affording a prospect of the bay and the town, with a peep at the ocean beyond.
"Below may be seen the edifice set apart for a church and school, a plain wooden building with a library attached, the manse, and Capt. Cargill's residence, neat mansions of wood towards the south end of the town, with small gardens; Mr. Valpy's house forming a conspicuous object, but not a very pleasing one in point of architecture; the principal surveyor's house, on a small rising ground, with its fanciful verandah, a confused cluster of houses round the Commercial Inn and the Royal Hotel; these are some of the most prominent objects in the picture of the town. Here and there, too, dotted among the houses, may be seen the painted tops of gipsy-like tents, or the more rustic dwellings of clay and grass, peeping from amid a bower of trees. There is a police magistrate, two physicians, one solicitor, three merchants, two butchers, two bakers, five shoemakers, one tailor, and several storekeepers, carpenters, and sawyers."
Passing from the more material features of the infant town to those of a more intellectual character, as was to have been expected from the foundation of the settlement, provision for religious instruction was at once attended to. Working plans, windows, doors, and other fittings for a church were brought out in the "Philip Laing," and no time was lost in getting the building erected. The most imposing position in the town, where the First Church now stands, was the site first selected; but the church was not, however, placed there, but close down to the water's edge, at the rear of the Standard Insurance buildings.
On the first Sunday after his landing, the Rev. Mr. Burns preached to the assemblage in the forenoon, and the Rev. Mr. Creed, Wesleyan missionary for the district, discharged the same duty in the afternoon, an excellent friendly feeling subsisting between the two parsons. Although Otago was essentially a Free Church settlement, sectarian bigotry was not practised, and as there was a good number of members of the Episcopal Church within its bounds, it was natural to expect that provision would soon be made for holding service according to their particular form. Accordingly, on the last Sunday of January 1849, the first congregation of that body met and service was held in the jail, and
