Enclosure C.

In reply to your letter of the 27th instant, requesting me to inform you what instructions were given to Mr. Macmanaway from this office, relative to the private survey he made of Section No. 25, Takapu District, I beg to give the following information, so far as my memory will permit:—

On Stevens purchasing the said section, he employed Mr. Macmanaway to survey it for him, and Mr. Park, then Provincial Surveyor, instructed him, I believe, as follows: To commence the dividingline between Sections 101 and 102, at Porirua, and cut this line with a certain bearing, first a distance of 59 chains, which distance would, according to the map used in this office and considered correct, have brought him to the stream forming the boundary between the Native and Crown land; then with another bearing, starting from the said point to cut the division-line between Sections 25 and 28, Takapu District, a distance of 6,180 links, bringing him to the New Zealand Company's line of road through the district which forms the eastern boundary of No. 25. To determine the western boundary— the one now in dispute—he was to measure 550 links from the above-mentioned point at 59 chains, and then lay off an equalizing line along the general course of the stream with a certain bearing, as shown in the plan laid before him, and which line ought to have crossed and recrossed the stream several times, sometimes half a chain on one side and then again two or three on the other side.

That the two former portions of his instructions were carried out I have no doubt whatever; but when he found, upon commencing the equalizing line, that there was no stream—in fact, that no stream had been crossed at the 59 chains—I should certainly consider it was his duty, or that of any other surveyor, to have at once reported the case to this office.

I have confined myself entirely to the question of Mr. Macmanaway's instructions, but intend making a more lengthened report on this case to his Honour the Superintendent.