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 tions of time and place—a conviction which he held also as to Hebrew, to the study of which he often reverted. He made and printed general vocabularies in three of the languages, and lists of interrogatives, prepositions, and conjunctions in eleven; and translated into the Mota tongue, which he regarded as most typical, the third and fourth gospels and other parts of scripture. He stopped, however, deliberately short in the scientific part of the work, mainly because his time was absorbed by the mission. He turned resolutely to the use of the languages for the purpose of teaching. ‘These languages,’ he said, ‘are very poor in words belonging to civilised, literary, and religious life, but exceedingly rich in all that pertains to the needs and habits of men circumstanced as they are. I draw this inference: Don't be in a hurry to translate, and don't attempt to use words as (assumed) equivalents of abstract ideas. Don't devise modes of expression unknown to the language as at present in use. They can't understand, and therefore don't use words to express definitions.’ Under Patteson's rule the character of the natives was completely transformed. Their savagery disappeared, there was no more war; and, after twenty years, out of a population of eight hundred in the chief island, Mota, all but forty were baptised. To this result Patteson's pupil, George Sarawia, the first Melanesian clergyman, largely contributed.

His interest in all that was going on at home was vividly maintained. He wrote regularly to his father while he lived, and to his sisters; he read largely; he kept up communication with many of his old friends; he corresponded with Professor Max Müller as to the Melanesian languages. He embraced enthusiastically Bishop Selwyn's plan of church government, under which every office-holder signed a pledge that he would resign his office when called upon to do so by the church synod or a court appointed by it; and believed that by this instrument the ecclesiastical body could, not only in the colonies, but in England itself, act beneficially in independence of the national organisation. In theological matters his sympathies were enlarged by his experience. Though sympathising with Pusey and Keble, and owing much to the latter, he criticised their tendencies and distinctly dissented from their views on the Lord's Supper.

His life was often in danger, for though the natives respected him they were changeable and suspicious and without restraint. At Santa Cruz in 1864 he was attacked as he left the shore, and though he escaped, two of his companions, Edwin Nobbs and Fisher Young, were struck by the poisoned arrows, and died of tetanus. But these dangers were greatly increased by the abuses of the labour traffic in the Pacific. The planters in Fiji and Queensland required native labourers, and many of the islanders were willing to go to the plantations for a few years; but unscrupulous traders lured away the islanders under false pretences, practically enslaved them, and at times used the bishop's name to attract victims. The bishop had never condemned the traffic, believing that it might be carried on honestly and with benefit to all parties; but he desired that it should be subjected, as it was after his death, to regulation by the British government. He found that many of the islands were depopulated by this new slave trade, and he had joined in bringing some notorious offenders to justice.

He visited the island of Nukapu on 16 Sept. 1871, not knowing that an outrage had been committed on its inhabitants by some Englishmen a few months before. He had once before been there, and he landed alone and unarmed. His friends, who were waiting for him in the ship's boat at the reef outside the island, found themselves attacked by a flight of arrows, which wounded two of them; and soon after a canoe floated out from the shore, in which was the dead body of the bishop, with a frond of palm tied in five knots. This was known to imply that he had been killed in revenge for five of the inhabitants. One of his companions, the Rev. Joseph Atkin, died of tetanus a few days afterwards. The members of the mission prayed that there should be no retaliation; but, unhappily, Captain Markham of the Rosario having gone to Nukapu to make inquiries, the natives, believing that he had come to avenge the bishop, fired on him, and drew upon themselves the penalty of this act. The death of the bishop, however, roused the Christian conscience in England. Its mention in the queen's speech at the opening of parliament led to the regulation of the labour traffic; the mission was extended, and gained a new ground of appeal to the hearts of the Melanesians; and his successor, Bishop John Selwyn, was able to show the men of Nukapu that they had, through a fatal error, slain their best friend. A cross erected by him on the spot where Patteson fell attests the martyrdom of the missionary bishop and the reconciling power of his death.

[Life by Miss Charlotte M. Yonge, 2 vols. 1873, new edit. 1878; Life by Miss Frances Awdry under the title ‘The Story of a Fellow Soldier,’ 1875; Men of the Reign; Heaton's