Crown Lands. a&3 
hut whether the nomenclature has been changed, or, by 
some freak of nature these creeks have become obli- 
terated, I cannot tell, but at present many of them do 
not exist. Some of these grants are of great extent; 
and the conditions under which they were originally 
held, however they may have been complied with by the last 
grantees, are, without exception, entirely ignored by 
the present claimants, and the only purpose for which 
the lands are now used, is the denuding them of their 
timber— a right which, in the original grants, the Govern- 
ment reserved to itself. 
In certain cases the claimants are numerous, notably 
so in the case of the Groote creek, where the legitimate 
and illegitimate descendants of the original grantees 
have alternately, and sometimes together, exercised pro- 
prietary rights. This place was in the first instance 
granted by the then Governor and Commander, Her- 
MANUS GELSKERKE, to CORNELIUS BOTER, who was a 
member of the Council. The boundaries, as already 
stated, were undefined, beyond the distance inland as 
far as the " water runs upwards/' The conditions were 
that the land should be cultivated in any way most 
profitable to the grantees ; a suitable house was to be 
erefted thereon ; slave labour was not to be employed ; 
a«d on the arrival of a Surveyor in the colony the place 
was to be surveyed. As in all other cases, the grantees 
were not to sell or alienate the lands without the consent 
of the Government, giving it always the right of pre- 
ference; while the Government reserved to itself the right 
of cutting the timber off the lands at any future time. 
Excepting that the land has not been sold or alienated, 
fte^oiwJitions have been entirely ignored and might never 
