LAND SETTLEMENT.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9558, 3 August 1909, Page 5

LAND SETTLEMENT.

By Telegraph—Press Association. AUCKLAND, August 2. With,a view to getting at the true position in regard to land settlement, so far as the province of Auckland is concerned, a "Star" reporter called upon Mr E. C. Gold Smith. Commissioner of Crown Lands, and put to him the cry of the selector: "There is no land." "Is that true?" the reporter asked. Mr Gold Smith smiled. "la it true?" he repeated. "Well, let me give you the figures. In the province of Auckland there are 442,950 acres of Crown lands open. Of this 143,000 is grazing land. There are 3,300 acres of second-class agricultural and pastoral land, and 9,000 acres of third-class, or purely pastoral, land. under the same Act, of unimproved first-class land, there are 4,800 acres, and of second-class rural land 53,500 acres. The balance is in town, village and suburban Jands. By the end of next month another 38,000 acres of land will be thrown open, of which 14,000 acres are first-class agricultural land, and on September Ist, 4,200 acres of second-class land will be balloted for. On Friday we hid a ballot for 32 sections, totalling 7,000 acres, and- there were nearly 300 applicants, We also approved of 22 selections, amounting to another 5,000 acres."

"So there is nothing in the declaration that there, is no land to be hand?" '

"Nothing whatever. Of course" Mr Gold Smith added, "there are lots of selectors [nowadays who won't go to the back-blocks. They all want to get One Tree Hilljif they can.The old pioneering apirit is dying out, but we can scarcely be blamed for that.**