A.—No. 1,

number of emigrants from the United Kingdom. I expect to be, ere long, in a position to furnish full information on this subject also. I have, &c, The Right Hon. the Earl of Kimberley. G. E. BOWEN.

No. 41. Copy of a DESPATCH from Governor Sir G-. E. Bowen, G.C.M.G., to the Right Hon. the Earl of Kimbekley. (No. 6.) Government House, Wellington, My Lord, — New Zealand, 7th January, 1872. I have the honor to report that I returned last week from an interesting excursion to the Wairarapa, a pastoral and agricultural district beginning thirtyfive miles to the north-east of the City of Wellington. It will be recollected that it was originally proposed to place there the settlement of the Canterbury Association, for which its present territory in the Middle Island was afterwards preferred. 2. Mr. Weld, now Governor of Western Australia, was one of the first settlers who established themselves in the Wairarapa, rather more than twenty years ago. The population of this district now amounts to about three thousand three hundred (3,300) Europeans and nine hundred (900) Maoris. The two races are at present dwelling together on the most cordial terms. Here, as elsewhere in the North Island, a very satisfactory change of feeling has taken place during the last three years ; —since the date of my first visit to the Wairarapa, of which a report will be found in my Despatch No. 23, of the 20th February, 1869. One striking proof of the improved condition of the country will be found in the fact that on my second visit last week I was entertained at a public luncheon at which the principal settlers and also the Maori chiefs of the district were present, and which was laid out in the entrenched stockade, built at the time of my first visit, three years ago, for the purpose of providing a place of refuge for the families of the colonists, at a period when a Native outbreak was considered imminent. 3. I was requested by the newly formed Pastoral and Agricultural Society of the Wairarapa to open their first Show on the 28th ultimo. I enclose a copy of the Address presented to me on this occasion, and of my reply, in which occurs the following paragraph :— " The increase in the live stock of New Zealand during the last thirteen years, "in which official statistics have been regularly collected, is very remarkable. In " 1858 there were only 14,212 horses in the Colony ; in 1871 there are 81,028 ; " while in 1858 the horned cattle were 137,204 and the sheep 1,523,324, in 1871 " these numbers have risen respectively to 436,592 and to 9,700,629. In other " words, during the last thirteen years —years, for the most part, of war and dis- " turbance in the North Island—horses have increased more than five-fold, cattle " more than three-fold, and sheep more than six-fold." 4. The Wairarapa is already connected with Wellington by a good carriage road, carried over the intervening range of the Bimutaka Mountains, through a pass the summit of which is 1,600 feet above the level of the sea. A railway has also been sanctioned by the Colonial Legislature, and will probably be commenced during the course of this year. 5. In my former Despatch describing my first visit to the Wairarapa (No. 23 of 1869), I mentioned that on my retnrn thence I had visited at his kainga in the Hutt Valley, about twenty miles from Wellington, the famous Ngatiawa Chief Taringa Kuri {i.e., Dog's ear), said to be the last survivor of those who had' seen Captain Cook on one of his later voyages to New Zealand. He was a very old man at the time of the arrival of the first English settlers in this part of the Colony, thirty-two years ago, and his age is generally believed to have exceeded one hundred years at his death, which took place three months since. It is somewhat singular that the three chiefs, Tarnati Waka Nene, Te Puni, and Taringa Kuri, all closely connected with the early colonization of New Zealand, should have passed away within a few months of each other. I mentioned the decease of Te 12

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NEW ZEALAND TO THE SECRETARY OE STATE.