chains, or from Kaiwarra Bridge twenty-nine miles six and a-half chains.

The total expenditure is £20,410, and the total cost of the whole line £829 per mile, after deducting £750 for the tools and implements in possession, and for keeping the Porirua road in repair since it was first opened, which sum of £829 per mile includes my own and all other salaries, the bridges, causeways, and every other item, the houses for the troops employed, none except the detachment at Paramatta having been any expense to Government, for the ranks suffer so employed, and, indeed, every contingency connected with the work.

In my report of 1st January, 1848, I stated "I have no means of ascertaining with certainty the comparative cost of road making in other countries, but am informed an ordinary parish road in England costs about £1500 per mile. The Holyhead road appears to have cost from £3000 to £4000 per mile"—the roads of Van Dieman's Land to have been still more expensive—those lately constructed at Hong Kong to have cost about £1000 per mile, the rate of wages being about tenpence a day.

It may be asked to what circumstances, then, is the comparative cheapness of this line to be attributed, the rate of wages of the natives having been 2s. 6d. and 3s. a day? I believe it to have arisen from careful superintendence and the avoidance of contracts chiefly, for where large bodies of men are working, the daily loss from inefficient superintendence may be enormous—oft in this case the gentlemen who superintended parties never allowed them to be out of work without them, so that there is no misapplication of labor because of idleness. As regards contracts, I believe the system to be good in communities where contractors keep up large establishments, and by taking many contracts and devoting their whole time and attention to them, make one assist another, and are thus able to remunerate themselves by a very moderate profit on each; but in small communities, where the nominal contractor is seldom the man who carries it out, but who after the deduction of a large profit lets the work to sub-contractors, who, in turn, expect a considerable profit, a vast proportion of the money intended for the road never reaches it, while to ensure the performance of the stipulations, the Government has to pay nearly as much to those who superintend the work as they would have to pay them to overlook their own labourers.

The correctness of these views may be gathered from the circumstance that the lowest offer to make roads by contract at Port Cooper is said to have been £1750 per mile, though the country is free from timber, and the wages of labourers only that which was for a long period paid on this line, where, as I have shown, the cost has not amounted to half that sum.

The cost, however, of this line has been much reduced by the employment of the military, who, receiving 7s. a day in addition to their other pay and allowances, thus cost the Colonial Government only half of what Native workmen do, and one-third the amount paid to Europeans.

I cannot but deem it to be regretted that in new and healthy colonies, where labor is so scarce, yet so much required, where piers, wharves, bridges, roads, and public buildings, are so much wanted, yet are attempted chiefly because the small revenue of existing taxes renders their construction at the high rate of civil labor impossible; that from one to two thousand men should continue in idleness which leads to vice and immorality, which would be difficult to avoid when work was not by their employing their country, by their instructions in the most important duties of soldiers on service, and by their improved health and conduct; the Colony, by the acquisition of such works as I have alluded to; or themselves by acquiring habits of steady industry, and the means of obtaining a comfortable existence in the colony on leaving the service. In my own Company no less than forty-two men have obtained leave to purchase their discharge after an average length of service of eight years, the money having been repaid by two years' employment on the roads.

The advantages gained, however, by their employment on the roads have been counterbalanced by the difficulties encountered in the first organization and discipline of labor of the native force, and in carrying on the work whilst the country was in a state of warfare; wherefore I conceive the Government may fairly expect any future road making to be carried on at the rate at which this line has been done for, even though it should be done exclusively by natives.

As regards more minute details requested in your letter of the 25th instant, of the cost of the several portions of the various portions of the line, the circumstances under which the earlier portions were executed have not left me any record from which I could compile them. Those of the latter portions, however, might be obtained from the daily employment returns, and quarterly returns, and abstracts which have been furnished to the Government, but it would require a great length of time to disengage them from the many operations.