The Sun.
London, England, 1850-09-06 00:00:00

NEW ZEALAND,

The following is an extract from a letter dated
Wellington, April 22 t•—
'Oa Thursday evening (the 11th), after a tedious
day's work beating up the northern shore of the Banks'
peninsula, we came to an anchor about seven o'clock just
outside the heads of Port Cooper. If we had had two
hours' more daylight we should have gone in, but our
captain is very cautious ; and though we had been
positively assured that nothing could possibly happen
even if we ran in blindfold, he preferred waiting
till morning. Elt six o'clock we weighed anchor, the
wind being fair. thotuh light, and passed quickly
up to the bay. None of us, I believe, were prepared for
the beauty of the scenery; it took us more by surprise
than eves at Otago, for the sketches which we had seen
in England were very far from inviting. The character is
very different from that of the lovely lake on the banks of
which Port Chalmers lies, but I am not sure that I do not
prefer it; the hills are very bold, both in face and in

outline, bare for the must Part—that is, with only small
patches of wood at the bottom of the glens, but with
much of that sublimity which is produced by extent
of view and rugged wildness. The harbour is very fine,
both in a picturesque and utilitarian point of view; the
captain and all the nautical men on board were de-
lighted with it, and gave it a very decided preference over

Otago, as being equally safe and far easier of ingress
and egress. It consists in a regularly shaped inlet, aoout
aeven miles long from the entrance to the end,
and varying from a mile to a mile and a half in
ividtb. It is open to one wind (E.N.E.), but everybody

agrees that it never blows hard from Chat qaarter, and
also that the swell is lost befire it reaches the harbour.
There is good anchorage outside in seven fathoms, and
thence it gradua,ly shoals to three fathoms, about five
miles up.
" There are two small bays, in which, if it should be
fund necessary, shelter for ships may be found from
the only wiad to which the rest of the harbour is exposed.
Nu pilot is required, as there is literally nothing t.)
.void, except the hills on each.side, and there is width
t•nough to heat in or out in fine weather. Half way up
the harbour we passed a whale-boat, which informed us
that we might go up and anchor opposite ' the town.'
At that time we had seen no sign of civilisation except
she line of a road in process of formation along the face
and over the top of the hill on the tortLern shore, and
no human habitation except some moor huts close ta the
beach, but we held on, and presently another whale-
boat, wish Captain Thomas, the chief surveyor
of the association, on board, shot from behind a bluff
on the northern shore and boarded us. Immediately
afterwards we let go our anchor, though the town was
not yet visible, and my wife and I went off with
Thomas. On rounding the bluff aforesaid, I was per-
fectly astounded with what I saw. One might have
supposed that the country had been colonized for years,
so settled and busy was the look of its port. In
the first place, there is - what the Yankees would
call a splendid jetty,' thence a wide and beaten-
looking road leads up the hill, and turns off
through a deep cutting to the eastward; on each side
of the road *item are houses scattered to the number of

about twentj-five, including two hotels' and a Custom-
house (in the shape of a small weather-boarded hut,
certainly, but a Custom-house). In a square railed off
close to the jetty are four excellent houses, intended
for emigrants' barracks, with a cook-house in the centre.
Next to the square comes a small house which Thomas
now inhabits himself and which he destined for an
agent's office; behind this, divided' from it by a plot of
ground intended for a garden, stands a stately edifice
which was introduced in due form to us as ' our house.'
It is weather-boarded, has six very good-sized rooms,
and a viranda; in short, after seeing it, we could not help
laughing at our own anticipations of a shed on the bare
beach with a fire at the door. The first view of these
plains, as of all others that I have seen in New Zealand,
is rattier disappoisr.ing to an English eye—that iF, oue
nai4ses the greenness and luxuriance which the growth of
grass in a coun try long cultivated and grazed over exhibits.
Ihe flax plant, too, which grows largely all over them,
exactly resembles at a distance that kind of bulrush
which we call flags, so that, although in fact the pre-
sence of it denotes, as I am told, unerringly that the soil
is sound and sufficiently dry for cultivation, the appear-
ance given by is that of barren swamps. When we got
down into the plain, we soon perceived the difference be-
. . . .

tween the real bulrush, which dces actually grow in
some spots, and the flax. We overtook several of our
fellow-pa,sengers who had starttd hr fore us walking, and
found them unaccustomed to new countrie as they were
open-mouthni about the want of luxuriant grass. We
saw the country to great disadvantage, for there have
been six months of almost unprecedented dry weather,
but, atter making allowance for this, I am sure that until
it shall have been either broken up or grez?d over no
part of it will produce grass to be competed with soil
of equal quality in old countries. There is no difference
of opinion, however, so f it as I can learn among those who
know the country RS to the land in the Canterbury plains
being of fully average quality, capable of fattening sheep
and cattle, as well as of giving good crops of all kinds.
When we arrived at Mr. Deans 's farm we bad a pruef of
this, for his garden, which never saw or heard of ma-
nure, is producing luxuriantly every kind of vegetables
and fruits—l never raw a finer show of them—apples,
pears, perches, everything, in short, flourishes. I wish I
could send home a specimen of the apples, they look like
waxwork. _ _

"On our return to the port we found our passengers
and crew scattered about loud in their praises of the
progress which has been made in so short a time, as well
as of the prospects held out by the settlement, and com-
paring everything with Otago, very much to the disad-
vantage of the latter, which seems to have found favour
in nob,dy's eyes. They forget that Thomas has had
the spending of a larger sum of money on a givcia spot
than any other pioneer of settlement in this country has
had; so that the superiority of his operations is not to
be laid alt gether to the account of his merits. Cer-
tainly no body of settlers ever found so much done to
smooth their path for them as ours will find. Most agri-
cultural produce, cx .ept flour, is already cheaper than
at Otago; meat is plentiful, at sid. per lb.; fresh butter,
Is. per lb.; cheese, Is. per lb.; eggs and milk, appa-
rently varying in price, but generally reasonable enough;
potatoes, 4s. 61 per cwt. The chief supplier of the
market is a man named Rhodes, who lives on the oppo-
site side of the harbour from 143 ttelton, and who is the
only person besides Deans and those who have bought
from the French at Akroa, whose title to land has been
recognized. Ho has, I understand, 400 acres, and his
stock consists of 3,500 sheep, and about 300 head of
cattle. We dined with Thomas, end there was also a
dinner at the grog-shop dignified by the name of the
Mike' Hot-I, and kept by Major Hornbrook, a field-
officer of Engineers in the Spanish Legion, who has come
down from Wellington on a spree, end who says he
will give 1001 a year to the individual who gets the
section on which he has located himself. This gallant
officer's cookery and accommodations are very well re-
ported of.
" I think all those who see the Canterbury settlement
will almit that, as I have said before, no first body of
colonists from Britain have ever found so much done to
prepare for and welcome them as ours will find. In fact,
difficulties in the usual sense of the word, as applied to
colonisation, there will be none—no roads to make, no
forests to clear, no want of food or lodging, or of facili-
ties for c h -;osing and settling upon land. Many things
will no doubt be expensive at first; for example, wood,
some articles of provisions, and labour; but every man's
enterprise may be made the subject of calculation on
paper, as in an old country. Humanly speaking, there
is no uncertainty or chance of disappointment to provide
against. He may lose his money, but if he does, again
I Say, humanly speaking, it will be his own fault, and
not the result of his obstacles which he could not fore-
see. If el certain that a vast deal of the discontent and
mutual bad feeling which is so painfully conspicuous at
Otago takes its origin from the discomforts and embar-
rassments experienced by men thrown with their wives
and children upon a bare shore at the beginning of win-
ter, without a road or a clearing, or a sign of civilization
to welcome or to cheer them. At that time they not un-
naturally acquire the habit of abusing the association
and the company, and their leaders, and each other, and
they have certainly never lost it, and I earnestly trust the
example may not be logt noon us."