THE STORY OF NEW ZEALAND is rich beyond that of most young countries in episodes of adventure and romance. Australia's pioneering-work was of a different quality from ours, mainly because the nation-makers of our neighbour encountered no powerful military race of indigenes to dispute the right of way. The student of New Zealand history seeking for foreign parallels and analogies must turn to the story of the white conquest in America for the record of human endeavour that most closely approaches the early annals of these Islands. There certainly is a remarkable similarity, in all but landscape, between the old frontier life in British North America and the United States and the broad features of the violent contact between European and Maori in our country. The New England back-woodsman and the far-out plainsman were faced with many of the life-and-death problems which confronted our New Zealand settlers on the Taranaki and Waikato and East Coast borders. In reading such fascinating books as “The Conspiracy of Pontiac,” “French Pioneers in the New World,” or “The Winning of the West,” the family likeness of the adventures of the pathfinder and the forest fighter to the New Zealand life of the “sixties” is irresistibly forced upon the mind. There was the same dual combat with wild nature and with untamed man; there was the necessity in each land for soldierly skill; the same display of all grades of human courage; much of the same tale of raid and foray, siege, trail-hunting, and ambuscade. There was as wide a difference in frontier and forest fighting-ability between the Imperial troops of the “forties” and early “sixties” and the soldier settlers who scoured the bush after Titokowaru and Te Kooti as there was between General Braddock's unfortunate regular troops of 1755 and the provincial scouts and hunters who learned how to beat the Red Indian at his own game, and later to defy British armies. It is to the pages of Francis Parkman, Theodore Roosevelt, and Henry Cabot Lodge that the New Zealander must turn for historic parallels in the story of the nations, rather than to those of Macaulay, Green, or Freeman.

THERE ARE SOME bays in the South Pacific on whose shores wild history has been made—strands saturate with a hundred romantic, adventurous, and tragic memories. Pre-eminently one of these is the beach of Apia, in Samoa; another, steeped almost as deeply in early-days legend and war-time history, is Kororareka, Bay of Islands. From the dawn of civilized enterprise on our coasts we hear of Kororareka and its fleets of whalers at anchor, its Maori “ship-girls,” its gun-play between quarrelsome native hapus, and its all-pervading flavour of licence and lawlessness; this period of pagan freedom followed by an unwilling reformation under the influence of reputable settlers and the British flag, a brief day of importance as the capital of the new-made colony, and the final debacle when the flagstaff on its sentry hill was laid in dust and the blockhouses and grog-shops alike went up in flames. Kororareka—the modern Russell—remains to-day a place apart, curiously little advanced, at any rate in population, by the passage of three-quarters of a century, and shorn of its ancient commercial glory; a sedate, pretty seaside township where the round of life in a delicious climate is seldom disturbed by intrusive shipping. The pervading air, a half-regretful recollection of a red-blooded past, is reminiscent of some of the old gold-digging towns on the coast of Westland.

The old landmarks are readily to be picked out. A modern flagstaff stands on the exact spot on Maiki Hill, 300 feet above us yonder, where Hone Heke, Haratua, and their kin four times felled the British signal-mast. The steep hills behind the little town are still clothed for the most part in manuka and fern as they were in Heke's day, with an immigrant admixture of gorse and sweetbrier. The old English church, with its marks of cannon-shot, still stands in the burying-ground around whose fence Kawiti fought the British bluejackets in 1845.

Let us picture something of the aspect of Kororareka Beach in the war-brewing “forties.” This straggling town, its single street fitting itself closely to the rim of the gravelly beach, is a mingling of pakeha and Maori architecture. One- and two-storied weatherboard stores and publichouses have for close neighbours thatched whares of slab and fern, tree-trunk and raupo. Near the southern end of the beach is a Maori village enclosed by a palisade of split trees and manuka stakes. There is no jetty; the boats of men-o'-war whalers, and trading craft alike are hauled up on the beach. Over in the north cove by Waipara Spring two boats' crews from an American whaleship are towing off a string of water-casks roped together. Out in the bay lie half a dozen deep-sea vessels, most of them New Bedford whale-hunters; nearer the beach sundry fore-and-afters, schooner- or cutter-rigged, swing to an anchor; one or two of these are owned and sailed by Maoris, for the East Coast native is not only a first-rate sailor, but is beginning to taste the pleasures and profits of shipowning. Natives in their blankets and mats lounge on the beach-edge, dozing, smoking, or arguing in the vociferous manner of the Maori. Ngapuhi girls, barefooted and bareheaded, well plumped-out of figure, swing up and down the roadway flaunting the print gowns and the brightly coloured “roundabouts” and the glittering ear-rings bought with the dollars of the sailormen. Some of them are lately from the mission stations, maybe, but the temptations of Kororareka and the whaleships are irresistible. Many a native wears a little metal cross or a crucifix about his neck, or a figure of the Virgin hung by a black ribbon or tape from one ear, balancing a shark's tooth or a greenstone in the other—for the Catholic religion, newly come to the Bay, is highly popular, and Bishop Pompallier numbers his converts by the hundred. Most of the able-bodied men, tall athletes with tattooed faces, are armed. You see a party of young bloods spring ashore from a canoe, in from one of Pomare's, Heke's, or Kawiti's pas up the harbour, and observe that every man has his short-handled tomahawk, brightly polished of blade, thrust through his flax girdle just over the hip or at the small of the back; he would no more stir from home without it than a Far West plainsman of the old days would move abroad without his six-shooter. Many also carry their flint-lock guns, which they call ngutu-parera (“duck-bill”—from the shape of the hammer); and note, too, the new percussion-cap gun, double-barrelled, which the Maori is able to obtain from Sydney trading craft, while his antagonist soon-to-be, the British soldier, must for some years yet be content with the ancient musket.

Whaleship watches on shore leave make lively business in the bar-rooms over their rum and ale. The captains have the parlours, sacred to the quarter-deck, and there they sit over their Scotch whisky or their cognac or squareface exchanging the news of all the seas, and relating their whale-fishing successes and misadventures

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON described the town on Apia Beach as the seat of the political sickness of Samoa. Cosmopolitan Kororareka was the seat of the troubles of north New Zealand; its flagstaff was the putake o te riri, in Maori phrase—the root and fount of the wars. And Hone Heke, one-time mission pupil, malcontent, and rebel general, played as bold a part in the drama of our early days as ever the patriotic Mataafa enacted in his little world under Upolu's palms in the last two decades of the nineteenth century.

Hone Heke's character was curiously composite—a mingling of passionate patriotism, ambition, bravado, vanity, and a shrewdness sharpened by his partial civilization. Heke foresaw more clearly than most of his countrymen the fatal consequences to the Maori of white colonization and the flooding of the country with an alien population who would regard the native New Zealander with none of the sympathy entertained for him by the long-settled missionaries. For the mission people, of whatever denomination, Ngapuhi, like most other tribes in 1840, cherished feelings of deep regard; they knew that those devoted men and women had not come to the Maori islands to make profit out of the natives' ignorance of trade values. Many a coast trader, timber-miller, and settler, too, were held in high estimation by the tribes of the North; they had won the affections of the chiefs and people by their fair methods of business, and by kindly services in times of sickness and sorrow. But the numerous speculators and land-seekers who landed in north New Zealand by every vessel after the hoisting of the British flag furnished them with an argument for a policy of exclusion, for it seemed even then to keen-visioned men like Heke that the wholesale immigration of so strong a race must in years to come inundate the chieftainship of the Maori.

MIDNIGHT ON MAIKI HILL. A rattle of arms at the blockhouse gateway came sharply through the tenebrous stillness; the guard was relieved—the soldier whose tedious duty was ended retired to his blankets, and the only half-awake relief, with musket and fixed bayonet, began his watch. Here, 300 feet above the sleeping town, the silence was intense; it was a windless night, with raw fog obscuring the gullies and floating upwards in thin wafts. Not a sound but the footfall of the sentry and the “Kou-kou” of the ruru, or night-owl. Those owl-calls were unusually frequent was the thought, perhaps, that crossed the mind of the solitary soldier. Had he possessed the scout instinct he might have noticed that the bird-calls all came from the brushwood on the east and south-east slopes of the range, the aspect towards Oneroa Bay and the lower blockhouse. Owl called to owl, and the regularly repeated cries grew nearer until they formed a semi-cordon of melancholy notes about the flagstaff hill. Then, too, was heard the screech call, plain as spoken words to the Maori; it sounded to him like “Kia toa!” (“Be brave!”)

It was a fatal cordon, for the rurus were the pickets of Heke's war-party announcing their positions to each other and keeping in touch as they crept towards the little fort that guarded their objective, the flagstaff. Two hundred Ngapuhi warriors, under Heke and Pokai, had landed in their canoes at Oneroa, in rear of Kororareka, late at night, and were now working their way up to surprise the hill post at the first streak of dawn. Some of them crept up until they crouched in the scrub a few yards from where the sentry stood. Most of them lay in a wooded gully close to the hilltop. They carried gun and tomahawk, and belts with heavy leather or wooden cartouche-boxes were strapped about them. The tomahawk was the weapon most favoured for such tasks as this: short-handled with wood or whalebone, thrust through the girdle at the hip or at the small of the back, as the olden Scots and the Borderers carried the “lyttel batayle axe” mentioned in Froissart's story of the Battle of Otterburne.

FEARS OF INVASION by Ngapuhi seized many of the inhabitants of the young capital when, two days after the sailing of the fleet from the Bay, the five shiploads of refugees landed at Auckland and the distressed people of Kororareka spread their story. A Militia was enrolled, and the Auckland citizen soldiery were drilled daily by instructors from the Regulars. The defences of the town were hastily set in order. Major Bunbury and his company of the 80th had already (1840–41) partly fortified Britomart Point by constructing stone barracks. These barracks formed two sides of a square; one side was loopholed; the buildings were capable of accommodating two hundred men, besides stores. Fort Britomart, as it was now called, had been an ancient pa of the Maoris, a tonguelike promontory, protected on the land side by a broad, deep ditch and parapet. The military utilized part of these defences; a portion of the parapet was thrown down to fill up the ditch at the entrance. On one side of the interior, where of old the warriors had built their low-eaved whares and kept lookout for enemy canoe flotillas, an octagonal loopholed guard-room was erected. A hospital was also built. The 96th and, later, the 58th completed the fortification, and several guns were mounted. The windows of St. Paul's Church, a brick building near by, were planked and loopholed for musketry.

H.M.S. “North Star” (Captain Sir Everard Home), a twenty-six-gun frigate, arrived at Auckland on the 22nd March. She brought from Sydney 162 officers and men of the 58th Regiment. Two days afterwards the schooner “Velocity” arrived from Sydney with fifty-five officers and men of the same regiment, and ordnance stores. In April the barque “Slains Castle” sailed in from Sydney, bringing the remainder of the 58th—more than two hundred rank and file—under Major Cyprian Bridge. On the 27th April an expedition totalling 470 officers and men under Lieut.-Colonel Hulme, of the 96th Regiment, and Major Bridge sailed from Auckland in the “Slains Castle,” the “Velocity,” and the schooner “Aurora,” with the object of re-establishing the

After hoisting the British flag on Kororareka Beach, Hulme's force destroyed Pomare's pa at Otuihu, overlooking the channel to Opua and the Waikare. The “North Star” was anchored off Otuihu, and Pomare himself was secured as a prisoner by stratagem. It was then arranged that an expedition should be directed against Heke's stronghold lately built near the shore of Lake Omapere.

The chiefs who with their tribes and hapus definitely ranged themselves upon the side of the Government were Tamati Waka Nene (Ngati-Hao Tribe); Mohi Tawhai (Mahurehure Tribe), of Waima, Hokianga; Makoare Tainui (Te Popoto); Wiremu Repa (Ngati-Hao); Paratene Kekeao (Ngapuhi); Tamati Pukututu (Uri-o-Ngonga), of the Kawakawa; Arama Karaka (Mahurehure); Rangatira (Ngati-Korokoro); Moehau (Hikutu); Nopera Panakareao (Te Rarawa). Some of the celebrated chiefs, such as the gigantic cannibal Tareha, Waikato (who had visited England in 1820 with Hongi Hika), and the Hokianga leader Papahia, remained neutral; and Pomare, although his pa was destroyed and he himself taken prisoner by Lieut.-Colonel Hulme, did not take any active share in Heke's work. Several chiefs of the Kapotai, Ngati-Wai, Ngati-Hau, Uri-Kapana, and Uri-o-Hau brought their hapus to Heke's assistance.

Tamati Waka Nene was allied by blood with the Hongi and Heke families. He had been Hongi's comrade on the war-path, and he had carried his musket and tomahawk as far south as Cook Strait in a great cannibal campaign twenty years before the coming of the British flag. Wise in knowledge of men and of military science as the Maori had developed it, endowed with a keen intellect and well-balanced reasoning-powers, he was the most able of all the Ngapuhi chiefs, and the best qualified, by natural gifts and by his tribal standing, to offer resistance to the disaffected sections of Ngapuhi. His brother, Patuone, a man of high character and a warrior of fame, also took up the British cause, steadfastly declining to have any part in rebellion against the Queen whose right of eminent domain he had accepted in the Treaty of Waitangi.

One of the chiefs at first friendly to the British Government but ultimately found fighting in the cause of Maori independence was Pene Taui, of Waimate and Ohaeawai. A curious story is told of Pene's defection, illustrative of the serious consequences often entailed by trivial incidents among the Maoris. In 1844, when the war feeling was developing throughout the north, Pene Taui was authorized to convene a meeting of Ngapuhi to consider the political situation. The assembled chiefs resolved to plant large quantities of food (potatoes, kumara, taro, and maize) in order to provide for a general gathering of the northern tribes in the Taiamai district, the heart of the Ngapuhi country, embracing the beautiful lands from Waimate to Ohaeawai. The meeting having concluded, Pene Taui sent a messenger to Tamati Waka Nene, at Hokianga, with the somewhat peremptory words, “Koia he kai” (“Plant food”). When the herald delivered this message in public, as was the Maori way, Tamati Waka, resentful of its wording, immediately said, sotto voce but not so low that the messenger could not hear, “Ko ia he kai.” It was a quick play upon Pene's message; the point lay in the accenting of “ia” (“him”) instead of “ko” (“plant”). Waka's utterance meant “Let him be food,” or “He shall be the food.” The messenger heard; he returned to Taiamai, and reported Waka's words to Pene Taui. That chief was so enraged at Waka's punning kanga, or curse, likening a high chief to food—cannibal fashion—that he at once made common cause with Hone Heke, taking with him all his tribe. It was Pene who built the stockade at Ohaeawai which Despard a few months later found impregnable.

This incident is narrated in a note sent to me by Captain Gilbert Mair, who adds, “Puns are of rare occurrence among the Maoris.”

H.M.S. “Hazard” having arrived from Auckland, the fleet hove up and sailed across the Bay to Kent's Passage, where the ships anchored under shelter of the island of Moturoa. On the following morning a force of four hundred men, including about a hundred seamen and marines from the frigates, was disembarked on the beach of Onewhero. On that day (3rd May, 1845) was begun the first march inland of British troops in New Zealand.

Imperfectly informed as to the route of march, without transport arrangements, without artillery, inefficiently rationed, and without tents or camp equipage, Hulme set out into an unknown country against an enemy of unknown strength, sustained apparently by the hope of somehow worrying through, or fortified by the popular belief that one British soldier was equal to any half-dozen savages. Neither Hulme nor his officers knew anything of the real strength of Maori fortifications skilfully defended. The report on native strongholds prepared by Lieutenant Bennett of the Royal Engineers in 1843, after a visit to Tauranga, was unknown to them. Fortunate it was for them and their men that the chivalrous enemy laid no ambuscades on the track; the Maori was not so considerate in the wars twenty years later. Doubly fortunate for them was the fact that Tamati Waka Nene was their ally and helper. He was the salvation of Hulme on that May expedition, as he was of the Maori-despising Despard a few weeks later.

The opening blunder was the awkward route taken. Instead of transporting the force by boat up a good tidal river, the Kerikeri, to the mission station at the landing, only fifteen miles from Kororareka, whence a cart-road led to the Waimate, fourteen miles, the commander marched his force along a rough native track south of the river for nine miles, bivouacked in the fern, and broke off to the right next morning, marching through torrents of rain to the Kerikeri mission station. The result was that the five days' biscuit ration and two-thirds of the reserve ammunition were spoiled by the rain.

From Kerikeri the combined naval and military column moved out on the inland trail on the morning of the 6th May. The clay road, reduced to a glue-like mire by the rain, made difficult marching. Waka's and Rewa's barefooted warriors watched with pity and some amusement the efforts of the troops to march in fours and keep their dressing on this unkindly highway; they wondered how men so heavily beswagged, so tightly fastened with belts and straps and leather stocks, could march and fight. The bluejackets, more handily equipped and comfortably clothed, made easier work of it; they carried with them a war-rocket tube from the “North Star” and a dozen rockets, which it was imagined would help to demolish any Maori stockade encountered. Acting-Commander George Johnson, of the “North Star,” was in command of this naval brigade. The cart-road to Waimate was followed for some miles, then the column struck in a direct line across country for Waka's armed camp between Lake Omapere and Okaihau, twenty miles from Kerikeri. The march could have been simplified had the force passed through Waimate, but the members of the Church Mission there, the Revs. R. Burrows and R. Davis, had made strong efforts to keep the mission station tapu from armed men and to preserve an attitude of strict neutrality. After passing the Waimate at a distance, the force entered a tract of forest, chiefly puriri; now the troops had their first taste of New Zealand bush work. A detachment of Pioneers of the 50th had been thrown ahead with Waka's natives. With their axes they improved the difficult Maori pad-track, only a few inches wide, for the passage of the main body. Unbridged creeks in flood were waded, small swamps were crossed, hills were breasted, and at last, at sundown, the bugles called a halt, and the weary soldiers and sailors loosened their packs under the stockade of Tamati Waka's fortified camp, a mile from the Omapere Lake.

Heke's pa, named Puketutu, was two miles from Nene's fort, and quite close to Lake Omapere. The fort is usually but erroneously referred to as “Okaihau” by writers on the northern war. Okaihau is about three miles to the west. Half-way between the two pas was the small hill Taumata-Karamu, the scene of many skirmishes between Heke and Nene in April. Now and again a man was killed. By mutual arrangement no ambuscades were laid, and the fighting was only in daylight.

“WE EXPECTED TO make short work of Johnny Heke,” said an old soldier of the 58th describing to me his march to Lake Omapere. But the difficulties of the undertaking so confidently essayed increased as the objective was approached and the military character of the Maori loomed formidably in the British warrior's vision. The unpropitious season heightened the troubles of the commander, whose deficiencies in artillery and commissariat were fatal to any chances of success. The greatest blunder of all, the failure to bring even the lightest of ship's guns, although there was a cart-road for the greater part of the way from Kerikeri to the lake, condemned the expedition to failure. This became fully apparent to the sanguine Hulme on the second day after his arrival on the terrain which Heke had selected as the battle-ground.

The country in which the rival armed bands of Heke and Waka Nene had pitched their fortified camps was an ideal region for military operations. Towards Lake Omapere the land was a gently undulating plain covered with manuka shrubbery, fern, flax, and tutu bushes, and adorned with numerous groves of the hardwood puriri, oak-like in the spread of its branches. To the east lay the plains and hills of Taiamai, the delectable land of the central Ngapuhi tribes. What swamps there existed were not large and could readily be avoided; streams were numerous but small. Many of these little rivers issued from fissures in the volcanic hillside, welling down cold and crystal-clear through the Maori cultivations that alternated with the wilderness of fern and tutu. The landscape was diversified with many a bold volcanic cone. Most conspicuous of these was Te Ahuahu (“Heaped Up”), otherwise known as Puke-nui (“Big Hill”), a long-extinct

There had been considerable fighting in the month of April between Heke's warriors and the hapus friendly to the whites, extending over this open country between Okaihau and Te Ahuahu. Heke's force numbered about three hundred men; his ally Kawiti joined in with another hundred and fifty towards the end of April. To these combined war-parties were opposed about four hundred men under Tamati Waka, Mohi Tawhai and Arama Karaka Pi, from Hokianga; Taonui, Nopera, Pana-kareao, and other chiefs loyal to the Treaty. Besides Waka's fortified camp, two stockades were built by Taonui and his tribe from Utakura, Hokianga, and by Mohi Tawhai and his Mahurehure hapu from Waima. All these three forts were close together for mutual support. Two or three white men joined Waka Nene in the field as volunteers. One of these was the afterwards celebrated Judge F. E. Maning, the author of “Old New Zealand.” He was a tall athletic man, whom nothing delighted so much as this opportunity of free-lance fighting. A comrade of Maning's was John Webster, of Opononi, Hokianga—a settler who had already seen much of wild life in Australia, where he fought the blacks and drove cattle on long overland journeys; in after-years he cruised with Ben Boyd in the schooner-yacht “Wanderer.” Webster brought to Waka's help a rifle (a novel weapon in those days) and two hundred home-made cartridges; and when shooting began he took his place in the rifle-pits with the warriors of Hokianga. In the fighting at Ohaeawai a little later both he and Maning shared. And another white warrior came in with his gun. This was Jackey Marmon, a wild figure, and the chief actor in many a bloody episode of old New Zealand. He was an ex-convict from the chain gangs of Sydney; he had settled among the Maoris in the days when New Zealand was a “No Man's Land,” fought in their wars, and even shared in their cannibal feasts; his fondness for human flesh was notorious among both Maori and pakeha in the “thirties” and early “forties.” In his war-paint of red ochre, with bare chest and arms tattooed, his shaggy head decked out with feathers, musket slung across his back, cartouche-box belts buckled around him, a long-handled tomahawk in his hand, he looked the perfect picture of a savage warrior.

The intertribal skirmishing went on until the arrival of the troops on the evening of the 6th May. Heke's pa, Puketutu (sometimes spoken of as “Te Mawhe,” although the hill of that name is some distance to the north-east), was now the immediate objective of attack; hitherto the fighting had been in open country between the opposing camps.

Very little remains to-day to mark Puketutu pa, the scene of the first British attack upon an inland Maori fort; the scene, too, of the first regular British charge with the bayonet against a Maori foe. The main road from the Bay of Islands, via Ohaeawai, to Te Horeke, Hokianga, cuts through the site of the northern part of Heke's pa, about three miles before Okaihau Township is reached. The fortification measured about 120 yards each way; it was a rectangle, with several salients or flanking bastions, of varied outline; from these each side of the pa could be completely enfiladed. There appear to have been three lines of palisading along part of the defences. The stockades were constructed of stout puriri trunks and saplings; the outer posts were from 5 inches to 10 inches in diameter, and carefully loopholed. A high breastwork was thrown up inside the inner fence; the trench from which the earth was dug was about 5 feet in depth; it separated the inner and middle lines of palisade. The foot of the pekerangi, about 15 feet high, was strengthened with a facing of rocks and stones gathered from the volcanic-lava debris which lay thickly around; this was a variation from the usual Maori method of leaving the foot of the pekerangi open for the garrison's fire. Another innovation—used at Ohaeawai also—was the coating of the outer wall with green flax. A large portion of the face of the palisade was reinforced in this way: large quantities of the native harakeke, or flax, were cut and tied in bundles; these bundles were closely and tightly lashed along the face of the timbers just above the roughly piled stone buttress. Thus fastened, the flax formed a padding or fender more than man-high along the stockade, and the smooth, thick leaves so tightly packed prevented any bullets from entering through crevices in the war-fence. The pa, however, was not quite finished when it was attacked, and had it been reconnoitred carefully it would probably have been found comparatively vulnerable in the rear and on the eastern flank.

On the morning of the 8th May Lieut.-Colonel Hulme advanced his force. By 9 a.m. he had placed his redcoat reserve behind a low ridge within 300 yards of Heke's pa, and ordered three parties of assault to take up their positions. The first of these parties consisted of the seamen of the frigates “Hazard” and “North Star,” under the command of Acting-Commander George Johnson, formerly of the “North Star” and at this time in temporary command of the “Hazard” (in place of Captain Robertson, disabled at Kororareka). The second party was the Light Company of the 58th Regiment, under Captain Denny; the third was composed of a detachment of Royal Marines and some men of the 96th Regiment, under Lieutenant and Adjutant McLerie (58th Regiment).

As the troops moved forward with fixed bayonets fire was opened upon them from two faces of the pa. One party, taking the pa in rear, marched between it and the lake, and reached a gentle rise within 200 yards of the fort and just above the lake. The rocket-tube from which so much was expected was now placed in position on the north-west side of the pa, at a distance of about 150 yards. Twelve rockets were fired by Lieutenant Egerton (“North Star”) and his bluejackets without any effect.

Kawiti, who had hastened to Heke's aid with a body of about three hundred men, had halted less than a quarter of a mile from the eastern side of the pa, where he lay in ambush under the brow of a low undulation. An advanced party of his men held a small breastwork. The troops on the hill advanced their right flank and drove the Maoris from the shelter, which was then manned by a detachment of soldiers. About noon Hone Ropiha (John Hobbs, named after the Wesleyan missionary at Hokianga), a friendly scout and guide, who had led the 58th and the sailors round the

LIEUT.-COLONEL HULME'S expedition to Omapere was criticized in severe terms by professional men and lay observers alike. These criticisms were directed not so much against the officer commanding or the troops, whose courage and discipline could not have been higher, but against the ill-considered policy which had hurried an imperfectly equipped force into the wilds against an enemy of unknown strength.

It was now approaching midwinter, and the rains which make camp life in the north uncomfortable and reduce the tracks to bogs had set in heavily. The weather would not be favourable for campaigning for several months. Nevertheless, Governor Fitzroy and the military authorities resolved to recommence operations against Heke, fearing that the longer he was left unmolested the stronger would grow his forces.

Heke employed his respite in recruiting his war-parties and gathering in supplies of ammunition and food. He was not, however, left in peace, for the ever-active Waka Nene, with three or four hundred men at his command, was encamped between Okaihau and Ohaeawai, and intermittent fighting occurred early in June. In the heaviest engagement Heke received a severe gunshot wound in the thigh, and was rescued by a party led by the tohunga Te Atua Wera (whose atua, or familiar spirit, was the Nakahi, according to Ngapuhi stories). Each side lost five or six killed in this fight (12th June).

Early in June Fitzroy received reinforcements; the barque “British Sovereign” arrived at Auckland from Sydney with the headquarters of the 99th Regiment, numbering 209 officers and men, under Colonel Despard, who had seen some service in the East Indies. Colonel Despard took charge of all the troops in the colony and organized a new expedition. In the middle of June the transport fleet sailed from the Waitemata for the Bay of Islands. Disembarking at Onewhero Beach, Despard marched his force to Kerikeri mission station; the guns and stores were boated up the Kerikeri River by the “Hazard's” bluejackets. Thence the route was through Waimate to Ohaeawai; the objective was a fort which Heke and Pene Taui were reported to have built. The strength of the column, including seventy-five volunteers from the Auckland Militia and eighteen seamen and marines from H.M.S. “Hazard,” was 596 rank and file. Major Cyprian Bridge, commanding the 58th, had about 270 men under him, the largest unit in the column. Major Macpherson commanded two companies of the 99th Regiment, and Lieut.-Colonel Hulme a company of the 96th. Acting-Captain George Johnson, of the “Hazard,” with him Lieutenant George Phillpotts (the “Topi” of the Maoris), brought up the naval party to work the guns. These pieces of artillery were two 6-pounder brass guns and two 12-pounder carronades.

On the morning of the 23rd June the force marched from Waimate for Ohaeawai, seven miles away. This stage of the march was much impeded by the bad roads (or, rather, bullock-tracks), the unbridged creeks, and a deep swamp.

Waka's advance guard of Hokianga Maoris was the first to come under fire. The Ohaeawai garrison had sent out parties of skirmishers, and firing began when the forces had passed the tino of Taiamai (the remarkable rock from which the district takes its name) about a mile, and were ascending a gentle rise in the direction of Ohaeawai. Despard heard the sound of musketry on his right front, and moved rapidly forward with his advance guard (No. 9 Company of the 58th Regiment, under Lieutenant Balneavis). Some of the friendly natives accompanied the white skirmishers; with them marched Jackey Marmon, the white cannibal warrior. Volleys of musketry saluted Balneavis and his men. The advance was over rather rough ground, covered with high fern and manuka, with here and there a native cultivation. A tall stockade came in sight. At about 500 yards from the north face of the Maori fort the bugles sounded the halt. Here, on gently rising ground, within musket-range of the pa, Despard encamped.

Next morning (24th June), after reconnoitring his enemy's position, Despard prepared for a regular siege, and opened fire from his field-pieces. In the meantime we may leave him anxiously scanning the stockade with his spy-glass after each shot, and see for ourselves what manner of fortress this was that the followers of Kawiti and Heke now held in defiance of British musket, bayonet, and artillery.

Ohaeawai pa in its original form was the headquarters of the chief Pene Taui. He strengthened it after the fighting at Kororareka, realizing that his own district might before long become a theatre of war. After the Battle of Puketutu, Kawiti and Heke united with Pene Taui in converting Ohaeawai into a formidable fort, proof against artillery as well as musketry. Old Kawiti, wise in all matters of warfare, marked out the lines of the new fortification, which when completed more than doubled the size of the original stockade, and in Heke's absence he superintended the labour of hauling the puriri palisade timbers from the forest and setting them in position. The pa stood on elevated ground, a terrain well adapted for defence, except in one important detail: it was commanded by a conical hill about a third of a mile away on the north-west, a knoll about 300 feet higher than the site of the stockade. This hill, Puketapu, on the northern flank of a wooded range which rose immediately west of Ohaeawai, was partly covered with puriri groves. The ground fell quickly away from the pa on all flanks but the north; the track from Waimate to Kaikohe passed under its eastern front, where the main road runs to-day. The ground sloped very gradually on the north, and it was that side, facing the quarter from which attack was expected, that the garrison made particularly strong. Eastward was the forest. Through the valley which half-encircled the pa hill on the west and north-west sides flowed a small stream, intersecting the Kaikohe track. Beyond this stream on the west swelled the ranges in a cloud of forest. On the partly cleared land to the north, where the British camp was pitched, stood many a large puriri. One of those puriri, still standing, could tell us, had it a tongue like Jason's talking-oak, of Despard's council of war held beneath its boughts, and of the shells and round shot which the guns of 1845 sent over its head. One of those shots fell short—there was many a defective charge—and smashed off the old tree's top branch.

The fort was oblong in form, with salients on each face and at two of the angles (south-east and south-west, giving the garrison an enfilading fire in every direction. The greatest axis was east and west; the distance from the eastern to the western-most palisade was a little over 100 yards. The shortest flank, the western, measured 40 yards; the eastern 43 yards. The original and the newer sections of the pa did not run on a continuous alignment; Kawiti's portion was constructed slightly en echelon, projecting a few yards on the south beyond the eastern division of the pa. The palisades and trench, however, made an uninterrupted defence, and the numerous projections gave an admirably complete flanking fire; therein shone the innate military engineering genius of the Maori. Part of the lines was defended by three lines of stockade timbers; on two faces the palisade was double. The outer wall, the pekerangi, or curtain, was formed of stout timbers, most of them whole trees, sunk deeply in the ground at short intervals, with saplings and split timbers closely set between the larger posts, all bound firmly together with cross-rails and torotoro, or bush-vines. The smaller timbers did not quite reach the ground; it was through the spaces left that the defenders fired from their shelter in the trench behind the second palisade. The outer defence was completed by the masking of the timber wall with green flax, as at Puketutu. The stockading was 10 to 15 feet in height; it was covered from a foot above the ground to the height of 8 or 10 feet with a thick mantlet of green flax-leaves tightly bound to the palisades. This padding of harakeke not only afforded considerable protection by deadening the impact of bullets, but masked the real strength of the stockade.

The second line of stockade, the kiri-tangata (“the warrior's skin”), was stronger than even the well-constructed pekerangi; every timber was set in the ground to a depth of about 5 feet, and rose above ground to a height corresponding with that of the outer line. Many of the palisades so planted, set close together, were whole puriri trees a foot or 15 inches in diameter—some were even larger—and some when cut and hauled from the forest must have been quite 20 feet in length. This line of stockade was loopholed; the apertures for the Maori musketry fire were formed by taking a V scarf with the axe out of the two contiguous timbers. These loopholes were on the ground-level; and the Maori musketeer, pointing his gun through the aperture, was thus able to deliver his fire under the foot of the pekerangi without in the least exposing himself. The distance between the two fences was 3 feet. The trench in which the musketeer squatted was 5 to 6 feet deep and 4 or 5 feet wide, with earth banquette on which the defenders stood to fire, and traverses at intervals of about 2 yards, with narrow communicating-trench between each, admitting of only one man passing at a time. The venerable Rihara Kou, of Kaikohe, describing it, said: “We could travel right round the pa in the trench, winding in and out” (“haere kopikopiko ana”).

Within the double stockade and the firing-trench again, on a portion of the front at least, there was a third line of timbers, a palisade about 10 feet high, against the outer side of which the earth thrown from the ditch was heaped. Inside all these defences were the living-quarters of the garrison—the warriors, and the wives and daughters who had come to cook for them and make their cartridges. These quarters were all underground, and were made shell-proof by being covered with heavy timbers, branches of trees, and earth. The roofs of some were built with the slope of the usual low whare, and the soil from the excavations was heaped up against them and over their tops until they seemed mere mounds of earth. These subterranean chambers (ruas, or pits, the Maoris called them) were usually 6 feet deep;

PENE TAUI'S STOCKADE was commanded at a range of less than one-third of a mile by the hill Puketapu, upon which Despard's Maori allies flew the British ensign. A modern field-gun at that distance would quickly have reduced the palisade to splinters. But what little impression was made by gun-fire upon the flax-masked defences was repaired by the garrison each night; and even when the 32-pounder arrived from the frigate “Hazard” its projectiles failed to breach the stockade. On the 30th June the gun was mounted on a platform, with strong timber slides, constructed on the lower slope of Puketapu; two of the smaller guns had been placed higher up. On the forenoon of the 1st July the 32-pounder opened fire obliquely at the front stockade.

Every one was absorbed in watching the effect of the gun-fire. Suddenly there came the noise of musket-fire in the rear, on the summit of Tamati Waka Nene's hill, and as the troops turned about in astonishment they saw the friendly Maoris, men and women, flying down the steep slope in confusion, and with them the picket (a sergeant and twelve men of the 58th) posted on the hill for the protection of the 6-pounder. They had been taken in reverse by a sortie-party of Maoris from the pa, advancing under cover of the forest on the right front and flank. The natives shot one soldier, seized the gun, and hauled down Waka's flag, which they carried off. Major Bridge and his 58th charged up and recaptured the hill. A few minutes later Despard's alarm and disgust turned to fury when he saw the captured British ensign run up on the flax-halliards of the Maori flagstaff in the pa, below the rebel flag—a kakahu Maori, as one of my Maori informants describes it—a native garment. Then it was that the Colonel made up his mind to storm the pa that day. He imagined that the few 32 lb. shot—which were soon expended—would so loosen the stockades as to enable the troops to cut and pull them down. Those who ventured to remonstrate were snubbed or insulted. Lieutenant Phillpotts, of the “Hazard,” was roused to such indignation by the Colonel's retort to his protest against a senseless attack that he threw away every vestige of military attire he happened to be wearing, and in his blue sailor shirt and underclothes rushed to his death. A protest from the free-lance allies met with a similar reception. John Webster tells the story:—

“Maning, myself, and Nene went to interview Despard. We knew well the strength of the pa and its construction. Maning was the spokesman, and commenced with, ‘Sir, we heard that you intend assaulting the pa, and we have come to say that unless a breach is made it will cause great loss of life and will fail.’

“‘What do you civilians know of the matter?’ replied Despard.

“‘Sir,’ said Maning, ‘we may not know much, but there is one that apparently knows less, and that is yourself.’

“Despard got very angry and threatened to arrest us. Nene now inquired what the chief of the soldiers was saying. Maning told him.

“‘He tangata kuware tenei tangata,’ said Nene.

“‘What does the chief say?’ Despard inquired of his interpreter. (I think Meurant was the interpreter's name.) He scratched his head and said, ‘It is not complimentary.’

“‘But I order you, sir,’ said Despard.

“‘The Chief says you are a very stupid person,’ then replied Meurant.

“It was impossible to make any impression on the man who had so many fine young fellows' lives in his hands, and he was prepared to sacrifice them through mere obstinacy.”

Tamati Waka Nene offered to make a feint attack on the stockade in the rear, in order to divert attention from the soldiers' assault, but this suggestion, like all others, met with a refusal.

The Colonel ordered a storming-party to parade at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and instructions were issued by his brigade-major (Lieutenant and Adjutant Deering) for the guidance of the officers commanding the various divisions. The troops were ordered to get their dinners. For many of them that meal was their last. Forebodings of disaster possessed some of the more thoughtful, but in spite of the doubtful character of the enterprise there was a distinct element of elation and relief among the rank and file at the prospect of an attack at close quarters. There was also a strong desire among the troops to avenge the death of a young soldier of the 99th who had been caught by the enemy while foraging for potatoes. The men on outpost duty had heard, as they believed, his cries of agony; and a story, palpably absurd, was circulated after the fight that he had been tortured to death by burning with kauri-gum. In their ignorance of Maori ways they credited their foes with the practices of Red Indians on the war-path.

FOR THREE MONTHS the sound of the bugle and all the stir of a military camp enlivened the mission station at Waimate. Employment was found for the redcoats in surrounding the buildings with a trench and parapets as a precaution against attack—much to the disgust of the mission people, who lamented to see the neutral station transformed into a fortified encampment. It was not until the middle of October that the troops, after destroying Haratua's pa at Pakaraka, removed to Kororareka, where they awaited the next movement in the campaign.

In October it became known that Lord Stanley, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, had recalled Captain Fitzroy, and that Captain George Grey, then Governor of South Australia, had been appointed as the new Governor of this colony. Captain Grey landed at Auckland from the East India Company's armed ship “Elphinstone” on the 14th November, and a few days later he arrived at Kororareka. He gave the insurgent leaders a final opportunity for acceptance of ex-Governor Fitzroy's terms of peace, which stipulated that the Treaty of Waitangi should be binding, that the British flag should be respected, that plunder taken from the Europeans should be restored, and that certain lands should be given up to the Crown. Old Kawiti had already replied to Fitzroy, refusing the demand for territory: “…You shall not have my land—no, never! Sir, if you are very desirous to get my land, I shall be equally desirous to retain it for myself.” The missionary Burrows was asked to convey Grey's letter to Heke. “Let the Governor and his soldiers return to England to the land that God has given them,” replied Heke, “and leave New Zealand to us, to whom God has given it. No; we will not give up our lands. If the white man wants our country he will have to fight for it, for we will die upon our lands.”

Governor Grey sent to Auckland for all available forces. Ships-of-war and battalions of soldiers were concentrated in the Bay. The latest addition to the fleet of British ships in New

It had been ascertained that the enemy were gathered to the number of several hundreds in the new pa at Rua-pekapeka, which was reported by the friendly Maoris to be stronger even than Ohaeawai. On the 8th December, 1845, the British advance upon Kawiti's bush fortress began with more than 1,100 rank and file under Colonel Despard, besides friendly Maoris. The route of march was over more difficult country than that traversed by the Ohaeawai expedition. The ships sailed up to the entrance of the Kawakawa River, thence transport was by boat for several miles; from the head of navigation the way lay through fifteen miles of roadless hills, forests, swamps, and streams to Kawiti's mountain fort.

The following troops were engaged in the attack on Ruapekapeka under Lieut.-Colonel Despard:— OfficersMenSeamen of H.M.S. “Castor,” “North Star,” “Racehorse,” and H.E.I.C. “Elphinstone,” under Captain Graham and Commander Hay, R.N.33280Lieutenant Wilmot, R.A., and Captain Marlow, R.E.2Royal Marines (Captain Langford)48058th Regiment (Lieut.-Colonel Wynward)2054399th Regiment (Captain Reed)7150H.E.I.C. Artillery (Lieutenant Leeds)115Volunteers from Auckland (Captain Atkyns)142681,100Native allies under Tamati Waka Nene, Patuone, Tawhai, Repa, and Nopera Pana-kareao450

Ordnance: Three naval 32-pounders, one 18-pounder, two 12-pounder howitzers, one 6-pounder brass gun, four mortars, and two rocket-tubes.

The modern road from the Township of Kawakawa to Ruapekapeka runs closely parallel to Despard's line of march; in fact, the two routes are identical as the site of Kawiti's stronghold is approached. At the head of boat-navigation on the Kawakawa River a fortified camp was established in the pa of a friendly chief, Tamati Pukututu. Here troops, guns, and stores were landed, and Commander Johnson, of the “North Star,” was given charge of the post with seventy men. Captain Graham, of the frigate “Castor,” was senior naval officer at the seat of war, and his bluejackets and those of the “North Star,” “Racehorse,” and “Elphinstone” were useful in the heavy work of transporting the artillery. The march of the combined naval and military force was a fine feat of pioneering, for it was necessary to make roads, fell bush, roughly bridge streams, and to use block and tackle in hauling the guns over rough ground and up steep hills. The men were compelled to carry, in addition to their arms and equipment, boxes each containing a 24 lb. or 32 lb. shell. The way in places led over fern hills and ridges; in places it plunged into patches of heavy timber.

THE NORTH PACIFIED, Governor Grey turned his attention to the Cook Strait settlements, where the position for the last year had verged upon war. The New Zealand Company's loose methods in the purchase of native lands had been followed by the repudiation of bargains, the estrangement of the two races, and the blocking of settlement. But the warriors who insisted upon muskets, gunpowder, and shot as the chief portion of the payment for the land upon which Wellington now stands were not at all dissatisfied in 1840 with the bargain they had made. They had secured arms, without which their tenure of the district in those days of almost constant intertribal jealousy and conflict would have been precarious, and they had given nothing of great value in exchange; for they were mentally resolved, if it had not been openly stated, that they would not suffer their existing cultivations and other grounds valuable as food-producing places, such as the portions of the forest richest in birds—the kaka, pigeon, and tui—to pass away for ever out of their hands.

Colonel Wakefield and his coadjutors in the first work of settlement suffered to a considerable extent from their want of knowledge of Maori laws and customs with respect to land, and also from their inability to make the natives understand the precise tenor of their questions and their documents. Richard Barrett, the whaler and trader, upon whom they placed reliance as interpreter and go-between, was illiterate, and his knowledge of the Maori tongue scarcely extended beyond colloquial phrases. Wakefield does not appear to have given close attention to the validity of the native vendor's title; so long as he found a chief or gathering of chiefs willing to sell such-and-such an area of bush, mountain and plain, he was satisfied. He was presently to gain by tragic experience a knowledge of the time and care necessary to complete a really safe and satisfactory purchase of land from the Maori. Doubtless there was at the back of Wakefield's mind a feeling that once the lands were settled by a strong body of British settlers, ready and able to hold their farms against all comers, the native population would quickly diminish in importance, if not in numbers.

Mr. Spain, the Land Claims Commissioner, in 1845 awarded the New Zealand Company 71,900 acres of land in Wellington and vicinity, excepting the villages and the lands that were actually occupied by the natives and thirty-nine native reserves. At the same time the Commissioner disallowed the Company's claims to the Wairau and Porirua lands, and in the end it was arranged (1847) that the sum of £2,000 should be paid to Ngati-Toa and their kindred for the disputed territory at Porirua, and £3,000 for the Wairau.

There seems to have been considerable uncertainty among settlers and Maoris alike as to the exact situation and boundaries of some of the reserves, more especially those in the Hutt Valley, and to this lack of precise information much of the trouble with the discontented tribes was due. In 1846 we find even the consistently friendly chief Te Puni complaining that the Ngati-Awa reserves at the Taita were occupied by European settlers. As the result of the failure to inform the Maoris of the position and bounds of the areas reserved for them, the natives in some instances cleared tracts of land outside the reserves, and in other cases occupied and cleared bush land that had been sold to settlers: disputes and suspicion were thus engendered.

The principal opposition to the white occupation of Hutt lands came in the first case from a chief named Taringa-Kuri (“Dog's Ear”), otherwise known as Kaeaea (“Sparrowhawk”). He derived his first name from his preternatural keenness of hearing; when out scouting, say the Macris, he would put his ear to the ground and detect the approach of an enemy at a great distance. “Dog's Ear” headed the Ngati-Tama Tribe, connected both with Ngati-Awa and with Ngati-Maniapoto. The clan had fought its way down the west coast as allies of Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata in the “twenties.” He and his people received a sixth part of the goods first given by Colonel Wakefield in payment for the Wellington lands. When the disputes arose as to the ownership of the Hutt Valley, “Dog's Ear” and his people cut a line through the bush as a boundary dividing the lower valley from the Upper Hutt, contending that the upper part should be reserved for Ngati-Tama

Not many of the Ngati-Tama Tribe were engaged in the war in the Hutt Valley. The majority had gone with Pomare Ngatata to the Chatham Islands. Later, a number of Ngati-Tama, as the result of quarrels with Ngati-Mutunga at the Chathams, migrated to the Auckland Islands in a French whaler. To their disgust they found that the climate of the Aucklands was so wet and cold that their potatoes would not grow. They were removed a few years later and returned to the Chatham Islands.

TWO MILES ABOVE the stockade at the Hutt Bridge a pioneer settler, Mr. Boulcott, had hewn a home out of the forest. His clearing bordered the left bank of the river; most of it was in grass; the rough edges of the farm were cumbered with half-burned logs and stumps, and on three sides was heavy timber; the fourth side faced the river and the fringing thickets on the other bank; beyond were the wooded steep hills that hemmed in the Hutt Valley on the west. A rough and narrow bush road, “corduroyed” with fern-tree trunks in the marshy portions, wound through the forest from the bridge at the fort; it was little more than a track, and in many places the branches of the rimu and rata met overhead and kept the road in dampness and shadow. Here and there were settlers' clearings, with houses of sawn timber and shingled roofs, or of slabs and nikau palm or raupo reed thatch; crops of wheat, oats, and potatoes were grown in these oases in the desert of bush. Where rows of shops, cottages, and bungalows, with beautiful orchards and gardens, cover the floor of the Hutt Valley to-day, there were but these roughly trimmed forest homes.

The most advanced post of the Regular troops in May, 1846, was on Boulcott's Farm, where fifty men of the 58th Regiment were stationed under Lieutenant G. H. Page. Some little distance higher up the valley, at the Taita, an outpost was established near Mr. Mason's section, where a small detachment of the Hutt Militia was stationed. Half the force of soldiers at Boulcott's were quartered in a large barn, around which a stockade of slabs and small logs had been erected and loopholed for musket-fire. The rest of the troops were accommodated in small slab outhouses near the barn and in tents. Lieutenant Page and his soldier servant occupied Mr. Boulcott's cottage; the owner of the place and his two men servants used a small house adjoining. It was upon this post that the Maoris, under Rangihaeata's orders, and led by Topine te Mamaku (otherwise Te Karamu), of the Ngati-Haua-te-Rangi, Upper Wanganui, made a desperate assault at daybreak on the morning of the 16th May, 1846.

TO THE RELIEF alike of Wellington townsmen, outlying settlers, and Ngati-Awa friendlies, Governor Grey returned to Port Nicholson from Auckland on the 1st July in H.M.S. “Driver,” and immediately infused energy into the lagging campaign against Te Rangihaeata. He revisited the military posts, made arrangements for the more speedy construction of the Wellington—Porirua Road and the road up the Hutt towards the Wairarapa, and had mutually satisfactory interviews with Te Puni and his leading chiefs. On the 12th July the “Calliope” landed at Paremata Point Major Last and a small reinforcement of twenty men of the 58th and forty-two of the 99th, under Lieutenants Page and De Winton and Ensign Blackburn. The frigate also took to Porirua a boat intended to be used as a gunboat in patrolling the inner shallow waters of Porirua and the Paua-taha-nui arm. The little craft was the longboat of the barque “Tyne,” which had been wrecked on the Rimurapa rocks at Sinclair Head. An energetic midshipman of the “Calliope,” Mr. H. F. McKillop, soon afterwards promoted to a lieutenancy, was given charge of the gunboat, which proved highly useful in the task of reconnoitring the upper waters and in occasional skirmishes with Rangihaeata's men. Mr. McKillop had already made a reconnaissance of Rangihaeata's position in a light four-oared boat, and had discovered that the rebel pa, although apparently not formidable in construction, was strategically strong in situation, being at the extreme head of Paua-taha-nui Inlet, partly surrounded by water, swamp, and bush, and difficult of approach either by land or by sea. This expedition (10th May) was a lively morning's adventure, in which McKillop and his comrades narrowly escaped being cut off.

McKillop's patrol would have been outmatched in a contest with the war-canoes which made a barbaric parade on the lake-like waters of Paua-taha-nui. A naval boat several times ventured up near the head of the arm, and on two occasions was compelled to retreat before these craft packed with Maoris. Two or three of the largest canoes were each manned by about fifty warriors, most of them armed with double-barrel guns. When, however, the longboat of the barque “Tyne” was procured and converted into a gunboat (oars and sail) with a 12-pounder carronade mounted in the bows, besides a small brass gun lent by Captain Stanley of the “Calliope” frigate, the scales were more evenly balanced. McKillop felt, with these two pieces of artillery and the addition of six bluejackets to his crew, that his little man-of-war was fit match for the whole of Rangihaeata's canoe flotilla.

On the morning of the 17th July the young naval officer, scanning the wooded coasts and the placid waters of the sea-lake, observed a large number of dark figures on the cleared part of a long point of hilly land which formed the largest promontory on the southern side of the Paua-taha-nui, and distant a little over a mile from Paremata camp. Through the narrow sea-passage where the railway-bridge now crosses the water near the Paremata fishing village McKillop followed the main channel of the tidal basin north-eastward until he was abreast of the promontory (to-day known as Long Point). Nothing was stirring on shore; every figure had vanished; but the officer ordered his crew to pull close in to the shore, and when within a few yards of the rocks fired a charge of canister into the manuka and small ngaio trees. Yells of mingled pain, fright, and rage arose, and from the bushes leaped a horde of shaggy-headed figures with flashing gun-barrels. It was only for a few seconds that their dusky faces were seen; they quickly took cover and opened a hot fire on the bluejackets. The gunners again raked the foliage with canister, and this fire brought out the Maoris. Firing as they came, they rushed into the open, and, seeing that the boat was within a few yards of the shore, many of them dashed into the shallow water on the edge of the main creek, attempting to board the boat. The men's beds and blankets had been lashed up in their hammocks and fastened round the top-sides and gun-wale of the boat, forming a bullet-proof inner breastwork. The encounter was at such close quarters that it was almost impossible for the warriors to miss. Nearly every bullet struck the boat, and although she was coppered almost up to the gunwale many balls passed through, to be stopped by the sailors' bedding parapet.

The Maoris, it was now seen, were led by Te Rangihaeata himself. For the first time in the campaign he personally headed his men in a charge against the whites. The warriors made an attempt to board the boat, imagining that she was aground, so close was she to the point. One party made an attack upon the quarter, and, as the carronade in the bows did not bear upon these men, McKillop slewed his brass gun, which was on a swivel, and fired at them. The gun burst; the midshipman was knocked

The crew completed their victory by firing several 12 lb. solid shot into the bushes where the Maoris had taken cover, and returned to Paremata.

By Proclamation dated 18th June, signed by Captain George Grey, Lieutenant-Governor, the operation of martial law in the “Island of New Ulster,” as the North Island was officially

A TRAVELLER TAKING the main road north from Wellington City and driving round the head of the Paua-taha-nui Inlet will pass within a few yards of the spot where Te Rangihaeata and his men built their palisaded and rifle-pitted stronghold in 1846. The exact site of the pa can readily be identified. The spot is occupied to-day by a steepled church of old-fashioned design, crowning as in a picture the green hill above the one-street village of Paua-taha-nui—now misspelled Pahautanui. The salt water once flowed at high tide nearly to the foot of that rounded hill; the land was raised several feet by the earthquake in 1855, and now the one-time flats of sand and mud are covered with grass, and the beach where Maori war-canoes and pakeha boats lay long ago has become a sheep-paddock. A little stream comes down from the hills around the eastern and southern foot of the mound, and joins the sea 200 yards below the place where our main road crosses on a wooden bridge. The hill is small-wooded like a park; white grave-stones gleam among the shrubs and trees on its seaward face. It is a slumberous pretty spot— This old churchyard on the hillThat keeps the green graves of the dead.

Transformed as the place is by the lapse of nearly three-quarters of a century, one still may reconstruct in imagination the hilltop as it was in Rangihaeata's year of war. It was a cleverly chosen retreat, convenient to the canoe-stream and the harbour, yet sufficiently removed from deep water to be unapproachable by heavily gunned war-vessels, and beyond effective musket-range from any but the smallest boats. It was protected on three sides by water and marshes. On the south and south-east there was a cliff, at its highest about 30 feet, now thickly covered with trees dropping to a backwater of the little river. On the scarped front—the west—were the curving stream, with its swampy borders, and the salt water; on the north and north-west were

Rangihaeata's stronghold, on the spot where the church now stands, was in the form of a parallelogram, with two rows of palisades, a ditch within the second row, 6 feet wide and 5 feet deep, and whares with underground communication. The outer stockade was a weak curtain, but the inner palisades were heavy timbers up to 10 inches or a foot in thickness and about 15 feet high. The fort was about eighty paces in length and half that in width; there were flanking defences, and there were intricate interior passage-ways, some on the surface fenced with manuka stakes, so narrow that only one man could pass at a time, and some underground. Shell-proof shelters covered with slabs and tree-trunks and earth were connected with the main trench by covered ways, and the main trench itself was cut with traverses protective against an enfilading fire down the ditch. The rear, as usual in Maori pas, was the weakest in defence; but the problem would have been to reach this part, naturally guarded as it was by water, swamp, and bush.

Captain Grey decided to approach the pa from the rear. He ordered a body of Militia, police, and Ngati-Awa friendlies to march across the hills from the Hutt and endeavour to carry the place by surprise. The Regular soldiers were excluded from the expedition, not being suitable troops for bush-work. On the afternoon of the 31st July this force, consisting of fifty men of the Hutt Militia, thirteen of the armed police, and 150 Ngati-Awa Maoris, left the Hutt Valley on their march over the hills. The Militia were under the command of Captain McDonogh and Lieutenant White, and the police under Mr. Chetham Strode. One Imperial officer, Ensign Middleton, of the 58th Regiment, accompanied the expedition, and Mr. Ludlam and Mr. Stilling joined as volunteers. The native friendlies were under the charge of Mr. D. Scott. The column ascended the hills on the western side of the Hutt River nearly opposite Boulcott's Farm stockade, and followed a native track over the ranges to the upper valley of the Pauataha-nui; this track was the route used by the enemy in their raids from the Porirua district upon the Hutt. Next morning (1st August) the two foremost guides encountered a scout of the enemy, a minor Upper Wanganui chief named Whare-aitu, otherwise known grotesquely as “Martin Luther.” He was captured. (In September he was court-martialled for rebellion and hanged at Paremata.) The capture was made within half a mile of the pa, and the incident was seen by some women from the hill stockade, which was now visible. Screaming out an alarm, they ran off to the pa. The main body and the Militia and police now came doubling up, and the whole force moved quickly forward. The pa had just been evacuated when the force rushed it.

The next stage in the history of Paua-taha-nui pa was its conversion into an Imperial military post. It was garrisoned by detachments of Regular regiments, and for a considerable period after hostilities had ceased it was occupied as an advanced post covering the construction of the main road northward to Paekakariki and Waikanae by a company of the 65th, who had arrived in Wellington on the 22nd July, 1846, by the barque “Levant” from Sydney—the first of that regiment to reach New Zealand. The force landed by the “Levant” consisted of Captain O'Connell, Captain Newenham, Lieutenant McCoy, Lieutenant Turner, and Assistant-Surgeon White (65th); Ensign Barker (58th); eight sergeants, seven corporals, and 162 rank and file of the 58th and 65th Regiments.

Our illustration showing the Paua-taha-nui post as it was at this period, with the main Maori stockading retained, is from a water-colour drawing by Lieut.-Colonel W. A. McCleverty, who was sent to Wellington from Sydney at the end of 1846 as Land Claims Commissioner, and was afterwards given command of the military operations at Wanganui.

The scene of hostilities now shifted northward. Te Rangihaeata, it was discovered, had taken post in the wooded ranges

THE NEW ZEALAND COMPANY'S settlement at Wanganui—or Petre, as it was officially named in compliment to Lord Petre, one of the directors of the Company—was the most unfortunate of all the colonies planted by the Wakefields. The first settlers under the Company took up their land there in 1841, but the natives very soon disputed their title to many of the sections, declaring that they had never sold the land. “Our case is indeed a hard one,” Dr. Wilson, of Wanganui, wrote in his diary in 1846. “Up to the commencement of our present war state we had waited more than six years for the proprietorship of land here which we paid for in London upwards of seven years ago; but that promised land has never yet been delivered up to us.” When some of the unfortunate settlers, despairing of ever being established in secure occupation of their farm sections outside the Town of Wanganui, applied to the Company for land elsewhere in New Zealand they were informed that only in the Wanganui district had they a claim for land. Those who left Wanganui were compelled to purchase afresh elsewhere, and those who remained presently found themselves compelled to arm for defence against the Maoris with whom they had hoped to live in neighbourly peace. The Company blamed the Government for preventing selection according to the conditions of sale, but Governor Hobson declared that nothing contained in the agreement between the Government and the Company had any such reference to their engagements with private parties, and held that the Company was bound to fulfil the conditions it had entered into for the disposal of their lands. Neither Hobson nor Fitzroy, however, was able to improve the unhappy position. Not until a campaign had been fought and Wanganui relieved from a state of siege, and the troubles adjusted by Governor Grey and Mr. (afterwards Sir Donald) McLean, was the peaceful progress of the district assured.

In 1845 there were not many more than two hundred Europeans in Wanganui; there were about sixty houses. This little outpost of colonization was practically surrounded by Maoris. The native population along the Wanganui River was estimated in 1846 at four thousand, most of whom were on very friendly terms with the settlers themselves, though they had no love for the New Zealand Company. Living was rough and primitive, but food was abundant; the Maoris of the numerous villages from Wanganui Heads inland plied a diligent canoe-paddle, bringing in their cargoes of pigs, potatoes, kumara, vegetable marrows, and pumpkins for sale by barter. Governor Grey in 1846 investigated the condition of the settlement, and made arrangements for the completion of the purchase of 40,000 acres. Major Richmond, the Superintendent of the Southern District, was deputed to settle the details. It was not until 1848, however, that the sale was finally closed. The area of purchase was increased to 80,000 acres, extending to the Kai-iwi River.

In December of 1846 the frigate “Calliope” and the Government brig “Victoria” brought up from Wellington and landed at Wanganui 180 men of the 58th Regiment, under Captain Laye and Lieutenant Balneavis, four Royal Artillery men with two 12-pounder guns, Lieutenant (afterwards Captain) T. B. Collinson, R.E., and Mr. Tyrone Power, D.A.C.G. These troops set about the work of fortifying the town. The warship also brought up the small gunboat which had been used in the Porirua patrols. Lieutenant Holmes, R.N., was detailed to command the gunboat-crew; with him was a young midshipman of the “Calliope.” On the 16th April, 1847, a minor chief of the Wanganui people, by name Ngarangi, went to the midshipman's quarters to receive payment for some work done. The juvenile officer, by way of a joke, presented a pistol at him; the charge exploded, and Ngarangi received a wound in the head. He was well tended, and soon began to recover. He told his people that the wound was accidental; nevertheless a small party determined to exact utu for the blood-letting, and so precipitate war. Six of them attacked the home of Mr. J. A. Gilfillan, in the Mataraua Valley, severely wounded Gilfillan, and killed his wife and three children with the tomahawk; a daughter of sixteen was wounded. Five of the murderers were captured by a party of friendly natives, under Hone Wiremu Hipango, and four of them were court-martialled in Wanganui and hanged on the Rutland Stockade hill.

The natives attached to the Europeans by ties of friendship or by the teachings of their missionary, Richard Taylor, agreed that the execution of the tomahawk-party was a proper punishment. By far the greater number of the Wanganui warriors, however, resolved to take up arms to avenge the deaths of the four. The execution of Whare-aitu by the military at Paremata in the previous year was also a provocative factor.

LAND DISPUTES TROUBLED the Settlement of New Plymouth almost from the day of its foundation. Commissioner Spain, who in 1844 investigated the New Zealand Company's claims, awarded 60,000 acres to the Company on payment of £200; but Governor Fitzroy set aside this award, considering that it would be an injustice to a very large number of Te Atiawa (Ngati-Awa) who were absent at the time their land was said to have been sold. Later, various blocks of land were purchased to satisfy the demands of the settlers. The principal transactions of this nature were carried out by Mr. F. Dillon Bell (afterwards Sir Dillon), who was sent in 1847 from Nelson by the New Zealand Company to supersede Mr. Wicksteed as the Company's agent in New Plymouth. Mr. Dillon Bell had joined the New Zealand Company in England in 1839, and was sent to Nelson in 1843. His excellent work in Nelson led to his selection for the delicate task of satisfying the mutually antagonistic elements in Taranaki. His chief purchases were the Omata Block of 12,000 acres, and the Hua territory, of 1,500 acres (from the Puketapu Tribe), which was named the “Bell Block.” Both these settlement areas were to become famous in after-years, when the settlers built fortifications thereon and prepared by force of arms to maintain their rights to the land upon which they had made their homes. Katatore, a tragic figure in Taranaki history, stoutly opposed the sale of the Bell Block by Rawiri Waiaua and others in 1848, and he had a singular pole carved and erected on the right bank of the Wai-whakaiho River, alongside the track, as a symbol of protest against the encroachment of the pakeha. This post, a puriri spar about 30 feet high, was named by the Maoris “ Poututaki,” and came to be known by the Europeans as the “Fitzroy pole” from its proximity to the Fitzroy Village, now a suburb of New Plymouth. It had two life-sized figures in bold relief, representing the pakeha cowering beneath a Maori warrior; the native figure was intended as a presentment of a chief of Puketapu, one Parata te Huia. The post was intended to mark the limit of European settlement; no pakeha, according to the Maoris, was to own any land between that spot and the Auckland District. It was 1853 before the natives would permit settlements on the Bell Block. The return to Waitara from Waikanae in 1848 of the greater part of the Atiawa (or Ngati-Awa) Tribe further complicated the progress of the white settlement in Taranaki. These people, sections of whom had sold much of the land about Wellington to the New Zealand Company—they had conquered those lands from the original holders—conceived a desire to return to their ancestral homes on the Waitara, and, in spite of the opposition and even threats of Governor Grey, carried out their undertaking successfully. Grey eventually withdrew his opposition in consideration of the help afforded to the Government by the Atiawa at Waikanae and Wellington in crushing Rangihaeata's rising in 1846. Wiremu Kingi te Rangitaake, the head chief of the Waikanae people, had given valuable protection to the Wellington Settlement at a very critical period. The Governor could not very well ignore this. Crying their farewells to their lands and the few people whom they left at Waikanae and Otaki, the Atiawa emigrants set sail up the coast in April, 1848. The flotilla consisted of forty-four canoes of large size, four open boats, and a small sailing-craft. A few people also travelled overland on horseback. The total number of the Atiawa who thus returned and landed joyfully on the shore of their ancient home-land was 587, consisting of 273 men, 195 women, and 119 children. These were the people who in 1860 came into conflict with the Administration over the purchase of the 600-acre block on which the Town of Waitara now stands.

Wiremu Kingi and his tribe set to work industriously to cultivate their lands on the left (or west) side of the Waitara River mouth, and in a few years had a number of comfortable settlements near the river, with large crops of wheat, maize, and potatoes, and a considerable number of horses and cattle, besides ploughs and other agricultural implements. In 1856 they sent to market about £8,000 worth of produce, and spent the proceeds on goods in New Plymouth. Their desirable lands inevitably excited the envy of the pakeha settlers, who presently moved the authorities to extend their purchases towards the Waitara.

In the meantime the growing native jealousy of the pakeha took formidable form in a combination to prevent further land-sales. This powerful movement, to which was conjoined an effort to found a Maori kingdom, was initiated shortly after New Zealand received its Constitution Act bestowing representative government upon the colony. The connection between these most important political developments may be rather difficult to trace exactly, but the coincidence is certainly remarkable. The Maori was not to be behind the white in his struggle for national power, and while the settlers had been successful in their agitation for self-determination, he was determined that the newcomers should be restrained in their race for Maori lands.

“If Englishmen could occasionally be brought to face the fact that since the institution of their nationality and language no permanent English community has ever passed under a foreign yoke, they would be better able to understand how impossible it is for a dominant race to do complete justice to a subject people, and how hollow is the pretence that impartial justice is rendered to such people. The strong natural sense of justice which animates Englishmen, and their intense respect for the rights of property, have doubtless helped to a vast degree to counteract the evils of domination and disparity; but if we could view the question from a national Maori point of view we should find much to approve of in the principle of the League.”—Mr. Justice Chapman, in his “History of New Zealand” (Dunedin).

The anti-pakeha crusade was given its first expression in a great conference of the west-coast tribes held in 1854 at Manawa-pou, a large settlement of the Ngati-Ruanui, at the mouth of the Ingahape River, on the South Taranaki coast. The site of this celebrated meeting is still plainly to be traced, although it is now part of the farm of a white settler. Manawa-pou is a beautiful terrace overlooking the sea, on the south side of the mouth of the Ingahape River, where the stream comes curving out of a deep grassy valley. On the hill 300 feet above are the earthworks of the Imperial redoubt of Manawa-pou, dating back to General Cameron's campaign. Here in the “fifties” was the home of a section of the Ngati-Ruanui, notable for the large stature of its men. The tribe built an unusually large meeting-house for the gathering; it was 120 feet long and 35 feet wide. “Taiporohenui,” the name given to the assembly-house, was orginally that of a sacred house of instruction in Hawaiki, according to Taranaki tradition. A great patriotic song was chanted by the people at the opening of “Taiporohenui.” It began:— E kore Taranaki e makere atu!E kore Taranaki e makere atu!Kei marea mai—kei marea mai!Tika tonu mai ki a Piata-kai-manawa,I Piata-kai-manawa.Ka turuKo te whakamutunga,E kapa-ti, kapa-ti!E—i—e!

In this chant the spirit of determination to hold fast to the ancestral land was made manifest—“Taranaki shall not be lost, shall not be abandoned to the stranger.” The conference of the tribes determined that no more land should be sold to the Europeans without the general consent of the federation, and that Maori disputes should not be submitted to European jurisdiction but should be settled by tribal runanga (councils). At this meeting, too, the idea of a Maori king for the Maori people was discussed and fervently approved.

The differences between the adherents of the Land League and those who wished to sell developed into murderous intertribal feuds. On the 3rd August, 1854, Rawiri Waiaua, who offered the Government a disputed area at Taruru-tangi, in the Puketapu Block, was fatally shot, with several of his followers, by Katatore and a party of twenty-eight men representing the non-sellers. The Government professed itself powerless to interfere. The quarrelling factions fortified themselves in their pas, and an intermittent skirmishing warfare prevailed for many months. The rival parties often selected the vicinity of the white settlements for their guerilla warfare. The Administration was appealed to for troops for the protection of New Plymouth, and on the 19th August, 1855, the first British garrison of the province arrived. This was a portion of the 58th Regiment, numbering about 270 men and officers, under Captain Seymour, with some Royal Artillery men and several field-guns, and some sappers and miners. In September the force was increased by the arrival from Wellington of some two hundred of the 65th Regiment.

The native-land vendetta was resumed in August, 1857, when Ihaia te Kiri-kumara, who was very friendly to the Government and had sold some land, laid and ambush for his enemy Katatore on the road through the Bell Block Settlement. The settlers heard the firing in the morning early as Katatore was shot down. In the intertribal war thus renewed Katatore's slayer was driven out of his pa, which was sacked and burned. All north Taranaki, or at any rate the native portion of the population, was almost continually under arms.

The period 1858–59 was one of continual internecine strife in the district between the Bell Block and the Waitara. Ihaia's pa, Ika-moana, near Puketapu, was evacuated and destroyed in February, 1858. Ihaia and his party, the land-sellers, were then besieged at the Karaka, on the Waitara. On the 10th March, 1858, Mr. S. Percy Smith (afterwards Surveyor-General) rode down to the Waitara with Mr. Parris, Civil Commissioner, who was in charge of native affairs in Taranaki, and made sketches under fire of the pas occupied by Ihaia and Wiremu Kingi. “Plenty of bullets flying over my head while sketching,” wrote Mr. Smith in his diary.

The following description of the fighting at the Bell Block arising out of the Puketapu feud over the sale of lands to the Government is from the pen of Mr. A. H. Messenger, son of the late Colonel W. B. Messenger, of New Plymouth:—

“Some curious incidents occurred in the native war waged over the newly made farms of the settlers from Devon and Cornwall. As a boy living in one of the Taranaki frontier posts, I heard the story of those stirring times recounted by my father. The opposing tribes fought back and forth with varying fortune over the undulating country of the Waiwhakaiho River, and out on to what was later known as the Bell Block. The settlers in 1857–58 were witnesses of many thrilling incidents, and it was a frequent occurrence to have to stop work in the middle of a fencing or ploughing job and retire to the security of the farmhouse while a fierce skirmish took place in which numerous casualties occurred on both sides. Though bullets were flying in all directions, the white settlers were never molested, and their stock also was under strict tapu, and was not interfered with. An episode typical of those thrilling days was described by a Devonshire settler who in the midst of ploughing operations suddenly found himself in a Maori battle. The opposing war-parties had skirmished up towards one another through the high fern surrounding the little farm, and finished up with a charge and close hand-to-hand fighting with tomahawk and mere over the newly ploughed ground. For a moment the settler thought that his end had come, but the brown warriors took no notice of his presence, and as the battle passed on he found himself still standing, hand on plough, gazing in bewilderment at several stark figures that lay sprawled in the attitude of sudden death amid the newly turned furrows. As night fell groups of warriors, many of whom bore fresh wounds from musket-ball or blow of tomahawk, gathered round the nearest farmhouse and deposited their guns with the white settlers, telling them that they would call for them on the morrow, when fighting was resumed in the same manner.

“In another case a settler received a message from each of the opposing forces to the effect that a fight would take place on his farm in the morning, and that it would be well for him to remain in his house until the tide of war had passed by. Taking due heed of this warning, the settler was witness on the following morning of a battle in his pastures. Many bullets struck the house, and one random shot killed a sheep; otherwise no damage was done to his property. The nervous tension brought on by these conditions of life proved too much for several of the settlers, who finally left the district in search of more peaceful surroundings.”

IT WAS Tamehana te Rauparaha, the son of the great Ngati-Toa conquistador, who first suggested the establishment of a king or high chief for the union of Maori tribes. Tamehana had made a voyage to England, and, being an exceedingly shrewd and observant man, he returned with many ideas for the betterment of his countrymen. The principal reform he felt impelled to propose was the setting-up of a king under whose control the people should live in harmony with each other and with their pakeha neighbours. His kinsman Matene te Whiwhi, of Otaki, seized upon the notion with patriotic enthusiasm, and travelled among the tribes advocating union and the election of some high rangatira as head of the Maori nation.

The members of the confederation of the anti-land-selling chiefs and people found considerable difficulty in the selection of a head for the union of the tribes. Many men of high pedigree were approached, but one after another declined the troublesome office of king. One of the chiefs whom Matene te Whiwhi and his fellow-leaguers urged to accept the kingship was Whitikau, of the Nga-Rauru Tribe, Waitotara. He refused; so did Tamati Hone, the man of highest standing in Ngati-Ruanui. A deputation of chiefs went to Wanganui and placed the position before Pehi Turoa, who refused. Te Heuheu Iwikau, of Taupo, similarly declined the offer.

The Waikato tribes held a very large meeting in 1857 at Paetai, on the Waikato River, at which the question was debated by delegates from all the tribes of the confederation, as well as others outside the league. The Arawa people of Rotorua and Maketu were represented at this gathering by Temuera te Amohau. Eloquent efforts were made to induce the Arawa to join the Kingites. Temuera refused, saying, “One of our chiefs, Timoti, was the only man of the Arawa people who signed the Treaty of Waitangi, but we shall not depart from the pledge he then gave. We will not join the king tribes. My king is Queen Victoria.” (“Taku kingi ko Kuini Wikitoria.”)

Temuera was taunted by some of the Waikato chiefs with the defeat Te Waharoa had inflicted on the Arawa twenty years previously at Mataipuku, near Ohinemutu. He retorted with an allusion to Te Waharoa having been taken prisoner and spared by the Arawa in his infancy. “As for us Arawa,” he said, “we shall stand as firmly as a rock in the ocean. Upon that rock shall be shattered the waves of your kingdom.” (“Ka tu a te Arawa hai toka tu moana, e pakaru ai nga ngaru o to Kingitanga.”) Temuera concluded by telling the Waikato that if they wished to set up a Maori king they should apply to the highest chief in New Zealand, Te Kani-a-Takirau, of the East Cape.

This suggestion is said to have led to an offer to the chief named to become king of the federated tribes, but here again the leaguers met with a refusal. Te Kani, in any case, was not a suitable selection. He was a very high-born rangatira, but a man of no force of character, and his territory was remote from the chief seats of agitation.

A conference was also held in 1857 at Pukawa, Lake Taupo, and was attended by chiefs from all over the Island. The chiefs finally selected Potatau te Wherowhero, who had no desire for the honour. He was a very old and feeble man, but his warrior reputation, his exalted lineage, and his widespread tribal connections qualified him as the necessary figurehead behind whom Wiremu Tamehana and his fellow-reformers might carry out their schemes of self-government.

The late Te Heuheu Tukino, the head chief of the Ngati-Tuwharetoa Tribe, described to the writer as follows the highly ceremonious manner in which the chiefs of the various tribes assembled at Pukawa in 1857 centralized their mana and bestowed it upon Potatau te Wherowhero, who was then chosen as the king of the confederated tribes:—

“Te Heuheu Iwikau, who was head of our tribe since the death of my grandfather, Te Heuheu Mana-nui, in the landslip at Te Rapa (1846), caused a high flagstaff to be erected on the marae, the meeting-ground, at Pukawa. At the masthead he hoisted a national flag; the pattern was that of the flag given by King William IV of England to the northern Maori tribes at the Bay of Islands some years before the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. Beneath this flag at intervals down the mast he had long ropes of plaited flax attached. The flagstaff symbolized Tongariro, the sacred mountain of our tribe. The Maoris were assembled in divisions grouped around the foot. Te Heuheu arose and said, indicating a rope, ‘This is Ngongotaha’ (the mountain near Rotorua Lake). ‘Where is the chief of Ngongotaha who shall attach this mountain to Tongariro?’ The leading chief of the Arawa Tribe, of Rotorua, rose from his place in the assemblage, and taking the end of the rope fastened it to a manuka peg, which he drove into the ground in front of his

THE COMPLICATED HISTORY of the Waitara purchase may be reduced to a simple summary. Teira, a minor chief of the Atiawa, living with his fellow-tribesmen on the ancestral lands on the Waitara, was persuaded to offer 600 acres of the land to the Government, at a price of £1 per acre. This block was on the left side of the Waitara, near the mouth, and included the ground on which the present Town of Waitara stands. A number of Teira's people supported him, but the majority of the Atiawa, headed by Wiremu Kingi te Rangitaake, opposed the transaction, and made vehement and repeated protest. It was acknowledged that Teira was the occupier of a portion of the land, and the Government contention—on the advice of Mr. Parris, its local native agent—was that a native had a right to dispose of his individual interests in land. But this was long before the establishment of the Native Land Court. Titles in native land had not been individualized; it was practically impossible to determine the precise extent of Teira's interests. The case for the opponents of the sale was that while individual cultivation rights existed no one had a right to part with the tribal estate without general consent. The land was the common property of the people, and it was against accepted tribal policy to permit a wedge to be driven into the estate by deed of sale without the acquiescence of all concerned. While the whole tribe might be called upon to fight to maintain any or every member of the tribe in possession, so no member was justified in parting with the joint property of the clan. This land had always been thickly populated, and was the property of a great many families, and Wiremu Kingi, as the paramount chief, undoubtedly exercised his right in vetoing the sale. Moreover, it is known that Wiremu Kingi was the victim of a private feud. He and Teira had quarrelled, and Teira, in order to obtain revenge, deliberately proposed the sale in order to bring trouble upon his antagonist and the tribe. This was a common mode of action among the Maoris. The determined opposition of Wiremu Kingi—who was no fire-

THE COMPLETION of the Waitara purchase, in spite of Wiremu Kingi's repeated protests, was resolved upon by the Governor in Council at Auckland early in 1860. It was decided to have the block surveyed, and to protect the survey party with an adequate military force if obstruction were offered, and if necessary to call out the Taranaki Militia and Volunteers for active service and proclaim martial law. The Auckland Militia, it was further decided by Governor Gore Browne and his Executive Council (the Stafford Ministry), should be enrolled and armed; all males between the ages of sixteen and fifty-five were liable for service. The fateful decision to proceed with the survey was communicated to Lieut.-Colonel Murray, temporarily commanding in New Plymouth, who immediately had the country between the town and the Waitara reconnoitred for the purpose of selecting suitable places for camps and redoubts on the disputed block and along the road. On the 20th February, 1860, the title to the block was put to the test. Mr. Octavius Carrington, Chief Surveyor, and Mr. Charles Wilson Hursthouse (afterwards District Surveyor and later Chief Engineer of Roads and Bridges) and a party of chainmen went to the Waitara to commence the survey of the land. Mr. Parris, the Government's principal instrument in the purchase, accompanied them. The Maoris obstructed the surveyors and prevented them beginning their work. The party returned to New Plymouth. Lieut.-Colonel Murray gave Wiremu Kingi twenty-four hours to apologize and withdraw his opposition. The old chief replied that he did not desire war, that he loved the white people very much, but that he intended to hold the land. Thereupon (22nd February) Murray proclaimed martial law in the Taranaki District. The Militia and the Taranaki Rifle Volunteers were called out for active service, and a small mounted corps was organized and armed with carbines, revolvers, and swords. The country settlers began their migration to the town, abandoning their homes, which presently were to go up in flames.

THE GULLY-RIVEN littoral of Waireka, five miles south-west of New Plymouth, was the theatre of an engagement (28th March, 1860) which proved the fighting-capacity of Taranaki's newly trained Volunteers and Militia, and saved the town from direct attack by the united strength of the southern tribes. The encounter was doubly memorable because it was the first occasion on which a British Volunteer corps engaged an enemy on the battlefield.

The British move upon the Waitara was quickly followed by the decision of Taranaki, Ngati-Ruanui, and Nga-Rauru, the three principal tribes of the coast curving round from Ngamotu to the Waitotara, to come to Wiremu's Kingi's aid. Ten days after the taking of the L pa five hundred warriors of these people, the best fighting-blood on the whole west coast south of New Plymouth, had arrived within six miles of the town. After ceremonious welcomes at Ratapihipihi and other settlements they gathered in a strongly entrenched and stockaded pa at Kaipopo, the most commanding part of the hills at Waireka. The fortification was alongside the road from Omata, and about a mile and a half south of the stockade commanding that settlement; the surf-beaten shore was less than three-quarters of a mile away. The district was already partially settled by Europeans, and farmhouses were scattered over the much-dissected coastland between the ranges and the sea. Clear streams, rock-bedded, coursed down through the numerous narrow wooded valleys. One of these was the Waireka (“Sweet Water”); it was joined just at the beach by a smaller hill-brook, the Waireka-iti. This broken terrain, with its spurs, knolls, and ravines giving abundance of cover, was an admirable country for the Maori's skirmishing tactics. The natives who composed the fighting force on this side of New Plymouth were chiefly Taranaki, composed of Ngamahanga, Patukai, Ngati-Haumia, Ngarangi, and other hapus, under Kingi Parengarenga (afterwards killed at Sentry Hill), Hori Kingi, the celebrated Wiremu Kingi te Matakaatea (not to be confused with Wiremu Kingi te Rangitaake, of Waitara), and Arama Karaka. A war-party of Ngati-Ruanui, chiefly the Ngaruahine hapu of the Waimate Plains, arrived just in time for the battle; their principal rangatira was Te Hanataua. The men were armed with double-barrel shot-guns, and were well supplied with powder and lead; several carried rifles.

On the 27th the first blood was shed in the Omata district. Two farmers (S. Shaw and H. Passmore) and a New Plymouth business man (Samuel Ford) were shot and tomahawked by ambush-parties on the roadside near the Primitive Methodist Chapel; next day the bodies of two boys (Pote and Parker), similarly killed, were found. On the morning of the 28th, when New Plymouth was in a state of intense excitement over the news of these murders, the military authorities decided to despatch an expedition to Omata for the purpose of rescuing the Rev. H. H. Brown and his family, and several other settlers who had remained on their farms. The chiefs, however, had made proclamation that Mr. Brown would be protected, and a notice in Maori was posted at Omata declaring that the road to his place and to his neighbours' must not be trodden by war-parties. The minister was tapu because of his sacred office; as for the others enumerated, one settler was Portuguese and one French; the war was only with the British. The force detailed for the expedition consisted of three officers and twenty-five men of the Royal Navy (H.M.S. “Niger”), four officers and eighty-four rank and file of the 65th Regiment, with 103 officers and men of the Taranaki Rifle Volunteers and fifty-six Taranaki Militia. Lieut.-Colonel Murray was in command. Lieutenant Blake was in charge of the bluejackets (who were to be followed, if necessary, by a larger force from the “Niger”). The colonial force was under the command of Captain Charles Brown, who had with him the following officers: Militia—Captain and Adjutant Stapp, Lieutenants McKechney and McKellar, Ensign W. B. Messenger; Volunteers—Captain Harry A. Atkinson, Lieutenants Hirst, Hamerton, Webster, and Jonas.

The first blunder made by the Imperial officers was the division of this small force despatched into hostile territory. Captain Brown, in command of the settlers, was ordered to march by the sea-coast, keeping along the beach until he reached the rear of the Maori positions at Waireka. The Regulars, under Lieut.-Colonel Murray, marched by the main road for the announced purpose of dislodging a war-party reported to be at the spot known as the “Whalers' Gate,” about three-quarters of a mile on the town side of the Omata stockade. The Volunteers and Militia were expected to recover the out-settlers supposed to be in danger, and to march back by the road, joining Murray at the “Whalers' Gate.” The force was not sent from town until after 1 p.m. (the colonials

Murray did not meet with any opposition at the “Whalers' Gate,” where there was no trace of Maoris. He moved leisurely along the south road until, near the Omata stockade, the sound of rapid firing about two miles off, near the sea, indicated that the civilian force was hotly engaged. He despatched the naval detachment and some of the 65th, under Lieutenant Urquhart, to Brown's assistance, while he took the main body along the road and down a lane which turned off on the right to the sea. Some distance down the lane he turned into a grass paddock, entrenched his men, and opened fire on the Maori skirmishers at long range. He had a rocket-tube, and fired some rockets into a wooded gully on his left front, up which some of the Maoris were moving to cut him off from the main road, as he thought. Accordingly he took up a position in the lane so as to secure the main road, and confined himself to firing rockets at the distant pa and any groups of Maoris observed, and rifle-fire on the native skirmishers over the spurs and in the ravines, until he considered it time to sound the “Retire.”

Meanwhile the Volunteers and the Militia were fighting a desperate battle on the slopes above the beach. Captain Brown, who had not had any previous experience of soldiering, had wisely requested his adjutant, Captain Stapp, to take command, and that veteran of the “Black Cuffs” conducted the afternoon's operations with the coolness characteristic of the well-skilled regular soldier. He had an old comrade with him who put good stiffening into the civilian ranks, Colour-Sergeant (afterwards Lieutenant) W. H. Free; both had been corporals in the 58th in Heke's War. The Volunteers were armed with medium Enfield rifles (muzzle-loading), the Militia had the old smooth-bore muskets (percussion cap), such as were first served out in the late “forties.” Of ammunition there were only thirty rounds per man; no reserve supply was brought.

When the Waireka was reached where it runs down on the ironsand beach the advanced guard under Colour-Sergeant Free caught sight of a large number of armed Maoris coming down at a run from their pa on the Kaipopo ridge nearly a mile away. Free fired the first shot in the engagement, and Volunteer Charles Wilson Hursthouse (the surveyor) the second, at 400 yards range. Free and his party doubled forward and took cover behind a furze hedge and rail fence to prevent the Maoris seizing it. Resting his Minie rifle on the lowest rail of the fence, Free sighted for 300 yards and drilled a conspicuous warrior through his cap-band as was afterwards discovered. “Good for you, Free,” shouted one of the veteran's comrades. Captain Atkinson rushed up the leading company (comprised of half the column, Volunteers and Militia mixed) in support, and took post on high ground on the south side of the Waireka, where his accurate fire kept the Maoris back for a time. However, as the number of the assailants was increased every minute by reinforcements from the pa, and as he was in danger of being outflanked, Captain Stapp ordered a retreat on Mr. John Jury's farmhouse, a small building on a terrace above the beach. Captain Atkinson, on his own suggestion, was sent to an excellent strategic position above the Waireka Stream and on the edge of the cliff overlooking the sea; from here he could command the flanks and rear of Jury's homestead and the mouth of the Waireka. Holding this position until the battle ceased, Atkinson and his men inflicted numerous casualties on

The Maoris were gradually forced back into an upper gully, but, as Captain Brown perceived an attempt on their part, under cover of the high flax-bushes, to cut off the way of retreat to the Omata stockade, he sent Urquhart to hold the commanding ground

THE WINTER OF 1860 drew on with its heavy rains, which converted the roads and tracks, cut up by the continuous military traffic, into mud-channels, and the difficulties of campaigning were correspondingly increased. The rivers were often in a state of high flood, and the swamps became almost impassable. Under these conditions the Imperial forces fought an action which developed into the most disastrous affair for the British in the first Taranaki War.

Half a mile south-east of Te Kohia (the L pa) the native belligerents constructed two forts close together and supporting each other, on small mounds called Puke-ta-kauere and Onuku-kaitara. Outside these strongholds were numerous rifle-pits and trenches, well masked by the high fern and tutu bushes. The double fortification was on considerably higher ground than the British main camp at Pukekohe, on the Waitara, and its situation was admirably chosen for defence. The spur on which the twin knolls were embossed lay between two small swampy water-courses which joined a short distance to the north-east and ran through a deep morass of flax and toetoe to the Waitara River, half a mile distant from Puke-ta-kauere, the northernmost pa. The forts thus were situated in a kind of V, with the apex towards the river. The ferny plateau south of the swamps and extending to the cliffs of the Waitara offered suitable ground from which a flanking fire could be poured on any attacking-party. The Onuku-kaitara pa was the larger of the two. The other was notable for its strong earthwork defences; it was surrounded with two trenches; the scarp of one of these ditches presented a face nearly 20 feet high. To all intent the places were impregnable to assault. Unfortunately for the British, the commander at the Waitara neglected to have the approach to the pas properly scouted, and lack of knowledge of the ground, conjoined to an ignorance of Maori field-engineering genius and skill in skirmishing tactics, was responsible for a defeat which enormously heartened up the pakeha's antagonists, and deepened the dissatisfaction of the Taranaki settlers with the Imperial command. The British main camp was only a mile away, and the building of the pas was carried on in plain view of the soldiers. From the Onuku-kaitara pa flagstaff flew a Maori ensign, white with a black cross. A reconnaissance-party from the camp was fired on. The senior officer, Major T. Nelson (40th Regiment), a veteran of the Indian and Afghan wars, then determined to attack.

The garrison of the double fort was much better fighting-material than the purely Atiawa force which had built and evacuated Te Kohia at the beginning of the war. Reinforcements of warriors had arrived from the Upper Waikato and the district afterwards known as the King Country, and from the southern parts of the west coast. The tribes which confronted Nelson and his 40th, besides Te Atiawa and Taranaki, were Ngati-Maniapoto and Ngati-Raukawa, Nga-Rauru (Patea and Waitotara), and Whanganui. Waikato as a tribe did not come, but some of their eager young men (such as Mahutu te Toko, a near relative of the Maori King) had joined Ngati-Maniapoto.

Te Huia Raureti, of Ngati-Maniapoto, one of the few survivors of the Orakau defence, gave me an account of his tribe's first participation in the Waitara war. He said that when the news of the quarrel over the Waitara reached the Upper Waikato the runanga (council of chiefs) of Ngati-Maniapoto discussed the question of assisting Wiremu Kingi. This runanga consisted of Rewi Maniapoto (the tumuaki, or head of the council), his cousins Te Winitana Tupotahi and Raureti te Huia Paiaka, Epiha Tokohihi, Hopa te Rangianini, Pahata te Kiore, Matena te Reoreo (the clerk), and several other chiefs. Kihikihi Village was at that time the headquarters of Ngati-Maniapoto, and the runanga met in a large house which bore the famous old Hawaikian name “Hui-te-rangiora.” This house of assembly was destroyed by the troops when Kihikihi was invaded in February, 1864. The conclave of chiefs did not act hastily. Two delegates, Raureti te Huia Paiaka (father of the narrator) and Pahata te Kiore, were despatched to Taranaki by the runanga to investigate the dispute and its causes. Their inquiries satisfied them that Wiremu Kingi's cause was just. “My father and Pahata,” said Te Huia Raureti, “came to a decision adverse to Ihaia te Kiri-kumara, the Government adherent, because he had taken sufficient utu for his personal wrongs (the seduction of his wife) by killing the offender, and there was no just cause (take) for parting with tribal lands in order further to involve Wiremu Kingi's people. On the return of this deputation to Kihikihi the runanga considered their report, and Rewi Maniapoto then went down to Ngaruawahia to lay the matter before King Potatau and his council. He requested the King to consent to a war-party of Ngati-Maniapoto marching to Taranaki in order to assist the Atiawa. The proposal was assented to. The old King delivered his command to the assembly of chiefs in these words: ‘Ngati-Maniapoto, haere hei kai ma nga manu o te rangi. Ko koe, e Waikato, ko Pekehawani taku rohe, kaua e takahia.’ (‘Ngati-Maniapoto, go you as food for the birds of the air. As for you, Waikato, Pekehawani is my boundary, do not trespass upon it!’)”

Pekehawani, an ancient Hawaikian name, was here used by Potatau as an honorific term for the Puniu River, the boundary between the Waikato and the territory of Ngati-Maniapoto. Rewi Maniapoto's tribe only he released for the war, but in all probability the fiery Rewi would have gone in spite of a royal prohibition. Waikato and Ngati-Haua were restrained for the present, but after the news of the Maori victory at Puke-ta-kauere arrived they could no longer be held back from the war. The usual route taken by the Ngati-Maniapoto and the Waikato on their journeys to Taranaki was down the Mokau River by canoe from Totoro to Mokau Heads, thence along the beach by Tongaporutu and the White Cliffs to Waitara. War-canoe expeditions down the rapid-whitened Mokau frequently covered the distance from Totoro to the Heads (forty-five miles) in one day, and by a forced march the warriors often reached Urenui or the Waitara at the close of the second day.

It was scarcely daylight on the morning of the 27th June when Major Nelson moved out from Waitara camp to the attack. He was accompanied by Captain Beauchamp-Seymour, commanding the Naval Brigade of H.M.S. “Pelorus.” The force, totalling about three hundred and fifty, was divided into three. The main body, under Nelson, crossed the Devon Road and marched across the fern plain. A detachment of sixty men of the 40th Regiment, under Captain Bowdler, marched to the left, with orders to occupy a mound south-east of the camp, in order to prevent the natives escaping along the left flank of the main body and attacking the camp. If this was not attempted, Bowdler was to double up to the support of his Major. The other division, 125 strong, consisting chiefly of the Grenadier Company of the 40th, under Captain Messenger (a cousin of Ensign W. B. Messenger, of the Taranaki Militia), was detailed to get possession of Puke-ta-kauere mound, to cut off the retreat from the other pa, and to bar the way to Maori reinforcements. The main body (Naval Brigade numbering sixty-five, Royal Artillery with two 24-pounder howitzers, Royal Engineers, and the Light Company of the 40th) moved in extended order towards the south-west side of the fortifications, and was soon engaged by the Maoris in large force.

The artillery opened fire at 7 a.m. from level ground north-west of Onuku-kaitara, but failed to make a large-enough breach

THE UPPER WAIKATO contingent had gone home after Puke-ta-kauere to tell of their victory over the pakeha, exhibit their trophies of battle, and plant their crops. The news of their prowess in the field, and the sight of the soldiers' caps and red coats in which some of them paraded, their newly gotten rifles, bayonets, and cartridge-pouches, aroused at once the admiration and the jealousy of their neighbours. Ngati-Maniapoto's exploits fired all the Waikato tribes with ardour for the field. Ngati-Haua's war-fever could no longer be allayed even by the peace-loving Wiremu Tamehana. The stalwart men of Matamata, Tamahere, and Maunga-tautari had reluctantly remained in their kaingas when Potatau forbade Waikato and Ngati-Haua to cross the Puniu River and released only Ngati-Maniapoto for the war on the Waitara. But now the old king was dead, and his runanga at Ngaruawahia had little control over Ngati-Haua of the plains. Why should Ngati-Maniapoto have all the joy and glory of killing the pakeha? Were not Ngati-Haua the kin of the great Waharoa, the most renowned warrior of the Island? So spake Te Wetini Taiporutu and other fiery blades. In vain Wiremu Tamehana urged prudence and foretold disaster. Wetini and his war-party must off to Waitara to kill soldiers themselves. The new season's potatoes planted, the Waikato-Waipa basin and the plains of Matamata were alive with parties of young musketeers marching off for the summer's shooting in Taranaki. Nearly every village from Ngaruawahia southward sent its squad to join the war-parties in reinforcement of Wiremu Kingi. Ngati-Maniapoto provided the larger part of the force; but Ngati Haua sent a company about eighty strong of the finest fighting-men that ever carried tupara and tomahawk. They were the flower of the tribe—tall athletes, fit successors of the invincible warriors whom Waharoa had led against many a stockade. Wetini Taiporutu (“The Surging Sea”) was at their head. The other tribes which swelled the strength of the columns marching southward were Ngati - Raukawa and Ngati - Koroki, and these subtribes of Waikato: Ngati-Apakura (from Rangiaowhia), Ngati-Ruru (Te Awamutu), Ngati-Koura (Orakau), Ngati-Kahukura, and Ngati-Mahuta. Rewi Maniapoto (or Manga, as he was more usually known by his own people) was the leader of the numberous hapus which mustered at Kihikihi; with him were Epiha Tokohihi, Te Paetai te Mahia, Mokau (of Ngati-Raukawa, at Orakau), and several other chiefs. Rewi was a veteran of the Waitara trail; as a boy of twelve he had marched on his first war expedition in 1832, when a Waikato army made one of its periodical raids on Puke-rangiora. Wetini's war-party marched apart from the others, eager to reach the scene of war and uphold the name of Ngati-Haua. From Mokau Heads they made a forced march along the beach, and, crossing the Waitara, met their allies on the strongly fortified plain at Kairau. Anxious to distinguish themselves in a battle of their own, they stayed not long at the Kairau, where they were joined by other Waikato tribes, but pushed on to Mahoetahi, an old practically unfortified pa on a gentle mound of a hill alongside the Devon Road, two miles and a half from Waitara and seven miles and a half from New Plymouth. Wetini took up this position as a deliberate challenge