CORRESPONDENCE.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1065, 25 April 1882, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

[IFe do not hold ourselves responsible for opinions expressed by our correspondents.'] TO THE EDITOB. Sib, —A subject very important not only to the progress of this district, but also to the whole of the North Island of New Zealand, is the existing condition of the Survey Department, and the rules laid down by the Surveyor-General for the guidance of surveyors under the Native Lands Act. Under the present system the relative costs of survey for the open country and the rough country are wholly disproportionate, inasmuch as, whilst the cost of surveying the most valuable country is comparatively trifling, the cost for rough and almost inaccessible country is very heavy. The surveys of open country, worth, perhaps, from £3 to £8 an acre, could be executed at rates varying from fourpence to one shilling an acre, whereas the rates for rough country, worth from three to ten shillings an acre, would be, to attain the same degree of accuracy, more than doubled. Indeed the expense entailed by reason of the Procrustean rules of of the Surveyor-General renders almost nugatory any attempt to put back

country into the market, neither proposed purchaser or lessee, or native owners, being willing to meet the enormous expenses of such work. A system applicable to such country as Victoria, and other countries of like character, is wholly inapplicable to such country as comprises nearly three-fourths of this island. An accurate major and minor triangulation is doubtless necessary, and a five-and-a-half inch or six inch plate is sufficient for this purpose where the sides of the triangles do not exceed from seven to ten miles in extent, with reference, wherever practicable, to calculated base lines. Instruments such as these are very heavy and very delicate, subject like nervous women, to a variety of complicated disorders, their carriage alone across difficult country requiring the greatest care; therefore, when the surveyor is called upon to execute the minor details of his work with the same instrument, and make a plate reading of every traverse peg in a crooked creek, may be two hundred feet below the level of the country, where his trigs are visible, and where traverse lines may rarely exceed a few chains, sometimes less than one hundred links in length, and with constant reference to connection with the trigs, making in effect every traverse peg a trig station—the result may be anticipated. The unfortunate surveyor cannot and will not do it; his instrument—his own property, worth £4O to £l5, is too valuable to be so risked ; his contract price too small to be payable, and yet all too large in tho opinion alike of owners and dealers. The results insure no greater degree of accuracy (whilst the costs are enormously increased) than would be obtained by the use of an ordinary prismatic compass, in a traverse of such a creek as described, or of boundary lines across bush ranges intersected at every few chains by yawning chasms extending twenty miles or more. The starting and terminal points may be fixed with the greatest nicety, but for the accurate traverse, the calculation and tabulation of latitude and departure, there is no recourse but “ fudge,” subject to the risk that some detective in the shape of an inspector of surveys may pounce down, and, measuring one solitary traverse line, declare that “ the allowance for errors is exceeded, to the survey bad.” “ The people,” says Sir Robert Peel, “ feel, but they cannot see,” and the parties solely interested, who, after going to great expense, find themselves relegated to the position of the status quo ante Survey are, like the dying Mercutio, apt to exclaim, “ A plague on both your houses,"which consented to- ’ gether to establish the Department which inaugurated the system which hangs like a mill round the neck of the public bears the burden.—l am, AcL Subveyob.