Life of John Coleridge Patteson : Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian IslandsYonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
Religion
Life of John Coleridge Patteson : Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian Islands
Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
Missions -- Melanesia; Patteson, John Coleridge, 1827-1871
'But you will like to hear how your gift will be appropriated. For three
summers the Melanesian scholars lived at St. John's College, which is
situated on a low hill, from which the ground falls away on every side,
leaving it exposed to every wind that blows across and around the narrow
isthmus.
'Thank God, we had no death traceable to the effect of the climate,
but we had constant anxiety and a considerable amount of illness.
When arrangements were completed for the arrival of a new principal to
succeed the Bishop of Wellington, the college was no longer likely to be
available for the Mission school. Consequently, we determined to build
on the site long ago agreed upon; to put up some substantial buildings,
and to remove some of the wooden buildings at the College which would
not be required there, and set them up again at Kohimarama.
'Just opposite the entrance into the Auckland harbour, between the
island of Eangitoto with its double peak and the easternmost point of
the northern shore of the harbour, lies a very sheltered bay, with its
sea-frontage of rather more than a quarter of a mile, bounded to the
east, south, and west by low hills, which where they meet the sea become
sandy cliffs, fringed with the red-flower-bearing pohutakawa. The whole
of this bay, the seventy acres of flat rich soil included within the
rising ground mentioned, and some seventy acres more as yet lying
uncleared, adjoining the same block of seventy acres, and likely to be
very valuable, as the land is capital--the whole of this was bought by
the Bishop many years ago as the property of the Mission, and is the
only piece of Church land over which he retains the control, every other
bequest or gift to the amount of 14,000 acres, having been handed over
by him to the General Synod. This he retains till the state of the
Melanesian Mission is more definitely settled.
'On the west corner of this bay we determined to build. A small tide
creek runs for a short way about S.S.E. from the extreme end of the
western part of the beach, then turns early eastward, and meets a small
stream coming down from the southern hill at its western extremity. This
creek encloses a space extending along the whole width of the bay of
about eighteen or twenty acres.
'At the east end stand three wooden cottages, occupied by the master,
mate, and a married seaman of the "Southern Cross." At the west end
stands the Melanesian school. Fences divide the whole space into three
portions, whereof the western one forms our garden and orchard; and the
others pasture for cows and working bullocks; small gardens being also
fenced off for the three cottages. The fifty acres of flat land south of
the creek we are now clearing and ploughing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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