No. 10

I have to acknowledge your despatch No. 64 of the 17th of
December last, informing me that under the legal difficulty which at
present impedes the grant of land in Vancouver Island you had authorized
the Colonial Surveyor as a provisional arrangement to permit settlers to
occupy certain lands situate within the surveyed districts of Vancouver
Island, with a preemptive right.

I approve of this measure as the best course which was probably
open to you under the circumstances.

At the same time I have to inform you that I am in correspondence
with the Hudsons Bay Company as to the best mode of terminating the
uncertainty which now prevails, by obtaining from them authority to
enable you to sell the waste land, under a provisional arrangement as
to the proceeds between the Crown and the Company, until the claims of
the latter are fully adjusted and the repurchase effected.

And I hope to be enabled very soon to give you instructions on
this head.