G;—3

1883. NEW ZEALAND,

WEST COAST ROYAL COMMISSION. REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER APPOINTED UNDER "THE WEST COAST SETTLEMENT (NORTH ISLAND) ACT, 1880."

Presented to both Houses of the General Assembly by Command of His Excellency.

Hon. Sir W. Fox, West Coast Commissioner, to the Honourable the Native Minister. West Coast Commission Office, Sir, — New Plymouth, 7th June, 1883, I have the honour to forward a report on the progress and present position of the work of my Commission, and to request that you will lay the same before His Excellency the Governor. I have, &o.j William Fox, West Coast Commissioner. The Hon. the Native Minister, Wellington.

To His Excellency Sir William Francis Dkummond Jervois, G.C.M.G., Governox" of New Zealand. May it please your Excellency,— ■ Eeferring your Excellency to my report of the 2nd June, 1882, laid before His Excellency Sir Arthur Hamilton Gordon, I have now the honour to report on the progress of the work done under my Commission since that date. 1. One of the most important facts to which I then called attention was the impediment presented by the state of the surveys of the Taranaki Districts Shortly after the date of that report I made arrangements with Ministers for the employment of a portion of the Government survey staff to co-operate with my own by executing that part of the work which I described as being in arrear, and I was just commencing operations on this basis when the serious illness of my Chief Surveyor, Captain Skeet, which very shortly terminated in his death, threw my plans into confusion. From this difficulty I was, however, immediately relieved by the Government authorizing the entire transfer of my survey department to Mr. Humphries, the Chief Surveyor of the Taranaki District, acting under my instructions. The arrangement has worked to my entire satisfaction, and a very large amount of work has been effected under it. The large reserves on the Stony Eiver and Opunake Blocks, the Parihaka Keserve and that on the Patua Ranges, and the Titahi Block, have all been surveyed and subdivided for the hapus, and the recommendations for Crown grants for the whole have been sent in for your Excellency's approval by me. This, with several smaller and isolated reserves, also disposed of, practically completes the whole of the work which had to be done between Waitotara Eiver (the southern boundary of the confiscated territory) and the Waffara Eiver, a distance of about one hundred and twenty miles, leaving £»nly about twenty miles, from Waitara to Parininihi (the northern