89

D.—2

contract with Messrs. Louis Knorr and Co., viz., two to "Wellington, and one each to Lyttleton and Napier, conveying in all 1,386 souls. 2. After the shipment of 453 adults remaining from the above contract, the second agreement for 1,611 adults will come into operation. These emigrants have to be selected under my control, and I intend then to reorganize the old agencies and to establish new ones. I trust that I shall thus be able to complete the two first contracts in the course of this year by the despatch of eight vessels. 3. I beg to hand you herewith the Emigration Eeturns from the German ports of Bremen and Hamburg during 1874, showing the total number of emigrants as 73,798 persons, against 270,510 in 1873, and 292,406 iv 1872. No return has been made of the number of emigrants who returned from the United States, but I have been assured that during the last six months of 1874 the departures of Germans from New York exceeded the arrivals. The news written home from the United States by Germans settled there are most discouraging, and it is stated that thousands of emigrants would gladly leave if they had the means to do so. 4. The decrease in emigration from Germany has mainly been caused by the above-mentioned bad news, and not from any disinclination in leaving the country. The position of the small-landowner farmer in Germany (who supplied hitherto the largest contingent of emigrants to the States) has not improved. They cannot contend against the large proprietors (salzbesitzer), with ample capital to cultivate their lands by modern improvements and machinery. Although wages rule high in Germany, these small landowners, rather than take service at home, prefer emigrating, and, forming the best materials for good settlers, we ought to profit by the present opportunity to divert the stream from the States to New Zealand, and thus secure, even after free passages may have ceased, a continued self-supporting emigration. Tor that purpose the attention to New Zealand ought to be called by a large circulation of a condensed German edition of your Handbook. I should also proposo to collect and publish the letters which have been and may still be received by the Germans from their friends in the colony. I find that nothing induces more confidence than good accounts sent home by persons who were known as trustworthy and reliable in the district in which they formerly resided. The safe transmission of such letters (many are addressed very indistinctly in German .letters, and sometimes insufficiently stamped) might perhaps be insured if they were collected by the Immigration Agents and forwarded to me for distribution. I have already offered to receive here and send on any letters which intending emigrants may wish to write ' to their friends settled in New Zealand. The restrictions against emigration have not been increased during the last year. Males between the ages of eighteen and twenty-eight are still prohibited to leave Germany. In some instances, however, where whole families emigrated, I succeeded in procuring passports for some who had not been actually enrolled in the army before they were twenty-one years of age. 5. Useful emigrants may still be got in Denmark, although wages there have increased; but much care is required to watch the agents, and to prevent their sending people collected in towns, and of doubtful character. Emigrants from Norway, farmers, who formerly went iv numbers to the United States, would be useful in New Zealand, and I hope to get a good many of them by the same means which I proposed to adopt in Germany. From Sweden, several hundred single females could be drawn every year, but they are so poor, that an advance of at least £3 would have to be made to them to purchase their necessary clothes and pay their expenses to Hamburg. Many of these Swedish women are employed in North Germany, mostly on farms, at wages from £4 to £7 each, part of which is advanced to them for outfit and travelling expenses. As female servants are so scarce in New Zealand, would it not be desirable to make the above advance of £3, which would have to be repaid out of the first quarter of wages ? I should think that the parties requiring a female servant would be glad to repay that sum to Government, and deduct it from the wages as it accrued. These Swedish girls are very industrious, good tempered, and faithful, but would require a little polish and teaching as domestic servants in towns. 6. Prom Switzerland and Italy many emigrants could be procured, but the people are also poor, and not many can raise the heavy cost of the journey to Hamburg. The Italians are the best railway labourers on the Continent, and are ever employed as such in the north of Germany. My Italian agents state that they could supply several hundred navvies on the following terms, viz.,—A cash advance for outfit and travelling expenses of £4 per adult, which they would repay, with their passage, in all £18, during the first year, and on obtaining a £20 land order ; but then they would require to have work guaranted to them for one year, viz., 15s. per week for unskilled labour, and 20s. for masons, carpenters, &c, including hut room and the usual rations, or additional 10s. in lieu thereof. 7. From Austria and Hungary numerous inquiries have been made, but, as in the case of Italy, few families can raise the heavy expenses of the land journey to Hamburg. If vessels could be despatched from Trieste, the emigration might assume large dimensions. 8. I was, as I mentioned to you some time ago, in correspondence with the agents of a large body of Menonites who wanted to leave Eussia. These people are the descendants of some Moravians who emigrated from Germany about the time of the Seven Tears' War, and settled mostly in southern Eussia and the Crimea. Their religion forbids them to carry arms, and when they left Germany they were promised immunity from serving as soldiers. The military law lately published in Eussia not exempting them, they were preparing to leave that country. I learn, however, that they have deferred their intention of emigrating, and that they are likely to accept a compromise made by the Eussian Government to serve in case of war as non-combatants only, being attached to the hospital and sanitary trains. I have, &c, ¥i. T. Kiechnee, Agent for New Zealand on the Continent of Europe. The Agent-General for New Zealand, London. 12—D. 2.