The agent, in this instance, was a man whose memory is yet green in Otago—Captain William Cargill of the 74th Regiment, retired, who had served with distinction in the Peninsular wars, and was reputed a descendant of David Cargill, the Covenanter. Otago never knew the desolation which had been the lot of her northern sisters and, in no very long time, the chief city had been founded under the reminiscent name of Dunedin, while the Port was called "Chalmers," after the great leader of the Disruption.
The principle of imitation possibly influenced the Church of England to follow the example of the Scotch seceders. Canterbury was founded in December, 1850, under the auspices of the Establishment, and it was Mr. Edward Gibbon Wakefield who obtained for the Canterbury Association a ten years' charter of incorporation from Her Majesty's Government. Moreover, land was purchased from the not yet defunct Company, and the emigrants, who were styled in England "Canterbury Pilgrims," arrived in due course. As a whole, they were as fine a set of people as ever young colony could desire. Their ideas were at first a little high-flown; but they soon got rid of initial absurdities, and Canterbury is to-day not the least in the Dominion of New Zealand.
Everything was going very well indeed, and men began to tell one another that, now that the native trouble was over, there was nothing more to be feared, nothing to prevent active colonisation, nothing to interfere with the rapid growth of the towns already founded. One might almost assert that New Zealand was a land without drawbacks. So they talked and hoped and planned, forgetting all the while that they lived—or some of them—within that sinister belt which straggles round the globe under the name of the "earthquake zone." They were sharply reminded of it on the 16th of October, 1848.
It was about two in the morning when people were suddenly awakened by—they knew not what. Simply, they were awakened. Some lay still, wondering why sleep had so abruptly departed; others, suspicious of trouble, rose and began to dress; only the few were aware of the true cause of that untimely awakening, and these rushed out of their dwellings and shouted an alarm. As the cries were in their mouths, there came a dull, far-away rumbling, a shudder shook the earth, and every house in Wellington rocked to and fro. Then people knew what was happening, and for a time all was confusion. The earth-pang was upon them, and folk ran hither and thither, crying aloud in their terror, seeking aid of those who sought it as eagerly, bewailing their ruined homes while shock after shock convulsed the earth, shaking down walls, splitting gaps in houses and cleaving fissures in the solid ground.
From Banks Peninsula on the east of the Middle Island to the Peninsula of Taranaki on the west and White Island on the east of the North Island, the two "isles shivered and shook like a man in a mortal affright." The plains gaped, the mountains reverberated to the crash of great masses of rock thundering down into their valleys, and for nearly a month from the time of the first tremor this whole area was full of diminishing unrest.
Most of the houses in the Wellington district were built of wood, though not a few were of brick, and it was discovered that those of wood which were built upon a brick foundation resisted the shocks better than those where only one of these materials had been used. Wellington suffered most, losing some sixteen thousand pounds' worth of property, while the fall of the ordnance store there buried in its ruins Sergeant Lovell and his two children.[65]
This was bad enough; but, as many of us know, it takes more than an earthquake to drive people from the land in which they have made their home. So most folk stayed where they were, and a shock of a more pleasurable kind presently confirmed them in their judgment.
This was nothing less than the discovery of gold. Men rejoiced, because they knew that, with such a magnet, it would not be long ere the colony attracted to her shores the increased population which she required for her better development.
There was reason to rejoice over the finding of gold at home, the more because, when news arrived of the Californian discoveries in 1849, no fewer than a thousand colonists had emigrated thither from New Zealand, whence so many able-bodied men could ill be spared. Two years later came the story of the marvellous finds in the river-beds of New South Wales and the gullies of Victoria, and the young colony suffered a further drain of her stalwarts. Many intending immigrants, too, had shifted their helm and, instead of keeping a course for Maoriland, steered for one or other of the gold-bearing colonies. So people were heartily glad from every point of view when Mr. Charles Ring in 1852 found unmistakable traces of gold at Coromandel, forty miles north of Auckland.