No. 79

I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your despatch No.
50 of the 8th of August acquainting me that the Supreme Court of
Vancouver Island had refused to grant an injunction, for which
application had been made on behalf of your Government, to restrain the
Hudson's Bay Company from disposing of parts of the 3084 acres of land claimed by them at Victoria and applying for directions as to any
further steps which might be advisable to take in the matter.

I enclose for your information a copy of a letter which I have
received on this subject from the Governor of the Hudsons Bay Company
together with the copy of one which I have caused to be addressed to him in answer. The correspondence in May last, which Mr. Berens
quotes, was transmitted to you in my despatch No. 61 of the 13th of June last. From the present letters you will perceive that the instructions sent at that time by the Company to their Agent in the Colony were not confined as had been supposed to the Water Frontage
then more immediately under discussion, but were intended to apply to
the whole of 3984 acres of which those frontages form a part, and that
in acknowledging the instructions, on the 14th of July last, the Agent
accordingly expressed his intention to refrain from selling any further
portions of the 3084 acres of Land.

You will probably have ascertained since the date of your despatch
the nature of those instructions, which I have no doubt will have had
the effect of stopping any further sales of the Land on the part of the
Company's Representatives in Vancouver Island.