The Old Campaigners.

I do not think a better all-weathers costume could be devised for bush and ranges than the uniform my old friend Captain Gilbert Mair used to wear on his fighting expeditions in the Urewera Country and other war-troubled regions in the Hauhau War days. It consisted of knickerbockers and thick woollen stockings, a light shawl belted round the waist, woollen shirt and uniform jacket. The shawl, worn kilt-wise, was a protection in pressing through thick bush, and a comfort at night, with the blanket. Many pakeha bush - fighters, surveyors and others adopted the Maori and Highland kilt fashion, but Maori found by long and hard experience that his additions to the costume made it a perfect dress for all purposes of marching and fighting in a wild land.

I knew a hard old scout, the late Steve Adamson—one of a family of four big hard-case brothers—who went through Whitmore's campaign in the Urewera Country attired only in a pair of trousers cut off just below the knees, and a woollen shirt. He marched barefooted, like his brother Tom with him and Tom wore very little more. They were more concerned about their carbines and revolvers and their loads of ammunition than about their uniforms. But it is not many men who could travel with as much indifference to the weather and the rough country as those tough scouts of the old brigade.