Extracts from Speech of His Honor the Superintendent of Wellington, to his Provincial Council, 8th June, 1864.

"After long and weary negotiations and many disappointments, I am happy at last to announce to you, that a memorandum of agreement for the sale of the Upper Manawatu Block has been duly signed; that all the owners have, after repeated runangas, agreed to the terms, and that the final deed of purchase is being prepared. The amount of the purchase money, £12,000, is probably the largest sum ever yet paid at any one time to the Natives, but when you consider that the block comprises some 250,000 acres, chiefly of rich alluvial land; that it abounds in valuable timber; that the river is navigable for some thirty miles; that probably no district in New Zealand of equal area is capable of supporting so large a population, you will scarcely deem the sum agreed to be paid for it excessive. You will now have acquired (including the Awahou Block) 270,000 acres of the long and much desired Manawatu country.

With respect to the remainder of the Manawatu district, whilst I am unwilling to raise undue expectations, I feel very confident that events are gradually, if not rapidly, tending to the only possible solution of the long pending dispute between the Ngatiapa on the one side and the Ngatiraukawa and Rangitanes on the other, viz., the cession of the block to the Crown.