Discover a Church Missionary Atlas in New Zealand
In the archives collection at the John Kinder Theological Library, there are many hidden treasures. One such treasure emerged recently: Church Missionary Atlas. Actually, two atlases.
The Kinder Library has the fifth (1873) and seventh (1891) editions of the ‘Church Missionary Atlas; maps of the various missions of the Church Missionary Society, with illustrative letter-press’, [BV2500CHU].
The latter, more comprehensive edition includes Part III. Ceylon, Mauritius, China, Japan, New Zealand, North-West America, and North Pacific.
As well as maps which give the location and list the names of the mission stations, the atlases contain substantial passages of text about the ‘New-Zealand Mission’ as the following extract illustrates:
‘The Maori language belongs to the Malayan stock. In the Northern Island there are less than seven leading dialects, each more or less distinct.
Of these the Ngapui [sic] is the most northerly, and was originally employed when settling the orthography; but the idiom now adopted for translations and other literary purposes, and also the most widely diffused in the Waikato, belonging to the Metropolitan District of Auckland. ….
‘The Maori vocabulary is peculiarly copious, each native tree and plant, of which there are 600 or 700 species, each bird and insect having its distinct name, however minute the variation. But there are no indigenous words to represent “peace’, “grace”, “hope,” “charity” … though “joy”, “anger”, “sorrow”, and other natural passions have each several synonyms’. – Church Missionary Atlas, 1873, p.54 [BV 2500CHU]
