A Wise Man of Taranaki.

In last month's Magazine I gave some reminiscences of the good old chief and tohunga Tauke, of Hokorima, on the famous Waimate Plain. I continue his life-story as I heard it from him many a year ago. He warmed up with the memories of his fighting days when he narrated the events of 1864, when he became a Hauhau. He was one of the band of heroes, half-crazed by the Pai-marire faith, who charged upon the British redoubt at Sentry Hill, or Te Morere.

The railway now passes within a few yards of the spot where the Imperial soldiers who manned the little hill fort repulsed the Taranaki braves. It was a mad affair; Tauke admitted as much, with a grim smile, when he told the story of his wounded hand. Fifty of those plucky warriors died on the red field of Te Morere.

Later, Tauke fought all through the Hauhau wars up to 1869, and he was one of the leaders in the bush battle at Te Ngutu-o-te-manu, where Von Tempsky and many others were killed.

Tauke told me that he once wrote a book for “Kawana Kerei.” This was in the years before the war. It was a large notebook which, at Sir George Grey's request, he filled with Taranaki history and folk-lore and poetry, dictated by his older relatives, the tohungas of Ngati-Ruanui.

Sir George Grey, he believed, took it with him to South Africa. Most probably it is one of the M.S. books in the Library at Cape Town, which in recent years were returned to Auckland in exchange for the South African material in the Grey collection.