About this time also, the London Missionary Society’s ship, the _John Williams_, visited me, having on board the Rev. Messrs. Turner, Inglis, Baker, and Macfarlan. They urged me to go with them on a three weeks’ trip round the Islands, as I had lately suffered much from fever and ague, and was greatly reduced by it. But a party of Bush natives had killed one of our Harbour people the week before, and sadly bruised several others with their clubs, and I feared a general war of revenge if I left—for my presence amongst them at least helped to keep the peace. I also was afraid that, if I left, they might not allow me to return to the island,—so I declined once more the pleasure of much-needed change and rest. Further, as the _John Williams_ brought me the wood for building a Church which I had bought on Aneityum, the Tannese now plainly saw that, though their conduct had been very bad, and I had suffered much on their island, I had no intention of leaving them or of giving up the work of Jehovah. Too much, perhaps, had I hoped for from the closely succeeding visits of the good Bishop Selwyn, the gallant Captain Vernon, and the Mission ship _John Williams_. The impressions were undoubtedly good, but evanescent; and things soon went on as they had done before among our benighted Tannese, led by Satan at his will, and impelled to the grossest deeds of heathen darkness. The change by Divine grace, however, we knew to be possible; and for this we laboured and prayed incessantly, fainting not, or if fainting, only to rise again and tackle every duty in the name of the Lord who had placed us there. Fever and ague had attacked me fourteen times severely with slighter recurring attacks almost continuously after my first three months on the island, and I now felt the necessity of taking the hint of the Tannese Chief before referred to,—“Sleep on the higher ground.” Having also received medical counsel to the same effect, though indeed experience was painfully sufficient testimony, I resolved to remove my house, and began to look about for a suitable site. There rose behind my present site, a hill about three hundred feet high or rather more, surrounded on all sides by a valley, and swept by the breezes of the trade winds, being only separated from the Ocean by a narrow neck of land. On this I had set my heart; there was room for a Mission House and a Church, for which indeed Nature seemed to have adapted it. I proceeded to buy up every claim by the Natives to any portion of the hill, paying each publicly and in turn, so that there might be no trouble afterwards. I then purchased from a Trader the deck planks of a shipwrecked vessel, with which to construct a house of two apartments, a bedroom and a small store-room adjoining it, to which I purposed to transfer and add the old house as soon as I was able.