tussle, doom a captive to death, or shoot a deserter with his own rifle.  As he would not join the Hau-Haus, they and their converts made the mistake of attacking him.  After beating them off he was joined by Major Biggs and a company of militia.  Together they advanced against the stronghold of the insurgents, perched on a cliff among the Waiapu hills.  By scaling a precipice with twenty picked men, Ropata and Biggs gained a crest above the pa, whence they could fire down into the midst of their astonished adversaries, over 400 of whom surrendered in terror to the daring handful.  But the mischief had run down the coast.  Spreading from point to point, dying down and then starting up, it was as hard to put out as fire abroad in the fern.  The amiable Kereopa visited Poverty Bay, three days’ journey south of the Waiapu, and tried hard to persuade the natives to murder Bishop Williams, the translator of the Scriptures into Maori.  Though they shrank from this, the Bishop had to fly, and his flock took up arms, stood a siege in one of their pas, and lost over a hundred men before they would surrender to the militia.  Further south still the next rising flared up on the northern frontier of the Hawkes Bay province.  Once more Ropata stamped it under, and the generalship with which he repaired the mistakes made by others, and routed a body of 500 insurgents was not more remarkable than the cold-blooded promptitude with which after the fight he shot four prisoners of note with his own hand.  It took ten months for the spluttering fire to flame up again.  Then it was yet another stage further south, within a few miles of Napier, amid pastoral plains, where, if anywhere, peace, it would seem, should have an abiding-place.  The rising there was but a short one-act play.  To Colonel Whitmore belonged the credit of dealing it a first and final blow at Omaranui, where, with a hastily raised force of volunteers, and some rather useless friendlies, he went straight at the insurgents, caught them in the open, and quickly killed, wounded, or captured over ninety per cent. of their number.

After this there was a kind of insecure tranquillity until June, 1868.  Then fighting began again near the coast between Wanganui and Mount Egmont, where the occupation of confiscated lands bred bitter feelings.  Natives were arrested for horse-stealing.  Straggling settlers were shot.  A chief, Titokowaru, hitherto insignificant, became the head and front of the resistance.  In June a sudden attack was made by his people upon some militia holding a tumble-down redoubt—­an attack so desperate that out of twenty-three in the work, only six remained unwounded when help came, after two hours’ manful resistance.  Colonel McDonnell, then in command on the coast, had proved his dash and bravery in a score of bush-fights.  In his various encounters he killed ten Maoris with his own hand.  He was an expert bushman, and a capital manager of the friendly natives.  But during