the swamps between the foot of the hills and Christchurch.
Many accounts of that pilgrimage have come down to us, and of the varied impression created by the first view of the “promised land” as seen from the summit. The Riccarton and Papanui bushes were the most noticeable features, with the Rangiora bush visible in the distance. To the east and north of Christchurch were great stretches of raupo swamp and of sandhills. The late Mr. George Robert Hart, for many years chief reporter for the “Press,” has left in “Stray Leaves from the Early History of Canterbury,” a description of the Christchurch of 1851. Mr. Hart came out as a boy with his parents in the “Cressy.” His father pitched his tent (a ship’s sail) on the site of the present White Hart Hotel.
Christchurch was then a waste of high fern and tutu, through which the surveyors had cut rough tracks. Indeed, a year later it is said that a new arrival lost his way amongst the scrub in Cathedral Square and was found plaintively asking to be shown the way to Christchurch. Behind the White Hart, in Lichfield Street, was a raupo swamp, another to the east extended nearly to the present Lancaster Park. These areas were the haunts of swarms of ducks and pukaki. Running diagonally across the site of the city was a deep gully, carrying water in winter time too deep to be forded. This gully left the river near St. Michael’s Church—it can still been seen in the vicarage gardens—crossed Cashel Street, passed near the Bank of New Zealand Corner, through Dr. Prins’ garden, where the Canterbury Hall now stands, and flowed back into the river near the Manchester Street bridge.
We shall come later to the first selection of sections by the settlers. In the first instance, each man pitched his camp where he pleased, cutting down the fern and tutu to make a clearing, and it happened that the first group of buildings grew up near “The Bricks” wharf
