LETTERS FROM NEW ZEALAND
1857–1911
I.
Christmas Day, 1856,
My dear St. John,
Here I am in the Ultima Thule of the Southern Seas, New Zealand, in the South Island, at Christchurch, the principal town of the Settlement of Canterbury, which has not yet completed its first decade of existence. As you may imagine it is the antipodes of all our old experience at Eton and Oxford.
Let me give you an example from the manner of my Christmas Eve yesterday. About 2 p.m. I was on the top of the pass through which a rough bridle track runs across the hills which separate Christchurch from Lyttelton harbour, affording the only means of communication by land between the harbour and the Canterbury plains, very steep, and about 1,200 feet in height. I was sitting there on a convenient rock, contemplating a magnificent view on either side: Lyttelton harbour to the east, a long and rather narrow inlet, indented with bays, encircled with a tumbled mass of hills of bold and broken outline, touching some 3,000 feet at their highest point. These
