the eighteen months of quiet the trained militia which had done such excellent work in 1865 and 1866, had been in part dispersed.  The force which in July McDonnell led into the bush to attempt Titokowaru’s pa, at Ngutu-o-te-manu (Beak-of-the-bird) was to a large extent raw material.  The Hau-Haus were found fully prepared.  Skilfully posted, they poured in a hot cross-fire, both from the pa and from an ambush in the neighbouring thickets.  Broken into two bodies, McDonnell’s men were driven to make a long and painful retreat, during which two died of exhaustion.  They lost twenty-four killed and twenty-six wounded.  McDonnell resigned in disgust.  Whitmore, who replaced him, demanded better men, and got them, but to meet no better success.  At Moturoa his assault on another forest stockade failed under a withering fire; the native contingent held back sulkily; and again our men retreated, with a loss this time of forty-seven, of which twenty-one were killed.  This was on November 5th.  Before Whitmore could try again he was called to the other side of the island by evil tidings from Poverty Bay.

These had their cause in the strangest story of the Maori wars.  Amongst the many blunders in these, some of the oddest were the displays of rank carelessness which repeatedly led to the escape of Maori prisoners.  Three times did large bodies get away and rejoin their tribes—­once from Sir George Grey’s island estate at Kawau, where they had been turned loose on parole; once from a hulk in Wellington Harbour, through one of the port-holes of which they slipped into the sea on a stormy night; the third time from the Chatham Islands.  This last escape, which was in July, 1868, was fraught with grave mischief.

Fruitlessly the officer in charge of prisoners there had protested against being left with twenty men to control three hundred and thirty captives.  The leader of these, Te Kooti, one of the ablest as well as most ferocious partisans the colonists ever had to face, had been deported from Poverty Bay to the Chathams two years before, without trial.  Unlike most of his fellow prisoners he had never borne arms against us.  The charge against him was that he was in communication with Hau-Hau insurgents in 1865.  His real offence seems to have been that he was regarded by some of the Poverty Bay settlers as a disagreeable, thievish, disaffected fellow, and there is an uncomfortable doubt as to whether he deserved his punishment.  During his exile he vowed vengeance against those who had denounced him, and against one man in particular.  In July, 1868, the schooner Rifleman was sent down to the Chathams with supplies.  The prisoners took the chance thus offered.  They surprised the weak guard, killed a sentry who showed fight, and seized and tied up the others, letting the women and children escape unharmed.  Going on board the Rifleman, Te Kooti gave the crew the choice between taking his people to New Zealand and instant