courteous, thinking, as it appeared afterwards, that the white men
were the departed spirits of deceased friends. A walk inland at
Vanua Lava disclosed pretty villages nestling under banyan trees, one
of them provided with a guest-chamber for visitors from other
islands. Two boys, Sarawia and another, came away to be scholars at
Lifu, as well as his masters in the language, of which he as yet
scarcely knew anything, but which he afterwards found the most
serviceable of all these various dialects.

The 26th of May brought the vessel to Bauro, where poor old Iri was
told of the death of his son, and had a long talk with Mr. Patteson,
beginning with, 'Do you think I shall see him again?' It was a talk
worth having, though it was purchased by spending a night in the
house with the rats.

It seemed as though the time were come for calling on the Baurese to
cease to be passive, and sixty or seventy men and women having come
together, Mr. Patteson told them that he did not mean to go on merely
taking their boys to return them with heaps of fish-hooks and knives,
but that, unless they cared for good teaching, to make them good and
happy here and hereafter, he should not come like a trader or a
whaler. That their sons should go backwards and forwards and learn,
but to teach at home; and that they ought to build a holy house,
where they might meet to pray to God and learn His will.

Much of this was evidently distasteful, though they agreed to build a
room.

'I think,' he writes, 'that the trial stage of the work has arrived.
This has less to attract outwardly than the first beginning of all,