portion of the defenders of the settlement.  When fighting was seen to be inevitable, the Government sent for aid to Australia, and drew thence all the Imperial soldiers that could be spared.  The Colony of Victoria, generous in the emergency, lent New Zealand the colonial sloop-of-war Victoria, and allowed the vessel not only to transport troops across the Tasman Sea, but to serve for many months off the Taranaki coast, asking payment for nothing except her steaming coal.  By the end of the year there were some 3,000 Europeans in arms at the scene of operations, and they probably outnumbered several times over the fluctuating forces of the natives.  The fighting was limited to the strip of sea-coast bounded by the Waitara on the north and the Tataramaika plain on the south, with the town of New Plymouth lying about midway between.  The coast was open and surf-beaten, the land seamed by ravines or “gulleys,” down which the rainfall of Egmont streamed to the shore.  Near the sea the soil was—­except in the settlers’ clearings—­covered with tough bracken from two to six feet high, and with other troublesome growths.  Inland the great forest, mantling the volcano’s flanks, and spreading its harassing network like a far-stretching spider’s web, checked European movements.  From the first the English officers in command in this awkward country made up their minds that their men could do nothing in the meshes of the bush, and they clung to the more open strip with a caution and a profound respect for Native prowess which epithets can hardly exaggerate, and which tended to intensify the self-esteem of the Maori, never the least self-confident of warriors.  A war carried on in such a theatre and in such a temper was likely to drag.  There was plenty of fighting, mostly desultory.  The Maoris started out of the bush or the bracken to plunder, to cut off stragglers, or to fight, and disappeared again when luck was against them.  Thirteen tiresome months saw much marching and counter-marching, frequent displays of courage—­more courage than co-operation sometimes,—­one or two defeats, and several rather barren successes.  For the first eight months the advantage inclined to the insurgents.  After that their overweening conceit of their Waikato contingent enabled our superior strength to assert itself.  The Maoris, for all their courage and knowledge of the country, were neither clever guerillas nor good marksmen.  Their tribal wars had always been affairs of sieges or hand-to-hand encounters.  Half the skill displayed by them in intrenching, half the pluck they showed behind stockades, had they been devoted to harassing our soldiers on the march or to loose skirmishing by means of jungle ambuscades, might, if backed by reasonably straight shooting, have trebled our losses and difficulties.