Sessional_Paper_1901 — Page 587

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Appendix No. 3.

21st February, 1901.

1. This report treats of the progress of the Cadastral Survey from the 1st December, 1900, that being the commencement of the Survey season, up to the 15th February, 1901, compared with the area surveyed up to the same date last year.

2. But there was a large increase after this period last year when all the Surveyors were at work in the country around Ping Shan, owing to very favourable circumstances, which do not pre- vail at the present time. These favourable circumstances were the (comparatively) very large sized fields into which the cultivated areas in those open Districts was divided. Owing to this the Sur- veyors were able to complete large out-turns every month. The country which is now being surveyed is broken; the fields are much smaller; and these difficulties will increase somewhat as the Cadastral Survey enters further into the hilly tract of country that remains to be dealt with.

The area

3. The area surveyed cadastrally up to the 15th February, amounts to 3,600 acres. surveyed last year during the same period amounted to 6,000 acres. It will be seen that the area completed during the present year amounts to of that completed in the same period last year.

4. This deficiency is chiefly due to the Surveyors working with the demarcators-both the Survey and Rent Roll operations being carried on at one and the same time. Some proportion of this deficiency most also be attributed to the increase of scale and the fact that under present con- ditions the Field Surveyors are on the fixed salaries. The precise shares of the decrease in the out-turn this year, as compared with last year, cannot be exactly apportioned to each of the causes mentioned, because there have been, apart from these, other hindrances to continuous work, which make it very difficult to say with any degree of certainty whether the progress made up to the 15th February is that which might have been expected; or whether, now that the Surveyors have set- tled down to their work, it may not be found that they will make better progress. I allude to the original orders that holdings alone should be surveyed: than that individual fields should also be mapped with the holdings. The change of scale to 32 inches when the work was in progress on the 161 mile scale is also accountable to some degree for the deficiency in the out-tură.

5. But the chief causes may be said to be the two operations of the Rent Roll and survey work which are being performed at one and the same time. And also, but to a very much smaller degree, the change of scale.

6. 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 carried on irrespective of holdings, the same condition of things will come to pass that now exists with regard to the maps of the (say) 35,000 (thirty-five thousand) acres surveyed last year to the North of the Tai Mo Shan hills. These maps have been traced for the Land Court and the areas of individual fields have been calculated and recorded; but the Laud Court cannot deal with those documents or that information because it possesses no establishment for that purpose. There- fore for all the immediate purposes of the Rent Roll those thirty-five thousand acres might almost have remained unsurveyed. Were the demarcation operations and the record 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 stale 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 surveys.

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 Surveyors. This is the only compromise at all possible.

10. The question is complicated by considerations affecting the realization of the Crown Rent. It is one entirely for the decision of the Colonial Goverument. If the objects of the Rent Roll are being fully obtained by the present 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 seale from 16 to 32 inches: This became absolutely neces sary as soon as the more open valleys had been surveyed. In the remaining portions excepting in over two localities the fields are situated on hill sides and in the glens and smaller valleys where they vary from 90 to 120, and perhaps more, to an acre. It is impossible to represent such minute detail on the 16 inches to a mile scale with any degree of utility. For purposes of the Rent Roll also it is necessary that dwelling lots should be shewn on the maps. Villages therefore are now surveyed in detail as well as the cultivated lands. On the 16 inches to a mile scale such detail sur- veys of villages are impossible. During the past year no villages have been surveyed in detail for this reason.

In India while the 16 inches scale is that generally adopted for the plains, this scale is rejected, when cadastral surveys in the Ilimalayas are undertaken, for larger scales. In the Himalayan valleys and even in the hillside cultivation the fields are larger than those in the hilly tracts of the New Territory. In the plains of India where the 16" scale is in general use for cadastral sur- veys, except in certain localities where local considerations compel the adoption of a larger scale, villages and towns are always surveyed (when necessary) on a larger scale and as a separate operation.

12. In the surveys in this Colony everything is being done in one operation by the Survey Staff except the demarcation on the ground of the boundaries of claims and the records of owners'

names.

GEO. P. TATE.