CO129-320 - Governor Sir Blake Acting Governor May - 1903 [11-12] — Page 17

4.

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to accept, the Colonial Goverment was only adopting the same principle upon which the Eastern boundary of the Praya Reclama- tion was fixed.

When that Reclamation was undertaken the Colonial Goverment had before it no proposal for a Naval and Military Reclamation and if it had acted on the principle now attempted to be established by the Admiralty and War Department it would have laid down a boundary line radiating from the starting point on the old frontage line to a point considerably to the Eastward of the boundary line actually fixed. (Vide

plan C.)

1

The compromise arranged at the conference which I had with Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge and Major-General Gascoigne, was for the purpose of facilitating a settlement of the matter and was not based on any admission that the prin- ciple which the Colonial Government contended for was wrong.

7.

In paragraph 3 of the Despatch under ack- nowledgment it is admitted that the dictum that the proper direction for the boundary of any Reclamation should be at right angles to the existing water frontage, does not apply literally in cases where the existing water frontage is not a straight line. In such cases Sir Montagu Ommanney states the matter would as a general rule be compromised by drawing the

boundary between the extended frontages so as to bisect the

angle between the existing frontages.

The boundary which the Colonial Government

now contend for is approximately the line which would result

by adopting that principle in the present case.

The difficulty that has arisen in this

matter