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land as one family could cultivate, on easy terms. One can imagine an immigrant family established in a valley under a deed say for 10 acres of land adopting an attitude of superiority towards later arrivals. No doubt the cultivation was shifting according to the season-swampy and low-lying land being taken up when the year was a dry one to be abandoned in favour of better drained fields when the rains were heavy.

7. In this way the clan would at one time or another have worked the greater part of the valley though the actual amount of land at any one time under cultivation might not exceed the legitimate ten acres. Newcomers wishing to settle would be told that the land belonged to the clan who were responsible for the tax. The strangers would have nothing to gain by objecting to pay. Any refusal would mean bad blood and possibly litigation with the result that the Government would get the tax and that the old settlers would have a lasting feud with the new arrivals.

Other immigrants would similarly find it to their interest to keep in with the clan and in time every settler in the valley would be paying them a fixed yearly sum under the name of tax although none of it would ever reach the coffers of the Government.

8. This I take to have been the usual manner in which clan rights over land came to be so universally asserted. The country bordering on the Canton delta has always been turbulent and lawless and the great difficulty of communications in a mountainous region no doubt made the Magistrates willing to condone such frauds on the revenue. No doubt the clan would pay a proportion of their receipts as bush money. When the District Magistrate was honest this would be absorbed by his underlings, when he was not it would form a useful addition to his slender stipend.

9. I estimate that four-fifths of the land tax in the New Territory passed through the hands of an intermediary before reaching the Government. The system I have described was not however the only The second cause was undoubtedly the desire of evading the heavy registration fees charged in the District Land Office.

cause of this.

In the first place unless a man had a "heading' a page with his own name or that of his ancestor in the register-it cost him not less than $100 to begin his registration. Even when he had this heading in the register there were fees legitimate and otherwise, to be paid and the trouble and delay of going to the District City.

10. The result was that very few sales of land were registered. The more usual course was for the transaction to be evidenced by a white, ie, an unregistered dead containing a covenant by the purchaser to pay the vendor a yearly sum to meet the tax which the vendor continued to pay as before. This was frequently done even when the vendor parted with the whole of the land held by him under a red deed when in order to save the purchaser the trouble and expense of registration the latter took a white or unregistered deed as evidence between himself and the vendor of the transaction and of the payinent of the purchase money. He might also get the original red deed to be kept as security against subsequent dealings with the land by his vendor. Thus the taxes were still paid in the old name though the land had passed into other hands.

It is possible I think to find in one or other of these sources the origin of all the clan claims in the New Territory. That is to say: either a clan has forced later immigrants to pay to itself an imposition under the name of land tax; or the clan (or individual members of it) has parted with land under a white deed and still continues to be responsible for the tax.

Ownership of land how acquired.

11. It may not be amiss to recapitulate briefly the various methods of acquiring land in the New Territory.

First by grant from the Crown.-On application to the District Magistrate for unoccupied waste, or for newly formed alluvial land, a notice was posted reciting the application. Then, after five months if no objection had been lodged a grant issued stating the area and class of the land and the tax payable.

Secondly by purchase.--The law required that every deed of sale should be registered and the amount of tax due transferred into the purchaser's name. In most cases the instrument was not registered, the vendor continuing to pay the tax and the purchaser indemnifying him by a yearly contribution. It was however usual in such cases as I have stated above for the vendor to hand over the prior registered deed to the purchaser to secure the latter against any subsequent dealings with it to his prejudice.

The Perpetual Lease.

12. Thirdly by perpetual lease.-This was by far the most common method of dealing with land in the New Territory.

The effect of a grant of land from the Crown was really to make the grantee a perpetual lessee subject to the payment of the proper Crown Rent. Something analogous was adopted by private individuals. When the transaction was intended to be registered it was usually called a sale, being