Te Waimate, (Book 5), Collected Letters & Journals of Richard Davis, Volume III

In December 1835, a young Englishman by the name of Charles Darwin, on the ship H.M.S Beagle, which had stopped off in the Bay of Islands on its historic round-the-world voyage, managed to get himself invited by Revd. William Williams to visit him at a small village in the interior, at Waimate.

When the Beagle left New Zealand some days later, Darwin recorded this verdict in his journal:

… I believe we were all glad to leave New Zealand. It is not a pleasant place. Among the natives there is absent that charming simplicity which is found in Tahiti; and the greater part of the English are the very refuse of society. Neither is the country itself attractive. I look back but to one bright spot, and that is Waimate, with its Christian inhabitants.

This, Book 5 of the Puckey/Davis Chronicles series, is a complete and unabridged edition of the Collected Letters and Journals of CMS missionary Richard Davis for the years 1831-1843 ( Volume III).

The whole series covers an amazing period of change in Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific, from 1797 through to the 1860’s. These decades telescoped together the ‘Homeric’ transition from oral cultures to a written culture, and the introduction of the technologies produced by the agricultural and industrial revolutions from the Middle East and Europe, all changes enthusiastically and expertly assessed and adopted by Māori.