The Rangers at Orakau.

On the march to Orakau, which resulted in the famous siege and the noble defiance by the Maoris of overwhelming odds, Lieutenant Roberts led the advance with a half-company of his Rangers. He led, too his Rangers in one of the unsuccessful attempts to storm the Maori earthworks on the first day. “All we saw,” he said, describing to me his share of the operations, “was the peach groves and the newlymade parapets. We couldn't see a Maori at first. They had made long horizontal loopholes or embrasures in the parapet, with pieces of timber on the top and at the sides to keep them open, and through these openings they delivered a heavy fire on us. The first thing we knew was a regular line of smoke and flash running the whole length of the earthworks on the west flank as they gave us a volley. After that and a second volley, the black heads popped up now and again, and we drew off, and with Jackson and Von Tempsky's Rangers, making a hundred carbine-and-revolver men altogether, we formed the eastern side of the cordon surrounding the pa.”