More Trouble Ahead.

Back at Ngatokorua, on the tussock plains, the pioneer of the survey found ominous complications. Two Maoris came in from the Tuhua country, between the Upper Wanganui and Lake Taupo, saying that there were two powerful aukatis (interdicts, prohibitions) to stop further progress, and besides there were a dozen mounted Hauhaus patrolling the tracks and waiting for him. They averred that they were sure to be hanged for the murder of Moffatt and one or two more pakehas would not alter the case.

This referred to the pakeha-Maori William Moffatt, whom the Taumarunui Maoris had page 26 shot at Matapuna in 1880, at the order of Wahanui, Taonui and Rewi Maniapoto, the head Kingite chiefs, for trespass on the sacred soil of the Rohepotae territory. Moffatt had lived with the Upper Wanganui Maoris before the war and had made gunpowder for the Hauhaus; a man with a strange wild history, too long a story to be narrated here.

This news of trouble ahead in the forests so alarmed the two delegates from the Taupo chiefs that they were afraid to go on to Taumarunui with Rochfort, and they turned back when within a few miles of that village. The surveyor still had some Maoris with him; two of these men had been among those who offered armed opposition to him at the Manganui-a-te-ao. One of them went on in front on the bush track which Rochfort was following, and at every slight noise he started back, fearing the Hauhau scouts.