264 
EMIGRATION. 
one of the New Zealand Land Company; it is styled the 
Church of England colony, as the Otako one is of the Church 
of Scotland ; and had the Company existed longer, it would 
have had one for the Church of Rome ; and so accommodating 
were its plans, that could Mahometan settlers have been 
found, it would doubtless have attended to their wants as 
well. It need not be said, that the Canterbury Settlement 
is now about as exclusively of the English as the other is of 
the Scotch Church; there is a natural repugnance to all 
these exclusive principles, and numbers of other denomi¬ 
nations have so flowed in from one settlement to the other, 
that there is little now to mark the peculiar character of 
the province, beyond, perhaps, a feeble effort at intoning, 
and the glimmering of a pair of candles at noon-day in 
some wooden building called a church. In other respects, 
it is but a name, and one not likely to continue. The 
climate of this part, though healthy, is naturally, from the 
difference of latitude, far inferior to that of the Northern 
Island, or even of Nelson: the winds are high and fre¬ 
quent ; and as the province chiefly consists of fine grassy 
plains, unsheltered by wood, they are the more severely 
felt. It is the great sheep feeding province, yet with a climate 
and scenery little superior to that of the highlands of Scotland, 
it is ludicrous to reflect on the absurd value which has been 
put upon the land there, the minimum price of which is 
£3 an acre (!!) for land at the antipodes, laying in a state 
of nature. Her Majesty purchased the princely estate of 
Balmoral, with its castle, and about 300 acres of improved 
land, and a district of more than twenty thousand acres,* in 
her own sea-girt island, and within a single day’s journey from 
her capital, for actually less than half the sum per acre that 
the poor sea-worn emigrant must give for scrub land in Can¬ 
terbury, in the midst of the wilds of New Zealand! 
It need not be added, very little of this valuable settlement 
has yet been disposed of at that price, nor is it likely that 
* The Balmoral Estate is seven miles by five—22,400 acres; purchase- 
money ,£31,000, or less than 28s. per acre. 
