Page:Letters from New Zealand (Harper).djvu/107



Sept. 20th, 1866.

I am here on my return to New Zealand. It was no easy matter to find the men I needed, especially as more were needed than I anticipated; amongst them a Head Master for Christ's College, Christchurch,—a responsible post, for which I have secured the Rev. W. Chambers Harris, a man of much promise. Moreover, further discoveries of gold have occurred on the West Coast of Canterbury, and a great "rush" has set in thither of miners and their camp-followers. This affects my future, for I have been appointed Archdeacon of Westland and, having arranged with a clergyman in England to follow me in a short time, I have to undertake the work of organizing the Church on the Goldfields. In all, I have secured seven good men for our Diocesan work.

After nearly two years again at home, with old friends and relations, and the interesting work I had in hand, I confess it was no small wrench to leave England. You can hardly realize the force of the old Greek "nostalgia," Home sickness, till you find yourself in a country, not only divided from the old by the whole circumference of the Earth, but so new that a decade or so ago it was uninhabited by white