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accessible and attractive, and in the maintenance of such wardens, constables, and other officers as appeared indispensable for the preservation of order and the security of life and property. A strict discharge of your duty will lead you to carefully inquire into the manner and circumstances under which such a large amount of unauthorised expenditure has been incurred, and I have directed every document to be laid before you that will be calculated to facilitate such an inquiry; but I have the utmost confidence that an intelligent view of the interests of the province will not only lead you to sanction the past, but also to see the importance of doing the Executive Government of the Province in a position to take a similar amount of responsibility upon itself under any equally urgent and unforeseen circumstances that may arise in the future.

5. The great necessity which such a sudden accession of population in such a rugged and previously little known country, created for wharves, roads, and other public works, pointed out the neighborhood of the Grey as the locality where the Provincial Engineer would be chiefly required, and as it was also indispensable that so important and distant a portion of the province should be presided over by a gentleman in whose hands the Government would be justified in placing large discretionary powers, I naturally sought the services of Mr. Blackett to act in the capacity of Gold Warden in addition to that of Engineer, and although the combination of offices placed too much work upon one individual, Mr. Blackett was enabled during his retention of the wardenship to give the most complete satisfaction to the Government, and to command a very unusual amount of approbation and respect from the population which he performed his duties.

6. For a detailed account of the extensive and useful public works that have been completed in the Grey District during the past financial year, I must refer you to the important report of the Provincial Engineer, by which you will see that at Cobden a wharf has been erected, 250 feet long by 25 feet wide. From this wharf to the sea-beach a dray-road has been formed, bridged, and metalled through a densely wooded, swampy, and rugged country, and the cross streets have been cleared. A court-house, a wharf-shed, a lock-up, and a substantial bonded store, including office for Postmaster, and other rooms have also been erected. At the Twelve-Mile Landing a township has been laid off, the main streets cleared one chain wide, and the necessary buildings and other conveniences erected for making it the principal station for the Police force on the West Coast.

In addition to these public roads no less than 115 miles of new road have been opened up in connection with the Grey Gold-fields. Sixty-one miles of which are available for horse. Such results have only been obtained by a considerable concentration of our available funds, and the attention of the Provincial Engineer being somewhat exclusively devoted to the newly developed portion of our province, in consequence of which many highly desirable public works in other districts have been necessarily postponed.

7. The steady increase of our gold duty and Customs revenue has, however, continued to justify the liberal treatment of our gold-fields, and cannot, I think, fail to show that the interests of the province will eventually be best promoted by offering every reasonable facility for their further development; and the really flourishing condition which our ordinary revenue has lately assumed will justify a sanguine

belief that the necessary demands of our extensive and yet to be fully developed gold-fields may, in future, be promptly and liberally met, without neglecting the just claims of the older districts.

8. The road necessary to complete the track between the Ports of Nelson and Cobden has been cut through, although at a cost considerably greater than was estimated last Session, the distance which then remained to be opened has been found to be about 80 instead of 66 miles as had previously been estimated, and instead of a foot-track a horse-track has been made wherever that was found practicable without great additional expense. The country through which the track has been cut was chiefly an uninterrupted black birch forest, very swampy, and the climate appears to be so unlike most other portions of the Nelson Province that the men employed could often not work two days a week on account of the almost constant rain. The Provincial Engineer reports, "the nature of the country in the Upper Grey seems to forbid the hope that we shall ever obtain a really good track except at a very great expense, but further exploration may lead to the discovery of a more favorable line than the one that has been selected."

9. Mr. Dent who had been sent with a small party to put up some chain ladders at Timiko cliffs, and to effect some other improvements to make the West Coast line passable for foot passengers, reports that he believes the river Pororari to be safe for the entrance of small steamers, and should his opinion prove to be correct I have no doubt that the importation of provisions by that means would give practical access to a large country between the rivers Grey and Buller, known to be highly auriferous but very inaccessible by inland communication. I may here remark that the present almost impassable character of the country in which the gold-fields are so rapidly extending will prevent its being fully exploited, and the present system of skimming over only the richest spots is undoubtedly to be exceeded by a more steady and systematic method of what is now left behind by the impatient fortune hunters. When greater facilities of access have been either discovered or created, and the cost of provisions thereby reduced, millions of acres in these districts will pay for working under such improved circumstances as will justify the gold-seeker in being satisfied with only handsome wages.

10. Mr. Blackett's full report on all the most important public works in the various other portions of the province, will render it unnecessary that I should do more than refer you to it, with the general remark that many improvements might have been effected by the liberal sums which the Council last year voted for Public Works to be paid for in land, have not been undertaken, in consequence of the absence of the Provincial Engineer.

11. The General Government has lately decided that the Province share of Customs duties collected at the Grey Port shall be equally divided between this Province and Canterbury, a trust that such a division is only a temporary arrangement, and that it will yet be possible to demonstrate to the satisfaction of the General Government that far more than half the duty paid on goods landed at the Grey are consumed by the inhabitants of this province.

12. Although the revenue from our landed estate received by the Provincial Treasurer has been less than half of the amount estimated by the late Land Commissioner, and has done very little more than pay the expenses of the Land Survey Department, the ordinary revenue has so greatly increased