The Evening Mail. MONDAY, JANUARY 15, 1877.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 228, 15 January 1877, Page 2

The Evening Mail.

MONDAY, JANUARY 15, 1877.

•••Words at* MrtnjfS,. unit n, drop of ink fedline upon a thought tnivy produuo that wMcti mafct» thousand* thinft."

Two advertisements in the Ofayo IktUij Times are worthy of note; we refer t» the demand for tenders for the survey of lands in the Ofcapua Hundred, Chatton Survey District,, and in the Pyramid Hundred, Otama Survey District; the former consisting of 9£Q® acres, and the latter of 12,40© acres, into Mocks of 200 acres a-piece. This appear* to us a step in the right direction, as tending to the band fid<t settlement of the country by offering inducement!* ta those immigrants wn© have little or no> capital, to occupy and cultivate lands of their own, as no doubt these sections, when surveyed, will hm offered to agriculturists at the lowest possible price, and on the easiest possible terms. It must have been a constant •ource of wusnder to new arrivals to find thai in a Colony so- small as New Zealand, Motifa of lantj a* large, and larger than

some of the estates in Great Britain, should be in the hands of a single individual, whose employment of labour wa3 of the very smallest description, while those immigrants who, actuated by a desire of acquiring acres of their own, come ©at here, find it utterly impossible, with the small capital at their command, to attempt to buy land in face of the opposition of the wealthy squatters. Looking at the land system in Canada—a Colony, at a rough estimate, twenty times the size of this—we find tliat nil lands are surveyed out into 200-acre blocks, and that whether it be in the Free Grant Districts*, or in parts where the land is vested in the Crown, no individual is allowed to own more than one of these sections, and, moceovw. he ta also* b*»und to do a certain amount of what b termed "settlement duty " each year, a duty qualified Inspector, appointed by Government, coining round p<riocUt-ally to see that this part of the cmtraet is duty fulfilled by the settler. Surely if. in a large country such as Canada, 2CK> acres is considered, and found actually to be. sufficiently large for a man and his family t> live on, and if the many fine farms there have been brought under such a high state of cultivation through the salutary influence of the '" sc-tttcuv..-nt duty " ordinance, it wotttd be found to hav-j a similar efFect here. Of coitnsj we a.e perfectly aware that some land in this Colony could never be used for agricultural purposes, and thervforo could only be remunerative by being in targe btncfcs ; but we hope, and vtmtuve to pcydict, that before long all the wheat-growing country well be cut up into one and two hundred acre sections, so that tO.*jOl) aerfc'S, instead of supporting one man, and giving employment to a couple of shepherds, wilt support fifty fatuities, and make a pleasant landscape out of what is now, to a great extent, a howling wilderness.