Page:Letters from New Zealand (Harper).djvu/27

Rh picturesque curves, shut in by thickets of flax, and to a great extent choked with masses of watercress, which in many places touches the bottom with its roots, at a depth of ten feet. The cress was brought out by the first settlers who little thought that they were importing a most expensive weed, which quite spoils the fair waterway of their pretty river.

This morning a delightful Christmas service in St. Michael's Church, a low wooden building, well furnished, and very well attended; the old familiar hymns, but, instead of holly and ivy, flowers and fruit; I wonder if I shall ever get accustomed to the topsy-turvey arrangement of December as June, and Midsummer as Christmas. My Father was duly enthroned, if I may use that phrase of a Glastonbury chair; his Royal Letters Patent were read out, defining the limits of his Diocese, now separated from the rest of New Zealand, which remains as Bishop Selwyn's Diocese. The Letters Patent declared Christchurch to be a "City," as the seat of the Bishopric, and are couched in just the same terms as similar Letters at home, but I fancy there must be some uncertainty as to their real scope. New Zealand is not a Crown Colony, such as the West Indies, but has its own constitution, its Governor, two Houses of Legislature, and within some broad limits complete power of self-government. The Church here is not established in the sense of Establishment at home, and I suppose must look to itself, not only for its maintenance, but for its government, and is, it would seem, outside the legal control of the State, either at home, or in the Colony, in matters that are purely ecclesiastical; though, of course, subject to the Civil Law in all other respects. Bishop Selwyn preached,