DESCRIPTIVE SKETCH OF NEW ZEALAND. 



1187 



the loaves and- fishes. Hence, one Church is strongly and richly endowed while numeri- 

 cally weaker than its poorer and more catholic sister. Presbyterianism, too, still remains 

 the dominant religion of Otago and Southland, although the disparity in number between 

 its adherents and those of other forms of religious belief is lessening year by year. 



THE PRESBYTERIAN FIRST CHURCH. 



The pioneer colonists arrived at Port Chalmers in March and April, 1848, under 

 the charge of Captain William Cargill to whose memory a monument has been raised 

 in Prince's Street and the Rev. Thomas Burns, a nephew of the immortal bard. We 

 are told, and can readily believe, that " the prospects were not very cheering to those 

 harbingers of the present community, and doubtless the hearts of many of these failed 

 them, while sailing up the harbour, on seeing on both sides steep hills densely wooded 

 to their summits, without a patch of open land except the barren sands at the Maori 

 settlement. The discomfort of being conveyed in open boats, along with their household 

 effects, from Port Chalmers, and landed on the shores of the town of Dunedin, its 

 surface an entanglement of scrub and flax, without a roof to cover or protect, or a 

 known face to welcome them, and the dread uncertainty as to how or where provisions 

 could be obtained until they could grow their own the time of their arrival being near 

 the beginning of winter must all have tended to damp their enthusiasm." In short, it 

 was an experience that has been common to dozens of special settlement parties in New 

 Zealand, both before that time and since. By and by Dunedin and Otago received a 

 powerful stimulus from the discovery of rich deposits of gold in the Tuapeka District 

 in 1 86 1. The fame of Gabriel's Gully spread like wild-fire over the length and breadth 

 of Australia, population streamed in by hundreds and thousands, and Dunedin, emulating 

 on a moderate scale the example of Melbourne, grew rapidly in size and opulence, until 



