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To the Rev W Jowitt
Apsley, Wellington, 12 Sept 1842.
Reverend and Dear Sir
I have repeatedly written to you since the Church Missionary Society were pleased to dissolve their connexion with me, but as yet have never been favoured with a reply. I cannot bring myself to imagine that your silence is from any disrespect. The Society may have been displeased at my retaining the aboriginal children which during eight years I had collected and instructed in the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, but be assured, dear sir, what I then did was neither out of bad feeling towards Mr Gunther or from any spirit of revenge to the Society. I knew Mr Gunther too well to consider him careful of the morals of the natives. I am well persuaded that had I in 1840 transferred the fourteen aboriginal females which were living under my roof to Mr Gunther's charge, they would have been ruined before they had been there a week. The conduct of the two aboriginal girls that he had, both from me, I think is enough to establish this fact. A native girl who was with us three years and who, during that period, never manifested any desire to have connexion with Europeans or native men, was decoyed away to live with Cochrane, a native youth, at the mission house in Febry 1841, that girl's frequent elopements from the mission house - her having borne an half caste child before she had been twelve months under Mr Gunther's charge as well as other circumstances prove, as Mr Porter has so repeatedly stated, that neither Mr nor Mrs Gunther were fit for