Wallingford Novr. 7th 1867 My dear McLean, I write this to send you back by Cobb's return in reply to yours of the 4th inst. I note all you say on the Poverty Bay question & the desirability of your undertaking to see what you can do with it. Defend upon it, it is no easy task. You will have every kind of difficulty to encounter & not the least will be those raised by interested Europeans. As to making as satisfactory a settlement of it as you could have done long ago that is impossible. I have thought it well over & I wd. advise you I shd. put it in that way to the Govr. & tell them that in that view alone do you undertake a difficult & embarrassing duty. You will understand from what I have written the kind of reply I shd. advise being sent. Thanks for rubbing up the Police & Cooper re the Bush Public Houses, they want looking after badly. Thank you also for giving us our District Constable back again. We could not do without him if we are to do the Magistrates work of our District. We had a court today at Wallingford & dealt with a number of cases. I informed the Bench that you wd. have the Constable sent back to us. The man who was here before wants to come back & is willing to do so on the old terms £50 a year. He is now employed at Waipawa in the Police but wd. rather be District Constable here as the man has bought land & built a shanty here & moreover as he has behaved himself well whilst here, you might please desire Scully to order him back to his old post. I see all you say about the Tareha Papakura case. a misapprehension. I thought Rhodes' agreement did not provide for interest being paid to the natives until the principal was paid up. I see it does & that you are making the only deduction necessary i.e. the difference in interest whatever that may be. I was not sure about it & thought it safest to raise the point. In reference to the valuations the point raised by Weber is no point at all in my judgement - the idea of putting a general value upon the whole Block is preposterous - the effect wd. be the valuable lands wd. all go from us for 1/3 or 1/4 of their value & we should be left with all the rubbish - the real-state of the case is, that there is a separate contract with the holder of each block, which is set forth in his lease & under which the Govt. is bound to give him his Block at such valuation as may be put upon it by Arbitration. There can be no doubt upon this point & the valuation must be a separate one in each case. Weber can of course in his own mind adopt a general valuation & proportion the same over the Block according to quality of particular sections. About the Waipawa Telegraph station. I reed, yesterday a memorial signed by close on 300 people comprising I think among them about 2/3 of my M.H.R. Constituency, who are of course in favor of Waipawa. Under these circumstances I forwarded the Memorial to Hall with my own recommendation that it was so evident a declaration of opinion by the great majority of the people of the inland District that it ought to be complied with. In my letter to Hall I said probably the station wd. be self supporting, but I said that in case not, that the Prov. Govt. should assist to maintain the station as a condition of its erection - that I believed the Prov. Govt. wd. endeavour to meet the wishes as expressed by so large a number of the people of the Province. I did not in any way invite Hall to make a demand upon us, but I implied that if he wd. not grant the station otherwise that then we might consider if we ought or not to assist. I was obliged to move myself in it for my constituency were getting excited & rampant over it. Now they are satisfied. Like you we have been having dreadful scorching winds up here which are drying up our paddocks but still the country looks pretty well with us. I get lots of work up here, what with my own affairs & being sort of general adviser or referee of all the neighborhood I am kept pretty well going. I see old Hiriwanu Powder & will come by Cobb. The old fellow made up his mind to die the other day, but thought better of it & is now all right again. Good night. Always yours very truly. J.D. ORMOND