THE SURVEYS.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume I, 26 March 1842, Page 11

THE SURVEYS.

We mentioned in our last that arrangements had been made with private surveyors, for the purpose of accelerating the laying | out of tlie suburban sections. For this endeavour to satisfy the very justifiable anxiety of the settlers to begin to work upon their own land, we should say our best thanks were due to the Company's agent, but that we well knon% and our fellow colonists well know, that this is not the right way of putting it. It is evident to all, that if any have more especially than others good reason to be anxious that the land should be early and satisfactorily laid , out, it must be the New Zealand Company themselves. We have wily, therefore, as ' settlers, to congratulate ourselves on having \ to a certain extent placed ourselves in the | hands of those whose interests are the same I its our own. The town surveys have pro- ! ceeded much more rapidly here than at Port Nicholson. The acres will, we believe, be ready i'ov selection by the 7th of next month at latest. The delays which una- ; voidably took place at Port Nicholson i induced the Company to send a much larger surveying staff to their second settlement ; and it was certainly expected, when we left England, that the surveys would be more forward on our arrival than we have found them. It is impossible, of course, to determine, from so long a distance and so i short experience, the exact time which it takes to survey 1,100 single acres for the town, or the same number of suburban and rural lots ; but doubtless the Company's next settlement will be differently arranged, either by increasing, and that considerably, the number of the staff, or by allowing a longer period to elapse between the departure of the surveyors and that of the first body of settlers. There do not appear to have been any extraordinary difficulties in the way of the progress of the survey here ; but it seems to be allowed on all hands that men will j not work so hard in a colony as they will ' in England, and this indisposition is increased, doubtless, by the consciousness that the engagement is for a term, and has no relation to the progress that is made. | These we look upou as acknowledged evils, which cannot well be provided against, and must therefore be submitted to. The Company's agent has taken the best possible means to obviate the difficulty arising from these causes as well as original miscalculation, and we doubt not that we shall find no cause to regret having arrived so early, when we find ourselves with all the advantages over those who follow us which a longer and more intimate acquaintance with the localities and capabilities of our future home must necessarily give. The possible evils that might arise out of too early an arrival of a body of settlers appear to us to be very great ; and we confess that though in our instance the delay in obtaining possession does not appear to have thrown even a shadow of discouragement on the energies or spirits of any, yet we should be loath, if the matter lay with ourselves, to run tbe same risk with another body, which might not contain the same elements of success as our own. <