Chapter XIX.
Resignation of Bishop Harper—Appointment and consecration of Bishop Julius—The Boer War—Death of Queen Victoria—Proclamation of King Edward VIII.—The Jubilee of Canterbury–Antarctica.
The time came when Bishop Harper owing to increasing deafness felt that he could no longer do justice to his great charge, and, on August 10, 1889, he resigned his office—his resignation to take effect on March 31, 1880. The Bishop was then eighty-six years of age, having been born on January 9, 1804.
The story of his life has been told by Canon Purchas. The reader will there find the record of an English parish priest, who, in his fifty-third year was not afraid to respond to a call to take charge of an immense diocese which extended over the greater part of the then uncultivated South Island of New Zealand, and who, on arrival, shared with the pioneers the hardships and the dangers of the unbridged rivers, and travelled over the length and breadth of the district committed to his charge. On the first of those journeys, the Bishop was accompanied by his son Henry, who was afterwards Archdeacon of Timaru, and has lately published a volume of his letters written at the time. From these letters may be gathered the very real dangers and difficulties of the journeys the Bishop then undertook. On that first journey from Christchurch to the Bluff, the Bishop had two narrow escapes from death, and was only saved by his magnificent constitution and by his powerful capacity as a swimmer.
But over and above all this stands the portrait of a
