Murdoch to Rogers (Permanent Under-Secretary)

With reference to your letter of 2nd ultimo, and the subsequent
correspondence on the subject of the retransfer to the Crown of
Vancouver Island, I have to report, for the information of the Earl
of Carnarvon, that we have received back from the Hudsons Bay Co
the proposed Draft Re-conveyance, the alterations in which,
suggested by the Colonial Government, we had submitted for their
consideration.

2. Messrs Maynard & Sons, the Solicitors of the Company, in
returning the Draft state that it appears to be quite correct, if
certain words introduced by the Colonial Authorities in the first
head of exceptions to the Reconveyance, be expunged. The exception
as altered runs thus

And also all land situated in the Victoria District
forming any portions of sections 18 & 32 on the Colonial
 Official plan of the said Island, which may have been sold by the
said Company previous to the 1st day of January 1862.

The words underlined in red ink were introduced by the Colonial
Authorities, and are the words objected to on the part of the
Company. Their effect is to limit the exception to land sold by
the Company in Sections 18 & 32, which are the Sections comprizing
what the Company claimed as their private property on the ground of
possession before January 1849, whereas by the Agreement of 3rd
Febry 1862 all sales of Land by the Company in any portion of the
Victoria District were to be effectual against the Crown. Sales,
therefore, made by the Company of Land in the Victoria District,
although beyond sections 18 and 32, should, as the Draft was
originally framed, be excepted from the Re-conveyance.

3. As the Company's objection to the restrictive words appears to
be well founded, we propose to have the Deed engrossed without
those words, and presented to the Company for execution, unless we
should receive Lord Carnarvons instructions to the contrary.