§ 17. Our Holiday on the Completion of the New Testament.

The Committee of Missionaries very kindly granted us two (the Editor and the Printer of the New Testament) a holiday,—or relief from heavy and constant daily duties which had long been pressing on us both; it being also the time of the Christmas vacation with his School. And with the New Year, (1838,) we were directed to visit the Natives at the East Cape and Coast on to Poverty Bay, (then an almost unknown district,)—so we left the Bay of Islands on our voyage thither, on the 1st January, and returned on the 13th February following.—Our journey of several weeks among those hitherto unknown parts and people was a very interesting one, highly romantic in not a few instances;^* one benefit to the Press resulting therefrom I may here briefly mention, viz.,—that out of the nine youths I brought away with me from the East Coast for instruction, two of them I succeeded in training to become fairly good and useful pressmen in the following year, 1839.