Walcott to Rogers (Permanent Under-Secretary)

I have to acknowledge Mr Elliot's Letter of the 6th instant,
enclosing the copy of a Despatch from the Governor of Vancouvers
Island on the subject of the settlement of the Land claims at
Victoria of the Hudsons Bay Company.

2. This Despatch contains no new matter nor raises any new point.
Its object is to disclaim (in reference to a remark contained in the
Duke of Newcastles Despatch of the 14th of May last) any desire of
raising unnecessary controversies with the Company's Local Officer or
of conducting his correspondence with them in other than a liberal
and conciliatory spirit—and to enforce, on two points, the views he
had expressed in his previous Despatch of the 20th of April last.

3. In that Despatch Governor Douglas proposes as a final settlement
of the questions in dispute between the Crown and the Company that
the Crown, on the one hand, should give up a lot of land at the foot
of Fort Street assigned to it by the agreement of February 1862, and
that the Company, on the other hand, should surrender to the Crown a
lot of land at the foot of Broughton Street, a portion of the
Government reserve marked 2 on the plan prepared by Mr McTavish, and
also 3 Town lots Nos 1603, 1605 and 1607. The proposal was
accordingly made to the Hudson's Bay Company and was accepted by them
in Mr Beren's Letter to the Duke of Newcastle of the 1st of August last subject to the rights of third parties, if any, to whom the lots
in question may have been already conveyed.

4. This result was unknown to Mr Douglas when he wrote his present
Despatch which crossed the Duke of Newcastle's Despatch of the 20th
of August last communicating it to him, and instructing him to take
certain measures preparatory to the reconveyance of the Island to the
Crown.

5. Until therefore the receipt of the Governor's reply to that
communication no further step appears to be necessary in the matter.