THE STORY OF NEW ZEALAND is rich beyond that of most young countries in episodes of adventure and romance. Australia's pioneering-work was of a different quality from ours, mainly because the nation-makers of our neighbour encountered no powerful military race of indigenes to dispute the right of way. The student of New Zealand history seeking for foreign parallels and analogies must turn to the story of the white conquest in America for the record of human endeavour that most closely approaches the early annals of these Islands. There certainly is a remarkable similarity, in all but landscape, between the old frontier life in British North America and the United States and the broad features of the violent contact between European and Maori in our country. The New England back-woodsman and the far-out plainsman were faced with many of the life-and-death problems which confronted our New Zealand settlers on the Taranaki and Waikato and East Coast borders. In reading such fascinating books as “The Conspiracy of Pontiac,” “French Pioneers in the New World,” or “The Winning of the West,” the family likeness of the adventures of the pathfinder and the forest fighter to the New Zealand life of the “sixties” is irresistibly forced upon the mind. There was the same dual combat with wild nature and with untamed man; there was the necessity in each land for soldierly skill; the same display of all grades of human courage; much of the same tale of raid and foray, siege, trail-hunting, and ambuscade. There was as wide a difference in frontier and forest fighting-ability between the Imperial troops of the “forties” and early “sixties” and the soldier settlers who scoured the bush after Titokowaru and Te Kooti as there was between General Braddock's unfortunate regular troops of 1755 and the provincial scouts and hunters who learned how to beat the Red Indian at his own game, and later to defy British armies. It is to the pages of Francis Parkman, Theodore Roosevelt, and Henry Cabot Lodge that the New Zealander must turn for historic parallels in the story of the nations, rather than to those of Macaulay, Green, or Freeman.

THERE ARE SOME bays in the South Pacific on whose shores wild history has been made—strands saturate with a hundred romantic, adventurous, and tragic memories. Pre-eminently one of these is the beach of Apia, in Samoa; another, steeped almost as deeply in early-days legend and war-time history, is Kororareka, Bay of Islands. From the dawn of civilized enterprise on our coasts we hear of Kororareka and its fleets of whalers at anchor, its Maori “ship-girls,” its gun-play between quarrelsome native hapus, and its all-pervading flavour of licence and lawlessness; this period of pagan freedom followed by an unwilling reformation under the influence of reputable settlers and the British flag, a brief day of importance as the capital of the new-made colony, and the final debacle when the flagstaff on its sentry hill was laid in dust and the blockhouses and grog-shops alike went up in flames. Kororareka—the modern Russell—remains to-day a place apart, curiously little advanced, at any rate in population, by the passage of three-quarters of a century, and shorn of its ancient commercial glory; a sedate, pretty seaside township where the round of life in a delicious climate is seldom disturbed by intrusive shipping. The pervading air, a half-regretful recollection of a red-blooded past, is reminiscent of some of the old gold-digging towns on the coast of Westland.

The old landmarks are readily to be picked out. A modern flagstaff stands on the exact spot on Maiki Hill, 300 feet above us yonder, where Hone Heke, Haratua, and their kin four times felled the British signal-mast. The steep hills behind the little town are still clothed for the most part in manuka and fern as they were in Heke's day, with an immigrant admixture of gorse and sweetbrier. The old English church, with its marks of cannon-shot, still stands in the burying-ground around whose fence Kawiti fought the British bluejackets in 1845.

Let us picture something of the aspect of Kororareka Beach in the war-brewing “forties.” This straggling town, its single street fitting itself closely to the rim of the gravelly beach, is a mingling of pakeha and Maori architecture. One- and two-storied weatherboard stores and publichouses have for close neighbours thatched whares of slab and fern, tree-trunk and raupo. Near the southern end of the beach is a Maori village enclosed by a palisade of split trees and manuka stakes. There is no jetty; the boats of men-o'-war whalers, and trading craft alike are hauled up on the beach. Over in the north cove by Waipara Spring two boats' crews from an American whaleship are towing off a string of water-casks roped together. Out in the bay lie half a dozen deep-sea vessels, most of them New Bedford whale-hunters; nearer the beach sundry fore-and-afters, schooner- or cutter-rigged, swing to an anchor; one or two of these are owned and sailed by Maoris, for the East Coast native is not only a first-rate sailor, but is beginning to taste the pleasures and profits of shipowning. Natives in their blankets and mats lounge on the beach-edge, dozing, smoking, or arguing in the vociferous manner of the Maori. Ngapuhi girls, barefooted and bareheaded, well plumped-out of figure, swing up and down the roadway flaunting the print gowns and the brightly coloured “roundabouts” and the glittering ear-rings bought with the dollars of the sailormen. Some of them are lately from the mission stations, maybe, but the temptations of Kororareka and the whaleships are irresistible. Many a native wears a little metal cross or a crucifix about his neck, or a figure of the Virgin hung by a black ribbon or tape from one ear, balancing a shark's tooth or a greenstone in the other—for the Catholic religion, newly come to the Bay, is highly popular, and Bishop Pompallier numbers his converts by the hundred. Most of the able-bodied men, tall athletes with tattooed faces, are armed. You see a party of young bloods spring ashore from a canoe, in from one of Pomare's, Heke's, or Kawiti's pas up the harbour, and observe that every man has his short-handled tomahawk, brightly polished of blade, thrust through his flax girdle just over the hip or at the small of the back; he would no more stir from home without it than a Far West plainsman of the old days would move abroad without his six-shooter. Many also carry their flint-lock guns, which they call ngutu-parera (“duck-bill”—from the shape of the hammer); and note, too, the new percussion-cap gun, double-barrelled, which the Maori is able to obtain from Sydney trading craft, while his antagonist soon-to-be, the British soldier, must for some years yet be content with the ancient musket.

Whaleship watches on shore leave make lively business in the bar-rooms over their rum and ale. The captains have the parlours, sacred to the quarter-deck, and there they sit over their Scotch whisky or their cognac or squareface exchanging the news of all the seas, and relating their whale-fishing successes and misadventures

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON described the town on Apia Beach as the seat of the political sickness of Samoa. Cosmopolitan Kororareka was the seat of the troubles of north New Zealand; its flagstaff was the putake o te riri, in Maori phrase—the root and fount of the wars. And Hone Heke, one-time mission pupil, malcontent, and rebel general, played as bold a part in the drama of our early days as ever the patriotic Mataafa enacted in his little world under Upolu's palms in the last two decades of the nineteenth century.

Hone Heke's character was curiously composite—a mingling of passionate patriotism, ambition, bravado, vanity, and a shrewdness sharpened by his partial civilization. Heke foresaw more clearly than most of his countrymen the fatal consequences to the Maori of white colonization and the flooding of the country with an alien population who would regard the native New Zealander with none of the sympathy entertained for him by the long-settled missionaries. For the mission people, of whatever denomination, Ngapuhi, like most other tribes in 1840, cherished feelings of deep regard; they knew that those devoted men and women had not come to the Maori islands to make profit out of the natives' ignorance of trade values. Many a coast trader, timber-miller, and settler, too, were held in high estimation by the tribes of the North; they had won the affections of the chiefs and people by their fair methods of business, and by kindly services in times of sickness and sorrow. But the numerous speculators and land-seekers who landed in north New Zealand by every vessel after the hoisting of the British flag furnished them with an argument for a policy of exclusion, for it seemed even then to keen-visioned men like Heke that the wholesale immigration of so strong a race must in years to come inundate the chieftainship of the Maori.

MIDNIGHT ON MAIKI HILL. A rattle of arms at the blockhouse gateway came sharply through the tenebrous stillness; the guard was relieved—the soldier whose tedious duty was ended retired to his blankets, and the only half-awake relief, with musket and fixed bayonet, began his watch. Here, 300 feet above the sleeping town, the silence was intense; it was a windless night, with raw fog obscuring the gullies and floating upwards in thin wafts. Not a sound but the footfall of the sentry and the “Kou-kou” of the ruru, or night-owl. Those owl-calls were unusually frequent was the thought, perhaps, that crossed the mind of the solitary soldier. Had he possessed the scout instinct he might have noticed that the bird-calls all came from the brushwood on the east and south-east slopes of the range, the aspect towards Oneroa Bay and the lower blockhouse. Owl called to owl, and the regularly repeated cries grew nearer until they formed a semi-cordon of melancholy notes about the flagstaff hill. Then, too, was heard the screech call, plain as spoken words to the Maori; it sounded to him like “Kia toa!” (“Be brave!”)

It was a fatal cordon, for the rurus were the pickets of Heke's war-party announcing their positions to each other and keeping in touch as they crept towards the little fort that guarded their objective, the flagstaff. Two hundred Ngapuhi warriors, under Heke and Pokai, had landed in their canoes at Oneroa, in rear of Kororareka, late at night, and were now working their way up to surprise the hill post at the first streak of dawn. Some of them crept up until they crouched in the scrub a few yards from where the sentry stood. Most of them lay in a wooded gully close to the hilltop. They carried gun and tomahawk, and belts with heavy leather or wooden cartouche-boxes were strapped about them. The tomahawk was the weapon most favoured for such tasks as this: short-handled with wood or whalebone, thrust through the girdle at the hip or at the small of the back, as the olden Scots and the Borderers carried the “lyttel batayle axe” mentioned in Froissart's story of the Battle of Otterburne.

FEARS OF INVASION by Ngapuhi seized many of the inhabitants of the young capital when, two days after the sailing of the fleet from the Bay, the five shiploads of refugees landed at Auckland and the distressed people of Kororareka spread their story. A Militia was enrolled, and the Auckland citizen soldiery were drilled daily by instructors from the Regulars. The defences of the town were hastily set in order. Major Bunbury and his company of the 80th had already (1840–41) partly fortified Britomart Point by constructing stone barracks. These barracks formed two sides of a square; one side was loopholed; the buildings were capable of accommodating two hundred men, besides stores. Fort Britomart, as it was now called, had been an ancient pa of the Maoris, a tonguelike promontory, protected on the land side by a broad, deep ditch and parapet. The military utilized part of these defences; a portion of the parapet was thrown down to fill up the ditch at the entrance. On one side of the interior, where of old the warriors had built their low-eaved whares and kept lookout for enemy canoe flotillas, an octagonal loopholed guard-room was erected. A hospital was also built. The 96th and, later, the 58th completed the fortification, and several guns were mounted. The windows of St. Paul's Church, a brick building near by, were planked and loopholed for musketry.

H.M.S. “North Star” (Captain Sir Everard Home), a twenty-six-gun frigate, arrived at Auckland on the 22nd March. She brought from Sydney 162 officers and men of the 58th Regiment. Two days afterwards the schooner “Velocity” arrived from Sydney with fifty-five officers and men of the same regiment, and ordnance stores. In April the barque “Slains Castle” sailed in from Sydney, bringing the remainder of the 58th—more than two hundred rank and file—under Major Cyprian Bridge. On the 27th April an expedition totalling 470 officers and men under Lieut.-Colonel Hulme, of the 96th Regiment, and Major Bridge sailed from Auckland in the “Slains Castle,” the “Velocity,” and the schooner “Aurora,” with the object of re-establishing the

After hoisting the British flag on Kororareka Beach, Hulme's force destroyed Pomare's pa at Otuihu, overlooking the channel to Opua and the Waikare. The “North Star” was anchored off Otuihu, and Pomare himself was secured as a prisoner by stratagem. It was then arranged that an expedition should be directed against Heke's stronghold lately built near the shore of Lake Omapere.

The chiefs who with their tribes and hapus definitely ranged themselves upon the side of the Government were Tamati Waka Nene (Ngati-Hao Tribe); Mohi Tawhai (Mahurehure Tribe), of Waima, Hokianga; Makoare Tainui (Te Popoto); Wiremu Repa (Ngati-Hao); Paratene Kekeao (Ngapuhi); Tamati Pukututu (Uri-o-Ngonga), of the Kawakawa; Arama Karaka (Mahurehure); Rangatira (Ngati-Korokoro); Moehau (Hikutu); Nopera Panakareao (Te Rarawa). Some of the celebrated chiefs, such as the gigantic cannibal Tareha, Waikato (who had visited England in 1820 with Hongi Hika), and the Hokianga leader Papahia, remained neutral; and Pomare, although his pa was destroyed and he himself taken prisoner by Lieut.-Colonel Hulme, did not take any active share in Heke's work. Several chiefs of the Kapotai, Ngati-Wai, Ngati-Hau, Uri-Kapana, and Uri-o-Hau brought their hapus to Heke's assistance.

Tamati Waka Nene was allied by blood with the Hongi and Heke families. He had been Hongi's comrade on the war-path, and he had carried his musket and tomahawk as far south as Cook Strait in a great cannibal campaign twenty years before the coming of the British flag. Wise in knowledge of men and of military science as the Maori had developed it, endowed with a keen intellect and well-balanced reasoning-powers, he was the most able of all the Ngapuhi chiefs, and the best qualified, by natural gifts and by his tribal standing, to offer resistance to the disaffected sections of Ngapuhi. His brother, Patuone, a man of high character and a warrior of fame, also took up the British cause, steadfastly declining to have any part in rebellion against the Queen whose right of eminent domain he had accepted in the Treaty of Waitangi.

One of the chiefs at first friendly to the British Government but ultimately found fighting in the cause of Maori independence was Pene Taui, of Waimate and Ohaeawai. A curious story is told of Pene's defection, illustrative of the serious consequences often entailed by trivial incidents among the Maoris. In 1844, when the war feeling was developing throughout the north, Pene Taui was authorized to convene a meeting of Ngapuhi to consider the political situation. The assembled chiefs resolved to plant large quantities of food (potatoes, kumara, taro, and maize) in order to provide for a general gathering of the northern tribes in the Taiamai district, the heart of the Ngapuhi country, embracing the beautiful lands from Waimate to Ohaeawai. The meeting having concluded, Pene Taui sent a messenger to Tamati Waka Nene, at Hokianga, with the somewhat peremptory words, “Koia he kai” (“Plant food”). When the herald delivered this message in public, as was the Maori way, Tamati Waka, resentful of its wording, immediately said, sotto voce but not so low that the messenger could not hear, “Ko ia he kai.” It was a quick play upon Pene's message; the point lay in the accenting of “ia” (“him”) instead of “ko” (“plant”). Waka's utterance meant “Let him be food,” or “He shall be the food.” The messenger heard; he returned to Taiamai, and reported Waka's words to Pene Taui. That chief was so enraged at Waka's punning kanga, or curse, likening a high chief to food—cannibal fashion—that he at once made common cause with Hone Heke, taking with him all his tribe. It was Pene who built the stockade at Ohaeawai which Despard a few months later found impregnable.

This incident is narrated in a note sent to me by Captain Gilbert Mair, who adds, “Puns are of rare occurrence among the Maoris.”

H.M.S. “Hazard” having arrived from Auckland, the fleet hove up and sailed across the Bay to Kent's Passage, where the ships anchored under shelter of the island of Moturoa. On the following morning a force of four hundred men, including about a hundred seamen and marines from the frigates, was disembarked on the beach of Onewhero. On that day (3rd May, 1845) was begun the first march inland of British troops in New Zealand.

Imperfectly informed as to the route of march, without transport arrangements, without artillery, inefficiently rationed, and without tents or camp equipage, Hulme set out into an unknown country against an enemy of unknown strength, sustained apparently by the hope of somehow worrying through, or fortified by the popular belief that one British soldier was equal to any half-dozen savages. Neither Hulme nor his officers knew anything of the real strength of Maori fortifications skilfully defended. The report on native strongholds prepared by Lieutenant Bennett of the Royal Engineers in 1843, after a visit to Tauranga, was unknown to them. Fortunate it was for them and their men that the chivalrous enemy laid no ambuscades on the track; the Maori was not so considerate in the wars twenty years later. Doubly fortunate for them was the fact that Tamati Waka Nene was their ally and helper. He was the salvation of Hulme on that May expedition, as he was of the Maori-despising Despard a few weeks later.

The opening blunder was the awkward route taken. Instead of transporting the force by boat up a good tidal river, the Kerikeri, to the mission station at the landing, only fifteen miles from Kororareka, whence a cart-road led to the Waimate, fourteen miles, the commander marched his force along a rough native track south of the river for nine miles, bivouacked in the fern, and broke off to the right next morning, marching through torrents of rain to the Kerikeri mission station. The result was that the five days' biscuit ration and two-thirds of the reserve ammunition were spoiled by the rain.

From Kerikeri the combined naval and military column moved out on the inland trail on the morning of the 6th May. The clay road, reduced to a glue-like mire by the rain, made difficult marching. Waka's and Rewa's barefooted warriors watched with pity and some amusement the efforts of the troops to march in fours and keep their dressing on this unkindly highway; they wondered how men so heavily beswagged, so tightly fastened with belts and straps and leather stocks, could march and fight. The bluejackets, more handily equipped and comfortably clothed, made easier work of it; they carried with them a war-rocket tube from the “North Star” and a dozen rockets, which it was imagined would help to demolish any Maori stockade encountered. Acting-Commander George Johnson, of the “North Star,” was in command of this naval brigade. The cart-road to Waimate was followed for some miles, then the column struck in a direct line across country for Waka's armed camp between Lake Omapere and Okaihau, twenty miles from Kerikeri. The march could have been simplified had the force passed through Waimate, but the members of the Church Mission there, the Revs. R. Burrows and R. Davis, had made strong efforts to keep the mission station tapu from armed men and to preserve an attitude of strict neutrality. After passing the Waimate at a distance, the force entered a tract of forest, chiefly puriri; now the troops had their first taste of New Zealand bush work. A detachment of Pioneers of the 50th had been thrown ahead with Waka's natives. With their axes they improved the difficult Maori pad-track, only a few inches wide, for the passage of the main body. Unbridged creeks in flood were waded, small swamps were crossed, hills were breasted, and at last, at sundown, the bugles called a halt, and the weary soldiers and sailors loosened their packs under the stockade of Tamati Waka's fortified camp, a mile from the Omapere Lake.

Heke's pa, named Puketutu, was two miles from Nene's fort, and quite close to Lake Omapere. The fort is usually but erroneously referred to as “Okaihau” by writers on the northern war. Okaihau is about three miles to the west. Half-way between the two pas was the small hill Taumata-Karamu, the scene of many skirmishes between Heke and Nene in April. Now and again a man was killed. By mutual arrangement no ambuscades were laid, and the fighting was only in daylight.

“WE EXPECTED TO make short work of Johnny Heke,” said an old soldier of the 58th describing to me his march to Lake Omapere. But the difficulties of the undertaking so confidently essayed increased as the objective was approached and the military character of the Maori loomed formidably in the British warrior's vision. The unpropitious season heightened the troubles of the commander, whose deficiencies in artillery and commissariat were fatal to any chances of success. The greatest blunder of all, the failure to bring even the lightest of ship's guns, although there was a cart-road for the greater part of the way from Kerikeri to the lake, condemned the expedition to failure. This became fully apparent to the sanguine Hulme on the second day after his arrival on the terrain which Heke had selected as the battle-ground.

The country in which the rival armed bands of Heke and Waka Nene had pitched their fortified camps was an ideal region for military operations. Towards Lake Omapere the land was a gently undulating plain covered with manuka shrubbery, fern, flax, and tutu bushes, and adorned with numerous groves of the hardwood puriri, oak-like in the spread of its branches. To the east lay the plains and hills of Taiamai, the delectable land of the central Ngapuhi tribes. What swamps there existed were not large and could readily be avoided; streams were numerous but small. Many of these little rivers issued from fissures in the volcanic hillside, welling down cold and crystal-clear through the Maori cultivations that alternated with the wilderness of fern and tutu. The landscape was diversified with many a bold volcanic cone. Most conspicuous of these was Te Ahuahu (“Heaped Up”), otherwise known as Puke-nui (“Big Hill”), a long-extinct

There had been considerable fighting in the month of April between Heke's warriors and the hapus friendly to the whites, extending over this open country between Okaihau and Te Ahuahu. Heke's force numbered about three hundred men; his ally Kawiti joined in with another hundred and fifty towards the end of April. To these combined war-parties were opposed about four hundred men under Tamati Waka, Mohi Tawhai and Arama Karaka Pi, from Hokianga; Taonui, Nopera, Pana-kareao, and other chiefs loyal to the Treaty. Besides Waka's fortified camp, two stockades were built by Taonui and his tribe from Utakura, Hokianga, and by Mohi Tawhai and his Mahurehure hapu from Waima. All these three forts were close together for mutual support. Two or three white men joined Waka Nene in the field as volunteers. One of these was the afterwards celebrated Judge F. E. Maning, the author of “Old New Zealand.” He was a tall athletic man, whom nothing delighted so much as this opportunity of free-lance fighting. A comrade of Maning's was John Webster, of Opononi, Hokianga—a settler who had already seen much of wild life in Australia, where he fought the blacks and drove cattle on long overland journeys; in after-years he cruised with Ben Boyd in the schooner-yacht “Wanderer.” Webster brought to Waka's help a rifle (a novel weapon in those days) and two hundred home-made cartridges; and when shooting began he took his place in the rifle-pits with the warriors of Hokianga. In the fighting at Ohaeawai a little later both he and Maning shared. And another white warrior came in with his gun. This was Jackey Marmon, a wild figure, and the chief actor in many a bloody episode of old New Zealand. He was an ex-convict from the chain gangs of Sydney; he had settled among the Maoris in the days when New Zealand was a “No Man's Land,” fought in their wars, and even shared in their cannibal feasts; his fondness for human flesh was notorious among both Maori and pakeha in the “thirties” and early “forties.” In his war-paint of red ochre, with bare chest and arms tattooed, his shaggy head decked out with feathers, musket slung across his back, cartouche-box belts buckled around him, a long-handled tomahawk in his hand, he looked the perfect picture of a savage warrior.

The intertribal skirmishing went on until the arrival of the troops on the evening of the 6th May. Heke's pa, Puketutu (sometimes spoken of as “Te Mawhe,” although the hill of that name is some distance to the north-east), was now the immediate objective of attack; hitherto the fighting had been in open country between the opposing camps.

Very little remains to-day to mark Puketutu pa, the scene of the first British attack upon an inland Maori fort; the scene, too, of the first regular British charge with the bayonet against a Maori foe. The main road from the Bay of Islands, via Ohaeawai, to Te Horeke, Hokianga, cuts through the site of the northern part of Heke's pa, about three miles before Okaihau Township is reached. The fortification measured about 120 yards each way; it was a rectangle, with several salients or flanking bastions, of varied outline; from these each side of the pa could be completely enfiladed. There appear to have been three lines of palisading along part of the defences. The stockades were constructed of stout puriri trunks and saplings; the outer posts were from 5 inches to 10 inches in diameter, and carefully loopholed. A high breastwork was thrown up inside the inner fence; the trench from which the earth was dug was about 5 feet in depth; it separated the inner and middle lines of palisade. The foot of the pekerangi, about 15 feet high, was strengthened with a facing of rocks and stones gathered from the volcanic-lava debris which lay thickly around; this was a variation from the usual Maori method of leaving the foot of the pekerangi open for the garrison's fire. Another innovation—used at Ohaeawai also—was the coating of the outer wall with green flax. A large portion of the face of the palisade was reinforced in this way: large quantities of the native harakeke, or flax, were cut and tied in bundles; these bundles were closely and tightly lashed along the face of the timbers just above the roughly piled stone buttress. Thus fastened, the flax formed a padding or fender more than man-high along the stockade, and the smooth, thick leaves so tightly packed prevented any bullets from entering through crevices in the war-fence. The pa, however, was not quite finished when it was attacked, and had it been reconnoitred carefully it would probably have been found comparatively vulnerable in the rear and on the eastern flank.

On the morning of the 8th May Lieut.-Colonel Hulme advanced his force. By 9 a.m. he had placed his redcoat reserve behind a low ridge within 300 yards of Heke's pa, and ordered three parties of assault to take up their positions. The first of these parties consisted of the seamen of the frigates “Hazard” and “North Star,” under the command of Acting-Commander George Johnson, formerly of the “North Star” and at this time in temporary command of the “Hazard” (in place of Captain Robertson, disabled at Kororareka). The second party was the Light Company of the 58th Regiment, under Captain Denny; the third was composed of a detachment of Royal Marines and some men of the 96th Regiment, under Lieutenant and Adjutant McLerie (58th Regiment).

As the troops moved forward with fixed bayonets fire was opened upon them from two faces of the pa. One party, taking the pa in rear, marched between it and the lake, and reached a gentle rise within 200 yards of the fort and just above the lake. The rocket-tube from which so much was expected was now placed in position on the north-west side of the pa, at a distance of about 150 yards. Twelve rockets were fired by Lieutenant Egerton (“North Star”) and his bluejackets without any effect.

Kawiti, who had hastened to Heke's aid with a body of about three hundred men, had halted less than a quarter of a mile from the eastern side of the pa, where he lay in ambush under the brow of a low undulation. An advanced party of his men held a small breastwork. The troops on the hill advanced their right flank and drove the Maoris from the shelter, which was then manned by a detachment of soldiers. About noon Hone Ropiha (John Hobbs, named after the Wesleyan missionary at Hokianga), a friendly scout and guide, who had led the 58th and the sailors round the

LIEUT.-COLONEL HULME'S expedition to Omapere was criticized in severe terms by professional men and lay observers alike. These criticisms were directed not so much against the officer commanding or the troops, whose courage and discipline could not have been higher, but against the ill-considered policy which had hurried an imperfectly equipped force into the wilds against an enemy of unknown strength.

It was now approaching midwinter, and the rains which make camp life in the north uncomfortable and reduce the tracks to bogs had set in heavily. The weather would not be favourable for campaigning for several months. Nevertheless, Governor Fitzroy and the military authorities resolved to recommence operations against Heke, fearing that the longer he was left unmolested the stronger would grow his forces.

Heke employed his respite in recruiting his war-parties and gathering in supplies of ammunition and food. He was not, however, left in peace, for the ever-active Waka Nene, with three or four hundred men at his command, was encamped between Okaihau and Ohaeawai, and intermittent fighting occurred early in June. In the heaviest engagement Heke received a severe gunshot wound in the thigh, and was rescued by a party led by the tohunga Te Atua Wera (whose atua, or familiar spirit, was the Nakahi, according to Ngapuhi stories). Each side lost five or six killed in this fight (12th June).

Early in June Fitzroy received reinforcements; the barque “British Sovereign” arrived at Auckland from Sydney with the headquarters of the 99th Regiment, numbering 209 officers and men, under Colonel Despard, who had seen some service in the East Indies. Colonel Despard took charge of all the troops in the colony and organized a new expedition. In the middle of June the transport fleet sailed from the Waitemata for the Bay of Islands. Disembarking at Onewhero Beach, Despard marched his force to Kerikeri mission station; the guns and stores were boated up the Kerikeri River by the “Hazard's” bluejackets. Thence the route was through Waimate to Ohaeawai; the objective was a fort which Heke and Pene Taui were reported to have built. The strength of the column, including seventy-five volunteers from the Auckland Militia and eighteen seamen and marines from H.M.S. “Hazard,” was 596 rank and file. Major Cyprian Bridge, commanding the 58th, had about 270 men under him, the largest unit in the column. Major Macpherson commanded two companies of the 99th Regiment, and Lieut.-Colonel Hulme a company of the 96th. Acting-Captain George Johnson, of the “Hazard,” with him Lieutenant George Phillpotts (the “Topi” of the Maoris), brought up the naval party to work the guns. These pieces of artillery were two 6-pounder brass guns and two 12-pounder carronades.

On the morning of the 23rd June the force marched from Waimate for Ohaeawai, seven miles away. This stage of the march was much impeded by the bad roads (or, rather, bullock-tracks), the unbridged creeks, and a deep swamp.

Waka's advance guard of Hokianga Maoris was the first to come under fire. The Ohaeawai garrison had sent out parties of skirmishers, and firing began when the forces had passed the tino of Taiamai (the remarkable rock from which the district takes its name) about a mile, and were ascending a gentle rise in the direction of Ohaeawai. Despard heard the sound of musketry on his right front, and moved rapidly forward with his advance guard (No. 9 Company of the 58th Regiment, under Lieutenant Balneavis). Some of the friendly natives accompanied the white skirmishers; with them marched Jackey Marmon, the white cannibal warrior. Volleys of musketry saluted Balneavis and his men. The advance was over rather rough ground, covered with high fern and manuka, with here and there a native cultivation. A tall stockade came in sight. At about 500 yards from the north face of the Maori fort the bugles sounded the halt. Here, on gently rising ground, within musket-range of the pa, Despard encamped.

Next morning (24th June), after reconnoitring his enemy's position, Despard prepared for a regular siege, and opened fire from his field-pieces. In the meantime we may leave him anxiously scanning the stockade with his spy-glass after each shot, and see for ourselves what manner of fortress this was that the followers of Kawiti and Heke now held in defiance of British musket, bayonet, and artillery.

Ohaeawai pa in its original form was the headquarters of the chief Pene Taui. He strengthened it after the fighting at Kororareka, realizing that his own district might before long become a theatre of war. After the Battle of Puketutu, Kawiti and Heke united with Pene Taui in converting Ohaeawai into a formidable fort, proof against artillery as well as musketry. Old Kawiti, wise in all matters of warfare, marked out the lines of the new fortification, which when completed more than doubled the size of the original stockade, and in Heke's absence he superintended the labour of hauling the puriri palisade timbers from the forest and setting them in position. The pa stood on elevated ground, a terrain well adapted for defence, except in one important detail: it was commanded by a conical hill about a third of a mile away on the north-west, a knoll about 300 feet higher than the site of the stockade. This hill, Puketapu, on the northern flank of a wooded range which rose immediately west of Ohaeawai, was partly covered with puriri groves. The ground fell quickly away from the pa on all flanks but the north; the track from Waimate to Kaikohe passed under its eastern front, where the main road runs to-day. The ground sloped very gradually on the north, and it was that side, facing the quarter from which attack was expected, that the garrison made particularly strong. Eastward was the forest. Through the valley which half-encircled the pa hill on the west and north-west sides flowed a small stream, intersecting the Kaikohe track. Beyond this stream on the west swelled the ranges in a cloud of forest. On the partly cleared land to the north, where the British camp was pitched, stood many a large puriri. One of those puriri, still standing, could tell us, had it a tongue like Jason's talking-oak, of Despard's council of war held beneath its boughts, and of the shells and round shot which the guns of 1845 sent over its head. One of those shots fell short—there was many a defective charge—and smashed off the old tree's top branch.

The fort was oblong in form, with salients on each face and at two of the angles (south-east and south-west, giving the garrison an enfilading fire in every direction. The greatest axis was east and west; the distance from the eastern to the western-most palisade was a little over 100 yards. The shortest flank, the western, measured 40 yards; the eastern 43 yards. The original and the newer sections of the pa did not run on a continuous alignment; Kawiti's portion was constructed slightly en echelon, projecting a few yards on the south beyond the eastern division of the pa. The palisades and trench, however, made an uninterrupted defence, and the numerous projections gave an admirably complete flanking fire; therein shone the innate military engineering genius of the Maori. Part of the lines was defended by three lines of stockade timbers; on two faces the palisade was double. The outer wall, the pekerangi, or curtain, was formed of stout timbers, most of them whole trees, sunk deeply in the ground at short intervals, with saplings and split timbers closely set between the larger posts, all bound firmly together with cross-rails and torotoro, or bush-vines. The smaller timbers did not quite reach the ground; it was through the spaces left that the defenders fired from their shelter in the trench behind the second palisade. The outer defence was completed by the masking of the timber wall with green flax, as at Puketutu. The stockading was 10 to 15 feet in height; it was covered from a foot above the ground to the height of 8 or 10 feet with a thick mantlet of green flax-leaves tightly bound to the palisades. This padding of harakeke not only afforded considerable protection by deadening the impact of bullets, but masked the real strength of the stockade.

The second line of stockade, the kiri-tangata (“the warrior's skin”), was stronger than even the well-constructed pekerangi; every timber was set in the ground to a depth of about 5 feet, and rose above ground to a height corresponding with that of the outer line. Many of the palisades so planted, set close together, were whole puriri trees a foot or 15 inches in diameter—some were even larger—and some when cut and hauled from the forest must have been quite 20 feet in length. This line of stockade was loopholed; the apertures for the Maori musketry fire were formed by taking a V scarf with the axe out of the two contiguous timbers. These loopholes were on the ground-level; and the Maori musketeer, pointing his gun through the aperture, was thus able to deliver his fire under the foot of the pekerangi without in the least exposing himself. The distance between the two fences was 3 feet. The trench in which the musketeer squatted was 5 to 6 feet deep and 4 or 5 feet wide, with earth banquette on which the defenders stood to fire, and traverses at intervals of about 2 yards, with narrow communicating-trench between each, admitting of only one man passing at a time. The venerable Rihara Kou, of Kaikohe, describing it, said: “We could travel right round the pa in the trench, winding in and out” (“haere kopikopiko ana”).

Within the double stockade and the firing-trench again, on a portion of the front at least, there was a third line of timbers, a palisade about 10 feet high, against the outer side of which the earth thrown from the ditch was heaped. Inside all these defences were the living-quarters of the garrison—the warriors, and the wives and daughters who had come to cook for them and make their cartridges. These quarters were all underground, and were made shell-proof by being covered with heavy timbers, branches of trees, and earth. The roofs of some were built with the slope of the usual low whare, and the soil from the excavations was heaped up against them and over their tops until they seemed mere mounds of earth. These subterranean chambers (ruas, or pits, the Maoris called them) were usually 6 feet deep;

PENE TAUI'S STOCKADE was commanded at a range of less than one-third of a mile by the hill Puketapu, upon which Despard's Maori allies flew the British ensign. A modern field-gun at that distance would quickly have reduced the palisade to splinters. But what little impression was made by gun-fire upon the flax-masked defences was repaired by the garrison each night; and even when the 32-pounder arrived from the frigate “Hazard” its projectiles failed to breach the stockade. On the 30th June the gun was mounted on a platform, with strong timber slides, constructed on the lower slope of Puketapu; two of the smaller guns had been placed higher up. On the forenoon of the 1st July the 32-pounder opened fire obliquely at the front stockade.

Every one was absorbed in watching the effect of the gun-fire. Suddenly there came the noise of musket-fire in the rear, on the summit of Tamati Waka Nene's hill, and as the troops turned about in astonishment they saw the friendly Maoris, men and women, flying down the steep slope in confusion, and with them the picket (a sergeant and twelve men of the 58th) posted on the hill for the protection of the 6-pounder. They had been taken in reverse by a sortie-party of Maoris from the pa, advancing under cover of the forest on the right front and flank. The natives shot one soldier, seized the gun, and hauled down Waka's flag, which they carried off. Major Bridge and his 58th charged up and recaptured the hill. A few minutes later Despard's alarm and disgust turned to fury when he saw the captured British ensign run up on the flax-halliards of the Maori flagstaff in the pa, below the rebel flag—a kakahu Maori, as one of my Maori informants describes it—a native garment. Then it was that the Colonel made up his mind to storm the pa that day. He imagined that the few 32 lb. shot—which were soon expended—would so loosen the stockades as to enable the troops to cut and pull them down. Those who ventured to remonstrate were snubbed or insulted. Lieutenant Phillpotts, of the “Hazard,” was roused to such indignation by the Colonel's retort to his protest against a senseless attack that he threw away every vestige of military attire he happened to be wearing, and in his blue sailor shirt and underclothes rushed to his death. A protest from the free-lance allies met with a similar reception. John Webster tells the story:—

“Maning, myself, and Nene went to interview Despard. We knew well the strength of the pa and its construction. Maning was the spokesman, and commenced with, ‘Sir, we heard that you intend assaulting the pa, and we have come to say that unless a breach is made it will cause great loss of life and will fail.’

“‘What do you civilians know of the matter?’ replied Despard.

“‘Sir,’ said Maning, ‘we may not know much, but there is one that apparently knows less, and that is yourself.’

“Despard got very angry and threatened to arrest us. Nene now inquired what the chief of the soldiers was saying. Maning told him.

“‘He tangata kuware tenei tangata,’ said Nene.

“‘What does the chief say?’ Despard inquired of his interpreter. (I think Meurant was the interpreter's name.) He scratched his head and said, ‘It is not complimentary.’

“‘But I order you, sir,’ said Despard.

“‘The Chief says you are a very stupid person,’ then replied Meurant.

“It was impossible to make any impression on the man who had so many fine young fellows' lives in his hands, and he was prepared to sacrifice them through mere obstinacy.”

Tamati Waka Nene offered to make a feint attack on the stockade in the rear, in order to divert attention from the soldiers' assault, but this suggestion, like all others, met with a refusal.

The Colonel ordered a storming-party to parade at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and instructions were issued by his brigade-major (Lieutenant and Adjutant Deering) for the guidance of the officers commanding the various divisions. The troops were ordered to get their dinners. For many of them that meal was their last. Forebodings of disaster possessed some of the more thoughtful, but in spite of the doubtful character of the enterprise there was a distinct element of elation and relief among the rank and file at the prospect of an attack at close quarters. There was also a strong desire among the troops to avenge the death of a young soldier of the 99th who had been caught by the enemy while foraging for potatoes. The men on outpost duty had heard, as they believed, his cries of agony; and a story, palpably absurd, was circulated after the fight that he had been tortured to death by burning with kauri-gum. In their ignorance of Maori ways they credited their foes with the practices of Red Indians on the war-path.

FOR THREE MONTHS the sound of the bugle and all the stir of a military camp enlivened the mission station at Waimate. Employment was found for the redcoats in surrounding the buildings with a trench and parapets as a precaution against attack—much to the disgust of the mission people, who lamented to see the neutral station transformed into a fortified encampment. It was not until the middle of October that the troops, after destroying Haratua's pa at Pakaraka, removed to Kororareka, where they awaited the next movement in the campaign.

In October it became known that Lord Stanley, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, had recalled Captain Fitzroy, and that Captain George Grey, then Governor of South Australia, had been appointed as the new Governor of this colony. Captain Grey landed at Auckland from the East India Company's armed ship “Elphinstone” on the 14th November, and a few days later he arrived at Kororareka. He gave the insurgent leaders a final opportunity for acceptance of ex-Governor Fitzroy's terms of peace, which stipulated that the Treaty of Waitangi should be binding, that the British flag should be respected, that plunder taken from the Europeans should be restored, and that certain lands should be given up to the Crown. Old Kawiti had already replied to Fitzroy, refusing the demand for territory: “…You shall not have my land—no, never! Sir, if you are very desirous to get my land, I shall be equally desirous to retain it for myself.” The missionary Burrows was asked to convey Grey's letter to Heke. “Let the Governor and his soldiers return to England to the land that God has given them,” replied Heke, “and leave New Zealand to us, to whom God has given it. No; we will not give up our lands. If the white man wants our country he will have to fight for it, for we will die upon our lands.”

Governor Grey sent to Auckland for all available forces. Ships-of-war and battalions of soldiers were concentrated in the Bay. The latest addition to the fleet of British ships in New

It had been ascertained that the enemy were gathered to the number of several hundreds in the new pa at Rua-pekapeka, which was reported by the friendly Maoris to be stronger even than Ohaeawai. On the 8th December, 1845, the British advance upon Kawiti's bush fortress began with more than 1,100 rank and file under Colonel Despard, besides friendly Maoris. The route of march was over more difficult country than that traversed by the Ohaeawai expedition. The ships sailed up to the entrance of the Kawakawa River, thence transport was by boat for several miles; from the head of navigation the way lay through fifteen miles of roadless hills, forests, swamps, and streams to Kawiti's mountain fort.

The following troops were engaged in the attack on Ruapekapeka under Lieut.-Colonel Despard:— OfficersMenSeamen of H.M.S. “Castor,” “North Star,” “Racehorse,” and H.E.I.C. “Elphinstone,” under Captain Graham and Commander Hay, R.N.33280Lieutenant Wilmot, R.A., and Captain Marlow, R.E.2Royal Marines (Captain Langford)48058th Regiment (Lieut.-Colonel Wynward)2054399th Regiment (Captain Reed)7150H.E.I.C. Artillery (Lieutenant Leeds)115Volunteers from Auckland (Captain Atkyns)142681,100Native allies under Tamati Waka Nene, Patuone, Tawhai, Repa, and Nopera Pana-kareao450

Ordnance: Three naval 32-pounders, one 18-pounder, two 12-pounder howitzers, one 6-pounder brass gun, four mortars, and two rocket-tubes.

The modern road from the Township of Kawakawa to Ruapekapeka runs closely parallel to Despard's line of march; in fact, the two routes are identical as the site of Kawiti's stronghold is approached. At the head of boat-navigation on the Kawakawa River a fortified camp was established in the pa of a friendly chief, Tamati Pukututu. Here troops, guns, and stores were landed, and Commander Johnson, of the “North Star,” was given charge of the post with seventy men. Captain Graham, of the frigate “Castor,” was senior naval officer at the seat of war, and his bluejackets and those of the “North Star,” “Racehorse,” and “Elphinstone” were useful in the heavy work of transporting the artillery. The march of the combined naval and military force was a fine feat of pioneering, for it was necessary to make roads, fell bush, roughly bridge streams, and to use block and tackle in hauling the guns over rough ground and up steep hills. The men were compelled to carry, in addition to their arms and equipment, boxes each containing a 24 lb. or 32 lb. shell. The way in places led over fern hills and ridges; in places it plunged into patches of heavy timber.

THE NORTH PACIFIED, Governor Grey turned his attention to the Cook Strait settlements, where the position for the last year had verged upon war. The New Zealand Company's loose methods in the purchase of native lands had been followed by the repudiation of bargains, the estrangement of the two races, and the blocking of settlement. But the warriors who insisted upon muskets, gunpowder, and shot as the chief portion of the payment for the land upon which Wellington now stands were not at all dissatisfied in 1840 with the bargain they had made. They had secured arms, without which their tenure of the district in those days of almost constant intertribal jealousy and conflict would have been precarious, and they had given nothing of great value in exchange; for they were mentally resolved, if it had not been openly stated, that they would not suffer their existing cultivations and other grounds valuable as food-producing places, such as the portions of the forest richest in birds—the kaka, pigeon, and tui—to pass away for ever out of their hands.

Colonel Wakefield and his coadjutors in the first work of settlement suffered to a considerable extent from their want of knowledge of Maori laws and customs with respect to land, and also from their inability to make the natives understand the precise tenor of their questions and their documents. Richard Barrett, the whaler and trader, upon whom they placed reliance as interpreter and go-between, was illiterate, and his knowledge of the Maori tongue scarcely extended beyond colloquial phrases. Wakefield does not appear to have given close attention to the validity of the native vendor's title; so long as he found a chief or gathering of chiefs willing to sell such-and-such an area of bush, mountain and plain, he was satisfied. He was presently to gain by tragic experience a knowledge of the time and care necessary to complete a really safe and satisfactory purchase of land from the Maori. Doubtless there was at the back of Wakefield's mind a feeling that once the lands were settled by a strong body of British settlers, ready and able to hold their farms against all comers, the native population would quickly diminish in importance, if not in numbers.

Mr. Spain, the Land Claims Commissioner, in 1845 awarded the New Zealand Company 71,900 acres of land in Wellington and vicinity, excepting the villages and the lands that were actually occupied by the natives and thirty-nine native reserves. At the same time the Commissioner disallowed the Company's claims to the Wairau and Porirua lands, and in the end it was arranged (1847) that the sum of £2,000 should be paid to Ngati-Toa and their kindred for the disputed territory at Porirua, and £3,000 for the Wairau.

There seems to have been considerable uncertainty among settlers and Maoris alike as to the exact situation and boundaries of some of the reserves, more especially those in the Hutt Valley, and to this lack of precise information much of the trouble with the discontented tribes was due. In 1846 we find even the consistently friendly chief Te Puni complaining that the Ngati-Awa reserves at the Taita were occupied by European settlers. As the result of the failure to inform the Maoris of the position and bounds of the areas reserved for them, the natives in some instances cleared tracts of land outside the reserves, and in other cases occupied and cleared bush land that had been sold to settlers: disputes and suspicion were thus engendered.

The principal opposition to the white occupation of Hutt lands came in the first case from a chief named Taringa-Kuri (“Dog's Ear”), otherwise known as Kaeaea (“Sparrowhawk”). He derived his first name from his preternatural keenness of hearing; when out scouting, say the Macris, he would put his ear to the ground and detect the approach of an enemy at a great distance. “Dog's Ear” headed the Ngati-Tama Tribe, connected both with Ngati-Awa and with Ngati-Maniapoto. The clan had fought its way down the west coast as allies of Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata in the “twenties.” He and his people received a sixth part of the goods first given by Colonel Wakefield in payment for the Wellington lands. When the disputes arose as to the ownership of the Hutt Valley, “Dog's Ear” and his people cut a line through the bush as a boundary dividing the lower valley from the Upper Hutt, contending that the upper part should be reserved for Ngati-Tama

Not many of the Ngati-Tama Tribe were engaged in the war in the Hutt Valley. The majority had gone with Pomare Ngatata to the Chatham Islands. Later, a number of Ngati-Tama, as the result of quarrels with Ngati-Mutunga at the Chathams, migrated to the Auckland Islands in a French whaler. To their disgust they found that the climate of the Aucklands was so wet and cold that their potatoes would not grow. They were removed a few years later and returned to the Chatham Islands.

TWO MILES ABOVE the stockade at the Hutt Bridge a pioneer settler, Mr. Boulcott, had hewn a home out of the forest. His clearing bordered the left bank of the river; most of it was in grass; the rough edges of the farm were cumbered with half-burned logs and stumps, and on three sides was heavy timber; the fourth side faced the river and the fringing thickets on the other bank; beyond were the wooded steep hills that hemmed in the Hutt Valley on the west. A rough and narrow bush road, “corduroyed” with fern-tree trunks in the marshy portions, wound through the forest from the bridge at the fort; it was little more than a track, and in many places the branches of the rimu and rata met overhead and kept the road in dampness and shadow. Here and there were settlers' clearings, with houses of sawn timber and shingled roofs, or of slabs and nikau palm or raupo reed thatch; crops of wheat, oats, and potatoes were grown in these oases in the desert of bush. Where rows of shops, cottages, and bungalows, with beautiful orchards and gardens, cover the floor of the Hutt Valley to-day, there were but these roughly trimmed forest homes.

The most advanced post of the Regular troops in May, 1846, was on Boulcott's Farm, where fifty men of the 58th Regiment were stationed under Lieutenant G. H. Page. Some little distance higher up the valley, at the Taita, an outpost was established near Mr. Mason's section, where a small detachment of the Hutt Militia was stationed. Half the force of soldiers at Boulcott's were quartered in a large barn, around which a stockade of slabs and small logs had been erected and loopholed for musket-fire. The rest of the troops were accommodated in small slab outhouses near the barn and in tents. Lieutenant Page and his soldier servant occupied Mr. Boulcott's cottage; the owner of the place and his two men servants used a small house adjoining. It was upon this post that the Maoris, under Rangihaeata's orders, and led by Topine te Mamaku (otherwise Te Karamu), of the Ngati-Haua-te-Rangi, Upper Wanganui, made a desperate assault at daybreak on the morning of the 16th May, 1846.

TO THE RELIEF alike of Wellington townsmen, outlying settlers, and Ngati-Awa friendlies, Governor Grey returned to Port Nicholson from Auckland on the 1st July in H.M.S. “Driver,” and immediately infused energy into the lagging campaign against Te Rangihaeata. He revisited the military posts, made arrangements for the more speedy construction of the Wellington—Porirua Road and the road up the Hutt towards the Wairarapa, and had mutually satisfactory interviews with Te Puni and his leading chiefs. On the 12th July the “Calliope” landed at Paremata Point Major Last and a small reinforcement of twenty men of the 58th and forty-two of the 99th, under Lieutenants Page and De Winton and Ensign Blackburn. The frigate also took to Porirua a boat intended to be used as a gunboat in patrolling the inner shallow waters of Porirua and the Paua-taha-nui arm. The little craft was the longboat of the barque “Tyne,” which had been wrecked on the Rimurapa rocks at Sinclair Head. An energetic midshipman of the “Calliope,” Mr. H. F. McKillop, soon afterwards promoted to a lieutenancy, was given charge of the gunboat, which proved highly useful in the task of reconnoitring the upper waters and in occasional skirmishes with Rangihaeata's men. Mr. McKillop had already made a reconnaissance of Rangihaeata's position in a light four-oared boat, and had discovered that the rebel pa, although apparently not formidable in construction, was strategically strong in situation, being at the extreme head of Paua-taha-nui Inlet, partly surrounded by water, swamp, and bush, and difficult of approach either by land or by sea. This expedition (10th May) was a lively morning's adventure, in which McKillop and his comrades narrowly escaped being cut off.

McKillop's patrol would have been outmatched in a contest with the war-canoes which made a barbaric parade on the lake-like waters of Paua-taha-nui. A naval boat several times ventured up near the head of the arm, and on two occasions was compelled to retreat before these craft packed with Maoris. Two or three of the largest canoes were each manned by about fifty warriors, most of them armed with double-barrel guns. When, however, the longboat of the barque “Tyne” was procured and converted into a gunboat (oars and sail) with a 12-pounder carronade mounted in the bows, besides a small brass gun lent by Captain Stanley of the “Calliope” frigate, the scales were more evenly balanced. McKillop felt, with these two pieces of artillery and the addition of six bluejackets to his crew, that his little man-of-war was fit match for the whole of Rangihaeata's canoe flotilla.

On the morning of the 17th July the young naval officer, scanning the wooded coasts and the placid waters of the sea-lake, observed a large number of dark figures on the cleared part of a long point of hilly land which formed the largest promontory on the southern side of the Paua-taha-nui, and distant a little over a mile from Paremata camp. Through the narrow sea-passage where the railway-bridge now crosses the water near the Paremata fishing village McKillop followed the main channel of the tidal basin north-eastward until he was abreast of the promontory (to-day known as Long Point). Nothing was stirring on shore; every figure had vanished; but the officer ordered his crew to pull close in to the shore, and when within a few yards of the rocks fired a charge of canister into the manuka and small ngaio trees. Yells of mingled pain, fright, and rage arose, and from the bushes leaped a horde of shaggy-headed figures with flashing gun-barrels. It was only for a few seconds that their dusky faces were seen; they quickly took cover and opened a hot fire on the bluejackets. The gunners again raked the foliage with canister, and this fire brought out the Maoris. Firing as they came, they rushed into the open, and, seeing that the boat was within a few yards of the shore, many of them dashed into the shallow water on the edge of the main creek, attempting to board the boat. The men's beds and blankets had been lashed up in their hammocks and fastened round the top-sides and gun-wale of the boat, forming a bullet-proof inner breastwork. The encounter was at such close quarters that it was almost impossible for the warriors to miss. Nearly every bullet struck the boat, and although she was coppered almost up to the gunwale many balls passed through, to be stopped by the sailors' bedding parapet.

The Maoris, it was now seen, were led by Te Rangihaeata himself. For the first time in the campaign he personally headed his men in a charge against the whites. The warriors made an attempt to board the boat, imagining that she was aground, so close was she to the point. One party made an attack upon the quarter, and, as the carronade in the bows did not bear upon these men, McKillop slewed his brass gun, which was on a swivel, and fired at them. The gun burst; the midshipman was knocked

The crew completed their victory by firing several 12 lb. solid shot into the bushes where the Maoris had taken cover, and returned to Paremata.

By Proclamation dated 18th June, signed by Captain George Grey, Lieutenant-Governor, the operation of martial law in the “Island of New Ulster,” as the North Island was officially

A TRAVELLER TAKING the main road north from Wellington City and driving round the head of the Paua-taha-nui Inlet will pass within a few yards of the spot where Te Rangihaeata and his men built their palisaded and rifle-pitted stronghold in 1846. The exact site of the pa can readily be identified. The spot is occupied to-day by a steepled church of old-fashioned design, crowning as in a picture the green hill above the one-street village of Paua-taha-nui—now misspelled Pahautanui. The salt water once flowed at high tide nearly to the foot of that rounded hill; the land was raised several feet by the earthquake in 1855, and now the one-time flats of sand and mud are covered with grass, and the beach where Maori war-canoes and pakeha boats lay long ago has become a sheep-paddock. A little stream comes down from the hills around the eastern and southern foot of the mound, and joins the sea 200 yards below the place where our main road crosses on a wooden bridge. The hill is small-wooded like a park; white grave-stones gleam among the shrubs and trees on its seaward face. It is a slumberous pretty spot— This old churchyard on the hillThat keeps the green graves of the dead.

Transformed as the place is by the lapse of nearly three-quarters of a century, one still may reconstruct in imagination the hilltop as it was in Rangihaeata's year of war. It was a cleverly chosen retreat, convenient to the canoe-stream and the harbour, yet sufficiently removed from deep water to be unapproachable by heavily gunned war-vessels, and beyond effective musket-range from any but the smallest boats. It was protected on three sides by water and marshes. On the south and south-east there was a cliff, at its highest about 30 feet, now thickly covered with trees dropping to a backwater of the little river. On the scarped front—the west—were the curving stream, with its swampy borders, and the salt water; on the north and north-west were

Rangihaeata's stronghold, on the spot where the church now stands, was in the form of a parallelogram, with two rows of palisades, a ditch within the second row, 6 feet wide and 5 feet deep, and whares with underground communication. The outer stockade was a weak curtain, but the inner palisades were heavy timbers up to 10 inches or a foot in thickness and about 15 feet high. The fort was about eighty paces in length and half that in width; there were flanking defences, and there were intricate interior passage-ways, some on the surface fenced with manuka stakes, so narrow that only one man could pass at a time, and some underground. Shell-proof shelters covered with slabs and tree-trunks and earth were connected with the main trench by covered ways, and the main trench itself was cut with traverses protective against an enfilading fire down the ditch. The rear, as usual in Maori pas, was the weakest in defence; but the problem would have been to reach this part, naturally guarded as it was by water, swamp, and bush.

Captain Grey decided to approach the pa from the rear. He ordered a body of Militia, police, and Ngati-Awa friendlies to march across the hills from the Hutt and endeavour to carry the place by surprise. The Regular soldiers were excluded from the expedition, not being suitable troops for bush-work. On the afternoon of the 31st July this force, consisting of fifty men of the Hutt Militia, thirteen of the armed police, and 150 Ngati-Awa Maoris, left the Hutt Valley on their march over the hills. The Militia were under the command of Captain McDonogh and Lieutenant White, and the police under Mr. Chetham Strode. One Imperial officer, Ensign Middleton, of the 58th Regiment, accompanied the expedition, and Mr. Ludlam and Mr. Stilling joined as volunteers. The native friendlies were under the charge of Mr. D. Scott. The column ascended the hills on the western side of the Hutt River nearly opposite Boulcott's Farm stockade, and followed a native track over the ranges to the upper valley of the Pauataha-nui; this track was the route used by the enemy in their raids from the Porirua district upon the Hutt. Next morning (1st August) the two foremost guides encountered a scout of the enemy, a minor Upper Wanganui chief named Whare-aitu, otherwise known grotesquely as “Martin Luther.” He was captured. (In September he was court-martialled for rebellion and hanged at Paremata.) The capture was made within half a mile of the pa, and the incident was seen by some women from the hill stockade, which was now visible. Screaming out an alarm, they ran off to the pa. The main body and the Militia and police now came doubling up, and the whole force moved quickly forward. The pa had just been evacuated when the force rushed it.

The next stage in the history of Paua-taha-nui pa was its conversion into an Imperial military post. It was garrisoned by detachments of Regular regiments, and for a considerable period after hostilities had ceased it was occupied as an advanced post covering the construction of the main road northward to Paekakariki and Waikanae by a company of the 65th, who had arrived in Wellington on the 22nd July, 1846, by the barque “Levant” from Sydney—the first of that regiment to reach New Zealand. The force landed by the “Levant” consisted of Captain O'Connell, Captain Newenham, Lieutenant McCoy, Lieutenant Turner, and Assistant-Surgeon White (65th); Ensign Barker (58th); eight sergeants, seven corporals, and 162 rank and file of the 58th and 65th Regiments.

Our illustration showing the Paua-taha-nui post as it was at this period, with the main Maori stockading retained, is from a water-colour drawing by Lieut.-Colonel W. A. McCleverty, who was sent to Wellington from Sydney at the end of 1846 as Land Claims Commissioner, and was afterwards given command of the military operations at Wanganui.

The scene of hostilities now shifted northward. Te Rangihaeata, it was discovered, had taken post in the wooded ranges

THE NEW ZEALAND COMPANY'S settlement at Wanganui—or Petre, as it was officially named in compliment to Lord Petre, one of the directors of the Company—was the most unfortunate of all the colonies planted by the Wakefields. The first settlers under the Company took up their land there in 1841, but the natives very soon disputed their title to many of the sections, declaring that they had never sold the land. “Our case is indeed a hard one,” Dr. Wilson, of Wanganui, wrote in his diary in 1846. “Up to the commencement of our present war state we had waited more than six years for the proprietorship of land here which we paid for in London upwards of seven years ago; but that promised land has never yet been delivered up to us.” When some of the unfortunate settlers, despairing of ever being established in secure occupation of their farm sections outside the Town of Wanganui, applied to the Company for land elsewhere in New Zealand they were informed that only in the Wanganui district had they a claim for land. Those who left Wanganui were compelled to purchase afresh elsewhere, and those who remained presently found themselves compelled to arm for defence against the Maoris with whom they had hoped to live in neighbourly peace. The Company blamed the Government for preventing selection according to the conditions of sale, but Governor Hobson declared that nothing contained in the agreement between the Government and the Company had any such reference to their engagements with private parties, and held that the Company was bound to fulfil the conditions it had entered into for the disposal of their lands. Neither Hobson nor Fitzroy, however, was able to improve the unhappy position. Not until a campaign had been fought and Wanganui relieved from a state of siege, and the troubles adjusted by Governor Grey and Mr. (afterwards Sir Donald) McLean, was the peaceful progress of the district assured.

In 1845 there were not many more than two hundred Europeans in Wanganui; there were about sixty houses. This little outpost of colonization was practically surrounded by Maoris. The native population along the Wanganui River was estimated in 1846 at four thousand, most of whom were on very friendly terms with the settlers themselves, though they had no love for the New Zealand Company. Living was rough and primitive, but food was abundant; the Maoris of the numerous villages from Wanganui Heads inland plied a diligent canoe-paddle, bringing in their cargoes of pigs, potatoes, kumara, vegetable marrows, and pumpkins for sale by barter. Governor Grey in 1846 investigated the condition of the settlement, and made arrangements for the completion of the purchase of 40,000 acres. Major Richmond, the Superintendent of the Southern District, was deputed to settle the details. It was not until 1848, however, that the sale was finally closed. The area of purchase was increased to 80,000 acres, extending to the Kai-iwi River.

In December of 1846 the frigate “Calliope” and the Government brig “Victoria” brought up from Wellington and landed at Wanganui 180 men of the 58th Regiment, under Captain Laye and Lieutenant Balneavis, four Royal Artillery men with two 12-pounder guns, Lieutenant (afterwards Captain) T. B. Collinson, R.E., and Mr. Tyrone Power, D.A.C.G. These troops set about the work of fortifying the town. The warship also brought up the small gunboat which had been used in the Porirua patrols. Lieutenant Holmes, R.N., was detailed to command the gunboat-crew; with him was a young midshipman of the “Calliope.” On the 16th April, 1847, a minor chief of the Wanganui people, by name Ngarangi, went to the midshipman's quarters to receive payment for some work done. The juvenile officer, by way of a joke, presented a pistol at him; the charge exploded, and Ngarangi received a wound in the head. He was well tended, and soon began to recover. He told his people that the wound was accidental; nevertheless a small party determined to exact utu for the blood-letting, and so precipitate war. Six of them attacked the home of Mr. J. A. Gilfillan, in the Mataraua Valley, severely wounded Gilfillan, and killed his wife and three children with the tomahawk; a daughter of sixteen was wounded. Five of the murderers were captured by a party of friendly natives, under Hone Wiremu Hipango, and four of them were court-martialled in Wanganui and hanged on the Rutland Stockade hill.

The natives attached to the Europeans by ties of friendship or by the teachings of their missionary, Richard Taylor, agreed that the execution of the tomahawk-party was a proper punishment. By far the greater number of the Wanganui warriors, however, resolved to take up arms to avenge the deaths of the four. The execution of Whare-aitu by the military at Paremata in the previous year was also a provocative factor.

LAND DISPUTES TROUBLED the Settlement of New Plymouth almost from the day of its foundation. Commissioner Spain, who in 1844 investigated the New Zealand Company's claims, awarded 60,000 acres to the Company on payment of £200; but Governor Fitzroy set aside this award, considering that it would be an injustice to a very large number of Te Atiawa (Ngati-Awa) who were absent at the time their land was said to have been sold. Later, various blocks of land were purchased to satisfy the demands of the settlers. The principal transactions of this nature were carried out by Mr. F. Dillon Bell (afterwards Sir Dillon), who was sent in 1847 from Nelson by the New Zealand Company to supersede Mr. Wicksteed as the Company's agent in New Plymouth. Mr. Dillon Bell had joined the New Zealand Company in England in 1839, and was sent to Nelson in 1843. His excellent work in Nelson led to his selection for the delicate task of satisfying the mutually antagonistic elements in Taranaki. His chief purchases were the Omata Block of 12,000 acres, and the Hua territory, of 1,500 acres (from the Puketapu Tribe), which was named the “Bell Block.” Both these settlement areas were to become famous in after-years, when the settlers built fortifications thereon and prepared by force of arms to maintain their rights to the land upon which they had made their homes. Katatore, a tragic figure in Taranaki history, stoutly opposed the sale of the Bell Block by Rawiri Waiaua and others in 1848, and he had a singular pole carved and erected on the right bank of the Wai-whakaiho River, alongside the track, as a symbol of protest against the encroachment of the pakeha. This post, a puriri spar about 30 feet high, was named by the Maoris “ Poututaki,” and came to be known by the Europeans as the “Fitzroy pole” from its proximity to the Fitzroy Village, now a suburb of New Plymouth. It had two life-sized figures in bold relief, representing the pakeha cowering beneath a Maori warrior; the native figure was intended as a presentment of a chief of Puketapu, one Parata te Huia. The post was intended to mark the limit of European settlement; no pakeha, according to the Maoris, was to own any land between that spot and the Auckland District. It was 1853 before the natives would permit settlements on the Bell Block. The return to Waitara from Waikanae in 1848 of the greater part of the Atiawa (or Ngati-Awa) Tribe further complicated the progress of the white settlement in Taranaki. These people, sections of whom had sold much of the land about Wellington to the New Zealand Company—they had conquered those lands from the original holders—conceived a desire to return to their ancestral homes on the Waitara, and, in spite of the opposition and even threats of Governor Grey, carried out their undertaking successfully. Grey eventually withdrew his opposition in consideration of the help afforded to the Government by the Atiawa at Waikanae and Wellington in crushing Rangihaeata's rising in 1846. Wiremu Kingi te Rangitaake, the head chief of the Waikanae people, had given valuable protection to the Wellington Settlement at a very critical period. The Governor could not very well ignore this. Crying their farewells to their lands and the few people whom they left at Waikanae and Otaki, the Atiawa emigrants set sail up the coast in April, 1848. The flotilla consisted of forty-four canoes of large size, four open boats, and a small sailing-craft. A few people also travelled overland on horseback. The total number of the Atiawa who thus returned and landed joyfully on the shore of their ancient home-land was 587, consisting of 273 men, 195 women, and 119 children. These were the people who in 1860 came into conflict with the Administration over the purchase of the 600-acre block on which the Town of Waitara now stands.

Wiremu Kingi and his tribe set to work industriously to cultivate their lands on the left (or west) side of the Waitara River mouth, and in a few years had a number of comfortable settlements near the river, with large crops of wheat, maize, and potatoes, and a considerable number of horses and cattle, besides ploughs and other agricultural implements. In 1856 they sent to market about £8,000 worth of produce, and spent the proceeds on goods in New Plymouth. Their desirable lands inevitably excited the envy of the pakeha settlers, who presently moved the authorities to extend their purchases towards the Waitara.

In the meantime the growing native jealousy of the pakeha took formidable form in a combination to prevent further land-sales. This powerful movement, to which was conjoined an effort to found a Maori kingdom, was initiated shortly after New Zealand received its Constitution Act bestowing representative government upon the colony. The connection between these most important political developments may be rather difficult to trace exactly, but the coincidence is certainly remarkable. The Maori was not to be behind the white in his struggle for national power, and while the settlers had been successful in their agitation for self-determination, he was determined that the newcomers should be restrained in their race for Maori lands.

“If Englishmen could occasionally be brought to face the fact that since the institution of their nationality and language no permanent English community has ever passed under a foreign yoke, they would be better able to understand how impossible it is for a dominant race to do complete justice to a subject people, and how hollow is the pretence that impartial justice is rendered to such people. The strong natural sense of justice which animates Englishmen, and their intense respect for the rights of property, have doubtless helped to a vast degree to counteract the evils of domination and disparity; but if we could view the question from a national Maori point of view we should find much to approve of in the principle of the League.”—Mr. Justice Chapman, in his “History of New Zealand” (Dunedin).

The anti-pakeha crusade was given its first expression in a great conference of the west-coast tribes held in 1854 at Manawa-pou, a large settlement of the Ngati-Ruanui, at the mouth of the Ingahape River, on the South Taranaki coast. The site of this celebrated meeting is still plainly to be traced, although it is now part of the farm of a white settler. Manawa-pou is a beautiful terrace overlooking the sea, on the south side of the mouth of the Ingahape River, where the stream comes curving out of a deep grassy valley. On the hill 300 feet above are the earthworks of the Imperial redoubt of Manawa-pou, dating back to General Cameron's campaign. Here in the “fifties” was the home of a section of the Ngati-Ruanui, notable for the large stature of its men. The tribe built an unusually large meeting-house for the gathering; it was 120 feet long and 35 feet wide. “Taiporohenui,” the name given to the assembly-house, was orginally that of a sacred house of instruction in Hawaiki, according to Taranaki tradition. A great patriotic song was chanted by the people at the opening of “Taiporohenui.” It began:— E kore Taranaki e makere atu!E kore Taranaki e makere atu!Kei marea mai—kei marea mai!Tika tonu mai ki a Piata-kai-manawa,I Piata-kai-manawa.Ka turuKo te whakamutunga,E kapa-ti, kapa-ti!E—i—e!

In this chant the spirit of determination to hold fast to the ancestral land was made manifest—“Taranaki shall not be lost, shall not be abandoned to the stranger.” The conference of the tribes determined that no more land should be sold to the Europeans without the general consent of the federation, and that Maori disputes should not be submitted to European jurisdiction but should be settled by tribal runanga (councils). At this meeting, too, the idea of a Maori king for the Maori people was discussed and fervently approved.

The differences between the adherents of the Land League and those who wished to sell developed into murderous intertribal feuds. On the 3rd August, 1854, Rawiri Waiaua, who offered the Government a disputed area at Taruru-tangi, in the Puketapu Block, was fatally shot, with several of his followers, by Katatore and a party of twenty-eight men representing the non-sellers. The Government professed itself powerless to interfere. The quarrelling factions fortified themselves in their pas, and an intermittent skirmishing warfare prevailed for many months. The rival parties often selected the vicinity of the white settlements for their guerilla warfare. The Administration was appealed to for troops for the protection of New Plymouth, and on the 19th August, 1855, the first British garrison of the province arrived. This was a portion of the 58th Regiment, numbering about 270 men and officers, under Captain Seymour, with some Royal Artillery men and several field-guns, and some sappers and miners. In September the force was increased by the arrival from Wellington of some two hundred of the 65th Regiment.

The native-land vendetta was resumed in August, 1857, when Ihaia te Kiri-kumara, who was very friendly to the Government and had sold some land, laid and ambush for his enemy Katatore on the road through the Bell Block Settlement. The settlers heard the firing in the morning early as Katatore was shot down. In the intertribal war thus renewed Katatore's slayer was driven out of his pa, which was sacked and burned. All north Taranaki, or at any rate the native portion of the population, was almost continually under arms.

The period 1858–59 was one of continual internecine strife in the district between the Bell Block and the Waitara. Ihaia's pa, Ika-moana, near Puketapu, was evacuated and destroyed in February, 1858. Ihaia and his party, the land-sellers, were then besieged at the Karaka, on the Waitara. On the 10th March, 1858, Mr. S. Percy Smith (afterwards Surveyor-General) rode down to the Waitara with Mr. Parris, Civil Commissioner, who was in charge of native affairs in Taranaki, and made sketches under fire of the pas occupied by Ihaia and Wiremu Kingi. “Plenty of bullets flying over my head while sketching,” wrote Mr. Smith in his diary.

The following description of the fighting at the Bell Block arising out of the Puketapu feud over the sale of lands to the Government is from the pen of Mr. A. H. Messenger, son of the late Colonel W. B. Messenger, of New Plymouth:—

“Some curious incidents occurred in the native war waged over the newly made farms of the settlers from Devon and Cornwall. As a boy living in one of the Taranaki frontier posts, I heard the story of those stirring times recounted by my father. The opposing tribes fought back and forth with varying fortune over the undulating country of the Waiwhakaiho River, and out on to what was later known as the Bell Block. The settlers in 1857–58 were witnesses of many thrilling incidents, and it was a frequent occurrence to have to stop work in the middle of a fencing or ploughing job and retire to the security of the farmhouse while a fierce skirmish took place in which numerous casualties occurred on both sides. Though bullets were flying in all directions, the white settlers were never molested, and their stock also was under strict tapu, and was not interfered with. An episode typical of those thrilling days was described by a Devonshire settler who in the midst of ploughing operations suddenly found himself in a Maori battle. The opposing war-parties had skirmished up towards one another through the high fern surrounding the little farm, and finished up with a charge and close hand-to-hand fighting with tomahawk and mere over the newly ploughed ground. For a moment the settler thought that his end had come, but the brown warriors took no notice of his presence, and as the battle passed on he found himself still standing, hand on plough, gazing in bewilderment at several stark figures that lay sprawled in the attitude of sudden death amid the newly turned furrows. As night fell groups of warriors, many of whom bore fresh wounds from musket-ball or blow of tomahawk, gathered round the nearest farmhouse and deposited their guns with the white settlers, telling them that they would call for them on the morrow, when fighting was resumed in the same manner.

“In another case a settler received a message from each of the opposing forces to the effect that a fight would take place on his farm in the morning, and that it would be well for him to remain in his house until the tide of war had passed by. Taking due heed of this warning, the settler was witness on the following morning of a battle in his pastures. Many bullets struck the house, and one random shot killed a sheep; otherwise no damage was done to his property. The nervous tension brought on by these conditions of life proved too much for several of the settlers, who finally left the district in search of more peaceful surroundings.”

IT WAS Tamehana te Rauparaha, the son of the great Ngati-Toa conquistador, who first suggested the establishment of a king or high chief for the union of Maori tribes. Tamehana had made a voyage to England, and, being an exceedingly shrewd and observant man, he returned with many ideas for the betterment of his countrymen. The principal reform he felt impelled to propose was the setting-up of a king under whose control the people should live in harmony with each other and with their pakeha neighbours. His kinsman Matene te Whiwhi, of Otaki, seized upon the notion with patriotic enthusiasm, and travelled among the tribes advocating union and the election of some high rangatira as head of the Maori nation.

The members of the confederation of the anti-land-selling chiefs and people found considerable difficulty in the selection of a head for the union of the tribes. Many men of high pedigree were approached, but one after another declined the troublesome office of king. One of the chiefs whom Matene te Whiwhi and his fellow-leaguers urged to accept the kingship was Whitikau, of the Nga-Rauru Tribe, Waitotara. He refused; so did Tamati Hone, the man of highest standing in Ngati-Ruanui. A deputation of chiefs went to Wanganui and placed the position before Pehi Turoa, who refused. Te Heuheu Iwikau, of Taupo, similarly declined the offer.

The Waikato tribes held a very large meeting in 1857 at Paetai, on the Waikato River, at which the question was debated by delegates from all the tribes of the confederation, as well as others outside the league. The Arawa people of Rotorua and Maketu were represented at this gathering by Temuera te Amohau. Eloquent efforts were made to induce the Arawa to join the Kingites. Temuera refused, saying, “One of our chiefs, Timoti, was the only man of the Arawa people who signed the Treaty of Waitangi, but we shall not depart from the pledge he then gave. We will not join the king tribes. My king is Queen Victoria.” (“Taku kingi ko Kuini Wikitoria.”)

Temuera was taunted by some of the Waikato chiefs with the defeat Te Waharoa had inflicted on the Arawa twenty years previously at Mataipuku, near Ohinemutu. He retorted with an allusion to Te Waharoa having been taken prisoner and spared by the Arawa in his infancy. “As for us Arawa,” he said, “we shall stand as firmly as a rock in the ocean. Upon that rock shall be shattered the waves of your kingdom.” (“Ka tu a te Arawa hai toka tu moana, e pakaru ai nga ngaru o to Kingitanga.”) Temuera concluded by telling the Waikato that if they wished to set up a Maori king they should apply to the highest chief in New Zealand, Te Kani-a-Takirau, of the East Cape.

This suggestion is said to have led to an offer to the chief named to become king of the federated tribes, but here again the leaguers met with a refusal. Te Kani, in any case, was not a suitable selection. He was a very high-born rangatira, but a man of no force of character, and his territory was remote from the chief seats of agitation.

A conference was also held in 1857 at Pukawa, Lake Taupo, and was attended by chiefs from all over the Island. The chiefs finally selected Potatau te Wherowhero, who had no desire for the honour. He was a very old and feeble man, but his warrior reputation, his exalted lineage, and his widespread tribal connections qualified him as the necessary figurehead behind whom Wiremu Tamehana and his fellow-reformers might carry out their schemes of self-government.

The late Te Heuheu Tukino, the head chief of the Ngati-Tuwharetoa Tribe, described to the writer as follows the highly ceremonious manner in which the chiefs of the various tribes assembled at Pukawa in 1857 centralized their mana and bestowed it upon Potatau te Wherowhero, who was then chosen as the king of the confederated tribes:—

“Te Heuheu Iwikau, who was head of our tribe since the death of my grandfather, Te Heuheu Mana-nui, in the landslip at Te Rapa (1846), caused a high flagstaff to be erected on the marae, the meeting-ground, at Pukawa. At the masthead he hoisted a national flag; the pattern was that of the flag given by King William IV of England to the northern Maori tribes at the Bay of Islands some years before the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. Beneath this flag at intervals down the mast he had long ropes of plaited flax attached. The flagstaff symbolized Tongariro, the sacred mountain of our tribe. The Maoris were assembled in divisions grouped around the foot. Te Heuheu arose and said, indicating a rope, ‘This is Ngongotaha’ (the mountain near Rotorua Lake). ‘Where is the chief of Ngongotaha who shall attach this mountain to Tongariro?’ The leading chief of the Arawa Tribe, of Rotorua, rose from his place in the assemblage, and taking the end of the rope fastened it to a manuka peg, which he drove into the ground in front of his

THE COMPLICATED HISTORY of the Waitara purchase may be reduced to a simple summary. Teira, a minor chief of the Atiawa, living with his fellow-tribesmen on the ancestral lands on the Waitara, was persuaded to offer 600 acres of the land to the Government, at a price of £1 per acre. This block was on the left side of the Waitara, near the mouth, and included the ground on which the present Town of Waitara stands. A number of Teira's people supported him, but the majority of the Atiawa, headed by Wiremu Kingi te Rangitaake, opposed the transaction, and made vehement and repeated protest. It was acknowledged that Teira was the occupier of a portion of the land, and the Government contention—on the advice of Mr. Parris, its local native agent—was that a native had a right to dispose of his individual interests in land. But this was long before the establishment of the Native Land Court. Titles in native land had not been individualized; it was practically impossible to determine the precise extent of Teira's interests. The case for the opponents of the sale was that while individual cultivation rights existed no one had a right to part with the tribal estate without general consent. The land was the common property of the people, and it was against accepted tribal policy to permit a wedge to be driven into the estate by deed of sale without the acquiescence of all concerned. While the whole tribe might be called upon to fight to maintain any or every member of the tribe in possession, so no member was justified in parting with the joint property of the clan. This land had always been thickly populated, and was the property of a great many families, and Wiremu Kingi, as the paramount chief, undoubtedly exercised his right in vetoing the sale. Moreover, it is known that Wiremu Kingi was the victim of a private feud. He and Teira had quarrelled, and Teira, in order to obtain revenge, deliberately proposed the sale in order to bring trouble upon his antagonist and the tribe. This was a common mode of action among the Maoris. The determined opposition of Wiremu Kingi—who was no fire-

THE COMPLETION of the Waitara purchase, in spite of Wiremu Kingi's repeated protests, was resolved upon by the Governor in Council at Auckland early in 1860. It was decided to have the block surveyed, and to protect the survey party with an adequate military force if obstruction were offered, and if necessary to call out the Taranaki Militia and Volunteers for active service and proclaim martial law. The Auckland Militia, it was further decided by Governor Gore Browne and his Executive Council (the Stafford Ministry), should be enrolled and armed; all males between the ages of sixteen and fifty-five were liable for service. The fateful decision to proceed with the survey was communicated to Lieut.-Colonel Murray, temporarily commanding in New Plymouth, who immediately had the country between the town and the Waitara reconnoitred for the purpose of selecting suitable places for camps and redoubts on the disputed block and along the road. On the 20th February, 1860, the title to the block was put to the test. Mr. Octavius Carrington, Chief Surveyor, and Mr. Charles Wilson Hursthouse (afterwards District Surveyor and later Chief Engineer of Roads and Bridges) and a party of chainmen went to the Waitara to commence the survey of the land. Mr. Parris, the Government's principal instrument in the purchase, accompanied them. The Maoris obstructed the surveyors and prevented them beginning their work. The party returned to New Plymouth. Lieut.-Colonel Murray gave Wiremu Kingi twenty-four hours to apologize and withdraw his opposition. The old chief replied that he did not desire war, that he loved the white people very much, but that he intended to hold the land. Thereupon (22nd February) Murray proclaimed martial law in the Taranaki District. The Militia and the Taranaki Rifle Volunteers were called out for active service, and a small mounted corps was organized and armed with carbines, revolvers, and swords. The country settlers began their migration to the town, abandoning their homes, which presently were to go up in flames.

THE GULLY-RIVEN littoral of Waireka, five miles south-west of New Plymouth, was the theatre of an engagement (28th March, 1860) which proved the fighting-capacity of Taranaki's newly trained Volunteers and Militia, and saved the town from direct attack by the united strength of the southern tribes. The encounter was doubly memorable because it was the first occasion on which a British Volunteer corps engaged an enemy on the battlefield.

The British move upon the Waitara was quickly followed by the decision of Taranaki, Ngati-Ruanui, and Nga-Rauru, the three principal tribes of the coast curving round from Ngamotu to the Waitotara, to come to Wiremu's Kingi's aid. Ten days after the taking of the L pa five hundred warriors of these people, the best fighting-blood on the whole west coast south of New Plymouth, had arrived within six miles of the town. After ceremonious welcomes at Ratapihipihi and other settlements they gathered in a strongly entrenched and stockaded pa at Kaipopo, the most commanding part of the hills at Waireka. The fortification was alongside the road from Omata, and about a mile and a half south of the stockade commanding that settlement; the surf-beaten shore was less than three-quarters of a mile away. The district was already partially settled by Europeans, and farmhouses were scattered over the much-dissected coastland between the ranges and the sea. Clear streams, rock-bedded, coursed down through the numerous narrow wooded valleys. One of these was the Waireka (“Sweet Water”); it was joined just at the beach by a smaller hill-brook, the Waireka-iti. This broken terrain, with its spurs, knolls, and ravines giving abundance of cover, was an admirable country for the Maori's skirmishing tactics. The natives who composed the fighting force on this side of New Plymouth were chiefly Taranaki, composed of Ngamahanga, Patukai, Ngati-Haumia, Ngarangi, and other hapus, under Kingi Parengarenga (afterwards killed at Sentry Hill), Hori Kingi, the celebrated Wiremu Kingi te Matakaatea (not to be confused with Wiremu Kingi te Rangitaake, of Waitara), and Arama Karaka. A war-party of Ngati-Ruanui, chiefly the Ngaruahine hapu of the Waimate Plains, arrived just in time for the battle; their principal rangatira was Te Hanataua. The men were armed with double-barrel shot-guns, and were well supplied with powder and lead; several carried rifles.

On the 27th the first blood was shed in the Omata district. Two farmers (S. Shaw and H. Passmore) and a New Plymouth business man (Samuel Ford) were shot and tomahawked by ambush-parties on the roadside near the Primitive Methodist Chapel; next day the bodies of two boys (Pote and Parker), similarly killed, were found. On the morning of the 28th, when New Plymouth was in a state of intense excitement over the news of these murders, the military authorities decided to despatch an expedition to Omata for the purpose of rescuing the Rev. H. H. Brown and his family, and several other settlers who had remained on their farms. The chiefs, however, had made proclamation that Mr. Brown would be protected, and a notice in Maori was posted at Omata declaring that the road to his place and to his neighbours' must not be trodden by war-parties. The minister was tapu because of his sacred office; as for the others enumerated, one settler was Portuguese and one French; the war was only with the British. The force detailed for the expedition consisted of three officers and twenty-five men of the Royal Navy (H.M.S. “Niger”), four officers and eighty-four rank and file of the 65th Regiment, with 103 officers and men of the Taranaki Rifle Volunteers and fifty-six Taranaki Militia. Lieut.-Colonel Murray was in command. Lieutenant Blake was in charge of the bluejackets (who were to be followed, if necessary, by a larger force from the “Niger”). The colonial force was under the command of Captain Charles Brown, who had with him the following officers: Militia—Captain and Adjutant Stapp, Lieutenants McKechney and McKellar, Ensign W. B. Messenger; Volunteers—Captain Harry A. Atkinson, Lieutenants Hirst, Hamerton, Webster, and Jonas.

The first blunder made by the Imperial officers was the division of this small force despatched into hostile territory. Captain Brown, in command of the settlers, was ordered to march by the sea-coast, keeping along the beach until he reached the rear of the Maori positions at Waireka. The Regulars, under Lieut.-Colonel Murray, marched by the main road for the announced purpose of dislodging a war-party reported to be at the spot known as the “Whalers' Gate,” about three-quarters of a mile on the town side of the Omata stockade. The Volunteers and Militia were expected to recover the out-settlers supposed to be in danger, and to march back by the road, joining Murray at the “Whalers' Gate.” The force was not sent from town until after 1 p.m. (the colonials

Murray did not meet with any opposition at the “Whalers' Gate,” where there was no trace of Maoris. He moved leisurely along the south road until, near the Omata stockade, the sound of rapid firing about two miles off, near the sea, indicated that the civilian force was hotly engaged. He despatched the naval detachment and some of the 65th, under Lieutenant Urquhart, to Brown's assistance, while he took the main body along the road and down a lane which turned off on the right to the sea. Some distance down the lane he turned into a grass paddock, entrenched his men, and opened fire on the Maori skirmishers at long range. He had a rocket-tube, and fired some rockets into a wooded gully on his left front, up which some of the Maoris were moving to cut him off from the main road, as he thought. Accordingly he took up a position in the lane so as to secure the main road, and confined himself to firing rockets at the distant pa and any groups of Maoris observed, and rifle-fire on the native skirmishers over the spurs and in the ravines, until he considered it time to sound the “Retire.”

Meanwhile the Volunteers and the Militia were fighting a desperate battle on the slopes above the beach. Captain Brown, who had not had any previous experience of soldiering, had wisely requested his adjutant, Captain Stapp, to take command, and that veteran of the “Black Cuffs” conducted the afternoon's operations with the coolness characteristic of the well-skilled regular soldier. He had an old comrade with him who put good stiffening into the civilian ranks, Colour-Sergeant (afterwards Lieutenant) W. H. Free; both had been corporals in the 58th in Heke's War. The Volunteers were armed with medium Enfield rifles (muzzle-loading), the Militia had the old smooth-bore muskets (percussion cap), such as were first served out in the late “forties.” Of ammunition there were only thirty rounds per man; no reserve supply was brought.

When the Waireka was reached where it runs down on the ironsand beach the advanced guard under Colour-Sergeant Free caught sight of a large number of armed Maoris coming down at a run from their pa on the Kaipopo ridge nearly a mile away. Free fired the first shot in the engagement, and Volunteer Charles Wilson Hursthouse (the surveyor) the second, at 400 yards range. Free and his party doubled forward and took cover behind a furze hedge and rail fence to prevent the Maoris seizing it. Resting his Minie rifle on the lowest rail of the fence, Free sighted for 300 yards and drilled a conspicuous warrior through his cap-band as was afterwards discovered. “Good for you, Free,” shouted one of the veteran's comrades. Captain Atkinson rushed up the leading company (comprised of half the column, Volunteers and Militia mixed) in support, and took post on high ground on the south side of the Waireka, where his accurate fire kept the Maoris back for a time. However, as the number of the assailants was increased every minute by reinforcements from the pa, and as he was in danger of being outflanked, Captain Stapp ordered a retreat on Mr. John Jury's farmhouse, a small building on a terrace above the beach. Captain Atkinson, on his own suggestion, was sent to an excellent strategic position above the Waireka Stream and on the edge of the cliff overlooking the sea; from here he could command the flanks and rear of Jury's homestead and the mouth of the Waireka. Holding this position until the battle ceased, Atkinson and his men inflicted numerous casualties on

The Maoris were gradually forced back into an upper gully, but, as Captain Brown perceived an attempt on their part, under cover of the high flax-bushes, to cut off the way of retreat to the Omata stockade, he sent Urquhart to hold the commanding ground

THE WINTER OF 1860 drew on with its heavy rains, which converted the roads and tracks, cut up by the continuous military traffic, into mud-channels, and the difficulties of campaigning were correspondingly increased. The rivers were often in a state of high flood, and the swamps became almost impassable. Under these conditions the Imperial forces fought an action which developed into the most disastrous affair for the British in the first Taranaki War.

Half a mile south-east of Te Kohia (the L pa) the native belligerents constructed two forts close together and supporting each other, on small mounds called Puke-ta-kauere and Onuku-kaitara. Outside these strongholds were numerous rifle-pits and trenches, well masked by the high fern and tutu bushes. The double fortification was on considerably higher ground than the British main camp at Pukekohe, on the Waitara, and its situation was admirably chosen for defence. The spur on which the twin knolls were embossed lay between two small swampy water-courses which joined a short distance to the north-east and ran through a deep morass of flax and toetoe to the Waitara River, half a mile distant from Puke-ta-kauere, the northernmost pa. The forts thus were situated in a kind of V, with the apex towards the river. The ferny plateau south of the swamps and extending to the cliffs of the Waitara offered suitable ground from which a flanking fire could be poured on any attacking-party. The Onuku-kaitara pa was the larger of the two. The other was notable for its strong earthwork defences; it was surrounded with two trenches; the scarp of one of these ditches presented a face nearly 20 feet high. To all intent the places were impregnable to assault. Unfortunately for the British, the commander at the Waitara neglected to have the approach to the pas properly scouted, and lack of knowledge of the ground, conjoined to an ignorance of Maori field-engineering genius and skill in skirmishing tactics, was responsible for a defeat which enormously heartened up the pakeha's antagonists, and deepened the dissatisfaction of the Taranaki settlers with the Imperial command. The British main camp was only a mile away, and the building of the pas was carried on in plain view of the soldiers. From the Onuku-kaitara pa flagstaff flew a Maori ensign, white with a black cross. A reconnaissance-party from the camp was fired on. The senior officer, Major T. Nelson (40th Regiment), a veteran of the Indian and Afghan wars, then determined to attack.

The garrison of the double fort was much better fighting-material than the purely Atiawa force which had built and evacuated Te Kohia at the beginning of the war. Reinforcements of warriors had arrived from the Upper Waikato and the district afterwards known as the King Country, and from the southern parts of the west coast. The tribes which confronted Nelson and his 40th, besides Te Atiawa and Taranaki, were Ngati-Maniapoto and Ngati-Raukawa, Nga-Rauru (Patea and Waitotara), and Whanganui. Waikato as a tribe did not come, but some of their eager young men (such as Mahutu te Toko, a near relative of the Maori King) had joined Ngati-Maniapoto.

Te Huia Raureti, of Ngati-Maniapoto, one of the few survivors of the Orakau defence, gave me an account of his tribe's first participation in the Waitara war. He said that when the news of the quarrel over the Waitara reached the Upper Waikato the runanga (council of chiefs) of Ngati-Maniapoto discussed the question of assisting Wiremu Kingi. This runanga consisted of Rewi Maniapoto (the tumuaki, or head of the council), his cousins Te Winitana Tupotahi and Raureti te Huia Paiaka, Epiha Tokohihi, Hopa te Rangianini, Pahata te Kiore, Matena te Reoreo (the clerk), and several other chiefs. Kihikihi Village was at that time the headquarters of Ngati-Maniapoto, and the runanga met in a large house which bore the famous old Hawaikian name “Hui-te-rangiora.” This house of assembly was destroyed by the troops when Kihikihi was invaded in February, 1864. The conclave of chiefs did not act hastily. Two delegates, Raureti te Huia Paiaka (father of the narrator) and Pahata te Kiore, were despatched to Taranaki by the runanga to investigate the dispute and its causes. Their inquiries satisfied them that Wiremu Kingi's cause was just. “My father and Pahata,” said Te Huia Raureti, “came to a decision adverse to Ihaia te Kiri-kumara, the Government adherent, because he had taken sufficient utu for his personal wrongs (the seduction of his wife) by killing the offender, and there was no just cause (take) for parting with tribal lands in order further to involve Wiremu Kingi's people. On the return of this deputation to Kihikihi the runanga considered their report, and Rewi Maniapoto then went down to Ngaruawahia to lay the matter before King Potatau and his council. He requested the King to consent to a war-party of Ngati-Maniapoto marching to Taranaki in order to assist the Atiawa. The proposal was assented to. The old King delivered his command to the assembly of chiefs in these words: ‘Ngati-Maniapoto, haere hei kai ma nga manu o te rangi. Ko koe, e Waikato, ko Pekehawani taku rohe, kaua e takahia.’ (‘Ngati-Maniapoto, go you as food for the birds of the air. As for you, Waikato, Pekehawani is my boundary, do not trespass upon it!’)”

Pekehawani, an ancient Hawaikian name, was here used by Potatau as an honorific term for the Puniu River, the boundary between the Waikato and the territory of Ngati-Maniapoto. Rewi Maniapoto's tribe only he released for the war, but in all probability the fiery Rewi would have gone in spite of a royal prohibition. Waikato and Ngati-Haua were restrained for the present, but after the news of the Maori victory at Puke-ta-kauere arrived they could no longer be held back from the war. The usual route taken by the Ngati-Maniapoto and the Waikato on their journeys to Taranaki was down the Mokau River by canoe from Totoro to Mokau Heads, thence along the beach by Tongaporutu and the White Cliffs to Waitara. War-canoe expeditions down the rapid-whitened Mokau frequently covered the distance from Totoro to the Heads (forty-five miles) in one day, and by a forced march the warriors often reached Urenui or the Waitara at the close of the second day.

It was scarcely daylight on the morning of the 27th June when Major Nelson moved out from Waitara camp to the attack. He was accompanied by Captain Beauchamp-Seymour, commanding the Naval Brigade of H.M.S. “Pelorus.” The force, totalling about three hundred and fifty, was divided into three. The main body, under Nelson, crossed the Devon Road and marched across the fern plain. A detachment of sixty men of the 40th Regiment, under Captain Bowdler, marched to the left, with orders to occupy a mound south-east of the camp, in order to prevent the natives escaping along the left flank of the main body and attacking the camp. If this was not attempted, Bowdler was to double up to the support of his Major. The other division, 125 strong, consisting chiefly of the Grenadier Company of the 40th, under Captain Messenger (a cousin of Ensign W. B. Messenger, of the Taranaki Militia), was detailed to get possession of Puke-ta-kauere mound, to cut off the retreat from the other pa, and to bar the way to Maori reinforcements. The main body (Naval Brigade numbering sixty-five, Royal Artillery with two 24-pounder howitzers, Royal Engineers, and the Light Company of the 40th) moved in extended order towards the south-west side of the fortifications, and was soon engaged by the Maoris in large force.

The artillery opened fire at 7 a.m. from level ground north-west of Onuku-kaitara, but failed to make a large-enough breach

THE UPPER WAIKATO contingent had gone home after Puke-ta-kauere to tell of their victory over the pakeha, exhibit their trophies of battle, and plant their crops. The news of their prowess in the field, and the sight of the soldiers' caps and red coats in which some of them paraded, their newly gotten rifles, bayonets, and cartridge-pouches, aroused at once the admiration and the jealousy of their neighbours. Ngati-Maniapoto's exploits fired all the Waikato tribes with ardour for the field. Ngati-Haua's war-fever could no longer be allayed even by the peace-loving Wiremu Tamehana. The stalwart men of Matamata, Tamahere, and Maunga-tautari had reluctantly remained in their kaingas when Potatau forbade Waikato and Ngati-Haua to cross the Puniu River and released only Ngati-Maniapoto for the war on the Waitara. But now the old king was dead, and his runanga at Ngaruawahia had little control over Ngati-Haua of the plains. Why should Ngati-Maniapoto have all the joy and glory of killing the pakeha? Were not Ngati-Haua the kin of the great Waharoa, the most renowned warrior of the Island? So spake Te Wetini Taiporutu and other fiery blades. In vain Wiremu Tamehana urged prudence and foretold disaster. Wetini and his war-party must off to Waitara to kill soldiers themselves. The new season's potatoes planted, the Waikato-Waipa basin and the plains of Matamata were alive with parties of young musketeers marching off for the summer's shooting in Taranaki. Nearly every village from Ngaruawahia southward sent its squad to join the war-parties in reinforcement of Wiremu Kingi. Ngati-Maniapoto provided the larger part of the force; but Ngati Haua sent a company about eighty strong of the finest fighting-men that ever carried tupara and tomahawk. They were the flower of the tribe—tall athletes, fit successors of the invincible warriors whom Waharoa had led against many a stockade. Wetini Taiporutu (“The Surging Sea”) was at their head. The other tribes which swelled the strength of the columns marching southward were Ngati - Raukawa and Ngati - Koroki, and these subtribes of Waikato: Ngati-Apakura (from Rangiaowhia), Ngati-Ruru (Te Awamutu), Ngati-Koura (Orakau), Ngati-Kahukura, and Ngati-Mahuta. Rewi Maniapoto (or Manga, as he was more usually known by his own people) was the leader of the numberous hapus which mustered at Kihikihi; with him were Epiha Tokohihi, Te Paetai te Mahia, Mokau (of Ngati-Raukawa, at Orakau), and several other chiefs. Rewi was a veteran of the Waitara trail; as a boy of twelve he had marched on his first war expedition in 1832, when a Waikato army made one of its periodical raids on Puke-rangiora. Wetini's war-party marched apart from the others, eager to reach the scene of war and uphold the name of Ngati-Haua. From Mokau Heads they made a forced march along the beach, and, crossing the Waitara, met their allies on the strongly fortified plain at Kairau. Anxious to distinguish themselves in a battle of their own, they stayed not long at the Kairau, where they were joined by other Waikato tribes, but pushed on to Mahoetahi, an old practically unfortified pa on a gentle mound of a hill alongside the Devon Road, two miles and a half from Waitara and seven miles and a half from New Plymouth. Wetini took up this position as a deliberate challenge to the British General. He had sent an invitation to combat quite in the manner of the knights of old. The gage was thrown down in a letter to Mr. Parris, the Assistant Native Secretary in Taranaki: “Come inland and let us meet each other. Fish fight at sea! Come inland and tread on our feet. Make haste! make haste!”

This metaphorical trailing of Ngati-Haua's blanket was taken up by the pakeha with spirited alacrity. It was on the evening of the 5th November that Major-General Pratt was informed that Wetini's contingent had crossed the Waitara, and that possibly next morning they would be in the vicinity of Mahoetahi. It was thought that they were marching on New Plymouth. Their numbers were greatly exaggerated. Pratt immediately issued orders for a British column to march from New Plymouth, and another from Waitara, to meet at Mahoetahi next forenoon, and so take the Maoris between two fires. At dawn of day a young Militia officer, Lieutenant F. Standish, with a friendly Maori chief named Mahau, reconnoitred in the direction of Mahoetahi, and saw the Ngati-Haua and Waikato enter an old village on the hilltop. At 5 o'clock on a beautiful clear morning the General's column left the town. It was composed chiefly of the 65th, 40th, and 12th Regiments, with some Royal Artillery manning two 24-pounder howitzers, a few sappers and miners, and two companies of the Taranaki Rifle Volunteers and Militia, with twenty of the Volunteer cavalry. The total strength of the force was 670; of this force the Volunteers made up about 130. Some friendly Maoris also went out, but took no part in the assault.

THE DEFEAT AT Mahoetahi, so far from crushing the Maori spirit, hardened up the fighting-fibre of Wiremu Kingi's northern allies. Reinforcements from Ngati-Maniapoto and Waikato came marching down the coast, and the story of the losses in the Mahoetahi marsh set the warrior soul athirst for revenge. Those who had lost relatives sallied out on scouting expeditions, laying ambuscades and cutting off European stragglers. Several pakeha settlers out seeking cattle or horses were shot and tomahawked within a short distance of New Plymouth during the summer of 1860–61. At this time the garrison of Taranaki had been reduced by several hundreds of Imperial troops, who were considered necessary for the protection of Auckland, owing to an alarm of coming hostilities with Waikato. By December, 1860, the Maori belligerents had constructed a series of field fortifications on the plateau bounding the Waitara River on the south (left bank), and garrisoned these works with considerably over a thousand men. Kairau and Huirangi were the principal defences—skilfully engineered lines of rifle-pits, trenches, and covered ways, their flanks resting on the thickly wooded gullies that dissected the edges of the tableland. These works barred the way inland to the historic hill pa, Puke-rangiora, high above the Waitara. A new system of fortifications on the front of this ancient stronghold was named Te Arei (“The Barrier”), and was designed as the citadel of the Atiawa.

Major-General Pratt took the field once more towards the end of December, when he concentrated a force of a thousand strong on the Waitara. Heavy artillery suitable for siege operations had been obtained from Auckland and from several of the ships of war, and with this battering-train Pratt moved from Waitara towards the Kairau forts on the 29th December. The first operation was the reduction of the stockaded trenched pa at Mata-rikoriko (“Winking Eyes”), a short distance inland of Puke-ta-kauere and somewhat nearer the Waitara River. The column numbered nine hundred men of all arms, with four guns. When the force reached the site of the old Kairau pa (destroyed on the 11th September), about 1,100 yards from Mata-rikoriko, a large redoubt was commenced for the accommodation of five hundred men. This redoubt was intended as a depot for the attack on the pa, and also for a movement against Huirangi. Working-parties of one hundred and fifty men were employed, under a brisk fire nearly all day from well-masked rifle-pits on the edge of a deep wooded gully about 150 yards from the redoubt. The garrison had a sleepless night, for the natives kept up a fire, with little intermission, until daylight next morning. On the 30th December the Royal Engineers and the rest of the working-parties raised and improved the parapets, formed firing-steps, and made barbettes and platforms for the guns. Two 8-inch guns were mounted on the left face of the redoubt, pointing towards Mata-rikoriko. The firing on both sides was exceedingly heavy. It was estimated that the British troops expended 70,000 rounds of rifle ammunition in less than twenty-four hours, besides about 120 rounds of shot and shell. On the morning of the 31st the pa was found to have been evacuated during the night, and it was quickly occupied by two companies of the 65th under Colonel Wyatt. The British lost three killed and twenty wounded. The Maoris, so far as is known, had six killed. A number of the 56th Regiment remained in occupation of Mata-rikoriko.

This episode was soon followed by a general advance upon the Huirangi works and Te Arei. The operations now developed into the most extensive field-engineering works ever undertaken by British troops in New Zealand. Major-General Pratt was a disciple of the slow, sure, and safe method of warfare; he did not believe in wasting lives in dashing assaults when the objective could be obtained less swiftly, but with less expenditure of manpower, by means of pick and shovel and artillery. Pratt exposed himself to much criticism, and his leisurely approach even excited the ridicule of his antagonists in Te Arei, who, however, came at last to realize the certainty of defeat by the inexorable sap, the covering redoubts, and the pounding artillery. The advance upon Huirangi and then upon Te Arei was enlivened by many skirmishes, which at times became sharp engagements involving hundreds of rifles. The work of the Royal Engineers, with the troops of the line pressed into the role of sappers and miners, was, however, the great feature of the move across the plains of Kairau and Huirangi. These operations were directed by Colonel T. R. Mould, R.E., the designer of numerous redoubts and blockhouses in Taranaki and Waikato.

Colonel Mould's fort-building in the Waitara campaign had begun with the construction of a strong stockade on the ridge on which the Puke-ta-kauere and Onuku-kaitara pas had stood.

On the 14th January Major-General Pratt with a force of between six hundred and seven hundred men—12th, 14th, 40th, and 65th detachments, and a Naval Brigade—marched from Waitara towards Huirangi, and came under a heavy fire from the Maoris, who had manned their rifle-pits and trenches between Kairau and Huirangi. The guns from the Kairau (No. 1 Redoubt) and the rifles of the troops replied briskly, and under fire the Royal Engineers, with working-details, commenced the construction of a redoubt (No. 2) about 500 yards on the right front of the Kairau Redoubt. This work was 26 yards square inside the parapet, which was 7 feet high and averaged 6 feet in thickness. Banquettes were formed and a barbette raised for the howitzer on the right-front salient angle. The redoubt, finished in eleven hours, was garrisoned by one hundred and twenty men, with artillery.

On the 18th January the General moved out again to the front with a force a thousand strong, and under an all-day fire from the Maori rifle-pits a third redoubt was begun to cover the British advance towards Huirangi. This field-work, soon to become celebrated for a daring attack made by the Kingites, was built about 400 yards to the left front of No. 2. It consisted when complete of three squares closely placed en echelon; the middle redoubt was 30 yards each way inside the parapet. The parapets of all these works were made with earth and fern in alternate layers, after the Maori manner. Two howitzers were mounted in the main redoubt, and an 8-inch gun on the front face of the right wing. A garrison of about three hundred men, including the headquarters of the 40th Regiment under Colonel Lesile, was placed in No. 3.

While the General was steadily making his way across the Kairau plateau, the Taranaki and Ngati-Ruanui Tribes on the southern section of the coast dug themselves in very strongly on the hills at Waireka, and completely barred the roads by a remarkably skilful system of trenches, rifle-pits, and stockaded pas. Several expeditions from New Plymouth during the summer of 1861 engaged the natives at Waireka Hill, Burton's Hill, and the vicinity of Omata, but without serious casualties on either side. The Rifle Volunteers and Militia, under Herbert, Stapp, and Atkinson, were conspicuously useful in the trying work of patrols and reconnaissances until the end of the war. One affair, though not an official expedition, demonstrated the pluck and coolness of the Volunteers. Fourteen young men, under Sergeant E. Hollis, were gathering peaches one Sunday morning (3rd March, 1861) at Brooklands (now Mr. Newton King's property), near the town, when they were ambuscaded by about double their number of Maoris, who gave them a volley from the cover of a ditch and hedge at very close range. Volunteer Edward Messenger, brother of Ensign W. B. Messenger, was shot dead, and a comrade, W. Smart, severely wounded. The lads returned the fire, recovered their comrade's body and arms, and kept off the Maoris until assistance arrived from the town.

IT WAS THE practice of the troops to stand to their arms an hour before daybreak as a precaution against surprise. In the raw and chilly early morning of the 23rd January, 1861, the Regulars in the Kairau and Huirangi redoubts turned out as usual and stood in silence awaiting sunrise. Suddenly a single gunshot came from the fern 100 yards to the right of No. 1 Redoubt. This was a Maori signal-gun. The next instant the fringes of the murky plain were a blaze of fire, and the roar of musketry ran along the fern on the right and left flanks of the British posts. The soldiers replied with their Enfields—though there was nothing but the flashes at which to fire—and the gloomy morning, so quiet a few moments before, was thunderous with the bellow and crackle of musketry. Presently the firing near No. 1 Redoubt and No. 2 Redoubt ceased: it was a Maori feint to divert attention from the real attack. No. 3 (400 yards in advance of No. 2) was the objective, and as the excited soldiers in the rear field-works peered through the darkness they saw the advanced redoubt, which had only been completed by the 40th Regiment the previous evening, all at once encircled by a darting ring of flame that lit up the darkness like a blaze of tropical lightning, followed by an incessant roll of small-arms fire and presently the explosion of hand-grenades.

The garrison of No. 3 Redoubt (the headquarters of the 40th, under Colonel Leslie) had a crowded half-hour of fighting before dawn that morning. While the natives in the rifle-pits and the British trenches that flanked the line of advance were making ready to open their feint attack, a picked party of a hundred and forty warriors—Ngati-Haua, Ngati-Maniapoto, Waikato, and Te Atiawa—crept up to the redoubt, and about half of them silently entered the ditches on the left and right faces of the redoubt—the two unflanked sides. Their leaders were Manga (Rewi Maniapoto) and Epiha Tokohihi, from Kihikihi, and Hapurona. Some were armed with double-barrel guns or with rifles; others carried only long-handled tomahawks for close-quarters combat. They were

The storming-party stealthily began to cut steps with their tomahawks in the earth of the newly scarped parapet. When they were about to attempt the assault a sentry of the 40th fired at a Maori just outside the trench. A return shot killed the soldier, and the next moment the 40th were at grips with their determined foes. The ditch was crowded with Maoris, some firing at the line of heads above them, some furiously springing up the scarp and slashing at the soldiers with their tomahawks. The men fired into the trench as fast as they could load their Enfields, and others threw short-fuse shells into the ditch. Lieutenant Jackson, of the 40th, was leaning over the parapet firing his revolver into the mass of Maoris when he was shot through the forehead. The attackers (including the supports in the fern) and the garrison were nearly equal in numbers.

Although the British musketry and the exploding shells and hand-grenades spread death and wounds among the warriors in the trench, the Maori forlorn hope stuck to their work tenaciously. Again and again those daring spirits essayed to scale the straight-cut scarp, only to be shot down or bayoneted by the soldiers. So the struggle went on until reinforcements came doubling up and cleared the ditch of all but the dead and dying.

A vivid account of the morning's fight is contained in an unpublished manuscript written by Colonel H. Stretton Bates, then a young ensign, who was an eye-witness of the combat. Colonel Bates was in No. 1 Redoubt with his regiment, the 65th—the “Royal Tigers”—nearly all stalwart Irishmen with experience of more than one combat. His story, after narrating the beginning of the attack, describes the despatch of reinforcements and the final scenes:—

Manuscript narrative by the late Colonel H. S. Bates, of England, lent by his son, Mr. H. D. Bates, of Wanganui. Colonel Bates served with the 65th Regiment in New Zealand for several years, and was a staff interpreter under General Cameron in the Waikato in 1863.

“It was evident to us in No. 1 that the surprise had failed, but the defenders of No. 3 were hard pressed. The heavy firing continued, and the cheers of the gallant 40th mingled with the wailing cries of the attackers as they adjured each other to be brave (‘Kia toa’) and to slay the soldiers. But hark to the clear notes of a bugle ringing out in the morning air from the advanced post! We recognize the regimental call of the ‘Royal Tigers,’ followed by the advance. ‘Whew!’ muttered our Colonel Wyatt, ‘the 40th are calling for trumps’; and he ordered two companies of the ‘Tigers’ and one of the 12th, a detachment of which corps was with us in No. 1, to proceed at once to the help of the defenders of No. 3 Redoubt. The great bearded fellows, looking more like bushrangers than soldiers, fell in without a moment's delay, and ere the bugle had sounded a third appeal for help the column of fours was out of the redoubt and, under command of the senior captain, who was destined to receive a brevet majority for his morning's work, was making its way over the plain at a steady double. The remainder of the ‘Tigers,’ leaning over the parapet, watched the drama which was being enacted in front. As the three companies passed No. 2 Redoubt the occupants gave them a loud cheer, and in a few minutes more the advanced redoubt was reached.

“Day was now breaking; the fire was not so continuous as before, and what there was came mostly from the front face. Loud cheers rose from the 40th, and they called out to the reinforcers that the ditch in front of the redoubt was crammed with natives, but that the thickness of the parapet and want of flanking defence prevented their rifles being sufficiently depressed so as to reach the Maoris. There was a hasty consultation, and then the ‘Tigers’ descended into the wide ditch on the right of the work, and the company of the 12th Regiment into the ditch on the left, and both parties made their way towards the front of the redoubt.

“The ditch in front was crowded with the attackers. Poor fellows! they had felt confident of surprising the soldiers, and had evidently come to stay, for they had brought provision of Indian corn with them. Better that they had brought ladders or bundles of faggots to enable them to scale the parapet. One of their number was a native catechist, who repeated prayers incessantly from the Church of England prayer-book all through the struggle. His blood-stained prayer-book was found on his body. Though the warriors were comparatively sheltered from musketry fire as they huddled together in the ditch, still ghastly wounds were being inflicted, as the soldiers lighted and flung over hand-grenades amongst the crowded mass, while some of the artillerymen, finding it impossible to depress the muzzles of the guns sufficiently, got shells and, having cut short the fuses, ignited them and rolled them over the parapet, so that falling they exploded, spreading havoc around them. In vain the doomed wretches tried to pick up the spluttering hand-grenades and fling them back; the natives were packed too closely together, and the horrid things exploded amongst them with grim result. The Maoris feared to quit the ditch and endeavour to retire, as to do this would have exposed them to the fire of the rifles which lined the parapet; besides, amongst the warriors were many of the warlike Ngati-Maniapoto and other Waikato tribes, whose motto was ‘Death before dishonour.’ On came the ‘Tigers’ along the side ditch. It was evident that a volley would greet the head of the little column as it turned the corner to make its way into the front ditch which the attackers occupied.

“Half a dozen guns ring out and down goes our leading man with a bullet through his forehead. A comrade staggers against the counterscarp, for a ball has struck him in the face and carried away part of his upper lip and some of his teeth. But on go the ‘Tigers’ with a wild shout. For a moment the leading files cross bayonet with tomahawk. Ugly wounds are inflicted by the whirling tomahawks and thrusting bayonets, and then the dusky warriors turn and scramble as best they can out of the ditch, endeavouring to gain the shelter of the fern and the forest. The occupants of the redoubt fire one round at the fugitives, and then hold their hand to avoid hitting the ‘Tigers’ and the 12th men, who have scrambled up the counterscarp of the ditch and are now scattered in pursuit of the flying foes. There is no time to reload, and the bayonet does its deadly work. The swifter-footed of the fugitives gain the shelter of the bush, and then the bugles sounding the ‘Recall’ check the pursuit. The repulse is complete.

“The dead and wounded are collected. There are between forty and fifty natives left on the field, and most of the wounds are mortal.

“Amongst the wounded was one youth of striking aspect. His long black hair and regular features would have made him appear effeminate but for the length of limb and splendid muscular development which caught the eye even as he lay on the ground, looking like a dusky Antinous. A good-natured soldier, one of the ‘Tigers,’ hearing him moaning something which sounded like ‘wai’ (water), was trying to make him drink from his canteen, saying, ‘Here, Jack, here's wai for you.’ The soldiers always addressed the Maoris as ‘Jack,’ and the Maoris the soldiers as ‘Tiaki’ also. My knowledge of the language enabled me to recognize that the wounded man was moaning ‘Kia maranga,’ meaning that he desired to be raised up. I noticed the small red mark in his chest which showed that a bullet had probably penetrated a lung, the bleeding from which was choking him. So kneeling down and putting my arms round him I raised him gently and supported him in a sitting position. He smiled and whispered, ‘It is well’; but the blood gushed from his mouth, and he fell heavily back in my arms as I knelt behind him. After a little he rallied, and I heard him panting as in whispers he endeavoured to repeat the Maori rendering of the Lord's Prayer, ‘Murua o matou hara’ (‘Forgive us our trespasses’). So far he got in an agonized and almost inaudible whisper, and then the blood poured from his mouth again; there was a short struggle, and the weight I was supporting became very heavy. Slowly I laid him down, and I am not ashamed to say that my eyes grew dim as I thought how desolate some heart in the far Waikato land would be when the morning's work was known.

“As I turned away I saw sitting near me, propped up with a bundle of rugs and mats, an elderly grey-haired Maori, whose name I afterwards heard was Marakai, or Malachi. (This was a man of Ngati-Mahutu.) He was gravely smoking, and had been watching the poor youth's end. From him I learned the lad's name, and that he was one of the Ngati-Maniapoto Tribe. The name I treasured in my memory, and some two years later, when I had been sent on a political mission to the warlike and resentful Ngati-Maniapoto, I found myself one night at the village from which the dead warrior came, and was able to relate to his mother the particulars of her son's death. Several of my then hearers confessed that they had been of the attacking-party on that 23rd January, and proudly exhibited the scars of bullet-wounds on their bodies. They told me that their original design had been to make a simultaneous attack on all three redoubts.

“Knowing that Marakai was wounded, I inquired if he was in much pain. With a courtly, half-sarcastic smile he inclined his head so as to direct my attention to his knee, which had been frightfully damaged by the explosion of a shell or hand-grenade, quietly remarking, ‘With a wound such as that one must suffer somewhat.’ Poor old fellow! What a noble man he was! A nobleman in fallen circumstances if you like, but always a noble man. I heard that he afterwards bore the amputation of his leg in the most plucky manner, but sank a day or two after the operation.

“Leaving the ghastly line of dead or dying Maoris I passed into the redoubt, where in a tent were lying our dead and wounded men. In his own tent was lying poor old Lieutenant Jackson, of the 40th, who had received a bullet through his forehead while leaning over the parapet at the beginning of the attack and firing his revolver at the natives.”

The British losses in the No. 3 Redoubt fight were five killed and eleven wounded. The Maoris lost quite fifty killed outright or mortally wounded. Among the dead were the chiefs Te Retimana and Paora te Uata (Ngati-Raukawa) and Ratima te Paewaka, of Waikato. Thirty-seven double-barrel and single-barrel guns and flint-lock muskets were found on the field, besides some stone meres and many tomahawks.

IN THE BEAUTIFUL midsummer weather the advance upon Te Arei was carried on under conditions which made soldiering life a pleasure in spite of the harassing tactics of the Maori snipers and the toil of redoubt-building. The tardy progress towards Hapurona's fortress was enlivened by numerous skirmishes, and there were casualties nearly every day. The flanks of the British advance were as animated as beehives with the native musketeers, whose guerilla activities kept the Regulars' covering-parties busy. No Volunteers or Militia were employed on these operations—their attention was concentrated on the patrolling of New Plymouth and its outskirts; but they could have been of assistance to the General in scouring the bush and working round to the rear of Te Arei. Pratt, however, made no attempt to engage his antagonists otherwise than by a frontal advance. Like his successor, General Cameron, he had a horror of bush warfare, in which the mobile Maori had so great an advantage over the soldier of the line. Yet there were not only settler-soldiers but many of the veterans of the 65th which could have been formed into an excellent forest-ranging corps, competent to follow the Maori into the roughest country if given a free hand and unhampered by the rigid Imperial methods. But it was not until 1863 that the value of such bush-fighting companies was recognized.

The advance was along a plateau of inconsiderable width with a very gentle upward slant inland to Te Arei, bordered on either flank by deep lateral valleys and ravines filled with karaka and rata trees and other timber. On the left these gullies fell steeply to the Waitara River; on the right they were enclosed by rolling hills, all densely wooded. In the rear was a forest country practically untrodden by Europeans; it was known, however, that in there were large plantations at Mataitawa and other well-sheltered retreats of the Atiawa. Day after day the Maoris in their fern-masked firing-pits on the edges of the plateau made practice with their tupara at the working-parties and the

The work on the long series of saps carried towards Huirangi and Te Arei was begun on the afternoon of the 22nd January, the day before the attack on No. 3 Redoubt. A double sap, termed also a “gabionade” in the Royal Engineers' technical phraseology, directed towards the centre of the Maori position, was commenced from the front of No. 3 Redoubt, and nearly 200 feet were excavated by dark. The working-party consisted of fifty men with five Royal Engineers. During the following eleven days the sap was steadily pushed forward, often under fire. The total length of this double sap dug was 768 yards, crossing the Maori rifle-pits when they abandoned the Huirangi position. The manuka gabions used were generally made at the Waitara camp by men of the Naval Brigade, assisted by soldiers, under the direction of Royal Engineers non-commissioned officers.

Another redoubt, called No. 4, was constructed on the 27th and 28th January, 310 yards ahead of the place where the sap was commenced. This was a small square work, measuring 13½ yards each side inside the parapet; it was garrisoned by fifty men.

A fifth redoubt, 24 yards square, was built 200 yards farther on, and 260 yards from the nearest of the Maori rifle-pits. It was garrisoned by a hundred men, with a 24-pounder howitzer.

On the afternoon of the 1st February the Maoris were discovered to have abandoned their position at Huirangi, falling back on the main fortress on the height at Te Arei, the north-west front of the famous old pa of Puke-rangiora, several hundreds of feet above the Waitara River. No. 6 Redoubt was built at Huirangi, its front slightly in advance of the abandoned Maori rifle-pits, in the middle of a field of high Scotch thistles; its left-front angle was close to a patch of dense bush extending to the left and front. A portion of this bush was cleared by axemen.

From the end of the double sap at Huirangi a short single sap, 90 yards, was carried on in the direction of Te Arei. Fifty men were employed in filling in the native rifle-pits to the right of No. 6 Redoubt; they extended for half a mile. No. 6 was garrisoned by the headquarters of the 65th Regiment, and a platform was laid for an 8-inch gun.

No. 7 Redoubt was now constructed (10th to 12th February), about 1,300 yards ahead of No. 6, and about 800 yards from the front of Te Arei pa. Its building was carried on on the first day under a sharp fire from a line of Maori rifle-pits in commanding positions, and from the pa itself. This fire was replied to by a line of British skirmishers, supported by four guns and howitzers. Captain Strange (65th Regiment) was mortally wounded. The redoubt was garrisoned by four hundred men, including the headquarters of the 40th Regiment. The front face and part of the left face were surmounted with gabions filled with earth, with sandbag loopholes at intervals to protect the interior from the natives' plunging fire. A man had been killed and an officer and a man wounded within the redoubt. A screen for an 8-inch gun was erected on the left flank of the redoubt; it was 12 yards in length, and was formed of two rows of gabions surmounted by a third row, all filled and backed up with earth from a ditch in the front. A parapet was also thrown up on the right of the redoubt outside as a cover for field-guns.

THIS CHANT, OFTEN heard even at the present day, embodied the passionate sentiment of nationalism and home rule for the Maoris which developed into a war-fever in Waikato. From first to last the wise and patriotic Wiremu Tamehana was a restraining force, and with him a few of the more temperate-minded of the Waikato chiefs, such as Patara te Tuhi, nephew of the old King Potatau te Wherowhero. Potatau was a firm friend of the pakeha, and, had he been a younger man, his undoubtedly great influence, born of his warrior reputation and his aristocratic position, probably would have prevented the Waikato throwing themselves into a test of arms with the Government. In the beginning of the King movement, as has already been explained, there was no desire to force a war. The great meetings at which the selection of Potatau as King was confirmed were attended by numerous Europeans. Government officials, missionaries, and traders were alike welcome guests at Ngaruawahia, Rangiaowhia, and the other centres of the home-rulers. The more intelligent of the Maoris saw clearly that there was nothing to be gained by a rupture of relations with the pakeha. But the irritation caused by the inevitable friction over European encroachment, the treatment of the natives by the lower class of whites, the reluctance of the authorities to grant the tribes a reasonable measure of self-government, and, lastly, the sympathy with Taranaki and the bitterness engendered by the loss of so many men in the Waitara campaign, all went to mould the Waikato and their kinsmen into a powerful foe of the Colonial Government.

In the beginning the natural desire of the natives for a better system of government could have been turned to beneficial account by a prescient Administration. At a large meeting at Paetai, near Rangiriri, on the 23rd April, 1857, Potatau, Te Wharepu, and other chiefs asked the Governor, Colonel Gore Browne, for a Magistrate and laws, and runanga or tribal councils. To this request the Government responded by the experimental establishment of civil institutions in the Waikato, under Mr. F. D. Fenton, afterwards Judge of the Native Land Court. The new machinery, however, was not given time to develop into a useful and workable system before Mr. Fenton was recalled, and the field was left free for the exponents of Maori independence to develop their own schemes of government.

An account has been given in a previous chapter of the first meetings in connection with the establishment of the Maori kingdom. The Paetai meeting of 1857 was a highly picturesque gathering. The Lower Waikato people were assembled to meet their guests from up-river, the Ngati-Haua and Ngati-Maniapoto and some of the Waikato hapus, who came sweeping down the river in a grand flotilla of nearly fifty canoes. Wiremu Tamehana and his Ngati-Haua set up on the marae or village campus the flag of the newly selected King; this ensign was white, with a red border and two red crosses, symbolic of Christianity; it bore the words “Potatau Kingi o Niu Tireni.” The speeches breathed intense patriotism. “I love New Zealand,” cried one old blanketed chief. “Let us have order, so that we may increase like the white man. Why should we disappear from the land? Let us have a king, for with a king there will be peace among us. New Zealand is ours—I love it.” Another, Hoani Papita, of the Rangiaowhia people, Ngati-Hinetu and Ngati-Apakura, made an eloquent plea for independence and nationalism. “Fresh water is lost when it mingles with the salt,” he said. “Let us retain our lands and be independent of the pakeha.” And he began the chant which heads this chapter, “Ka ngapu te whenua.” The whole two thousand natives gathered around took up the song and chanted it in a tremendous chorus. That old heart-cry of nationalism still holds power to electrify the Maori.

IN THREE MONTHS after the firing of the first shot in the Waikato War the whole of the able-bodied male population of Auckland between the ages of sixteen and fifty-five was on active service, bearing arms and doing duty as regular soldiers. The same conditions prevailed in Taranaki. The military expenditure of the Government was about £12,000 per month, and was on an increasing scale as the campaign developed. In addition to the equipment and pay of the Volunteers and Militia, a flotilla of armoured river-steamers and small gunboats was provided, and a field battery of six 12-pounder Armstrong guns. All this expense devolved upon the Colonial Government, besides a liability of £40 per head per annum to the Imperial Government on account of the Regular troops employed in the war. These British troops ultimately numbered about ten thousand. In a memorandum by the Defence Minister, Mr. Thomas Russell, the Volunteers and Militia on duty in the Auckland District were stated to total 3,176. The Cavalry Volunteers numbered 188, and the Rifle Volunteers 150. The local corps organized and armed were: Waiuku, 70; Mauku, 70; Pukekohe, 40; Wairoa, 60; Papakura Valley, 20; Henderson's Mill, 40; North Shore, 125; other places, 422: making a total of 847.

In addition to these Volunteers and Militia there were colonial permanent forces enrolled for the war, consisting chiefly of regiments of military settlers recruited in Australia in 1863 by Mr. Dillon Bell (Native Minister), Mr. Gorst, and Colonel Pitt. The 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Regiments of Waikato Militia raised in this way gradually relieved the Auckland Volunteers and Militia of the duties at the various posts on the Great South Road. Each regiment consisted of ten companies of 100 men. Out of the land confiscated from the Maoris each officer and man was entitled to a farm section, ranging from 400 acres for a field officer to 50 acres for a private. By October, 1863, there were about two thousand five hundred of these military settlers from Victoria, New South Wales, and Otago on permanent service in the field.

A highly useful arm of the colonial service was the Colonial Defence Force Cavalry, armed with sword, carbine, and revolver. There were two troops of Nixon's Cavalry, as this corps was locally called, in the Auckland District. There were also troops in Hawke's Bay, at Wellington, and at Wanganui; the total strength of the regiment was 375. In the Imperial Transport Service, receiving colonial pay, there were, when the war was at its height, 1,526 officers and men, with 2,244 draught animals. Captain Jackson's corps of Forest Rangers, numbering sixty, was soon augmented by a second company. Major-General Galloway was appointed to the command of the colonial forces, and gave his services to the colony gratuitously.

The Auckland Militia of the first class, unmarried men of between the ages of sixteen and forty, were first called out for active service on the 23rd June, 1863. There were no conscientious objectors in those days (or if there were they did not raise their voices), and any shirkers were dealt with severely. The first draft was 400 men, some of whom were despatched to the main camp at Otahuhu, and thence in companies to the various outposts as far as Drury. Others were retained for city patrol duty; as the war went on the older and married men relieved them of the town guard work and left the first class available for field service. The citizen recruits, drawn from all classes and occupations, were drilled in the Albert Barracks ground by the Regular Army instructors; morning after morning the drill was continued until the raw material was considered sufficiently advanced in the elements of infantry work to be despatched to Otahuhu. The duties of soldiering fell very severely upon many of the towns-people called upon to make heavy marches and live under rough camp conditions in the depth of winter, and to toil at redoubt-building and trench-digging. The large camp at Otahuhu was rather badly organized in the first hurry of war preparations, and the inferior hutting and feeding of the troops caused much sickness. The pay was half a crown a day with rations; this was increased by a shilling a day at the front.

The citadel of Auckland, Fort Britomart, stood on a commanding promontory, faced with pohutukawa-fringed cliffs 40 feet high. Major Bunbury and other commanders in Auckland had partly fortified the position, which was considerably strengthened by Major-General G. Dean-Pitt, a Peninsular War veteran, who commanded the forces in the colony from 1848 to 1851. The parapet was revetted with sods reinforced with layers of fern—an idea borrowed from the Maori pa-builder—and pierced with embrasures on the sea faces. On the land face there was a deep ditch in front of the parapet, with a stockade close to the

These defences were not alone intended for defence against Maori attack. There were even in that day fears of a foreign war which would involve the British soldiers; the aggressive

The protection of the South Auckland outlying settlements and of the military road through the forest to the nearest point of the Waikato River necessitated the construction of many fortified posts, most of which were earthwork redoubts, others timber stockades. At Otahuhu, the principal field headquarters, there was a large fortified camp. At Howick, which was considered a vulnerable position owing to its proximity to the Wairoa Ranges, and open as it was to attack by war-canoe crews from the shores of the Thames Gulf, a field-work was erected. A large earthwork redoubt, called “St. John's Redoubt,” after an officer placed in charge of it, was built between Papatoetoe and Papakura. The Village of Papakura was protected by the erection on the Auckland side of the settlement of a small redoubt, which stood near the junction of the Great South Road and the Wairoa Road, and by the fortification of the Presbyterian church at the other side of the village. The redoubt was the camp of the local Volunteers and the Militia and a party of the 65th Regiment. The church was made bullet-proof by packing sand between the outer wall and the lining, a method used in most of the blockhouses built in the Maori campaigns. The walls were loopholed for rifle-fire. A correspondent, describing the remarkable sight of the country churches being stockaded and pierced for rifle-fire, remarked of the Papakura church, loopholed and bastioned, that it was a “visible transubstantiation of a bulwark of faith into a bulwark of earthly strength.”

At Kirikiri, on the Papakura—Wairoa Road, a redoubt was thrown up on a commanding site two miles from Papakura; this came to be known as “Ring's Redoubt,” after the captain of the 18th Royal Irish Regiment, who garrisoned it with his company in the early part of the war. A short distance farther along the Wairoa Road the “Travellers' Rest,” an inn, store, and farmhouse, combined, kept by Mr. W. B. Smith—a sturdy veteran of the Californian diggings and an old sailor—was put into a state of defence, and the owner and his family occupied it all through the war. The building was reinforced with heavy timbers, and rifle-slits were cut in the walls. The inn was the headquarters of Jackson's Forest Rangers during the early part of the war, and some of the Colonial Defence Force Cavalry were stationed there.

The Wairoa South Settlement (now Clevedon), eight miles from the mouth of the Wairoa River, was defended by the building of a redoubt on the left bank (west side) of the river and a stockade on the opposite side. The redoubt, a square work with flanking bastions, was built on Mr. Thorpe's farm. It was held by Major (afterwards Colonel) William C. Lyon and two hundred men, mostly Militia from Auckland. The stockade on the east bank was a formidable-looking post, a structure of heavy palisade timbers. It was 60 feet square, with very thick walls, bullet-proof and loopholed. Inside the stockade a corrugated-iron house, 40 feet by 16 feet, was built. This place, designed for from fifty to sixty men, was built by Mr. Snodgrass for the Auckland Provincial Government, and was occupied by the armed settlers of the district, the Wairoa Rifle Volunteers. Later, a redoubt was built lower down the river, on Mr. Salmon's property near the mouth of the Wairoa.

At Drury (the Tauranga of the Maoris), the head of navigation for cutters from Onehunga, there was a large military establishment, and a redoubt was built on the highest part of the settlement. AT Pukekohe East (the present site of Pukekohe Town was then dense bush) the little Presbyterian church was enclosed by a trench and a stockade of logs laid horizontally. At Mauku the English church was stockaded and loopholed. Major Speedy's house, “The Grange,” at Mauku, was loopholed and garrisoned by the settlers for defence; later, a stockade was built at the landing-place. A similar place of defence was provided at the Waiuku Settlement.

In many instances the settlers in the bush districts refused to leave their homes, and remained to brave the dangers of life on a troubled frontier.

From Drury the Great South Road through the forest to Pokeno was safeguarded by redoubts at short intervals. The principal posts were at Sheppard's Bush (Ramarama); Martin's Farm, on the plain a short distance north of Pukewhau Hill (now Bombay); Baird's Hill stockade, at the north end of Williamson's Clearing

At the few settlements on the Coromandel Peninsula there was some danger of attack from the Ngati-Paoa and other Kingite natives. A veteran Forest Ranger, Mr. William Johns, of Auckland, recalls the fact that temporary defences were provided at Cabbage Bay, under the western side of the Moehau Range, where there was a large sawmill owned by an Auckland firm. Johns, who had been a sailor and served in the Royal Navy, was early in 1863 in charge of a cutter, the “Miranda,” trading between Auckland and the Cabbage Bay mill. The natives in the district came under suspicion, as it was believed they would join the Kingites, and so one day the master of the cutter found twenty stand of arms (“Brown Besses” and a few rifles) delivered on the cutter by order of Colonel Balneavis, then Adjutant-General, for the defence of the mill workers and the other residents of Cabbage Bay. The guns were landed at the bay, but it was not many days before they were all stolen by the Maoris, who went on the war-path rejoicing. The mill hands built a stockade for the defence of the place, encircling the sawmill with a palisade of 3-inch planks 12 or 14 feet high. However, the men were soon withdrawn.

At Raglan, on the Whaingaroa Harbour, west coast, there was fear that the small European settlement would be attacked by the Kingites from Kawhia or inland. Many of the settlers sent their families to Onehunga by the trading-vessels, but some of the women and children remained. A place of defence was considered necessary, and Mr. Richard Todd, a Government surveyor (who was shot on Pirongia Mountain by the Kingites in 1870), took charge of the work of fortification, and employed a number of friendly natives in digging a trench around the Courthouse and gaol, and in making rifle-pits to protect the principal houses. The entrenchment defending the Government buildings took in about an acre of ground. The main building was strengthened with thick timbers, and was loopholed. Early in 1864 a redoubt was built at the head of Raglan Harbour by Colonel Waddy's expeditionary force (50th Regiment and three hundred Waikato Militia).

The military road through the forest and over the range from Drury to the Manga-tawhiri River was constructed in 1862 by a body of Imperial troops, the 12th and the 14th Regiments at the Pokeno end, and the 65th and 70th at the Drury end, with some Royal Engineers to direct the details of the work. Lieut.-General Cameron, in execution of Grey's plan for the employment of the troops in this work, fixed his headquarters at Drury Camp. Colonel Sir James Alexander (14th) was in command at Pokeno where the Queen's Redoubt was built. The troops in December, 1861, marched along the Maori track over

ON THE 9TH JULY, 1863, the Government issued an order requiring all natives living in the Manukau district and on the Waikato frontier north of the Manga-tawhiri to take the oath of allegiance to the Queen and to give up their arms, and warning the Maoris that those refusing to range themselves on the side of the British must retire to the Waikato. Those not complying with this instruction were to be ejected from their settlements. This ultimatum was followed by the following Proclamation sent to the Kingites summarizing the reasons which prompted the military measures adopted by the Government:—

CHIEFS OF WAIKATO,—

Auckland, 11th July, 1863.

G. Grey, Governor.

On the 12th July General Cameron detailed a force from his army encamped at the Queen's Redoubt at Pokeno to make the first advance into the Waikato. The second battalion of the 14th Regiment, under Lieut.-Colonel Austen, crossed the swamp-fringed Manga-tawhiri Stream at the termination of the military road, and took up a position to the left, on the site of an old pa on a hill above the river, a spur of the Koheroa Range. A few days later this body was reinforced by detachments of the 12th and 70th Regiments, and was now five hundred strong. Three field-works were thrown up on the hill.

The process of ejection of those natives who could not bring themselves to abandon their fellow-countrymen was now carried out at the Manukau, Papakura, Patumahoe, Tuakau, and other districts between Auckland and the frontier waters. The principal tribe evicted was Ngati-Pou, who had a settlement on the right (north) bank of the Waikato at Tuakau, with large cultivations of food crops and fruit-groves. In the middle of July Mr. Dillon Bell, Native Minister, and Mr. Gorst carried out a rather perilous mission in the forested ranges above Papakura, at a small settlement called Te Aparangi, on the Kirikiri Stream, about two miles east of Papakura. Here a considerable number of Maoris had congregated, and, as most of these were known to be Kingites in politics, it was considered necessary to remove them south of the border-line. Te Aparangi was the village of the old chief Ihaka Takaanini and his people of Te Akitai and Te Uri-a-Tapa, hapus of the Ngati-Tamaoho; another rangatira of Te Akitai was Mohi te Ahi-a-te-ngu. The permanent population of the settlement was small, but some scores of young men from the Auckland side who had decided to join the Kingites had made it their rendezvous, and were believed to be fortifying themselves in the bush. Just above Te Aparangi on the foothills of the ranges is a level-topped hill known as Puke-kiwi-riki, formerly a strongly trenched fort belonging to the Ngati-Tamaoho Tribe. The ancient pa presented a tempting site for a freebooting stronghold. Mr. Bell gave the Akitai and their kin the choice of making a declaration of allegiance to the Queen or of going unmolested to the Waikato. He urged the former course, saying that the Government had no wish to drive them from their land. Mohi spoke in appreciation of Mr. Bell's generosity in going unarmed among the Maoris at such a time to carry a message of peace and good will, and declared that if the Minister had arrived a few days earlier with such an offer he and most of his people would have remained peacefully in their homes. But the Governor had crossed the Manga-tawhiri and invaded Waikato, and the Ngati-Tamaoho hapus, who previously had opposed Rewi and his war-party, now felt it their duty to join Waikato.

When the Minister and Mr. Gorst rode back to Drury that afternoon they heard the news of the first blow of the war. A settler named Michael Meredith and his young son had been found tomahawked on their bush farm near Ramarama, about four miles from Drury; they were out fencing when the marauders caught them. Some blamed Ihaka's people, but wrongly; the killing was the deed of a party of young men who sought to distinguish themselves by drawing first blood. A force of Nixon's Cavalry (Otahuhu troop, numbering thirty) and the 65th Regiment (three hundred) invaded Te Aparangi and took prisoner Ihaka and a number of others, chiefly old men and women and children, but the young armed men escaped and joined their relatives at Waikato.

Canoe-paddles dipped and flashed all along the broad Waikato as the Upper Waikato tribes and Ngati-Maniapoto, Ngati-Haua, and Ngati-Raukawa came hurrying down the river, eager to measure their strength with the pakeha. There were men even from Taranaki and the Upper Whanganui among the war-parties. Before the main body of the Kingites had had time to concentrate on the south side of the Manga-tawhiri the first encounter of the war was precipitated by an advance force of Waikato, numbering between two and three hundred, under Te Huirama, a near relative of King Tawhiao. Te Huirama had a fortified position at Te Teoteo, an old Maori pa on a bluff immediately overlooking the Whanga-marino Stream, which joins the Waikato a short distance above the present Township of Mercer. From this point the range of the hills on which Te Teoteo stands trends in a crescent, the northern horn curving in again towards the Waikato at the point where the Manga-tawhiri comes down into the swamps near the main river. Near the tip of the northern horn of the hills was the British advanced camp, under Lieut.-Colonel Austen. Te Huirama and his men hastened to provoke an attack from the British troops, and dug a succession of trenches across the narrow ridge.

The movements of Waikato were observed from the 14th Regiment's camp on the south side of the Manga-tawhiri on the forenoon of the 17th July. Lieut.-Colonel Austen immediately ordered his battalion under arms, and moved out to meet the Maoris, followed by a detachment of the 12th and 70th Regiments. General Cameron, from the Queen's Redoubt, overtook the column on its march to the ranges, over low hills covered with fern and manuka.

IN SEPTEMBER OF 1863 the Koheriki and other parties of Kingites who roamed the ranges of Wairoa South and the Hunua turned their attention to the scattered settlements on the lower part of the river. They pillaged the houses of outlying farmers who had gone into the stockade opposite the Galloway Redoubt or into Papakura, and scouted the edge of the bush awaiting an opportunity to cut off settlers returning to their sections. Major Lyon, a Crimean veteran, was in command of the Militia district, with his quarters in the Galloway Redoubt. To relieve the Militia garrison doing duty in the redoubt, detachments of the Auckland Rifle Volunteers were sent down to the Wairoa in the Government armed steamer “Sandfly.” It was on this service that the city Volunteers first engaged the Maoris; their previous duty had chiefly been in garrison in Auckland, varied by service at Otahuhu and Drury, and an expedition as part of a “Flying Column” with the 70th Regiment, encamped near St. John's Redoubt, Papatoetoe.

On the 15th September some of the garrison when playing cricket, and a fatigue-party getting slabs, near the stockade, were fired on at a distance of about 150 yards, and heavy firing followed. Two days later a detachment of fifty-five men led by Major Lyon marched up the valley towards Otau in pursuit of a large raiding-party which had been plundering settlers' houses on the outskirts of the village. In the skirmish which followed the Volunteers behaved with steadiness and judgment, and inflicted some casualties on the Kingites. Lyon extended his small force across the face of the hill surrounding the native village and kept up a heavy fire, to which the Maoris replied by independent firing as well as by volleys from numbers of men formed into large squares. Each square, having delivered a volley, fell back behind the whares to reload.

Before daylight on the morning following this engagement Major Lyon marched from the Galloway Redoubt with a force composed of fifty men from the Auckland Rifle Volunteers and twenty Wairoa Rifles from the stockade, under Lieutenant Steele,

Among the Maoris was the young half-caste woman Heni te Kiri-karamu, who had gone on the war-path to share the fortunes of her brother Neri (Hone te Waha-huka), of the Koheriki. Describing the surprise attack Heni said, “We had intended to march down and attack the pa of the soldiers on the Wairoa, but they forestalled our plan. We camped in some deserted whares near the river-bank, and did not expect an early-morning visit, so there was a panic when we were awakened at daybreak by a terrific volley fired into our huts. The troops had lined up on the opposite side of the Wairoa, and at short range volleyed at us; it was a wonder that any of us escaped. Instead of making a stand we retreated rapidly into the forest. I carried my baby on

As the river was still flooded, the European force could not cross to follow up the Maoris, so Major Lyon marched his men back to the redoubt. Later on in the day twenty men of the 18th Regiment, under Lieutenant Russell, were despatched to occupy the position in front of the Maori camp which had been held in the morning, while the commanding officer, with seventy-five of all ranks, marched by a track on the other side of the river to take the settlement in the rear. The troops found, however, that the natives had evacuated the place.

In these skirmishes the Maoris lost eight men killed.

On the 13th October a party of the Koheriki retaliated with an attack on unarmed Europeans within a short distance of the Galloway Redoubt. An elderly man named Job Hamlin was killed, and his companion, a boy named Joseph Wallis, about thirteen years of age, was terribly tomahawked, but by a miracle survived his wounds. Joseph Wallis's people were shifting their property to town from their farmhouse near the Wairoa Road, for fear of the Maoris, and Job Hamlin was employed in carting the goods, which were loaded into a bullock-dray. The boy was riding on horseback, and Hamlin was driving the team. Suddenly some Maoris ran out from the bush and fired on them. The boy's horse refused to go on, and when he got off it to lead it, or to run the Maoris chased him. One of them caught him and delivered two tomahawk-cuts crosswise on the side of his head and face, inflicting an X-shaped wound. The top of his head was also smashed in with the butt of a gun. The soldiers at the redoubt ran up on hearing the firing, and found him lying there apparently dead; he was taken to the camp hospital at Papakura. Job Hamlin was found dead, tomahawked. The Maoris had left Wallis for dead. He recovered, and he is to-day farming in the Waikato, but he has suffered all his life from the gun-butt blow. He is the younger brother of Mrs. Harris, wife of the Hon. Major B. Harris, M.L.C.

On the 15th October an old soldier named Fahey and his wife, who were settled on a small bush farm near Ramarama, were out milking their cows when they were surprised by some of the Koheriki and shot and tomahawked. Mrs. Fahey was dead when found, and her husband died soon afterwards.

A party of twenty Koheriki natives on the 26th October raided Kennedy's Farm at Mangemangeroa, a few miles beyond Howick in the direction of Maraetai. Mr. Trust, who was in charge of the farm, was away in Auckland at the time, but there were three of his sons in occupation, besides two men, Courtenay and Lord. Ambrose Trust was the eldest son; the others, Richard and Nicholas Trust, were nine and twelve years of age. Lord, who was a workman on the place, was leaving the farmhouse at about 7 o'clock to go to his house when he saw a number of armed Maoris crouching in a ditch near the house. Lord and Courtenay escaped, but the latter was wounded. The Maoris fired through the front window. Ambrose Trust, taking his little brothers by the hand, ran out at the back and hurried in the direction of the nearest neighbours. The Maoris gave chase and shot down the two small boys. Ambrose, wounded in the shoulder, with difficulty escaped. The boys were tomahawked.

Major Peacocke, in command of the redoubt at Howick, started in pursuit of the Koheriki with some Militia, and a detachment of the Defence Force Cavalry and Otahuhu Volunteers, numbering fifty, took up quarters at Kennedy's Farm. Peacocke followed the track of the Maoris for some miles, but they had made off in the direction of the Hunua Ranges. H.M.S. “Miranda” steamed down the gulf in the afternoon with a force of a hundred Auckland Naval Volunteers and the same number of Rifle Volunteers, under Major de Quincey, and anchored off Mangemangeroa, but the raiders by that time had crossed the line of posts between Wairoa and Papakura, and there was therefore no chance of cutting them off.

IT WAS NECESSARY to organize a small fleet of protected vessels for the Waikato River in order to carry the war into the Kingite territory. The first craft procured was the little paddle-steamer “Avon,” of 40 tons, 60 feet in length, and drawing 3 feet of water. She had been trading out of Lyttelton before the purchase by the Government. She was brought up to the Manukau, and at Onehunga was armoured for the river campaign. She was armed with a 12-pounder Armstrong in the bows. The work of making the hull bullet-proof was carried out by the engineer, Mr. George Ellis (now of Auckland), who states that the “Avon” was converted into an armoured steamer by having iron plates bolted inside her bulwarks. These plates were ¼ inch thick and measured 6 feet by 3 feet. The wheel was enclosed by an iron house of similar-sized plates, with loop-holes. “I put the same thickness of iron protection on some smaller craft,” said Mr. Ellis. “These were armed barges for towing troops. The gunboat-barges were each 30 feet to 35 feet in length; they had been open fore-decked cutters in Auckland Harbour, and were taken over on trucks to Onehunga. I armoured them with lengths of bar iron, ¼ inch thick and 3 or 4 inches in width, along the outside of the hull from the gunwale to the water-line. In the bows of each boat was a gun-platform for a 12-pounder. The troops were put into these barges, which were towed up by the steamers. The bulwarks protected the soldiers quite well, but the barges were never attacked. There was another vessel, the ‘Gymnotus,’ but she was not armoured. She was a curious-looking craft like a long narrow canoe, and had been built for ferry service on Auckland Harbour. She was the first screw steamer on the Waikato, and was employed in carrying stores up the river.”

The paddle-wheeler “Avon” was the first steam-vessel to float on the waters of the Waikato. She was towed to Waikato Heads on the 25th July, 1863, by H.M.S. “Eclipse,” and Captain Mayne, the commander of that ship, took her inside the Heads and anchored that night eight miles below Tuakau. Next day, watched with intense excitement by the Maoris, friendlies, and hostiles alike, she reached the Bluff, otherwise known as Havelock—Te Ia-roa of the Maoris—just below the junction of the Manga-tawhiri with the Waikato. She was not fired upon, contrary to the expectations of her crew, who expected a volley from the southern bank of the river at the narrower parts. Mr. Strand, of Kohanga, assisted to pilot the “Avon” up the river.

On the 7th August Captain Sullivan (H.M.S. “Harrier”), senior naval officer in New Zealand, took the vessel on a reconnaissance up the river, and near Meremere she became a target for Maori bullets for the first time. A volley from some Maoris under cover on the river-bank was replied to with the 12-pounder Armstrong. On several occasions later in the campaign the “Avon” was under fire. This little pioneer of steam traffic on the Waikato proved an exceedingly useful vessel. When the army reached the Waipa Plains she carried stores up as far as Te Rore, on the Waipu; it was near there that Lieutenant Mitchell, R.N., of H.M.S. “Esk,” was killed on board her (February, 1864) by a volley from the east bank of the river. Lieutenant F.J. Easther, R.N., was in command of the “Avon.”

Mr. George Ellis, of Auckland, who was engineer of the “Avon,” says:—

“Lieutenant Mitchell's death occurred in this way: We carried out rather dangerous work in the later stages of the war when running up and down the Waipa River. Sometimes we took shots at anything that offered on the banks, and even landed to go pig-hunting. One very warm summer day, when steaming up the Waipa near Whatawhata, Mr. Mitchell remarked that it was too hot to remain in the iron wheel-house and that he would go outside; he declared that he would not be shot that day. He walked out on to the open part of the bridge-deck, and Lieutenant Easther (in command) and Midshipman Foljambe (father of the present Lord Liverpool) followed him. They had not been long there before a sudden volley was fired from the scrub-covered bank of the river—the east or proper right bank. The three officers were close together, with Mr. Mitchell in the middle, and, curiously, it was only the man in the middle who was hit. The volley was fired at an oblique angle. Mr. Mitchell was shot right through the breast, and died next day. We never saw a Maori, so thick was the cover on the bank.”

The “Avon,” besides plying on the Waipa, made a number of trips from Ngaruawahia to General Cameron's advanced camp at Pukerimu. This perilous passage through the hostile country was generally made at night. The “Avon” was never fired at on this part of the Waikato—usually called the Horotiu above Ngaruawahia—but there were anxious moments when she was passing through the narrows, where the high banks closely approach each other, above the present town of Hamilton.

The second steam-vessel of war placed on the Waikato was the “Pioneer”—a name that more properly might have been

The “Pioneer,” rigged for the voyage as a three-masted fore-and-aft schooner, left Sydney for the Manukau on the 22nd September, 1863, in tow of H.M.S. “Eclipse,” and, after a stormy voyage, reached Onehunga on the 3rd October. She was taken into the Waikato later in the month, after undergoing a few alterations, and until the end of the war was actively engaged in reconnaissances and conveyance of troops and supplies.

The four small armoured barges, or gunboats, mentioned by Mr. Ellis were taken into the Waikato about the same time, and each of them was placed under the command of a junior naval officer. Midshipman Foljambe (father of Lord Liverpool, recently Governor of New Zealand) was in charge of one of these boats, which he called the “Midge” it was manned by

Later in the war two stern-wheel iron gunboats, called the “Koheroa” and the “Rangiriri” were procured in Sydney, and were brought over in sections and put together at the Government's dockyard and stores depot at Putataka, Port Waikato. The high bulwarks of each steamer were pierced for rifle-fire, and there was a gun-position on the lower deck amidships. The “Koheroa” on one occasion towards the close of the campaign went up the Waikato River as far as a point near the present town of Cambridge.

Without this river flotilla General Cameron could not have carried on the Waikato campaign. The gunboats and the troops they carried enabled him to outflank the Maori positions at Meremere and Rangiriri, to capture Ngaruawahia unopposed, and to

Some small vessels were necessary for despatch and patrol work on the coast. The Colonial Government bought the s.s. “Tasmanian Maid,” 90 tons, renamed her the “Sandfly,” and armed her. Under the command of Captain Hannibal Marks, the “Sandfly” carried out useful work as a gunboat and despatch-vessel on the east coast, particularly in the Hauraki Gulf and in the coast operations near Maketu (1864). The “Sandfly” was protected against a sudden attack by canoe-crews by an arrangement of galvanized wire stretched between stanchions fitted on the bulwarks, thus forming a strong boarding netting. As a further defence, canvas mattress-cases stuffed with flax were provided, to be placed against the wire netting as a bullet-

FIFTY-SIX MILES SOUTH of Auckland the Main Trunk trains pass the station of Rangiriri. Nothing is to be seen there of the battle-ground of the 20th November, 1863—the view is of swamps and lagoons and a forest of weeping-willows bordering the Waikato River—but from the line a little distance north of the station one may see, a mile away, the hill where the engagement was fought. Westward of the railway is the still, sedge-bordered Lake Kopuwera, now a bird sanctuary, alive with wild duck and swans and wading-birds. This lagoon extends to the eastern base of a ridge marked by a dark plantation of pines: that is the spot where the Maoris of Waikato built their redoubt and dug out their rifle-pits and trenches to resist General Cameron. On the west side sweeps the Waikato River, here a full third of a mile wide. The Great South Road, running west of the railway, traverses the battlefield. Half a mile before reaching Rangiriri Township going south from Auckland the traveller motors or rides over the actual site of the entrenchments. The central redoubt of Rangiriri was just on the western side of the present road. The trenches and rifle-pits extended down the slopes on either side of the Waikato on the west and to the small lake on the east. The long double trench and parapet on the north (or front) face of the position can still be traced from the hilltop; it is about three-quarters of a mile in length, stretching from water to water. The redoubt in the centre of the works, the apex of the ridge, is indicated by a ditch still about 6 feet deep, with a parapet extending westward over the crown of the hill.

In the rear of the left centre of the main line and at right angles to it there was a line of trenches and rifle-pits parallel to the Waikato River, designed to resist troops landing from the war-steamers. In rear again and some distance from the pa there was a separate earthwork on the spur, the southern terminal of the ridge. This work General Cameron had observed on a reconnaissance, and arranged to attack it by landing a force from the steamers simultaneously with the land attack on front of the main position. The distance between the central redoubt on the ridge and the entrenchment in rear immediately overlooking the swamps and lakes was about 500 yards. The whole of the Kingite defences consisted of earthworks; no palisading was used.

General Cameron, after reconnoitring Rangiriri on the 18th November in the “Pioneer,” moved against the Kingite stronghold on the 20th. The whole of the river fleet was engaged in taking up sailors and soldiers from the Manga-tawhiri, while the troops encamped at Meremere and Takapau marched up along the right bank of the river. The “Pioneer” and “Avon” brought up the headquarters of the 40th Regiment, about 320 strong. In tow of the steamers were the four armoured gunboats filled with men. Commodore Sir William Wiseman commanded the flotilla. A Naval Brigade of a hundred men, under Lieutenant Alexander, of H.M.S. “Curaçoa,” marched up the bank with the infantry column. The force which assembled on the north front of the Rangiriri ridge at 3 o'clock in the afternoon after a hot march totalled about 850, made up as follows: Royal Navy, 100 officers and men, with a 6-pounder Armstrong; Royal Engineers, 15; Royal Artillery, 54, with two Armstrong guns; 12th Regiment, 112; 14th Regiment, 186; 65th Regiment, 386. On the river side of the operations much delay was caused, as the “Pioneer” became unmanageable and was not able to anchor at the point arranged, owing to the powerful current of the flooded Waikato and the strong wind blowing.

The attack began with an artillery bombardment at a range of about 700 yards. The three Armstrong guns shelled the Maori works for nearly two hours; a fire was also directed on the pa from the gunboats. The solid earthworks suffered very little from the shelling, but many casualties were inflicted on the Maoris crowded in their trenches and pits. The heaviest gun employed was a 12-pounder Armstrong. Then General Cameron, concluding that this artillery preparation was sufficient, ordered an assault of the the Kingite trenches. For this task the 65th Regiment was detailed. The leading company, under Lieutenant Toker, carried scaling-ladders and planks; with the stormers was a small detachment of the Royal Engineers, under Captain Brooke. Three companies of the 65th followed, with the 14th in support. The storming-party, with fixed bayonets at the charge, swept gallantly up the manuka-grown slope of the hill, and quickly forced the defenders out of the first line of entrenchments, but lost several men. A bullet smashed Captain Gresson's right arm.

The Kingite warriors fell back to defend the second line of rifle-pits, and for a few minutes held the position with great

THREE MILES TO the east of General Cameron's advanced post at Kihikihi the village of Orakau (“the Place of Trees”) lay among its fruit-groves and its cultivated fields, gently tilted to the quarter of greatest sunshine. This easy northward-looking slant of the country is a topographical feature particularly marked in these parts of the Waipa basin. The contour of Rangiaowhia, Orakau, and the neighbouring terrain of Otautahanga and Parawera is distinguished by a gradual upward slope to the south, and then a sudden break in a descent of a hundred or two hundred feet to the swamps and wooded levels. The Orakau settlement, a collection of thatched hamlets, was spread over half a square mile of the slopes and plain extending from the ridge called Karaponia, on the south, to the edge of the swamps and kahikatea forest through which the Manga-o-Hoi coiled in its sluggish course to join the Mangapiko at Te Awamutu on the west. These swamps and the creek separated the Orakau country from the higher land of Rangiaowhia. To the east the range of Maunga-tautari made a rugged skyline; to the south the blue mountains of Rangitoto marked the source of the Waipa River in the heart of the Ngati-Maniapoto country. The crest of the Orakau ridge broke off abruptly to a manuka swamp; from the northern part of this swamp watercourses drained into the Manga-o-Hoi, and from the southern side of the imperceptible watershed the eel-waters flowed toward the Puniu, a clear stream running over a gravelly bed in a westerly course two miles away.

Orakau was an idyllic home for the Maori. Like Rangiaowhia, it was a garden of fruit and root crops. On its slopes were groves of peaches, almonds, apples, quinces, and cherries; grape-vines climbed the trees and the thatched raupo houses. Potatoes, kumara, maize, melons, pumpkins, and vegetable-marrows were grown plentifully. Good crops of wheat were grown in the “fifties” and early “sixties” on the northward- sloping ground between Karaponia

The name Karaponia (“California”), bestowed upon the hill of the wheat-fields at Orakau, has a curious history. One or two natives of the district who had gone to Auckland in the early “fifties” shipped in a New Zealand vessel bound for San Francisco, where the gold-diggings of the Sacramento had created a demand for wheat, flour, and potatoes from the South Pacific colonies. After trying their luck at the diggings they found their way back to New Zealand, and when they reached their homes narrated their travels to California (Maorified into “Karaponia”). The word appealed to the native ear as a pleasant-sounding name—“He ingoa rekareka, ingoa ngawari,” says the Maori. So “Karaponia” presently came to be given to the wheat-farm terminating in the ridge on which the British guns were emplaced in 1864.

The people of Orakau were the Ngati-Koura hapu of Waikato, with a section of Ngati-Raukawa. The focus of the settlement was the Maori church, which stood on the crown of a knoll on the west side above a deep but narrow swamp, through which a small watercourse, the Tautoro, flowed toward the Manga-o-Hoi. (On this elevation Mr. W. A. Cowan, father of the present writer, built his homestead a few years after the battle.) Near the church the chief Te Ao-Katoa, of Ngati-Raukawa, lived before the war. He was a tohunga of the ancient Maori school; later he became a war-priest of the Hauhau fanaticism. To the north a short distance along the slopes were the whares and peach-groves of Te Kawakawa; beyond was Te Ngarahu, where under the acacias on the swamp-edge Dr. R. Hooper lived (1848–63); he had a half-caste wife, and received a small salary from the Government for dispensing medicines to the natives.

Such, before the war, was Orakau, soon to become a place of sadness and glory, the spot where the Kingites made their last hopeless stand for independence, holding heroically to nationalism and a broken cause.

There was a military expedition to Orakau a month before the construction of the pa to which the British troops laid siege. This was on the 29th February, 1864, when Colonel Waddy, of the 50th, led a column out from Te Awamutu, six miles away, with the object of dispersing some Maoris who it was reported were digging rifle-pits. The Forest Rangers were in the advance. A little more than half-way between Kihikihi and Orakau (at a spot where the present main road ascends a small hill above a narrow swamp) the Rangers encountered a newly built stake fence; a high bank rose behind it, and the crown of this bank looked suspicious to Von Tempsky. He ordered his men to throw down the fence, making a gap; they then rushed the bank. As expected, there was a line of rifle-pits there; the trenches were masked with branches of manuka stuck into the earth. The position was deserted, but a few shots were fired at long range by some Maoris, who fell back on Orakau. The village was abandoned, and the Rangers went through it in skirmishing order. The natives made no stand, but drew off eastward in the direction of Otautahanga, and the troops, after burning some of the whares, returned to Te Awamutu.

After the defeats at Rangiaowhia and Hairini, and the British occupation of Kihikihi, Ngati-Maniapoto with some of the other tribes gathered at Tokanui, below the group of terraced hills now called the “Three Sisters.” Thence they travelled southward to Otewa, on the Waipa, and from there they were called to a conference at Wharepapa, a large village about three miles south of the Puniu. The gathering discussed two questions: (1) Whether or not the war should be renewed; (2) whether a fortified position should be taken up on the northern side of the Puniu River or on the southern side. The decision to continue the war was unanimous. As to the site of the new fighting pa, it was resolved to confine the war, if possible, to the northern side of the Puniu. Rewi made a proposal to consult Wiremu Tamehana at the stronghold Te Tiki o te Ihingarangi, on the upper Waikato, on the question of the future conduct of the campaign. It was decided to send to the kingmaker and ask his advice, and Rewi and a small party of his men set out for Te Tiki. They marched by way of Ara-titaha, on the southern spur of Maunga-tautari. There they met an Urewera (Tuhoe) war-party, 140 strong, under the chiefs Piripi te Heuheu, Hapurona Kohi, Te Whenuanui (Ngakorau), the old warrior Paerau te Rangi-kai-tupu-ake, Te Reweti (of the Patu-heuheu), Ngahoro (of Ngati-Whare), and Hoani (Tuhoe and Patu-heuheu). Tuhoe proper numbered fifty; the Ngati-Whare and Patu-heuheu party was also fifty strong. The prophet Penewhio sent two tohungas, Hakopa and Tapiki, with the contingent. In the contingent were twenty men of the Ngati-Kahungunu Tribe, from the Wairoa, Hawke's Bay, under Te Waru Tamatea. The main body of this force, numbering a hundred, led by Piripi te Heuheu, had fought in some of the engagements of the war, including Hairini, and had helped to garrison Manga-pukatea and Paterangi. The Ngati-Kahungunu party did not arrive until after Hairini had been fought. About the end of 1863 Rewi had made a recruiting journey to the Rangitaiki country and to the Ngati-Whare and Tuhoe headquarters; there were old ties of friendship between his section of Ngati-Maniapoto and the Warahoe people and some of their Urewera kinsmen. Rewi visited Tauaroa, Ahikereru, and Ruatahuna, accompanied by Te Winitana Tupotahi and Hapi te Hikonga-uira, and aroused the fighting blood of the mountain tribes by his appeal for assistance and his chanting of two thrilling war-songs. The first was the Taranaki patriotic chant beginning “Kohea tera maunga e tu mai rara?” (“What is that mountain standing yonder?”) referring to Mount Egmont. The second was the song that began “Puhi kura, puhi kura, puhi kaka” (“Red plumes, red plumes, plumes of the kaka”), his favourite battle-chant. These impassioned war-calls intensely excited the young warriors of Tuhoe, and in spite of the advice of some of the old chiefs they raised a company for the assistance of the Maori King. Two casks of gunpowder were given to Rewi's party. One of these—presented by Harehare, Te Wiremu, and Timoti, of the Ngati-Manawa, at Tauaroa—had been sent from Ohinemuri by the old cannibal warrior Taraia Ngakuti, of Ngati-Tamatera. The tohungas had recited charms over the cask of powder to render the contents doubly efficacious against the pakeha; and it had been given a name, “Hine-ia-Taraua.” Takurua Koro-kai-toke joined Rewi; he was the elder brother of Harehare, the present chief of Ngati-Manawa at Murupara, on the Rangitaiki. He and his wife Rawinia (Lavinia) were both wounded at Orakau. Harehare himself, having no grievance against the Europeans, did not join, saying that he would fight the troops if they invaded the Rangitaiki country, but not otherwise. But Tuhoe and Ngati-Whare entertained no such punctilio; they were eager to make use of their weapons, and would travel far for the pure love of fighting. A small war-party of Tuhoe had already gone to the Waikato. This taua consisted of twenty men from Ruatahuna, led by Piripi te Heuheu. These warriors assisted Ngati-Maniapoto in the Lower Waikato in the latter part of 1863, but did not share in the defence of Rangiriri, and returned to Ruatahuna. It was then in response to Rewi's appeal for reinforcements that the larger expedition was formed. It numbered a hundred men (rau taki-tahi). After Hairini, the Urewera remained at Arohena with Ngati-Raukawa; and the Ngati-te-Kohera section of this tribe was assembled with them at Ara-titaha when Rewi reached that village.

The Urewera chiefs, strongly supported by Ngati-Raukawa, urged that a fort should be built at or near Orakau as a challenge to the troops; and Te Whenuanui chanted a song composed by the chief tohunga of the Urewera, prophesying the defeat of the Europeans and the reconquest of the land by the Maoris. Rewi replied that he had no faith in such a prophecy, and proposed that the chiefs should all consult Tamehana before renewing the war. He opposed the suggestion to fortify Orakau, but the Urewera were persistent. Their tohungas, Hakopa and Tapiki, said, “Let us go on; let us challenge the pakeha to battle. We are bearing heavy burdens [guns and ammunition]; let us use them.” Rewi angrily replied, “If you Tuhoe persist in your desire for battle I alone will be the survivor”; and he chanted this song of warning, foretelling defeat:— Tokotokona na te hau tawaho,Koi toko atuE kite ai auI Remu waho ra,I kite ai au,I Remutaka ra,I kite ai auMate kuku ki W ai'mata ra e.Tohungia mai e te kokoreke raKatahi nei hoki ka kiteTe karoro o tua wai,Tu awaawa ra.Na te kahore anakeE noho toku whenua kei tua.Tera e whiti ana,E noho ana,Ko te koko koroki ata,“Ki—ki—tau.”

In this chant, a mata or prophecy, Rewi in figurative language endeavoured to dissuade. Tuhoe from again entering the campaign. He sang of the winds of war, of the enemy troops gathering at the seaports, in the south and on the Waitemata, to sweep over the lands of the people; and concluded with an allusion to the koko (tui) singing in the dawn. He was the bird of dawn; by this he meant that he would be the lone survivor of the battle. “But this,” says an Urewera survivor, “did not change our purpose, although Rewi repeated his warning and again declared, ‘If you persist I alone will be the survivor,’ for he had a strong presentiment that we would be defeated.”

Rewi, abandoning his visit to Tamehana, gloomily returned to Waikeria. He had dreamed, he told his people, that he was standing outside the church in Orakau and flying a kite, one of the large bird-shaped kites made of raupo and adorned with feathers. At first it soared strongly upwards to the clouds; then it broke loose and came to the ground in pieces. The shattering of the kite he interpreted as a portent of the utter defeat of the Maoris. But Rewi's recital of his matakite, or vision of omen, did not turn his tribe from their resolve to renew the war; they were burning to join the Urewera and

The war-parties united at Otautahanga, and marched to Orakau, two miles to the west, to select a site for the fort. Near Ara-titaha some of the people had begun to fortify a mound called Puke-kai-kahu, but the majority of the warriors demanded that a position be taken up nearer the British advanced post. One important reason for the selection of Orakau was that it was in a convenient position for the supply of food to the garrison.

Only a few of the Waikato people living at Orakau joined in the forlorn hope of the Kingites. The greater number of Ngati-Maniapoto had gone southward for safety, and did not return in time for Orakau, and the war-party of that tribe consisted chiefly of Rewi's immediate kinsmen, in number about fifty. The backbone of the defence was furnished by the war-loving Urewera and Ngati-te-Kohera.

The ground chosen for the fort was the gentle slope of Rangataua, in the midst of the Orakau peach-groves.

Pou-patate, of Te Kopua, who was sent as one of the messengers to assemble the people at Wharepuhunga and other places for the defence of Orakau, states that a proposal was made by some of Ngati-Maniapoto, when the refugees were gathering near the Puniu, to build a fort at Kiharoa. This is on the crown of the high ground just to the north of the three round hills at Tokanui, two miles south of the Puniu River, on the road from Kihikihi to Otorohanga. But by this time the chiefs had decided upon Orakau.

Another Maori survivor says that when the warriors gathered at Orakau to select the site of the pa it was seen that the crest of the hill at Karaponia was the most suitable spot, but upon consideration it was disapproved because there was no water there, and Rangataua was chosen because it was close to a water-spring and also was in the middle of the food cultivations.

The main work thrown up by the natives, working in relays because there were not sufficient spades, was oblong in figure, about 80 feet in length by 40 feet in width, with its greatest axis north and south. The design was an earthwork redoubt with external trench and a broad parapet, inside which was another ditch, well traversed against an enfilading fire, and converted into a series of ruas, or burrows, partly covered over for protection from shell-fire. The main parapet was about 6 feet thick; the height from the bottom of the ditch was 6 to 8 feet. In constructing the rampart the builders used alternate layers of earth and armfuls of newly pulled fern; the fern helped to bind the friable soil, and gave the wall an elastic quality which greatly reinforced its resistance to shot and shell. The interior scheme, divided into a number of ruas, also neutralized to some extent the shell-fire; a shell dropped into one of these burrow-like compartments would have a very circumscribed radius of damage. In portions of the earthwork the builders made long horizontal rifle loopholes or embrasures, with sections of board for the upper part and short pieces of timber at the sides.

ALTHOUGH THE Battle of Orakau was the final and decisive blow delivered in General Cameron's Waikato campaign, it did not end the Maoris' preparations for resistance. Ngati-Maniapoto fully expected that the British would follow up their victory, and would invade the country south of the Puniu River. The scattered hapus were collected, and the defence of the territory in the southern part of the Waipa basin was decided upon. The first fortification built was designed to block the advance of troops towards Hangatiki, the home of Wahanui Huatare and a large section of Ngati-Maniapoto. It consisted of entrenchments thrown up at Haurua, across a ridge on the main track between Otorohanga and Hangatiki, with swamps on the flanks. The ditches and parapets of this work are intersected by a riding-track on the west side of the railway-line a short distance south of Otorohanga. In rear of this advance work was a stronger position, Te Roto-Marama, an entrenched hill near the present Village of Hangatiki. The third pa built was Paratui, a hill-fort between the Mangaokewa and Mangapu Streams, a short distance south of Hangatiki; the site is to the west of the Main Trunk Railway. The whole strength of Ngati-Maniapoto was concentrated on the construction of these fortifications, under Rewi, Raureti, Wetini, Paku-kohatu, Te Rangi-ka-haruru (“The Thundering Heavens”), and Hauauru and his brother Patena, the chiefs of the Ngati-Matakore subtribe, both warriors of the old days of intertribal strife. Topine te Mamaku, from the Upper Wanganui, was also there. Haurua was for some time the headquarters of these Kingites, resolved to bar the southward march of the troops. But Cameron's advance had ended, and Kihikihi remained the most southern outpost of the troops.

It was at Ara-titaha, a Ngati-Raukawa settlement on the southern spur of Maunga-tautari, that the last shots of the Waikato War were fired, in a slight skirmish. This was a reconnaissance affair, about three months after Orakau. A Roman Catholic priest, the Rev. Father Garavel, arrived at Te Awamutu one day from Taupo via Orakau, and mentioned that he had seen an armed party of Maoris at Ara-titaha, where the track ascended from the plain near Waotu. Lieutenant Rait, commanding the mounted artillery, on patrol around the advanced posts organized a secret expedition, which was joined by detachments of the 65th and other corps from Kihikihi and Rangiaowhia, under Captain Blewitt and other officers. The mounted men were engaged at long range by some Maori skirmishers near the Village of Ara-titaha, but the artillery troopers, having only revolvers, could not reply to the fire, and the infantry were some distance in the rear. Ensign Mair, the interpreter, however, was armed with a carbine, and he returned the Maoris' fire, and fired the last shot in the campaign. The force withdrew to the camps without carrying hostilities further.

Soon after the capture of Orakau the Ngati-Haua and their allies from Tauranga, who had entrenched themselves at Te Tiki o te Ihingarangi, evacuated their stronghold. The fortification, a pa of ancient days, had been strengthened by deepening the trenches, digging covered ways, and erecting palisades. The main pa stood on the edge of a high cliff overlooking the rapid Waikato, at the foot of the Pukekura Range; in rear was a higher pa of small area. General Cameron had made preparations to shell the place, and had gathered a strong battery at Pukerimu. Tamehana and his people did not wait for the bombardment. They abandoned the place under cover of night, crossing the river in canoes—a dangerous feat, for the current was very swift, and there were rapids just below the crossing-place. Men, women, and children all safely reached the eastern side and marched across the plain to Peria, near Matamata. For some time after the British occupation of Te Tiki o te Ihingarangi a force of Militia garrisoned a redoubt on the site of the upper pa. Wiremu Tamehana made his peace with the British, after his long and hopeless struggle, by meeting Brigadier-General Carey at Tamahere on the 27th May, 1865, and signing a document acknowledging submission to the law of the Queen. His tribe lost some land by confiscation, but Waikato were the heaviest sufferers; they were dispossessed of all their territory east of the Waikato River, and remained on the lands of their friends the Ngati-Maniapoto for nearly a generation after the war.

Te Awamutu was the winter quarters for the Waikato army of occupation. When the Government fixed the confiscation-lines the Puniu River was made the frontier, and no attempt was made to drive the defeated Kingites farther south. Four thousand regular troops remained at Te Awamutu and the outposts until the end of 1864, and as they were withdrawn the military settlers embodied in the regiments of Waikato Militia took