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along the shore, North of Queen's Road, and having each a sea frontage of 100 feet. Six of these lots were reserved for the Crown, one remained unsold, but the remaining 33 lots, put up at an upset price of £10, were sold (June 14, 1841) at an average rate of £71, prices ranging from £20 to £265 per lot. Those 33 lots amounted in the aggregate to an extent not much exceeding nine acres. The annual payment bid for them was £3,032. This amounts to an average of £7 8s. 6d. per 1,000 square feet, a price which is equal to a rate of more than £323 per annum for the acre. The principle of the sale was somewhat undefined, but it was understood to be an annual rate of quit rent, if that tenure should be sanctioned by the Home Government, coupled with the condition of prepayment of one year's rent, and a deposit of $500 (which, however, was never claimed by the Government) as a guarantee that the purchaser would, within six months, spend at least $1,000 on buildings or other improvements of the lot. There are on record several criticisms of this first land sale. Sir H. Pottinger stated (March 27, 1841) that the tenure which Captain Elliot proposed to obtain was wholly unprecedented and untenable, and later on (November 19, 1844) he added that Captain Elliot had not been armed with any authority to dispose of the public lands. Mr. A Matheson (May 4, 1847) gave it as his opinion that, had a sufficient number of sea frontage lots been put up for sale, the rate would not have much exceeded the upset price of £10, but that, owing to the number of lots being quite disproportionate to the number of competitors, a keen competition drove the price up to £100 and upwards, for some lots, and that the average of this was afterwards (unjustly) retained by the Government as the standard of value. The purchasers, somewhat sanguinely but honestly believed themselves entitled to receive eventually a perpetual lease at the prices at which they had bought the land, because Captain Elliot wrote (June 17, 1841) to Jardine, Matheson & Co. and to Dent & Co., declaring his purpose 'to move Her Majesty's Government either to pass the lands in fee simple for one or two years purchase at the late rates or to charge them in future with