REPORTS OF OFFICERS IN NATIVE DISTRICTS.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume II, Issue 192, 1 August 1874, Page 2

REPORTS OF OFFICERS IN NATIVE DISTRICTS.

S. Locke, Esq., R.M., in his report to the Government, thus writes respecting Poverty Bay : — Great progress is going on in this fertile district, and the back country is becoming rapidly taken up, and the natives are settled quietly to agricultural pursuits. The Poverty Bay Commission has concluded the object for which it was appointed, so that “ The East Coast Lands Titles Investigation Aet, 1866 —67,” and the East Coast Act, 1868,” could be repealed. One of tho troubles likely to have arisen was from the complicated state of the titles of those Europeans who have either leased or bought from the Maori the lands that passed the Commission, no provision having been made for sub-divisional shares in grants, but this flaw is provided for by “ The Land Act, 1873 there being some fifty or more grantees in a block, with no defined rights, some of whom have sold, others mortgaged, others leased, others again retaining their shares; and all these transactions, perhaps, have taken place with different parties. The Patutahi Block is about being surveyed for farms, Ac. Captain Porter, I am informed, has settled the questions lip reference to this block with the natives. ' As a portion of this land is low lying, great care will be required inmarking it off. It would be better'll the TnaiH drain were made through it prior to marking off tho farms, &c. A good dray road (?) has been formed from Gisborne to Ormond, and a track cut through by Motu to Opotiki and Ohiwa, in the Bay of Plenty. It is of essential importance for the advancement of the district, and in a strategical point of view, that this road to Opotiki be made passable for drays, and that the road to the oil springs, which are about to be worked, be carried on to the Waiapu Valley, thus opening up for settlement a large extent of country now lying waste in the centre of the East Cape peninsula. The telegraph, which is expected to reach Gisborne in a few months, will be a great boon to this country. There are two schools erected for the Maori children here. Dr. Nesbitt, Resident Magistrate, is unceasing in his endeavors to encourage these and any other objects that have in view the good of the natives and the district.