WASTE LANDS OF THE COLONY.

Auckland Star, Volume II, Issue 563, 30 October 1871, Page 2 (Supplement)

WASTE LANDS OF THE COLONY.

To tlie Editor of the Evening News. Sib, —I read yesterday an able article in one of your contemporaries, on the important matter of speedily settling population on such of the waste lands of this country as belong to natives who are desirous to utilise the same. As an old settler who has travelled a good deal, i am able to state that those lands are very extensive, and a glance at the geological map of jSFew Zealand, lately published at Wellington, will confirm this assertion, and show that there is more agricultural land in the province of Auckland alone than exists in the whole of the Southern Island. I feel sure, however, that those lands cannot be acquired while proceedings of the startling nature, revealed in the pamphlet entitled " Craig's Troubles," are allowed to appear both in and out of the Supreme Court. I think that necessary precautions should be taken to prerent the recurrence of such evils; but mere precautions, which might be evaded, would be useless without the redressal of past wrongs, than which no step could be more calculated to restore to the minds of the public a confidence which has been too rudely shaken. — lim &c, Old Settles.