fisherman, expressed a wish to be duly married. One couple made some
difficulty about the fee (having no money), but promised to send the
amount (20s.) in money, or fish, to the nearest clergyman, in the
fall. The service was to have commenced at five o'clock, but it was
with difficulty all were got together and duly arranged at 6.15. We
said the Evening Prayers, which I fear must have been parables to
these poor people, several of whom had lived here and in the
neighbouring coves all their life, and had never before seen a
clergyman, or heard the service. After the second lesson, the baptisms
had to be performed, and sad and strange were the discoveries made by
the question, whether the child or person (for some were fifteen,
sixteen, and eighteen years of age) had been baptized or no? Of all it
was answered they had been baptized; but some, it appeared, could not
tell by whom, some by fishermen, several by a woman,--the only person
in the settlement (and she a native) who could read correctly. One
woman (married) was baptized, hypothetically, with her infant.
Twenty-one in all were admitted, the majority with hypothetical
baptism. Both of the women who came to be married had infants in their
arms; one of them had three children. Not one person in the whole
settlement could read correctly, except the woman before mentioned;
her husband (a native of Bay of Islands), a little. He had, however,
been employed to marry one of our present couples, which he confessed
to me with some shame and confusion of face, saying, "he had picked
the words out of the book as well as he could make them out," but he
did not baptise, because "that reading was too hard;" in fact, he
could scarcely read at all, he left the baptisms therefore to his
wife. I addressed the people after the baptisms, trying to make them
understand the meaning and purpose of that Sacrament, and again after
the prayers, in their obligations as baptized. After this service, Mr.
Johnson married the two couples, and I examined the children in their
prayers and belief, which I found most of them could repeat more or
less correctly, but not one knew a letter of the alphabet. It was
considerably after nine o'clock before we could dismiss our visitors,
and sorry they seemed to be dismissed as I was to dismiss them. Poor
people! the fair faces of the children would have moved the admiration
of a Gregory; and the destitute, forsaken condition of all would move
the compassio