My own means will enable me to set the mission on foot in the first instance, and I have little doubt but it will succeed." Zeal such as this, tempered with discretion and guided by the "wisdom which cometh from above," in answer to many believing prayers, could scarcely fail of its sure reward. On the 19th of November, 1814, he embarked on his great mission, with a motley crew, such as (except perhaps on some other missionary ship) has seldom sailed in one small vessel--savages and Christian teachers and enterprising mechanics, their wives and children, besides cattle and horses. Of this strangely assorted company he gives the following description: "The number of persons on board the Active, including women and children, was thirty-five; the master, his wife and son, Messrs. Kendall, Hall, and King, with their wives and children, eight New Zealanders, (including Duaterra and his uncle the great warrior Shunghie or Hongi) two Otaheitans, and four Europeans belonging to the vessel, besides Mr. John Lydiard Nicholas and myself; there were also two sawyers, one smith, and a runaway convict whom we afterwards found on board, a horse and two mares, one bull and two cows, with a few sheep and poultry. The bull and cows have been presented by Governor Macquarie from his Majesty's herd." On the 15th December, they were in sight of land; the next day, the chiefs were sent on shore, and a friendly communication was at once opened with the natives. But even before they had landed "a canoe came alongside the Active, with plenty of fish, and shortly afterwards a chief followed from the shore, who immediately came on board." Mr. Marsden's fame, as the friend of the New Zealanders, had arrived before him. "I told them my name, with which they were all well acquainted.... We were now quite free from all fear, as the natives seemed desirous to show us attention by every possible means in their power." The Active dropped her anchor a few days after at Wangaroa, near the Bay of Islands, the scene of the massacre of the Boyd's crew, and there amongst the very cannibals by whose hands their countrymen had fallen so recently the first Christian mission to New Zealand was opened. A fierce and unholy revenge had been taken, in the murder of Tippahee, a native chieftain, and all his family, by an English crew who had visited Wangaroa after the Boyd's destruction, and Tippahee, as Mr. Marsden always maintained, suffered unjustly, having had no share in the dreadful massacre. But thus it was; and amongst a people so exasperated did these servants of the most high God venture forth as the heralds of the gospel. Seldom since the words of the prophet were first uttered have they had, in reference to missionaries, a more significant, or a more correct appropriation than they now received. "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation."