On Bishop Selwyn’s return to Auckland, he ordained a second Maori Deacon, Levi, a man of 38, whose character had had long testing, and whose final preparation for ordination he had begun immediately on his return from England. He was now free to set off on his first voyage with Patteson in the Southern Cross. This was to be a visitation tour to the Chatham Islands and to the Southern settlements in New Zealand. Selwyn was able to leave the vessel in charge of Patteson and to make some long journeys on foot. He had planned a journey of one thousand miles and fixed the exact time which it should take. A week before the appointed end he wrote to Mr. Abraham asking him to meet him at a certain place at 1 o’clock on the day fixed. Mr. Abraham writes:
“As my watch pointed to the hour I looked up and saw him emerge from a bush looking well, wiry and bushy. He had walked five hundred and fifty-miles and ridden four hundred and fifty in the course of the last three months, having examined and confirmed one thousand, five hundred people. He was alone nearly all the way and had great difficulty getting the horses he did, so engaged are the people in their cultivations, etc., that they could not spare time to go with him.... He gave an amusing account of the way in which he shamed them sometimes into giving him a horse to ride. He would go to a village and ask for a horse and guide. There were none was the answer. He would point to a herd of thirty or forty not far off—no one knew to whom they belonged. He would then put down his pack and begin to throw out the most useless articles, and pack it up again and begin to strap it on. ‘What are you about?’ ‘Lightening my burden for a walk.’ This touched some woman’s heart, who would either herself fetch, or urge her husband to get a horse. One morning at dawn, as he was just starting on his lonely march he found a woman standing with a horse ready for him.... The last month’s journey was the worst, perhaps, as he was obliged to leave his blankets behind to lighten his shoulders, and had to sleep under his tent with nothing but a thin maude these cold autumnal evenings.”
The thought that soon there would be another Bishop to care for these scattered southern settlements must often have cheered Selwyn during his lonely wanderings.
His thoughts were now turning to the Pacific Islands which he hoped would be the sphere of Patteson’s future work. On Ascension Day, 1855, he left Auckland in the Southern Cross again. Ascension Day was his favourite day for starting, for he felt the charge ringing in his ears: “Go ye and teach all nations.” He went first with Mrs. Selwyn and Patteson to Sydney. He wished to get permission to set up his school for the young Melanesians in Norfolk Island. He had become convinced that it was impossible to go on bringing the young islanders to school at Auckland, and then on account of the climate, to have to take them back after a few months to their own homes. This was much too expensive and wasteful a method to be continued, and he wished to find a suitable island where a school and a centre for the mission might be set up. Norfolk Island struck him as eminently suited for the purpose. It had been used as a convict settlement, but this had now been given up. Selwyn had visited the island with Sir George Grey, who approved of his idea, and wrote to the home government asking that the disused prison and a portion of the land should be granted to the Bishop for his school. Objections were made in some quarters because of another proposal for using Norfolk Island. There had been discovered in a Pacific Island named Pitcairn, an English population who proved to be the descendants of a certain John Adams, the leader of a mutiny in a Government vessel called the Bounty. Adams had brought up the children of the mutineers who survived and their descendants with great care, during the years in which they had lived unknown and separated from the outer world. Now that they had been discovered in their lonely home, it was considered that they were too many to go on living on the little island of Pitcairn, and the English Government intended to transport them to Norfolk Island. Objections were made in England to the idea of bringing native islanders from the Pacific to live alongside with the Pitcairners, lest they should corrupt these interesting descendants of English mutineers, who, it was asserted, had grown up in a state of primitive innocence under a patriarchal system. Bishop Selwyn, however, urged that it would be good for the Pitcairners to help in the work of training the natives and of navigating the Mission vessel. But the Governor of New South Wales would not agree to his proposal. The Bishop was much interested in the Pitcairners and waited to see them on their arrival at Norfolk Island before he started for the Pacific. He was warmly welcomed by them. The careful provision of John Adams had seen to it that they were brought up as Christians, but naturally none of them had been confirmed. It was decided therefore to leave Mrs. Selwyn on the Island to teach and prepare the girls and women for confirmation, whilst Selwyn and Patteson went for their cruise to visit the northern Pacific Islands.
Before leaving Sydney, a crowded meeting was held by the Australian Board of Missions to hear Bishop Selwyn speak on the Melanesian Mission, and at this meeting Patteson was introduced by the Bishop as his dear friend, one for whose companionship he ought to thank God. After this they took Mrs. Selwyn to Norfolk Island and sailed for the Pacific. They went first to the Presbyterian mission at Anaiteum, and deposited goods and letters that they had brought for the missionaries, Mr. and Mrs. Ingles. Patteson much admired their schools and wrote of their work as full of hope and encouragement. After this many islands new to the Bishop were visited. Near one of them they came across a brig with a sandal wood trader who was notorious for “dark deeds of revenge and unscrupulous retaliation upon the natives.” In the past the Bishop had been one of those who had helped to bring him to justice, but he had remained friends with him and had baptised his only son. Now he introduced Patteson to him, saying, “Mr. Patteson is come from England on purpose to look after these islands.” He was convinced that the knowledge that there were those who watched their doings would have a restraining effect upon the traders.
Patteson was able to learn from the behaviour of the Bishop how to be on the look out for signs of danger. Selwyn’s quick eye was always on the watch and without any apparent suspicion of fear, he was ever on the alert to detect any slight intimation of possible danger. On one occasion whilst they were happily bartering fish hooks for cocoanuts, the Bishop, to Patteson’s surprise, made a sudden sign to come away. When they were in their boat he said: “I saw some young men running through the bushes with bows and arrows, and these young gentry have not the sense to behave well like their parents.”
The Bishop’s method in his work among the islands has been described by one who watched it as follows:
“On first invading the land he tries to make a favourable impression on the people’s minds by presents, and by letting them see that he is not come to trade. This he does by leaving his boat ten or twenty yards from the reef, where some hundred people are standing and shouting; he then plunges into the water arranging no end of presents on his back, which he has been showing to their astounded eyes out of the boat. He probably has learnt from some stray canoe or a neighbouring island the name of the chief. He calls out his name; he steps forward; the Bishop hands him a tomahawk, and holds out his hand for the chief’s bow and arrows. The old chief with innate courtesy sends the tomahawk to the rear, to show that he is safe and may place confidence in him. The Bishop pats the children on the head, gives them fishhooks and red tape, for there is an enormous demand for red tape in these islands. Probably then the Bishop has some ‘tame elephant’ with him—a black boy from some other island—and he has clothed him, and taught him to read or the like; and he brings forward this specimen and sample, and tries to make them understand that he wants some of their boys to treat in like manner. The Bishop gets as many names written down as he can and picks up as many words as he can; establishes a friendly relation, and after a while swims off to his boats. Next year he will go and call out the names of his old friends, get two or three on board, induce them to take a trip with him while he goes to the neighbouring islands. So he learns their language enough to tell them what he has come for.”
During this trip with Patteson, he landed on sixty islands, and they brought back thirty-three scholars, who were looked upon as Patteson’s boys. They stopped at Norfolk Island to hold what Selwyn described as “one of the most remarkable confirmations in the history of the Church. The whole adult population of the Pitcairn Islanders, except those who were too feeble to attend, presented themselves to me in nine classes to be examined and confirmed.” The eldest of the candidates, a woman over seventy, was a daughter of John Adams. The service was held in the old convict chapel, which opened on to the prison yard, “in every corner heaps of rusty fetters and cast-off garments.” The Confirmation was followed by a Celebration of Holy Communion.
This time the boys from the Islands had again to be taken to Auckland as no other place was ready for them. Selwyn wrote from there to Judge Patteson expressing his delight in the help given him by his son: