After Trinity Sunday, May 27, the 'Southern Cross' sailed, and the outward voyage gave leisure for the following letter to Prof. Max Muller, explaining why he could not make his knowledge of languages of more benefit to philology while thus absorbed in practical work:—
'"Southern Cross," off Norfolk Ireland: June 6, 1866.
'My dear Friend,—I am about to tire your patience heavily. For I must find you some reasons for doing so little in making known these Melanesian dialects, and that will be wearisome for you to read; and, secondly, I cannot put down clearly and consecutively what I want to say. I have so very little time for thinking out, and working at any one subject continuously, that my whole habit of mind becomes, I fear, inaccurate and desultory. I have so very many and so very different occupations, and so much anxiety and so many interruptions, as the "friction" that attends the working, of a new and somewhat untried machine.'
'You know that we are few in number; indeed (Codrington being absent) I have but two clergymen with me, and two young men who may be ordained by-and-by. Besides, had I the twenty troublesome men, whom you wish to banish into these regions, what use would they or any men be until they had learnt their work? And it must fall to me to teach them, and that takes again much of my time; so that, as a matter of fact, there are many things that I must do, even when all is going on smoothly; and should sickness come, then, of course, my days and nights are spent in nursing poor lads, to whom no one else can talk, cheering up poor fellows seized with sudden nervous terror, giving food to those who will take it from no one else, &c.
'Then the whole management of the Mission must fall upon me; though I am most thankful to say that for some time Mr. Pritt has relieved me from the charge of all domestic and industrial works. He does everything of that kind, and does it admirably, so that our institution really is a well-ordered industrial school, in which kitchen work, dairy work, farm work, printing, clothes making and mending, &c., are all carried on, without the necessity of having any foreign importation of servants, who would be sure to do harm, both by their ideas as to perquisites (= stealing in the minds of our Melanesians), and by introducing the idea of paid labour; whereas now we all work together, and no one counts any work degrading, and still less does any one qua white consider himself entitled to fag a Melanesian.
'Mr. Tilly, R.N., has also quite relieved me from my duties as skipper, and I have no trouble about marine stores, shipping seamen, navigating the vessel now. I cannot be too thankful for this; it, saves me time, anxiety, and worry; yet much remains that I must do, which is not connected with peculiar work directly.
'I can't refuse the Bishop of New Zealand when he presses me (for want of a better man) to be trustee of properties, and to engage in managing the few educational institutions we have. I can't refuse to take some share in English clerical work while on shore; indeed, in 1865, my good friend Archdeacon Lloyd being ill, I took his parish (one and a half hour distant from Kohimarama), the most important parish in Auckland, for some three months; not slacking my Melanesian work, though I could only avoid going back by hard application, and could make no progress. Then I must attend our General Synod; and all these questions concerning the colonial churches take some time to master, and yet I must know what is going on.
'Then I must carry on all the correspondence of the Mission. I am always writing letters. Every £5 from any part of New Zealand or Australia I must acknowledge; and everyone wants information, anecdotes, &c., which it vexes my soul to have to supply, but who else can do it? Then I keep all the accounts, very complicated, as you would say if you saw my big ledger. And I don't like to be altogether behindhand in the knowledge of theological questions, and people sometimes write to me, and their letters need to be answered carefully. Besides, take my actual time spent in teaching. Shall I give you a day at Kohimarama?
'I get in the full summer months an hour for reading by being dressed at 5.30 A.M. At 5.30 I see the lads washing, &c., 7 A.M. breakfast all together, in hall, 7.30 chapel, 8-9.30 school, 9.30-12.30 industrial work. During this time I have generally half an hour with Mr. Pritt about business matters, and proof sheets are brought me, yet I get a little time for preparing lessons. 12.45 short service in chapel, 1 dinner, 2-3 Greek Testament with English young men, 3-4 classics with ditto, 5 tea, 6.30 evening chapel, 7-8.30 evening school with divers classes in rotation or with candidates for Baptism or Confirmation, 8.30-9 special instruction to more advanced scholars, only a few. 9-10 school with two other English lay assistants. Add to all this, visitors interrupting me from 4-5, correspondence, accounts, trustee business, sermons, nursing sick boys, and all the many daily unexpected little troubles that must be smoothed down, and questions inquired into, and boys' conduct investigated, and what becomes of linguistics? So much for my excuse for my small progress in languages! Don't think all this egotistical; it is necessary to make you understand my position.
'If I had spare time, leisure for working at any special work, perhaps eleven years of this kind of life have unfitted me for steady sustained thought. And you know well I bring but slender natural qualifications to the task. A tolerably true ear and good memory for words, and now something of the instinctive insight into new tongues, but that is chiefly from continual practice.