Bush-Fighting.

These were the days when the Arawa under their vigorous young New Zealand Cross heroes, and the Ngati-Porou from the East Coast under Major Ropata, N.Z.C., and Captain Porter, tramped for weeks and months through these vast and trackless forests in chase of Te Kooti and Kereopa. Sometimes they struck faint trails and followed them up like Red Indians or Australian trackers; they met ambuscade with ambuscade, and rushed camps and stockades.

Silent camps; cautious bivouacs; often fireless. No fires were ever lit by day, because the smoke rising above the trees would betray their position to the Hauhaus. It was an incautious fire in the Waipaoa camp, rising among a hundred almost similar mists, that gave away Te Kooti's refuge to his keen-eyed pursuers. Up to the middle of 1872 the contingents followed up their enemies implacably.

More than once after the first discovery they had glimpses of Waikare-iti, and even such seasoned bushmen as Mair and Preece were impressed by the vast loneliness, the primeval solitude, that brooded over this blue jewel of a lake.