of 1854, George Augustus Selwyn, the first Bishop of New Zealand, recruited Patteson as a missionary to the South Seas. Patteson left England with the bishop in March 1855, and landed at Auckland in May. Missionary work Patteson arrived at Auckland in May 1855. For five years, he toured the islands on the Southern Cross, visiting the indigenous peoples and teaching them about Christianity. He ran the Melanesian Mission's summer school at Kohimarama, Auckland. He also founded St Barnabas College on Norfolk Island, as a training centre for missionaries. On 24 February 1861, at Auckland, he was consecrated the first Bishop of Melanesia. It was not an easy calling: the islands were scattered over of ocean. He was not always welcomed, particularly since the native peoples were subject to abuses at the hands of blackbirders. These essentially stole men as labourers, transporting them away under harsh conditions. Usually Patteson's gentle, quiet manner reassured the indigenous peoples, but not always. Once when he and his assistants were about to leave Santa Cruz, they were shot at with arrows. Patteson's assistants were wounded, and the arrows turned out to be poisoned, since both ultimately died from the wounds. A brilliant linguist, Patteson eventually spoke 23 of the more than 1,000 Melanesian languages. He printed grammars and vocabularies and translated some gospels into the Mota language. Patteson was described as tall and athletic, with a grave and gentle face. In the islands he went barefoot, wearing only shirt and trousers, the latter tucked up above his knees. Following the example of Bishop Selwyn, when Patteson came to an island where he did not know the people and where they might be hostile, he used to swim ashore wearing a top hat. He had filled it with presents for the people. He quickly made friends, learnt the villagers' names, and enough of their language to use when he came again. Patteson's goal was to take boys from local communities, educate them in western Christian culture at his mission school, and return them to their villages to help lead the next generation. He had difficulty persuading local people to allow their young men to depart, sometimes for years, for this purpose. Patteson never tried to make the Melanesians British but thought he was equipping them for the contemporary world. His most brilliant scholar, Edward Wogala, wrote of him: "He did not live apart, he was