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of Mr. Taiaroa's efforts to induce the General Assembly to grant further compensation for the lands taken possession of by the Crown in the South Island. The Natives in other places are watching this movement with great interest, and if successful it will probably find many imitators. The Kaiapoi Natives have, during the past year, received the balance of the land due to them under the award of the Native Land Court held in Christchurch in 1868. The acreage amounts to 2,925 acres, but they are still unable to make any use of it, as there is some technical difficulty respecting the title. I am glad to observe that the attention of the Government is being drawn by the officers in other Native districts to the necessity for some alteration in the Marriage Act with reference to Maoris. As the law now stands, a Maori may be married without a Eegistrar's license, and he is led to believe that the issue of such marriage will be legitimate; but the Supreme Court has lately ruled that no marriage would be recognized by that Court which was not contracted in accordance with the existing law : that in fact a Maori marrying without a Eegistrar's certificate could not contract a lawful marriage. As great injustice may hereafter be done to those whose parents were not married in accordance with the English law—by their being superseded in the possession of property by others whose claim rested upon their being the legitimate heirs (through their parents having contracted a lawful marriage) of the original owners of the land—it would be only fair to the Natives to bring in an Act legitimatizing all persons born before a certan?date, and recognizing as lawful all existing marriages, provided the parties to them registered their marriage by a certain date, and requiring that in future the Natives should conform to all the provisions of the Marriage Act. The Under Secretary, Native Department, James W. Stack. Wellington.

No. 19. Mr. H. T. Clarke, Under Secretary, to the Hon. the Native Minister. Sir,— Native Office, Wellington, 15th May, 1877. In obedience to the command contained in your memorandum of the 16th ultimo on a letter from Mr. Brabant, E.M., reporting a disposition on the part of the Pirirakau and Ngatihaua Natives to interfere and quarrel with the adjacent European settlers in the Tauranga District, I have the honor to report that I left Wellington for Tauranga on the 19th April, and arrived there on the 22ud. Before leaving Wellington I communicated by telegram with Te Eaihi and Hakariwhi, chiefs of the Ngatihaua residing near Cambridge, and requested them to meet me in Tauranga on the 24th. It was very desirable that these chiefs should be brought face to face with their people, as it was their action in leasing the Omokoroa Eeserve that caused the interference of some of the members of the Ngatihaua tribe. Te Eaihi showed some reluctance at first to comply with my request, but on pressure being brought to bear upon him he gave way, and I have the pleasure to state that he joined me at Tauranga on the day appointed. On the 23rd I had a long interview with the Ngaiterangi chief's Hori Ngatai and Enoka te Whanake on the late threatened disturbances in Tauranga by the Pirirakau and Ngatihaua. They without hesitation stated that a great deal of unnecessary excitement had been created by the Europeans; that, if the matter had been left in the hands of the officers whose duty it was to attend to such matters, very little would have been heard out of the district; that the disparaging remarks made by a small section of Europeans iv Tauranga against the Government only tended to encourage the obstructing Natives in the attitude they had assumed, and might eventually result in bringing about the very state of things they ostensibly deprecated. With reference to the Omokoroa question, they suggested that it would probably offer a favourable opportunity to get rid of the Ngatihaua element from the Tauranga District by allowing the Natives to alienate the land to the Europeans who at present held it under lease. I told them that, should the proposal be made by the Ngatihaua chiefs now in Tauranga, there was one difficulty which presented itself to my mind in giving effect to it—viz., that the reserve was made for the Ngatihaua tribe. Enoka, who was one of the principal original owners of Omokoroa, recalled to my mind the circumstances under which the reserve was made by Mr. Mackay and myself in 1867—viz., that he had opposed the reserve being made for the Ngatihaua, on the ground that Wiremu Tamihana tc Waharoa had on two occasions renounced in favour of Ngaiterangi all their claims to the land, aud that it was only at the earnest request of Te Eaihi, backed up by a recommendation from Mr. Mackay and myself, that he consented to the reserve being made at all. He said that the persons principally interested in the reserve were Tana, Wi Tamihana's representative, Te Eaihi, and Hakiriwhi, and that it should be left with these chiefs to deal with their own people. Later in the day I had a long conversation with Pene Taka, the recognized leader of the Hau-Hau party in Tauranga, in the presence of Hori Ngatai, Enoka, and Te Kuka. He, as is his usual manner, indulged in a great deal of extravagant language, which meant really nothing; but he finished up by saying that Tawhiao had issued a " panui," desiring all those people who acknowledged his authority to keep their hands behind them, and that all the fighting now-a-days was to be with the mouth. He stated that the Hau-Haus had been greatly irritated by the false accusations of the Europeans, aud by the intemperate language of the Ngaiterangi; that I might