A.—4

18

I^—The Islands geueraly: Mr. Seed.

Total value of exports in 1871, £3,634,358. The staple exports are coffee, cinnamon, cocoanut oil, and coir, the respective values of which articles exported in 1871 were :— Coffee ... ... ... ... ... ... £2,432,427 Cinnamon ... ... ... ... ... 68,410 Cocoanut oil ... ... ... ... ... 257,770 Coir ... ... ... ... ... ... 45,448 The greatest part of the exports go to the United Kingdom. The great bulk of the imports are from the United Kingdom and from British possessions in India. Maueitius. Area, 676 square miles. Population, census, April, 1871, 316,042. Total value of imports in 1871, deducting specie, £1,807,382. Total value of exports in 1871, deducting specie, £3,053,054. The principal article of export is sugar. In 1871 the quantity exported was 123,000 tons, valued at £2,819,344. Average price per cwt., £1 2s. 7d. The Mauritius has several small dependencies between lat. 3° and 20° S., and long. 50° and 70° E. The chief of these is the Seychelles Islands, between lat. 4° and s°, about 930 miles north from the Mauritius, one of which, Mah6, is sixteen miles long by from three to four miles broad, fertile, well watered, very healthy, and having a population of about 7,000. Mahe, its chief town, has on its north-east side about 100 wooden houses and a garrison of thirty men. Seychelles, a dependency of Mauritius. The staple article of export is cocoanut oil. The quantity exported in 1871 was 253,070 gallons. The total value of imports, 1871, was £61,780. The total value of exports, 1871, was £40,598. Eevenue in 1871, £9,787. Total expenditure in 1871, £8,035. Lab u an. Area, forty-five square miles. Population, 4,898. Total imports in 1870, £122,983. Total exports in 1870, £61,218. The chief articles of export, the produce of the island, or brought into the island from Borneo for exportation, are bees'-wax, birds'-nests, camphor, coals, gutta-percha, indiarubber, hides, pearls, seed-pearls, rattans, sago, tortoiseshell, and trepang. Boeneo (Beunei). The popiolation of the town of Brunei is a branch of the Malay race, and is estimated to number between 30,000 and 40,000 people. The trade is conducted with Labuan, Singapore, and places on the coast of Borneo, The value of exports from Brunei in 1871 was roughly put down at between £40,000 and £50,000, and the imports at £46,000 or £47,000.

MEMOEANDA ON SOME OF THE SOUTH SEA ISLANDS. (By Mr. H. B. Steendale.)

I.—The Islands generally: Mr. Sterndale.

Mr. Steendale to the Hon. J. Vogbl. Sib,— Auckland, 28th March, 1874. In obedience to your request, I have the honour to forward to you certain memoranda concerning the resources of the greater number of those islands of the Pacific upon which I have at any time resided or with which I have been engaged in trade. The lands to which these papers relate are those only which are inhabited by the copper-coloured Polynesians or Maoris, as they all call themselves —that is to say, tribes from the same original stock as the aborigines of New Zealand, and speaking dialects of the same language. Concerning the Melanesian Isles, or those inhabited by the Papuan race, which include New Caledonia, the New Hebrides, the Solomon Isles, and New Guinea, I have no information to offer, never having been to them, or having had anything to do with their people. This much, however, is well understood: that they are very rich in a variety of valuable products; and, to obtain information concerning them, the most ready means with which I am acquainted would be to make inquiry among the labour-traders frequenting the port of Levuka, in Fiji, many of those men being of long experience in those localities, and sufficiently intelligent to relate truthfully what they have seen. Concerning the Fijis I offer no remarks, as they are now so generally well known, from the elaborate reports of Her Majesty's Commissioners, and from various other sources. I have also avoided mentioning the Sandwich Islands, since, being under an enlightened Government of their own, and on the track of the mail steamers, information concerning them is very extensively diffused. For similar reasons^ I have omitted the islands of the Society Group, they being a dependency of France; and as concerns those of them which prefer independence, as well as the Paumotus or Low Archipelago, I have thought it unnecessary to repeat what I have already published in the Daily Southern Cross.