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No. 96. The Agent-General to the Hon. the Minister for Immigration. (No. 1994.) 7, Westminster Chambers, Victoria Street, Westminster, S.W., Sir,— 23rd December, 1874. I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter No. 310, dated 23rd October, 1874, forwarding copies of the following documents relative to the ship " Strathnavar," which you state arrived at Port Nicholson upon the Ist Septembor: —■ 1. Immigration Commissioners' report 2. Papers relating to an inquiry into the conduct of Dr. Jackson, the surgeon-super-intendent. 3. Certified list of births and deaths upon the voyage. I have carefully perused the report and other papers, relative to the alleged misconduct of Dr. Jackson, and I observe that the Under Secretary of your department and Mr. Crawford, E.M., who were requested to inquire privately into the matter, reported to the effect, " that no irregularity had been proved against Dr. Jackson during the limits of his engagement," and that under these circumstances you did not feel justified in withholding payment of his gratuity, but had caused him to be informed that it was not considered advisable that he should again come out in charge of emigrants. Dr. Jackson's name has accordingly been erased from the list of surgeons eligible for appointment in our service. I have, &c, I. E. Featiierston, The Hon. the Minister for Immigration, Wellington, N.Z. Agent-General.

No. 97. The Agent-General to the Hon. the Minister for Immigration. (No. 2002.) 7, Westminster Chambers, Victoria Street, Westminster, S.W., Sin,— 23rd December, 1874. In continuation of my letter of the 20th October, No. 1692,1 have the honor to inform you that two days after its despatch, Dr. Hosking, the surgeon-superintendent of the " Scimitar," having reported himself at this office, I had the opportunity of addressing to him certain plain queries in regard to the principal points upon which he had given evidence before the Eoyal Commission, and concerning which his testimony had formed the chief groundwork on which the report of the Commissioners, as well as the despatch of your predecessor of the 29th June, No. 186, imputing gross carelessness to this Department had been framed. 2. I enclose a copy of my queries, and of Dr. Hosking's replies. 3. At the close of my letter on the subject of the " Scimitar," above referred to, I quoted the following passage from Dr. Hosking's evidence, as reported to have been taken before the Commission. Dr. Hosking is alleged to have " stated that he had a long conversation with Dr. Eccles as to the propriety of sending away so many infected people, and also my opinion that they should be detained if practicable, for isolation and treatment ashore, until the epidemic had passed ; but this was deemed by him and Mr. Smith impracticable, and it was further urged that the mortality afloat would be no worse than if they remained ashore." Having placed this passage in contrast with other extracts from Dr. Hosking's evidence, I have to make the following comments upon it: —It is not merely that this statement is inconsistent with what precedes it; it is-utterly incoherent with the rest of the evidence." 4. I felt assured that there must be some very grave fault or error in the statement of Dr. Hosking's evidence, and having submitted to him queries in detail as to the charges which he was alleged to have made against Mr. Smith and Dr. Eccles, I found that he utterly denied ever having made such charges at all. 5. In Mr. Vogel's letter under reply, he said, in terms of whose natural indignation I should bo far from complaining, if the hypothesis upon which they were founded had proved to be correct, " If the evidence is reliable, upon which point the Commissioners do not appear to have entertained any doubt, it is difficult for me to express in terms of sufficient reprobation my opinion of the conduct of Mr. Smith, the Despatching Officer, and of Dr. Eccles, the Imperial Government Commissioner, who, in the face of the acknowledged fact of the existence of the infection of scarlet fever amongst the emigrants, and in defiance of the opinion of the surgeon-superintendent Dr. Hosking, who strongly urged that these unfortunate people should be detained on shore for isolation and treatment until the epidemic had passed, are stated to have insisted on sending the ship to Bea, arguing that the mortality afloat would not be worse than if the emigrants remained on shore. But Dr. Hosking absolutely denies that he ever protested against the ship being sent to sea, and says, that if he had thought it his duty to protest at all, he should have protested in writing. Not merely does he deny that he did not so protest, he avows that he perfectly concurred with Dr. Eccles that the ship should be sent to sea. He further declares that his evidence concerning Mr. Smith is incorrectly given, and that he has no recollection of having ever made any suggestion to that officer as to the propriety of delaying the dispatch of the ship. Furthermore, he urges as proof of the correctness of the judgment at which he and Dr. Eccles arrived on the subject, that, far from its being the case as Mr. Yogcl was led to assume, that "the ship was sent to sea with the seeds of infection notoriously on board," and " in the face of the acknowledged fact of the existence of scarlet feve amongst the emigrants," in reality there was probably only one infected case on board at the time the ship sailed—the child Brown, in whom symptoms of disease manifested themselves for the first time only after the "Scimitar" was five days out, and who was at once completely isolated. This is the case referred to in my former letter on the subject, respecting which I cited Dr. Hosking's. evidence before the Commission, that " no examination prior to our sailing could have detected disease in this case."