On the King Country Frontier.

Later on, in the beginning of the Seventies, we find Mr. Tregear, now holding a commission as captain in the New Zealand Militia, engaged in pioneer work as surveyor and military roadmaker, in the Upper Waikato, on the border of the King Country. His headquarters were at Orakau, where he stayed with the furthest out settler, Mr. Andrew Kay. He had a contingent of friendly Maoris under him, men of the Ngati-Naho and Ngati-Tipa, two lower Waikato tribes; they were encamped on the north bank of the Puniu, the frontier river. That was an anxious period on the Waikato border; there were alarms of coming raids; it was known that some of the Kingite Maoris were planning descents on the frontier townships and farms. Te Kooti, too, lived only a few hours' ride away, an outlaw chieftain; and although he had had enough of war, his name and reputation inspired nervousness along the border. So the presence of Tregear's armed Maoris, opponents of the Kingite party, helped to restore confidence among the settlers. They were auxiliaries to the Armed Constabulary in the redoubts and blockhouses, and the Waikato Cavalry, a competent body of settler volunteers, in two troops, one at Te Awamutu, under Major William Jackson, and the other at Cambridge under Captain James Runciman.

Tregear used to say that those adventurous times along the frontier were the best days of his life. He laid out the Frontier Road, a patrol route along the Puniu north bank; he made scouting expeditions with one or two of his Maoris. But it never came to actual fighting though there was more than one stray killing along the border. The last affair of the kind was the murder of Timothy Sullivan, a farm-worker near Roto-o-Rangi, by a Maori with a grievance over nonpayment for land leased by settlers, just across the frontier.

Edward Tregear was a bit of a dandy in those days, as one who knew him at Orakau in the early Seventies told me. He had a weakness for a crimson sash and a brightly-coloured waist shawl. Many a frontiersman and bushman of those times took to the kilt costume of the Maori, a rapaki or waist-shawl or bit of blanket, for campaigning and rough-country travel. He came to know the Maori people intimately on this military and road-making duty, and those years of his young vigorous life gave him much practical knowledge and wisdom that influenced his after career and his writings.

At one time, following on this frontier experience, Mr. Tregear was interested in a sawmill venture on the Waikato River, and carried on the timber work with native labour, but it did not turn out a financial success. He had not the money-making bent. He practised his profession as surveyor for many years in the Government employ, in Waikato, on the Coromandel Peninsula; and in Taranaki, and he continued in the service of the Survey Department in Wellington, until the creation of the Department of Labour by the Ballance Government. That was in the year 1891. Then opened his new field of effort, one into which he threw his whole soul, and in which he initiated much of the humanitarian legislation which attracted to New Zealand the attention of social reformers the world over.

Tregear's early war-time experience, when many parts of the North Island were frontiers and when military duty devolved on most of the able-bodied male population in the Auckland and Taranaki provinces, gave him an interest and pride in soldierly service which remained with him long after the Maori campaigns had ended. When he was engaged in survey work in South Taranaki in 1879 he held a commission as Captain of the Patea Rifles, and at a later period in Wellington he was Captain of one of the Wellington volunteer companies, the Civil Service Rifles.