The Camp at Opepe.

“We continued our march next morning up the eastern side of the Rangitaiki, until we reached a place well up towards Runanga. Here we re-crossed the river and that night we reached the Opepe Bush, which extended for about a mile on the northern side of the Runanga-Taupo track, a short distance from the main trail. We turned off from the track there and by a side-path reached a little plateau, with a pumice gully on two sides and the bush immediately in the rear. There were four or five deserted Maori whares there, roughly built huts of saplings and fern-tree trunks, roofed with totara bark.

“There the fourteen of us were left, Cornet Angus Smith in command. There were, two N.C.O.'s, Sergt-Major Slattery, an old soldier of the British Army, and Sergeant C. F. Dette. Four of the party were from Tauranga—Troopers Harry Gill (son of Judge Gill, of the Native Land Court), Johnson, Bidois and Poictier or Potie; the last three were half-castes. The rest of us were from Opotiki: Troopers George Stephenson, Ross, Lawson, Harry Cook, Lockwood, McKillop (trumpeter), and myself. I had enlisted under the name of Leary, which was my stepfather's name; I resumed later my proper name of Crosswell. Cornet Angus Smith was also from Opotiki; he had been a storekeeper there.

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“I believe someone asked Colonel St. John if the camp was a safe place, and he replied that we were as safe there as we would be in London. With two other officers he rode on to Tapu-wae-haruru, on the north end of Lake Taupo. We made ourselves fairly comfortable in the huts, after turning out our horses on a grass clearing at the edge of the bush. On Sunday the 6th, some of us rambling about, got three sheep, probably strays from one of the out-stations on the ranges to the east, and we killed them and hung them up in the camp. (We never had the pleasure of eating that mutton).

“On the following morning I went to search for my horse, which had strayed in the direction of Fort Galatea; after an unsuccessful search I returned to camp. It was raining, and I was wet through by the time I got back to the whares, so I took off all my clothes and hung them to dry at a big fire which we lit in one of the smallest huts, built of ponga fern-tree trunks. In the largest whare—the door of which faced north, towards the bush—there were seven men; in another were the three half-caste troopers from Tauranga, and I and the others were in the small whare. I had returned to the hut about an hour, it now was about four o'clock in the afternoon.