Katatore, had shot him down in cold blood, unarmed. The settlers fearful of the disturbance that might follow, asked that some troops should be sent to protect them, but the Governor, thinking that the presence of English soldiers would only add to the difficulty, begged the Bishop to go down to see whether he could bring about a peaceful settlement. The Bishop started at once accompanied by Dr. Abraham and his faithful Maori Deacon, Rota. They had a hard fortnight’s walk through difficult country to the Pah, that is the camp, of William King, a well known native chief, who had taken the part of Katatore, and here they met with a friendly reception. The next day the conference began in Katatore’s Pah, and Abraham thus describes what happened. They found “one hundred men or so within; all were seated on the ground to hear what the Bishop had to say. After a few minutes a man dressed like a would-be flash criminal at Newgate came up to us. It was Katatore, a little cunning, ill-favoured looking rascal, dressed in a black paletot, moleskin trousers, boots and a little black hat on the top of an immense bush of hair. He then told us the story of the murder. When he came to it, the Bishop said: ‘So