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Excerpt from Memories of the Life of J. F. H. Wohlers: Missionary at Ruapuke, New Zealand, an Autobiography
J. F . H. Wohlers was born a peasant in the village of Hoyerhagen, near Bremen, but a desire for the life of a missionary being developed in him, he went to New Zealand in 1843, under the auspices of the North German Missionary Society.
He settled in the first instance at Nelson, but finding no sphere there for missionary operations removed to the island of Ruapuke, in Foveaux Straits, then the residence of the principal native chiefs of the South Island, coming down the coast with Mr. Tuckett, the agent of the New Zealand Company, on his journey to select the site for the present settlement of Otago.
He converted communities, to use his own words, of loathsome savages sunk in degradation and poverty, both at Ruapuke and on the adjacent coasts of Stewart Island and the mainland, into prosperous communities of civilized human beings, receiving for many years no remuneration, but producing his own food out of the soil, and teaching the Maoris to do the same after a civilized manner. He preserved and fully records the old Maori mythology (a sublime one) which, even in his day, was only known to a few, as it was the religion of previous generations, the custodians of which all died before his own demise. He published the book of which this is a translation in Bremen, in 1883, and died at Stewart Island on the 7th of May, 1885, at the age of seventy-three.
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