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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 9, Issue 6 (September 1, 1934)

A Canoeing Adventure

A Canoeing Adventure.

The missionary had a narrow escape from a Maori musketeer on the Waipa, when he returned to that river from his Tauranga journey. He and his companions, four young men who had accompanied him all the way from Waikato Heads, found that their canoe had been taken away. He discovered it on the bank below Te Rore; the men who had commandeered it had gone on shore to eat a meal. Ashwell paddled off, leaving the annoyed “converters” of the canoe on the bank. One of them loaded his musket and sent a bullet after the missionary. It whizzed close to his head. The gunman loaded again and fired; that ball also narrowly missed its reverend target. The paddlers by this time were going for their lives, they were out of range by the time the man had reloaded and fired after them.

In July of 1839, Ashwell again visited the Waipa country. In the meantime the outpost station of the Church Mission at Moeatoa, on Manukau Harbour, had been removed to Maraetai, at Waikato Heads; Ashwell's fellow-worker there was the Rev. R. Maunsell—“Te Manihera” of the Maoris. The Maraetai station flourished; there were congregations of three to four hundred every Sunday. Christianity was becoming popular; the freedom and security of life it offered was a novelty appreciated by the war-ridden tapu-ridden Maori.