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IV.—The Partition.

Having thus obtained the unanimous consent of the shareholders to the primary rules that should govern the division and apportionment, I at once commenced the partition of the open land. Attended by nearly the whole of the resident Natives, and assisted by two Native Surveyors, I traversed the boundaries and made a rough survey of the reserve. Following a dry shingle ridge, I laid down a central road (one chain wide) so as to connect the church bush road with the Rangiora, and thus give road access to the Native Industrial School and to the Tuahiwi bush. From this central road, lateral branches (half a chain wide) divided the open land into twelve blocks, varying in extent, and so planned that every farm in the sub-division would have sufficient road frontage and easy access to the Government trunk line.

Having ascertained the acreage of these blocks respectively, I proceeded to allot them to the various hapus, in such a way as to allow to each individual a farm of fourteen acres. By thus associating the members of one hapu in the same block, and afterwards regulating the allotment of the particular farms according to the rule of family connection, a very important point was gained. From the willingness of near relatives to meet each other in a spirit of mutual accommodation, or preference, I had no difficulty in finding allottees for all the farms, although they differed very much both in quality and in position value.

Exceptions were made in the extent of some of the farms, but as I shall speak more fully of these in another part of this report, I need not here explain the reasons.

The difficulties with the bush were such as I had anticipated. So clamorous and disputatious were the Natives about the better parts of it, so exaggerated their ideas of its extent, and so much at fault were they in estimating acreage, that, at the outset, there was much danger of the attempt to partition it proving an utter failure.

I would strongly recommend that for the future, in a work of this kind, the survey and the apportionment should go hand in hand, especially in cases where there is bush to be sub-divided. In a dense forest even the most experienced eye is utterly at fault in computing areas, or indicating the proper direction of divisional lines; and consequently an apportionment made in this way is always sure to cause dissatisfaction when (as is likely to be the case,) the actual areas are afterwards found to be so much at variance with the estimated ones. I confess that I was myself not a little surprised to find that my apportionment of the Kaiapoi bush, made as it was entirely by guess-work, proved, upon survey, to be, upon the whole, so satisfactory; and I can only consider it a fortunate accident.

I may here explain that the partition of the bush was altogether a separate matter to that of the open land; and that it is not proposed that Crown Grants should be issued to holders of bush parcels under the present arrangement. Most of these parcels have been allotted to several Natives in common and in such cases the real advantage of a Crown Grant, that of securing land to them in severalty, would be lost.

The sub-division of the bush land is, in fact, a provisional one. It has not been made so much with a view to individualization as to an adjustment of disputed claims. The Natives (who are, in the end, to be charged with the whole cost of the survey,) are unwilling to incur the unnecessary expense of cutting timbered land into small parcels, when a few family divisional lines would answer their purpose as well; and I fully concurred with them, as I saw that there would be no permanent advantage in securing to a Native a parcel of two or three acres, detached from his farm, irregular in shape, and having no frontage upon a public road. Besides, had the strict individualization of the bush land been carried out, the admitted individual claims to the portions from which timber had been removed prior to the sub-division would have caused endless confusion. As it is, the matter stands thus: Each Native as he removes his allotted share of the bush will quietly appropriate the land. In course of time (say 10 years) the whole of the bush will have been removed, and the land will then revert to the old tenure. It will be a public Domain, at the disposal of the runanga, and available for some object of general benefit.

A report of my proceedings, with full particulars of the partition, accompanied by a plan, was communicated through the Native Secretary, in May, 1860, and received the approval of the Government.