On the War-Path.

Then came the Waikato War, and the Maori prosperity and peace came to ruin. The mill-wheels were idle; young men and old were all off to the Lower Waikato with their double-barrelled guns and their tomahawks. Reihana had a war-party of his own hapu of Ngati-Maniapoto and he was with the Kingite army in the entrenchments at Meremere, near the present township of Mercer, and fell back with his comrades before the slow but irresistible advance of the British forces by river and land, southward to the fringe of the Ngati-Maniapoto country. When General Cameron's troops invaded the heart of the native agricultural district, at beautiful Rangiaowhia, Reihana was one of the warriors who resisted the attack in the second day's hot fighting. That was on the hill of Haerini, where the hard-fighting Maoris were driven back by artillery fire and British bayonet and cavalry charges. Reihana received a bullet wound in the leg. That was the end of his fighting; henceforth his part, when he returned to his home village, was in the political councils of the Kingites.