The last stage was again a painful one, for boots and clothes had well nigh given out, and it was with blistered feet that the bishop tramped along the sandy coast to Hamlin's cottage on the Manukau, whence a sail across the harbour brought him to Onehunga, with just one suit sufficiently decent to enable him to enter Auckland by daylight, though his broken boots compelled him to avoid its central street.
This journey, which lasted exactly three months from the day when he left Wellington to that on which he arrived at Waimate (Oct. 10, 1842—Jan. 9, 1843), must be pronounced a great one. Even now, with all the aids of railways, roads, and steamers, it would be no easy feat. To cross the island not once but twice—first from west to east, and then from east to west—besides skirting the coast for some hundreds of miles, and to do all this on foot, except where rivers could be utilised with native canoes, was surely a remarkable achievement. The results of his investigation were thoroughly satisfactory to the bishop. Wherever he went he had preached to the Maoris in their native tongue, and had won golden opinions from them. The missionaries had everywhere given him a hearty welcome, and had generally come some miles to meet him when they had heard of his approach. Of them, as of their converts, he had formed a favourable opinion. Whatever might formerly have been his yearnings for the ancient Jerusalem, they were now quite overpowered. The words which kept rising to his lips were words of thankfulness: "The lot is fallen unto me in a fair ground; yea, I have a goodly heritage."
CHAPTER IX.
ADJUSTMENT.
(1843-1844).
Unreconciled antitheses are prophecies and promises of a larger future.
—Westcott.
With Bishop Selwyn there appeared in New Zealand a type of churchmanship which was new to the Maoris, and even to their teachers. Much had happened in the mother country since Marsden and the brothers Williams had left it. The Oxford, or "Tractarian," movement had drawn men's minds to the thought of the visible Church; the old Missionary Society, which had been founded under Queen Anne "for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts," had recovered from its low condition, and was once more doing active work among British colonists; the study of Christian antiquity was being zealously pursued, and many young churchmen were enthusiastically bent on imitating the ascetic lives of the saints and hermits of the past.