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Updated: June 21, 2025
'You should have been with me when, as I jumped on shore at Mota, I took Paraskloi's father by the hand. That dear lad I baptized as he lay in his shroud in the chapel, when the whole weight of the trial seemed, as it were, by a sudden revelation to manifest itself, and thoroughly overwhelmed and unnerved me.
Want of provisions, which Mota could not supply, made the stay very brief; and after obtaining the necessary supplies at Aurora, the 'Southern Cross' brought her sad tidings to Norfolk Island on the 17th. That day Mrs. Palmer wrote: 'On Monday afternoon, 15th, Mr. Codrington went for a ride to the other side of the island, and there espied the schooner, eight miles off.
No doubt, his habitual gentleness made his occasional severity more felt, but at Mota his capacity for scolding was held in respect. I was told when I was last there, that I was no good, for I did not know how to scold, but that the Bishop perfectly well understood how to do it.
In spite of the vast varieties of language and dialect spoken by fifty or sixty human beings, collected from twenty or thirty islets of the Pacific main, no practical difficulty has been found in using the Mota as the general language in Chapel and school, so that in a short time a congregation of twenty languages are able to join in worship in the one Mota tongue, more or less akin to all the rest, and a class of, say, nine boys, speaking by nature five different languages, easily join in using the one Mota language, just as a Frenchman, a German, a Russian, a Pole, an Italian, and an Englishman, all meeting in the same cafe or railway carriage, on the same glacier or mountain top, might harmoniously agree to use the French language as their medium of communication.
Then let him take a voyage with me, see Melanesians in their own homes, stop for a while at Mota e.g. make trial of the climate, &c., &c., and then let me have my decisive talk with him. 'If he will not do for the work, I must try and find other employment for him in some New Zealand diocese, or help to pay his passage home.
We brought away three old and twelve new scholars, refusing the unpromising old scholars. There is, I hope, a sufficient opening now at Ambrym and Leper's Island to justify my assigning these islands to Jackson and Bice respectively. 'Our plan now is to take very few people indeed from the Banks Islands to Norfolk Island, as they have a permanent school and resident clergyman at Mota.
If the people have escaped a little longer for their wildness, it will not be for long. 'The Bishop still remained at Mota, while I went back to the Solomon Islanders. The cliffs of Mota, and perhaps the intelligence of the people, had comparatively protected it, though Port Patteson had become a station of the "labour ships." The village of Kohimarama was not a disappointment.
'He felt, of course, that he was doing his work all the while; but the expression of his countenance was very different while sitting with a party of men over their food at Mota, and when sitting with a party in Norfolk Island.
The last thing she has told us of is the baptism on St. Barnabas' Day "the first fruits of Mota unto Christ." What a thought what a subject for prayer and thanksgiving! God grant it may prove to you more than we can ask or think. 'Ever yours, my dear Bishop, 'Don't trouble yourself to write, but think of us. Of course there was no obeying this postscript, and the immediate reply was:
I really think that not Mota only, but the Banks Islands are in a hopeful state. Palmer will try the experiment of stopping here for eight or ten months. I almost dare to hope that a few years may make great changes. Yet it seems as if nothing were done in comparison with what remains to be done.
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