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" To His Excellency the Earl of Onslow.—May it please your Excellency,-—ln pursuance of your Excellency's Commission, dated the 28th of March ultimo, appointing me to inquire into the cause of>the break in No. 1 Government Sludge-channel at Kranara on the 18th of December, 1889, I have now the honour to report the step 3 which I have taken in the matter, and the opinion which I havejormed. " I reached Kumara on the 2nd of April, and opened the inquiry on Thursday, the 3rd. On that day I sat until late in the evening, and during the day made a visit to the sludge-channel, in company with Mr. Gow and Mr. Seddon, as well as Mr. Eogers, the overseer of the channel, and Mr. Mansfield, one of those whose lives were in such imminent jeopardy by the accident. The inquiry was then, in consequence of the Easter holidays, adjourned to Tuesday, the Bth of April. The sittings were continued through that and the two following days, and were closed on the evening of Thursday the 10th of April. On the first day Mr. Gow, and afterwards Mr. Purkiss, solicitor, represented the management of the sludge-channel, and Mr. Moss, and afterwards Mr. Guinness, appeared as counsel, instructed by Mansfield and party. Mr. Seddon, M.H.E., also appeared, and took much the most prominent part in the proceedings. I am at a loss to say what interest Mr. Seddon may be considered to represent, and he did not seem able to give me any information on the subject, except that as one of those who had asked for an inquiry he represented himself. I, however, made no difficulty in permitting Mr. Seddon to appear and to put questions to the witnesses ; for, although he could not have been so recognised had the proceeding been a Coroner's inquest, yet I thought that Mr. Seddon's minute and extensive knowledge of mining matters in the Kumara district might be of much assistance, and, further, that it might be as well that the member for the district should satisfy himself that the inquiry had been as complete as possible. "I now proceed to give briefly an outline of the leading circumstances connected with the accident, which occurred on the 18th of December last. On that morning, probably between 7 and 8 o'clock, the tunnel became blocked by a fall of the roof at a point about 18|- chains from the mouth. At that time five men—viz., Mansfield, Morgan, Evans, Thomas, and Straight —were employed on the upper section of No. 3 channel, the upper end of which was destined to open into No. 1 about 30 chains above the mouth of the latter. To reach their work they had been constructing a cross-drive, through which they got rid of their debris by sending it into the main channel. At the time of the fall of earth a large quantity of water was coming down the channel, and this water was so suddenly backed up in the tunnel that it entered the cross-drive before the men could escape, and so shut them up in a cul de sac from which there was no egress. In that position they would all have been drowned in a very few minutes had the water continued to rise, but it ceased to do so before it was too late, and in the course of an hour or two it had drained off sufficiently to allow steps to be taken for the extrication of the men, which was effected after they had been confined in the drive about twenty-two hours. There is very little doubt that the cause of the check given to the rising of the water in the drive was the occurrence of a second break in the tunnel, which took place about 5 chains above the first, and must have followed it almost immediately. Mr. Seddon made some attempt to show that this upper break occurred first, but without any success whatever, and the men concerned have no doubt that it was this upper break, and this alone, that saved their lives when nothing else could have done so. The only motive that I can conceive for such a desire to show the facts otherwise than they really were is to be found in the circumstance that the upper break was probably due to the giving-way of some rotten laths, and that if this could be shown to have been the first thing that occurred, it would have afforded some foundation for a charge of neglect against those whose duty it was to inspect the channel. " The question how this accident was caused admits of an answer perfectly clear and distinct. It was caused by the giving-way of a cap-piece at the spot where the lower break occurred. This cap-piece was observed by more than one witness to be broken and sagging in the middle within an hour before the fall took place. The same cap was afterwards dug out from the debris, and the fragments into which it was sawn or split in the process were produced in Court and examined by various witnesses, who have given their opinion on the subject. The central part of this cap, showing the precise seat of the fracture, was preserved, and no reasonable doubt can remain that this fracture was the immediate cause of the accident. The next question is how this fracture was caused—that is to say, how did this cap become at that particular time unable to bear the weight upon it ? The answer to this question given by Mr. Gow and the channel-managers generally is that in all probability there was a cavity overhead, and that a fall of earth and large stones took place, by the impact of which the cap was broken. On the other hand it was contended by Mr. Guinness and Mr. Seddon that the cap had become by decay too brittle to support the accustomed weight, or that if there was any increased weight at this time, it arose not from any fall from the roof of a cavity, but merely from water getting in through a broken surface above, and causing a greater tendency to subsidence (I suppose through diminished lateral cohesion of the earth), and consequent increased pressure on the cap. They say that this state of things ought to have been expected in the ordinary course of events; that the cap was unsound, and that its unsoundness ought to have been discovered, and a remedy supplied by putting in props or an intermediate set. "Either of these theories, so far as the state of the ground over the roof is concerned, might be accepted as reasonable, and in the case of a tunnel ten or eleven years old it must be to a great extent a matter of conjecture which is the true one, for if a cavity existed it could hardly be known, in consequence of the probability that there would be a layer of earth resting on the laths and forming the floor of the cavity, by which any examination would be rendered impossible. The balance of probability, therefore, must be determined by any indirect evidence there may be, and chiefly by the state of the cap-piece itself. Now, there is evidence that after the break some remnants of scrub and rushes were found among the debris, such as are commonly used in stuffing over the laths when cavities overhead occur in driving. This establishes a probability that some sort of cavity existed, although it gives no indication of its size; and this direct testimony cannot be