CO129-304 - Governor Sir Blake - 1901 [1-4] — Page 645

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performed at one and the same time. And also, but to a very much smaller degree, the change of Scale.

I do not see how these hindrances

to rapid work can be removed if the Rent Roll operations are to progress and keep abreast of the Surveys.

7.

If it be granted that the Surveys are to be dissociated from the Rent Roll work, and are to be car- ried on irrespective of holdings, the same condition of things will come to pass that now existe with regard to the Haps of the (say) 35,000 (Thirty-Five Thousand) acres surveyed last year to the North of the Taimoshan hills. These Yaps have been traced for the Land Court, and the areas of individual fields have been calculated and recorded, but the Land Court cannot deal with those documents or that information because it possesses no es- tablishment for that purpose. Therefore for all the immediate purposes of the Rent Roll, those Thirty-Five Thousand acres night almost have remained unsurveyed. Were the demarcation operations and the Records of Rights now going on to be severed from the Survey work, there would be a larger mass of unusable material accumulating on the hands of the Land Court, which would become atale, and possibly, even out of date by the time that the purely Survey work was finished and the Staff set free, and placed at the disposal of the Land Court, to enable that body to use the Maps (and other information) to illustrate questions of title.

8.

It would, therefore be necessary

to keep up a separate Staff for the Land Court while the Surveys were in progress (and afterwards) to deal with the Maps, and to compile areas of holdings, if it was desired to dissociate the two operations, but to keep the Rent Roll abreast of the Survey."

9.

Any compromise would hasten the

Survey to a small extent at a sacrifice of the Rent Roll, with the present Staff. For only 3 or 4 Field Surveyors could be spared from the Survey to carry on demarcation in the wake of the Survey- ors. This is the only compromise at all possible.

10.

The question is complicated by considerations affecting the realisation of the Crown Rent. It is one entirely for the decision of the Colonial government. If the objects of the Rent. Roll are being fully attained by the pre- sent system then that system must continue in force. The Cadastral work being undertaken for the Rent Roll alone.

11.

With regard to the increase of Scale from 16 to 32 inches, this became absolutely necessary as soon as the more open valleys had been surveyed. In the remaining portions excepting in one or two localities the fields are sita-

-ated