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.