“Wanted a Steam Auxiliary.”—Commissioned Home to Britain.—English Presbyterian Synod.—United Presbyterian Synod.—The “Veto” from the Sydney Board.—Dr. J. Hood Wilson.—The Free Church Assembly.—Neutrality of Foreign Mission Committee.—The Church of Scotland.—At Holyrood and Alva House.—The Irish Presbyterian Assembly.—The Pan-Presbyterian Council.—My “Plan of Campaign.”— Old Ireland’s Response.—Operations in Scotland.—Seventy Letters in a Day.—Beautiful Type of Merchant.—My First 100 at Dundee.—Peculiar Gifts and Offerings.—Approach to London.—Mildmay’s Open Door.—Largest Single Donation.—Personal Memories of London.—Garden-Party at Mr. Spurgeon’s.—The Hon. Ion Keith-Falconer.—Three New Missionaries.—“Restitution-Money.”—The Farewell at Mildmay.—Welcome to Victoria.—The Dream of my Life.—The New Mission Ship Delayed.—Welcome back to Aniwa.—Parting Testimony.—Fare-thee-well. In December 1883, I brought a pressing and vital matter before the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Victoria. It pertained to the New Hebrides Mission, to the vastly increased requirements of the Missionaries and their families there, and to the fact that the _Dayspring_ was no longer capable of meeting the necessities of the case,—thereby incurring loss of time, loss of property, and risk and even loss of precious lives. The Missionaries on the spot had long felt this, and had loudly and earnestly pled for a new and larger Vessel, or a Vessel with Steam Auxiliary power, or some arrangement whereby the work of God on these Islands might be overtaken, without unnecessary exposure of life, and without the dreaded perils that accrue to a small sailing Vessel such as the _Dayspring_, alike from deadly calms and from treacherous gales. The Victorian General Assembly, heartily at one with the Missionaries, commissioned me to go home to Britain in 1884, making me at the same time their Missionary delegate to the Pan-Presbyterian Council at Belfast, and also their representative to the General Assemblies of the several Presbyterian Churches in Great Britain and Ireland. And they empowered and authorized me to lay our proposals about a new Steam-Auxiliary Mission Ship before all these Churches, and to ask and receive from God’s people whatever contributions they felt disposed to give towards the sum of £6,000, without which this great undertaking could not be faced.