Travers.— Thomson's System of Survey from a Legal Point of View. 988 
section surveys were most of them made by contract, with compass and 
chain; and they were seldom inspected or tested. As a single section 
might be taken up anywhere in a block, and as there was no obligation on 
the surveyor to connect his work with previous surveys, or with boundary 
lines, or with any fixed points whatever, it often happened that the where- 
abouts of a section could only be guessed at, until in course of time the 
intervening areas became filled up, and a sort of connection formed. The 
results of this miserable system may be easily imagined—constant errors of 
survey in the first instance, leading, in the way I have already described, 
to overlaps and discrepancies between the maps and the ground, to a fair 
prospect of having to do much of the work over again, and to the certainty 
of a rich future crop of trouble, expense, and litigation. It is almost 
incredible that such a reckless mode of dealing with the lands should have 
been allowed to prevail for a single week, yet it did prevail for two years 
without any attempt at improvement, and under it large areas were sold 
and granted.”’ 
He next deals with the Hawke Bay surveys, extending over some 
9,050,000 acres of land; and of these he says, that the work, though a 
little better than that in Auckland, had very many inaccuracies and short- 
comings. And he points out that, although, for reasons which he gives, no 
great legal difficulties had yet arisen, yet the errors were sufficiently large 
and many to create a good deal of trouble, inconvenience and public 
distrust : and to prejudice the working of the Transfer Acts in a manner 
which had already caused bitter complaint. 
He then passes to Wellington, and commences by stating that there was 
no occasion for him to enter at any length into the history of the early 
surveys in that Province, because the old mistakes had been, to a great ex- 
tent reduced within the last ten years, by a more enlightened process of 
survey. He adds that the inheritance of blunders and chaos to which 
Mr. Jackson, the then Chief Surveyor of the Province had succeeded, on 
taking office in 1865, had been gradually swept away under a system of 
trigonometrical survey ; and was then so far reduced that more than two- 
thirds of the sold and granted lands in the Province had been laid out and 
mapped within small limits of error, and might be brought, at any time, 
under the operation of the Land Transfer Acts without further trouble. 
Tn view of this opinion, it is unnecessary for me to call attention to the 
causes and extent of error which existed in the surveys of this Province 
before the department came under the charge of Mr. Jackson ; but a perusal 
of Major Palmer’s report will convince any one of the importance and value 
of the system adopted by Mr. Jackson, and of the excellence of the work 
done by him. 
