Page 5 Advertisements Column 3

Lyttelton Times, Volume IV, Issue 174, 6 May 1854, Page 5

acres. If so, each such run should make five or six. Go and slash away right* and left at these Cormorants. I will back you to the best of my poweir. Believe me, yours very truly, (Signed) A. Domett. Lieut.-Colonel Campbell, &c, &c, • &c.

Christchurch, 25th July, 1853. Sir, —An opportunity of writing to you by the " Kaka " unexpectedly presenting itself, I avail myself of it to acquaint you that I have at last been able to take up my abode here in so much improved health as to enable me once more, I may say, efficiently to attend to my now much increased and daily increasing official ■-duties, in the performance of which I have so long been without any assistance whatever. My severe illness, as well as Mr. Boys', as you may well suppose, put it totally out of my power to act as I was so anxious to do, in trying to regulate.: and cut down in the way you wish, and as I now intend, the enormous extents of pasturage —much of it over and over applied for. But I regret exceedingly that you did not issue in the Government Gazette what I sent you on the 24th January last, the necessity for which I so clearly foresaw. You can hardly conceive the confusion which would thereby have been avoided, as also the difficulties as to the numerous applications for runs which it would have obviated. However, as they are nearly all not according to the prescribed form, I can manage to arrange them as I may deem best, and most for the good of the public ; indeed, it was impossible for any applicants to conform to it, as they could not tell what runs I should declare entirely forfeited for not being stocked, or which I shall cut down only. I trust I shall be able, in some way or other, to manage to satisfy all, though I hardly as yet know how, and certainly not without surveys of some kind being made. A report has gone abroad of my intentions of cutting down runs unmercifully; and I know that trafficking in them on the part of some of the present occupants will be attempted ; by their bargaining privately with applicants for the parts of the runs which they expect I shall take from them. I must be much on my guard as to this. But I see clearly that, however unpopular it may make me, I shall he under the necessity of cutting down, as you have urged me, most unsparingly, at all events before licenses can be issued. I have, as I before informed you, got through all the claims in Banks' Peninsula. It was my illness alone that prevented me from reporting upon them. The Crown grants being prepared with the assistance of members of my family, I hope to be able before long to forward the whole to you to be gazetted. Then all the waste unsold or unappropriated lands in Banks' peninsula will, under existing circumstances, again centre in the Grown in place of being, as was formerly the case, under their first Act of Parliament, in the Canterbury Association. I have already written to you, I hope sufficiently clearly, on the subject of the Town lands of Akaroa, as well as the rural lands of Banks' peninsula, so improperly and, as I conceive, illegally conveyed by the agents of the Canterbury Association to individuals and to the Church. I have also shown how totally hopeless it was to expect to arrive at an amicable, or any adjustment of matters with Captain Simeon ; particularly as soon as he came to be advised, and had his letters written for him by Mr. Sewell; with whom, as special agent of the Canterbury Association, I trust it will not be necessary for me to have any more communication. I have the honor to be, &c. &c. &c. (Signed) 3 as. Campbell, Commissioner. The Honble the Civil Secretary, Wellington. I shall now observe that, according to the 6th clause of the Pastoral Regulations, it is declared that in estimating the sufficiency of stock for any run applied for, the Commissioner shall not allow for natural increase in any proportions, with respect to the amounts of stock on the run greater than those set forth in the scale annexed. And it is also declared that, in no case shall a run be granted capable of containing more than 25,000 sheep. Thus I was restricted as to the maximum of pasture I was to allow as sufficient for a sheep. But surely no one will pretend to say that, by these regu-