therein named, and as the felling of the bush varies with the quantity and description of timber; the clearing with the slope of the ground on which it lays; or whether they are dug out from flat or steep land; the metalling, or whether it is comparatively hard or soft, rock or gravel, quarried for the purpose or obtained from one part in the ordinary course of work and applied to another; brought from a distance or obtained close to the work; with innumerable other circumstances varying with every chain of road, I believe a general idea of the cost of different operations will be better gained by the following details furnished me by Mr. Yule, the only superintendent who has remained with his party from first to last, and who has kept such details with great precision—

The average of the portion which he worked over about five miles, was, for felling three 14s. 4d. per chain or £57 11s. 8d. per mile, the width falling being 132 feet; clearing off to form the roadway 11s. 9½d. per chain or £47 3s. 4d. per mile, the width cleared being from 20 to 30 feet; making the bridle path 4 feet in width 6½d. per chain, or £5 8s. 9d. per mile; metalling the dry road £61 per mile, but much of this road having a rocky bottom received a very slight coat of metal, and probably £1 per chain, or £80 per mile, might be more safely taken as an average.

In further reporting upon the subjects requested in your letter already referred to, I feel I cannot do better than annex a copy of the Memorandum with which I was furnished when his Excellency the Governor-in-Chief entrusted me with the execution of the work, after reading which the extraordinary change which this and similar measures have effected in three years becomes evident.*

Not only has the gang of desperadoes spoken of been broken up, but all distinction of friendly or unfriendly tribes has ceased to exist, the Ngatitoa, the Ngatiraukawa, and the Ngatirangatahi, alike abandoning their pas, and with the utmost confidence in the Europeans, and in each other, establishing themselves in open villages, none making them afraid.

The line of communication between Wellington and Porirua, then running through a dense forest, a cart road practicable only to Mr. Boddington’s section, 4 miles from Wellington, the remainder offering ten or eleven miles every impediment of hill, forest, and morass, was so difficult for an unencumbered man, that I have known a company of soldiers leave

• This Memorandum has already been published.

Porirua at daylight and not reach Wellington till 9 at night, and on one occasion the natives of a party who tried to convey road-tools from Wellington to the Station near Jackson’s ferry in inclement weather actually died from exhaustion immediately after reaching it. The difficulty also of supplying the detachment at Porirua was so great that I have myself, after every effort of the Commissariat had failed, called off the natives from their work, and employing each man to carry a small quantity of flour, have thus kept up a temporary and limited supply; but when this road was opened eighteen months afterwards, Porirua became accessible as any part of England, and carriage of goods was established at the moderate rate of 1s 6d per cwt.

The insurgent natives, when expelled from Porirua, took post at Pauatahanui whence, making descents upon the Hutt, they murdered the Settlers, and fell upon the outpost before alarmed to, always regaining the bush without loss. Their subsequent expulsion from Pauatahanui, and retreat by the Horokiwi Valley, I need not dwell on further than as originating the line selected for the North road by which the following advantages were gained—

1st. Mastery of the country.

2nd. The opening a district then considered much more extensive than it proves, and next in value to that of the Hutt, having been laid out in sections and selected by Europeans.

3rd. The opening a road through a previously disturbed district which, avoiding the passage of the mouth of the harbour, and the Pukerua bush, (called by Rangihaeata his back-bone and closed against both Europeans and natives at his pleasure) emerged at a point on the coast beyond the rocky settlement which was always difficult, and sometimes impassable. By this road the settlers are now hauling to take possession of their newly acquired district of Rangitiki which though distant from Wellington more than a hundred miles, is by this road made accessible to drays from that settlement.

If these advantages alone had been gained in a new country by the expenditure of the money which has been entrusted to me, I hope they would appear to have been cheaply purchased; but it has also been one of the great means by which the Governor-in-Chief has converted disaffected natives into loyal subjects, enabling them to provide themselves with the comforts and necessaries of civilized life, and creating a new demand for our home manufactures likely soon to become general; furnishing them