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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 68

§ 2. Introductory

§ 2. Introductory.

In the year 1833, the Church Missionary Society, having determined to send out a Printing Press and types and all necessary matériel to their mission in New Zealand, were seeking a Missionary Printer to be in charge. In the end of that year, I, then residing in London, was introduced to the Secretaries of that Society at their Mission house, and engaged to go out to New Zealand with the Press as a Missionary.

For various reasons matters were not soon ready; and it was June, 1834, before we left London for Sydney, New South Wales, en route for New Zealand. During the long interval, (after my return from the Country in the Spring,) I was page 5 frequently at the large printing establishment of Messrs. Watts and Son, near Temple Bar, about the necessary requirements, (their types, &c., being all cast at their own foundry within the same building,) but all directions, orders, &c., respecting the same, were given by the Under-Secretaries of the Mission-House to that firm without any reference to me. Well do I remember the answers that were returned to my repeated applications for an Imposing-stone, and for page-cord, (not to mention other pings,)—"What! 'Coals to Newcastle'!! In that country where the New Zealand Flax grows everywhere wild, and the Natives are all adepts at making such beautiful lines and cords! and where the handsome Greenstone abounds!!!"—I briefly mention this here, as its sure results followed.—After a long passage of seventeen weeks our ship arrived at Sydney.

Here I make a short digression. What a difference! between the Sydney of that period and of to-day!! Then there was no steamer on her waters, and but few ships! then there were only three clergymen of the Church-of-England residing in all Australia;—two of them (the Reverends Messrs Cowper and Hill) in Sydney, and the Rev. S. Marsden at Paramatta. In order to get through their fixed Sunday (or weekly) duties, those Sydney Ministers were obliged to commence them on Saturday afternoons. During my stay in Sydney I assisted them as well as I could.

As no vessel could be found willing to leave for New Zealand, owing to their fear of the Maoris, we were obliged to remain eight or nine weeks at Sydney. At last, after much entreaty, a small schooner of 67 tons was got ready, and we sailed on the 10th December for the Bay of Islands. After a long and eventful voyage of twenty days, (suffering much from want of water, as well as from a complication of peculiar miseries!) we landed at Paihia Mission Station in the Bay of Islands, at 9 p.m. on the 30th December; and in the following few days got the Press, type, &c., safely on shore.