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Evening Star, Issue 3815, 17 May 1875, Page 2

The cost of survey is often a more serious consideration to land applicants and settlers on small areas than the price of tht land itself. This cost is most unequal in different parts of the Province, and is so arranged that the most enterprising men who push into the interior to open up waste country for agriculture are heavily handicapped for doing so. This is the practical result of the mileage system, and appears to be a state of things that should not be allowed. In some districts the system of staff surveyor* has not yet been again resorted to. In these the case is worst. A staff surveyor -ravelling to a district to lay off half-a-dozen areas charges distance only once, averaging the charge all round unless, fortunately for those waiting for survey, some Government business has taken him to their neighborhood. Under the private system invariably every holder of a section awaiting survey has to pay the surveyor’s mileage, although one journey may have been sufficient for all the work. Last year this question was repeatedly brought up in the Council, and a pledge was given that, as soon as possible, the private systern should be done away with. It is not at all evident that in any one case during the past year this has been done. A very voluminous return is now laid on the table, shewing the relative and aggregate cost of all the surveys that have taken place in Otago for two years. Without any special analysis we pick out a few charges Forty acres cost of survey, £4 ; _ one acre, £6 4s ; forty acres, > forty-six acres (five sections), £4l 16s : thirty and a-half acres (five sections), £39 15s: twenty acres, £6 4s. These few items are w™°j en * P°* n * the inequality of charges. . ®,®° n °t see how the mileage system can be justified at all In justice to all settlers an average charge sufficient for the expenses of the department should be struck on all surveys and mileage be entirely done away with! ihere is no reason why a settler, thirty miles from say Queenstown, should pay more than it he were only one mile away. The centres of the district offices are merely chosen a | A. elD j? conveniently situated to do the work of the district, and never should be allowed to practically handicap settlement, with enormous departmental charges, proportionately as it spreads outwards. Ail work being done according to priority of application, it becomes a question whether it would not be better to do away with survey charges altogether, making up the difference on the price charged for the land.