'I really trust that by God's blessing some real opening into the great Solomon group has been effected. There is every hope that many boys will join us this next voyage. No one can say what may be the result. As yet it is possible to get on without more help, but I do not for a moment doubt that should God really grant not only a wide field of labour, but some such hope of cultivating it, He will send forth plenty of men to share in this work. Men who have some means of their own--£100 a year is enough, or even less--or some aptitude for languages, surely will feel drawn in this direction. It is the happiest life a man can lead, full of enjoyment, physical and mental, exquisite scenery, famous warm climate, lots of bathing, yams and taro and cocoa-nut enough to make an alderman's mouth water, and such loving, gentle people. But of course something depends on the way in which a man looks at these things, and a fine gentleman who can't get on without his servant, and can't put his luggage for four months into a compass of six feet by one-and-a-half, won't like it.... 'You know the kind of incidents that occur, so I need not repeat them to you. I have quite learnt to believe that there are no "savages" anywhere, at least among black or coloured people. I'd like to see anyone call my Bauro boys savages! Why, the fellows on the reef that have never seen a white man will wade back to the boat and catch one's arms to prevent one falling into pits among the coral, just like an old nurse looking after her child. This they did at Santa Maria, where we two swam ashore to a party of forty or fifty men, and where our visit was evidently a very agreeable one on both sides, though we did not know one syllable of the language, and then.... But I almost tremble to think of the immense amount of work opening upon one. Whither will it lead? But I seldom find any time for speculations; and oh, my dear tutor, I am as happy as the day is long, though it never seems long to me!.... My dear father writes in great anxiety about the Denison case. Oh dear! what a cause of thankfulness it is to be out of the din of controversy, and to find hundreds of thousands longing for crumbs which are shaken about so roughly in these angry disputes! It isn't High or Low or Broad Church, or any other special name, but the longing desire to forget all distinctions, and to return to a simpler state of things, that seems naturally to result from the very sight of heathen people. Who thinks of anything but this: "They have not heard the Name of the Saviour Who died for them," when he is standing with crowds of naked fellows round him? I can't describe the intense happiness of this life. I suppose trials will come some day, and I almost dread the thought, for I surely shall not be prepared to bear them. I have no trials at all, even of a small kind, to teach me how to bear up under great ones.'