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LIFE AS A DISTRICT OFFICER
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revenue was being assessed for a term of thirty years; that property on the land having thus been recognized as belonging to a vast number of virtual proprietors, a Record of Rights had been undertaken which was to serve as a complete registration of all landed tenures. This special work of the Settlement was apart from the ordinary and regular work of the District, but he was appointed Settlement Officer as well as District Officer. He was now quite in his element; he could think, enquire, learn to his heart's content; all such processes, however, were already familiar to him. But there were new functions by him as yet untried; for he could begin to act, to organize, to command. He could also do that for which he must have already felt an innate genius; having informed himself first, he could instruct and educate others. He had several European Covenanted officers under him. His native officials were numerous in all grades; he officially educated them, and carefully brought them forward. With the agricultural affairs and the landed interests, his Settlement work brought him into the closest touch. His daily work, as administrator-general, lay with the magistracy, the police, the prisons, — the municipalities, such as they then were in their infancy, — the public health and sanitation, the local funds and the lesser works of improvement. He noticed the then existing germs of indigenous education. He probed to the very bottom the relations of the District Officer towards his work and his people. In his own person, and