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Square Foot of Marine Lot No. 184 in respect of damage sustained on September 1st, 1898, owing to the reclamation in front of that Lot. This offer which took the place of Major-General BLACK's award of the 22nd November, 1898, was not accepted by the claimants and, after some further correspondence, the Secretary of State on the 9th August, 1904, ordered a further enquiry in a despatch addressed to me as then Governor of Hongkong in the following terms:-

"I request that you will make further enquiry into the matter and report to me whether or not, in your opinion, Messrs. HOWARD and STEPHENS are entitled to any, and if any, to what further com- pensation."

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I accordingly held a public enquiry on the 3rd, 4th and 5th July, 1905, at which the claimants and the Colonial Government were represented by Counsel who cross-examined the Surveyors and other persons having knowledge of the value of property at Hongkong, whose statements in support of, or against the claim, were laid before me.

6. Copies of the Documents put in evidence by the claimants are annexed to this award as Appendix "A", of those put in by the Colonial Government as Appendix "B" and of the short-hand writer's notes on the verbal evidence as Appendix "C".

Reference was also made in the course of the hearing to various Sections of "The Praya Reclamation Ordinance, 1889," which is printed as No. 6 of 1889 in Volume I of the Revised Edition of the Ordinances; to the Record of Proceedings printed for the Privy Council for the hearing of the Appeal from the Supreme Court of Hongkong, and to the correspondence and statements printed with the Petition to the King of the 22nd May, 1903.

7. At the conclusion of the hearing, I put to the Chief Justice, who sat with me as Judicial Assessor, a series of questions bearing on the legal points involved in the case. These questions and His Honour's replies are set forth in Appendix

"D".

8. The first point for decision is what was the value of Marine Lot No. 184 at the time it ceased to be a Marine Lot. According to the statement of claim this value was $282,000.

(i.) This sum of $282,000 is practically the 3rd of the three valuations put in by the claimants as having been made by Messrs. LEIGH & ORANGE, on the 28th December, 1898, for the property as it was in 1895. It also corresponds approximately to the 2nd of those valuations. According to the Judicial Assessor's reply to the second and third of the questions addressed to him, if the system of capitalizing the net rentals obtained from the property be adopted, these valuations require corrections which, (together with an alteration in the rate of capitalization from 6% to 7% shown by the evidence to be necessary), reduce their amount to that of a valuation on this basis by Mr. DANBY, a witness for the Crown, viz., to $143,157. If this were held to be the value of the property and if Messrs. LEIGH & ORANGE'S valuation of the buildings on it, viz., $55,600, were taken, the

$143,157 – $55,600 value of the land per Square Foot in 1895 would be

$2.70. 32,481

Messrs. LEIGH & ORANGE's first valuation, however, gave the value of the land at $5 per Square Foot. This valuation was, according to the evidence given by Mr. ORANGE, based on four facts. The first of these was a payment of $1,700 offered by the Government in November, 1887, on account of the land of which Mr. STEPHENS was actually given possession under the Crown Lease being 339