“I have now one simple missionary idea before me—of watching over the remnant that is left. Our native work is a remnant in two senses, the remnant of a decaying people and the remnant of a decaying faith. The works of which you hear are not the works of heathens; they are the works of baptized men, whose love has grown cold.” The Maoris could not understand the Bishop’s presence with the English soldiers and looked upon him with suspicion as having gone over to the cause of their enemies, not recognising that he could not leave the troops without some one to minister to their spiritual needs. The English officers soon learnt to love him and to admire his devotion and courage. On a Sunday he would ride many miles, holding seven or eight services in the day. There was a long ridge of about two miles exposed to the fire from the Maoris below which connected two redoubts. The Bishop rode along it at full canter, and the officers used to watch him through their field glasses. They would see a puff of smoke and then the Bishop still galloping along, and say: “It’s all right, they missed him.” He was comforted sometimes by hearing of truly Christian acts done by Maoris. One Maori General was an old pupil of the Bishop’s; he himself tended a wounded English prisoner all through one night, and when the man asked for water and there was none in the Maori camp, he crept out through the fern into the English lines and brought back a calabash of water for the dying man. The Maori clergy to the Bishop’s great comfort were faithful all through the war. Lady Martin thus describes the effect of the war: “One by one the large flourishing schools on the Waikato and Waiapu rivers had to be closed, with their branch village schools under native teachers, which had become centres of light. The fine country which we had seen covered with wheat and crops became a battlefield—the mills were closed, the churches built by the natives were often used as barracks for the troops ... our bay became deserted. No invalids were brought to be nursed, no canoes heavily laden with produce skimmed across the harbour. It seemed as if the pleasant intercourse with the Maoris, which for twenty years had made our lives so bright was at an end.”