It was as late as the year 1850 that the first settlement was made at
Christchurch, when a considerable company of immigrants, since called
the "Canterbury Pilgrims," came from Liverpool intending to form a
community devoted to the Church of England. This design however was only
partially carried out, though Christchurch is the chief seat of the
Church of England in New Zealand, and has a magnificent cathedral
testifying to the design of the original founders. It is said that the
first people who arrived freely expressed their disappointment when they
climbed the hills of Littleton and looked off upon the Canterbury
Plains, with scarce a tree or shrub upon them, and not even a hillock to
break the dull monotony of the brown tussock and low clumps of wild
flax. A little over thirty years have since passed, and how different is
the view to-day! Those lonely, dreary plains are now covered with
thrifty farms, divided by broad fields of grain and well-fenced
orchards, dotted here and there with pleasant homesteads surrounded by
ornamental trees and blooming gardens, while as the centre and motive of
it all there lies in the foreground, close at hand, Christchurch, the
cheerful and populous City of the Plains. The lonely aspect of thirty
years ago has given place to one instinct with busy life and modern
civilization.

Littleton with its four thousand inhabitants is a most active and
intensely busy seaport. We were not prepared to find so much shipping
lying at its wharves. The long piers which are built out from the shore
are lined with foreign and coasting steamers, and are also laid with
iron rails connecting with the railroad which runs into the interior.
Thus freight is brought in the cars alongside of the shipping, and it
requires only a hoisting apparatus to fill rapidly with freight the hold
of the largest vessel. The export of New Zealand produce from Littleton
in 1886 reached the aggregate of nearly two million pounds sterling, and
the revenue collected during the same year was two hundred thousand
pounds sterling. The harbor is overlooked by a castellated signal-tower,
situated upon a lofty cliff; and the town itself is terraced over the
hillsides after the usual style of the colonies. Nothing could be more
striking to the eye upon entering the harbor from the sea than these
cliff residences.

Littleton is connected with Christchurch by a railroad, the tunnel for
which is cut directly through the surrounding r