can get them to take the loads at reduced prices; but even with this
help, it is enormously expensive to move a small house fifty miles, the
last fifteen over bad roads; it is collar-work for the poor horses all
the way, Christchurch being only nine feet above the sea-level, while
our future home in the Malvern Hills is twelve hundred.

You know we brought all our furniture out with us, and even papers for
the rooms, just because we happened to have everything; but I should not
recommend any one to do so, for the expense of carriage, though moderate
enough by sea (in a wool ship), is enormous as soon as it reaches
Lyttleton, and goods have to be dragged up country by horses or
bullocks. There are very good shops where you can buy everything, and
besides these there are constant sales by auction where, I am told,
furniture fetches a price sometimes under its English value. House rent
about Christchurch is very high. We looked at some small houses in and
about the suburbs of the town, when we were undecided about our plans,
and were offered the most inconvenient little dwellings, with rooms
which were scarcely bigger than cupboards, for 200 pounds a year; we
saw nothing at a lower price than this, and any house of a better class,
standing in a nicely arranged shrubbery, is at least 300 pounds per
annum. Cab-hire is another thing which seems to me disproportionately
dear, as horses are very cheap; there are no small fares, half-a-crown
being the lowest "legal tender" to a cabman; and I soon gave up
returning visits when I found that to make a call in a Hansom three
or four miles out of the little town cost one pound or one pound ten
shillings, even remaining only a few minutes at the house.

All food (except mutton) appears to be as nearly as possible at London
prices; but yet every one looks perfectly well-fed, and actual want is
unknown. Wages of all sorts are high, and employment, a certainty. The
look and bearing of the immigrants appear to alter soon after they reach
the colony. Some people object to the independence of their manner, but
I do not; on the contrary, I like to see the upright gait, the well-fed,
healthy look, the decent clothes (even if no one touches his hat to
you), instead of the half-starved, depressed appearance, and too often
cringing servility of the mass of our English population. Scotchmen do
particularly well out here; frugal and thrifty, hard-working and sober,
it is easy to predict the futu