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10. Then, you say that Denham Bay is useless? —It is worse than useless. I took a shovel and went all over it. I dug up samples of the ground, and brought them with me when I was coming away. The whole of it was pumice-stone ; it is worse than the sea-beach. 11. Mr. Allen.] Where did you bring the samples to ?—To Auckland. I showed these samples to the people who wanted to go there. But they said that Fairchild was evidently trying to get the whole of the sections of the land for himself. I told them I did not want them to abandon their-intention altogether, but that they should not take their wives and families with them. But in they all rushed, and now they are there they say they will make the Government pay. One fellow said he would stop there till he died, that he might have his action against the Government. 12. The Chairman.] Are the hill-sides bare? —No, but they are too steep; you can only pull yourself up and lower yourself by catching hold of the trees. If the trees were off the island it would be impossible to walk over it. It is the most hilly piece of ground that I have seen. But Denham Bay is like a table. Orange-trees and pines grow on the island, but as soon as they get big, and the roots strike into the pumice, the trees begin to die. There are orange-trees there ten years old, and they have not borne fruit yet. 13. Would it be adapted for vines ?—I do not think the ground is good enough. Mr. Bell has some vines on his little bit of ground. 14. Then, you reckon that Bell's piece is the only bit of ground fit to live on ?—The only one that a man could live on; and when Bell's family gets bigger he will want more. He has moved two or three times to get a piece of land. He was nearly starved when he first went there, and he would have starved in any other part of the island than where he is. It is simply a pumice-stone bed, except the little piece that Bell is on. 15. I see Mr. Percy Smith in his report says that there is a level flat of about a mile and threequarter's at Denham Bay; that about one-third of that has been cleared by the inhabitants: was that before these people went there ?—That was done by some people who lived there thirty years before. 16. Mr. Percy Smith says: "But it is now abandoned and covered with heliotrope"? —It was a man with two Samoan wives who went there some thirty years before. They worked the ground, and did manage to grow a few'potatoes, but of a very small class. That was the only kind of cultivation. But no white man could live there. These Samoan women, I believe, managed to get a few potatoes and kumaras of a very poor kind out of the ground. I went over the ground with Mr. Percy Smith. I have no doubt he is correct. 17. He examined the whole of the island?— Yes; he went over every yard of it. He was seven or eight days engaged at that. The place is covered with a sort of weed which, even as a weed, does not appear to grow very well. No one, I think, could live there except on the ground which Bell has. [Approximate Cost of Paper. —Preparation, nil; printirj-g (1,300 copies), £I.'\

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