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.