E.—No. 1.

selves iv rotation, and that operation having been finished by eight o'clock, tliey then breakfast. Three cooks and sixteen stewards are appointed amongst the prisoners, and seven more are appointed to wash docks. These duties are all taken in rotation. Two more are told oft' to be stationed at the !•:.: (■■!\viu , for the purpose of admitting only one company on deck at a time, either to wash or scrape the deck. After breakfast the whole of the cooking and breakfast equipage is washed up, and religious services are performed amongst the prisoners, a native monitor (a prisoner) officiating. They then employ themselves in scraping the upper and lower decks, washing and scraping them every day alternately. The prisoners have a clean change of clothing every Sunday and Thursday morning. They have dinner between twelve and one, tea betwen four and five ; and the rations served out to them daily are lib. biscuit, lib. meat, and the same allowance as the soldiers have of tea, sugar, coffee, salt, and pepper. About 5 o'clock p.m. they have their evening religious service, and then wash decks, and they retire to rest at dusk. Many of the prisoners are pretty good scholars, considering the advantages they have had, and we noticed some of them writing and figuring on their slates —seven dozen of which have been distributed amongst them. Mr. White frequently gives them lessons in arithmetic and writing, and lias appointed eight of their number, who are more advanced than the others, to superintend their schools. There is a part of the hulk partitioned off as a hospital, but there arc few patients in it. There are ten on the sick list now, and twenty-six is the highest number that have been so. These were laid up with the following diseases:—three dysentery; three,, boils; one, scrofula ; nine, cough ; six, itch ; four, constipation. A daily, weekly, and monthly report is sent in to the Government by Mr. White, whose authority on board, as it regards the general management of the prisoners, is supreme. The vessel is fumigated once a week. One of the diversions which the prisoners have is fishing, and two lines are served out to each company, and they frequently catch sixty or seventy snappers in the day, which are very acceptable food for the sick. The prisoners were in the " Curacoa" from the 25th November to the 21th December, and since then they have been in the hulk. Mr. White has been with them the whole time, and brought a hundred of them down from Papakura. The stores for the rebels are supplied by the Native Office. The guard on board, to prevent the rebels from escaping and to preserve order, consists of fifty men of Captain Krippner's company of Waikato Militiamen. Captain Krippner is in command, and his responsibility extends simply to preventing the rebels from escaping, and, as our gallant friend observed, shooting them if they attempt it. They have not, however, attempted it, and Captain Krippner and his second m command, Ensign Wilson, have been able to reserve their fire. They are both gentlemanly and efficient officers, and we believe carry out their duty strictly. The duty is far from an agreeable one, but as only onethird of the men are on guard at a time, they have frequent opportunities for going on shore, and thus relieving the tedium (if it. Four sentries are always stationed at the most commanding positions on deck, and these have loaded revolvers. Another is stationed at the bow of the vessel, with a platform round it, so that he can command either side of it should an attempt at escape be made by jumping overboard ; in fact, Captain Krippner's arrangements for keeping his prisoners safe seem to be as perfect as they could be. Such is the result of our observations on the state of the prisoners on the Maori hulk. If we had more time, we would probably have been able to put them in a more readable shape : but even as ir is, we trust they will be in some degree interesting to our readers.

No. 9. MEMORANDUM in reply to Mixistees' Memorandum of the 2(jth April. The Governor finds from the Memorandum of His Responsible Advisers, of the 26th instant, thai there is a misunderstanding on their part as to the substantial points of difference between themselves and the Governor regarding the native prisoners on board the hulk " Marion." What the Governor is striving to bring tinder review is— 1. The long imprisonment of these people on board the hulk, without any announcement being made by the Government as to what their ultimate fate is to be. 2. The amount of punishment in the whole which, as he understands his ".Responsible Advisers' Memoranda, they advised him to cause to be inflicted upon the native prisoners. He believes that the first point to which he has alluded is exercising a very prejudicial effect upon the country, that it tends to prolong the war, to cause an unnecessary loss of life, and to entail an useless expense on Great Britain and the colony : whilst he does not consider it as forming a part of any settled line of policy. On the second point the Governor has already expressed his opinion. He would only add that he does not think the losses inflicted on the prisoners up to the date of their imprisonment were on the whole a necessary result of the plan of operations lie devised. An enquiry would show that many of these losses were inflicted in opposition to his wishes and advice, lfis present Responsible Advisers must be well aware of his \ iews on this subject; for when the expedition was sent to T&uranga, they advised him to issue orders that the crops and cattle, and other property of the natives on the "West side of the harbour should be taken possession of. and lie then declined to issue such orders ; even in the case of hostile natives at Tauranga lie would only sanction their supplies of food and their cattle being taken possession of. The Governor would now earnestly recommend that the losses which the Waikato tribes have suffered should not be perpetuated; he believes that by repairing these in as far as is expedient by aiding the natives to settle on those portions of land which may be assigned to them out of their whole possessions, the Government would perform an act at once generous and politic, and likely speedily to restore this part of the country to a healthy state, and to produce for the future a very beneficial effect on the minds of the dispossessed native population, many of whom were led by circumstances they could not control, unwillingly to join or go with the rebels. However, if the Governor is really the author of the losses the prisoner--have sustained, there is the more reason, in his opinion, why he should

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RELATIVE TO MAORI PRISONERS.