8

A.—s a,

the meantime the execution of the surveys will have made it possible, if the necessity ever occurs, td deal with the land in the manner contemplated at the time the promises were made. William Fox, West Coast Commissioner. West Coast Commission Office, New Plymouth, 26th April, 1884.

APPENDIX V. The Hon. Sir W. Fox to the Hon. the Native Ministee. Sic, — West Coast Commission Office, New Plymouth, 17th January, 1884. I have the honour to forward a report on two grants of sections of which I have recommended the issue by His Excellency the Governor, and have to request that you will lay it before His Excellency. I have, &c, William Fox, The Hon. the Native Minister, Wellington. West Coast Commissioner,

Bepobt on the Exclusion of Tapa te Waero and Mihaka Bererangi from Recommendations for the Issue of Crown Grants. May it please youe Excellency,—■ I have forwarded through the Native Minister recommendations for the issue of grants for part of Sections 389 and 390, Block VIII., Yv'airoa, and Section 388 and part of Section 394, Block VIII., Wairoa, from which it will be observed that I have purposely erased the names of two Natives, who, but for the reasons given below, would have been entitled to have their names included. 1. The first of these is the grant of Section 388 and part of Section 394, Block VIII., Wairoa, from which I have excluded the name of Tapa te Waero. The reasons for my having done so will be found in my report of the 10th May, 1882, laid before your Excellency's predecessor, giving a full account of Tapa's claims. Since the date of that report I have made two separate attempts, by personal interviews with Tapa and large gatherings of the tribe to which he belongs, to induce him to remove himself and his people from the sections illegally occupied by them, and to accept of a grant of other lands, which I consider fully equivalent in value to those they would have to abandon, and a full and liberal satisfaction of all pledges and promises given at any time to "Tapa and his people "by the Government. He has persistently, and, on the last occasion with more determined obstinacy, refused to accept the terms offered to him; and I have distinctly told him that he would be excluded from the grant now recommended for issue. 2. The other case is that of Mihaka Bererangi, whose name I have in like manner excluded from the grant of part of Sections 389 and 390, Block VIII., Wairoa, it having, after a very exhaustive inquiry, been made perfectly clear that this Native has wrongfully appropriated, and several times positively refused to account for, a sum of £1,500 paid into his hands by an officer of the Government for subdivision among a portion of the Ngarauru tribe. I have intimated to him that, until he refunds the money, I would make no recommendation of any grant to him. His exclusion will make some small reparation to the grantees for his dishonesty. The whole of the particulars have been forwarded in letters from myself to the Hon. Mr. Rolleston, dated 10th June, 1881, and 19th April, 1882. William Fox, New Plymouth, 17th January, 1884. West Coast Commissioner.

APPENDIX VI. Memorandum in re Application of Messrs. Boss and Arundell for Confirmation of a Lease of Part of the Otautu Reserve, dated the 3rd December, 1880 (on the ground that it was entered into in pursuance of a written agreement dated June, 1879, which agreement is alleged to have been lost). In order to get over the difficulty of the non-production of the above agreement, statutory declarations were made by Messrs. Boss, Taurua, Cowern (who acted as an agent in the matter), and Wallace (who is said to have conducted the negotiation for an extended lease, and to have interpreted and witnessed the agreement said to have been entered into in June, 1879). These statutory declarations exhibit the most remarkable lapses of memory and confusion of dates on the part of four several persons with which I have ever met, and which seem to me entirely to invalidate their testimony. 1. They all concur in asserting that the missing agreement was entered into in the presence of the whole of them, in Mr. Cowern's office, in Patea, in or about June, 1879, and they make no allusion to any other agreement between that date and the 3rd December, 1880, when the lease which had been agreed to be entered into was executed. Yet there is in my possession a complete and original agreement, dated 3rd September, 1880, containing the exact terms said to have been in the agreement of 1879, duly stamped and-executed by Taurua and Mr. Boss. It naturally occurs to ask why, if a formal written agreement between the same parties, containing identical terms, had been entered into in June, 1879, this other agreement was entered into the year afterwards (on the 3rd September, 1880) insteaS of the lease said to have been agreed upon in the former, and which lease was actually executed three months after the date of the latter—namely, in December, 1880 ? And why, in all the statutory declarations, which are minutely specific in many matters, is no allusion whatever made to the fact of there being two agreements previous to the lease ? Not only is there none, but Mr. Wallace emphatically declares that he had never been employed by Boss and