EARLY MISSIONARIES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18990, 11 October 1923, Page 11

EARLY MISSIONARIES.

LADY FRANKLIN’S OBSERVATIONS. TOUR IN AUCKLAND IN 1841. fFaou Ocr Own Gort.fri’Oijdent.l LONDON, August 30. Mr AV F. Rawnslev, who is presenting to the General Assembly Library the address to Lady Franklin by the citizens of A\ elliimton in 1841, Ims also sent to the High Commissioner a number of manuscripts winch are copies made at the time the original letters by Lady Franklin were written or dictated. These will he sent out to New Zealand as well for the Parliamentary Library. Some selections from these letters appear in the new edition of The Life, Diaries, and Correspondence of Jane Lady Franklin,’’ but some interesting portions are omitted from the hook. In a letter written to her sister, Mrs Simpkinson, Lady Franklin refers to the early missionaries in the North Island, and shows a very human bias in favour of her own particular sect. Lady Franklin tells how her party left the Bay of Islands and visited tho Church Missionary Agricultural establishment at AVaimate, “and from hence crossed a tract of country one day’s journey to the Hokianga River on the western coast. Here, we were lodged amongst the Wesleyan missionaries who live in friendly though only occasional intercourse with their Episcopal brethren. In other parts the Woslevans are more troublesome, always encroaching on the labour fields of the Church of England, and possessed with almost a Romanist spirit of proselytism. EARLY ROMAN CATHOLICS. “ Tho Roman Catholics are doing all they can by bribery to win the poor natives, and by pictures of all Protestants—Church and Wesleyan alike—roasting alive in the flames to frighten them into the only true faith. The natives, however, are verv shrewd, and often puzzle their priests. The Church of England missionaries are a good set of men, let who will say to the contrary. The country would not be now fit to inhabit had they not for above 20 years brought the ferocity of the savage to yield to the yoke of Christ.”