their belongings from the ships in Lyttelton to their homes in the new settlement.
Mr. Jollie’s plan of Christchurch was then prepared, and approved by Captain Thomas, “except as to one or two parts in which I had indulged in a little ornamentation, such as crescents. These were pronounced ‘ginger-bread,’ and I was not sorry to give them up for something more practical; but Thomas made one change which I have always regretted. I had proposed that several of the streets, instead of being one chain wide, should be wide enough to admit of their being planted with trees. Thomas would not agree to this, but afterwards, when the work was nearly finished, he gave his leave to widen one or two of the principal streets, if it could be done without materially delaying the completion of the survey, but it was then impossible to do it.” If Mr. Jollie’s plan had been sanctioned, Christchurch would have had several fine boulevards, and we should have been spared the congestion of traffic at the Bank of New Zealand Corner.
Then came the naming of the streets, and Mr. Jollie’s narrative presents a quaint picture of the baptismal ceremony. The plan was to use the names of the various dioceses of the Church of England. “Thomas, with his gold spectacles on, and a ‘Peerage’ in his hand, read out a name that he fancied, and if he thought it sounded well, and I also thought so, it was written on the map. The Lyttelton map was the first that was finished, and the first dealt with. Sumner followed. The result was that these two towns had used up most of the tip-top English titles, and for Christchurch, which came last, there was scarcely anything left but Ireland and the colonies.” The names used in Lyttelton were those of Canterbury (for the principal street), Norwich, Exeter, London, Oxford, Ripon, St. Davids, Winchester and Dublin. At Sumner (called after the Primate of England, the President of the Canterbury Association),
