1852 - Mundy, G. C. Our Antipodes. [Vol. II.] - CHAPTER XII. Trip to the Wanganui District...

[Image of page 338]

CHAPTER XII.

[1848.]

WELLINGTON, 13th January. -- A "Taua," or war-party, said to consist of some six hundred well-armed men, having assembled in the passes of the Wanganui River, demanding a conference with the English authorities, and refusing, as I understand, to confer with the Lieut.-Governor and the senior officer in the southern district, who had proceeded to Wanganui in H. M. S. Racehorse, or indeed with any one but the Governor-in-Chief, when they heard of his arrival in the south; his Excellency was not the man to disappoint them. In order, therefore, that the matter should not cool, he re-embarked this day in the Inflexible, and set sail for the above-named settlement, situated about 130 miles north of Wellington, on the western coast. The Major-General commanding the forces also took the opportunity of

[Image of page 339]

visiting this important military post, and I was fortunate enough to accompany him. As it was the purpose of his Excellency to meet the overtures of the Taua with certain stringent if not humiliating conditions, there were not wanting, among the large party, naval and military, on board, some few sanguine enough to expect a fresh rupture of these martial and unruly tribes--an expectation which I may at once take occasion to say was not realized.

In some of the cabins of H.M.'s steam sloop I noticed several very truculent-looking weapons--swords evidently sharpened with the intent to split Maori skulls, and rifles that would pick off a rebel at any reasonable distance. They were bloodless this bout; --for the matter was settled by diplomacy without appeal to the "ultima ratio vice-regum."

The first notable object passed by the Inflexible, in her course up the Straits, was the little table island of Mana, which looks as if it had been shot out of the mouth of Porirua Harbour, and acts as a sort of screen to its entrance. Rangihaieta has one of his numerous lairs on this islet; and, indeed, it is just the spot for a buccaneering depot. Soon afterwards we ran past the fine, high peaked, and wooded island of Kapiti, chiefly valuable as furnishing the only tolerable roadstead along this exposed and harbourless coast. Kapiti, in common with too many portions of this country, enjoys the dignity of having been purchased some scores of times, by different European speculators, from the natives. This island

[Image of page 340]

has also peculiar charms for Rangihaieta as a place of occasional resort.

Nearly opposite--on the mainland, the channel not being more than four or five miles wide--was visible the Missionary station of Waikanai, the Christian church looming in the distance like a huge barn. There appears round about it much level land between the sea and the mountains, and, winding down a wooded hill, could be distinguished a portion of the great military road, which is being gradually carried along the coast. This road, like all roads through countries under process of conquest, has been, and will be, one of the most potent instruments of the subjugation of New Zealand. The native chiefs most impatient of British domination, are perfectly awake, as old Rauperaha admitted, to this feature in road making; but they find these thoroughfares so useful to themselves that not only do the most mischievous abstain from breaking them up, but, even during warfare, they have seldom opposed any well-sustained obstruction to their formation.

With a fair wind and plenty of steam we shortly came in sight of the Racehorse, riding--or rather kicking and plunging--at anchor in the open and insecure roads of Wanganui, three or four miles from the mouth of the river. Though the breeze was light there was a heavy sea, and the surf was thundering upon the bar so as to preclude all communication with the shore except by means of the telegraph which, with the aid of Marryat's signals, the officer commanding at the post has esta-

[Image of page 341]

blished. Through this medium we received the information "all quiet," and then stood off for the night into deeper water. In the morning we found the ship anchored in a calmer sea.

The sunrise--a spectacle which, while admitting its beauty and sublimity as well as the healthfulness of its enjoyment, few of the richer classes have witnessed a dozen times in their lives; --the sunrise was truly magnificent on this fine summer morning. While the ocean was yet dark under our feet, and the shore was dim and indistinct in the mist of dawn, his earliest ray--like a flaming sword from its scabbard--flashed across the great island upon the snowy scalp of Tongariro, seventy miles distant inland and 10,000 feet above the level of the sea; and, in a few seconds later, upon the hardly less elevated peak of Mount Egmont, which though considerably to the northward of Wanganui is not more than fifteen miles from the shore. The effect of Sol's first greeting to this latter mountain--in shape and colour the most perfect sugarloaf I ever saw--was both singular and beautiful. Some one who knew the locality was trying to make me see the white pic which was visible to him above a bank of cloud. While straining my vision with this object, a spot became suddenly illumined so infinitely higher than where my eyes were fixed, that I had some difficulty in believing that it was a point on the earth's surface. The light had leapt from the first named mountain to the second, like beacon answering beacon! Soon afterwards the entire apex of the cone

[Image of page 342]

was silvered over; but the flanks and base remained shrouded in mist for several hours.

Tongariro (the ancestor of the old Titan Chief, Te Hao Hao, whom I have before mentioned) and its sister mountain Ruapehu, may be considered a district of mountains--while the Egmont starts abrupt and isolated from the midst of the comparatively level country of Taranaki--now New Plymouth.

The bar in front of Wanganui is sometimes, for weeks together, impassable, and its passage is always precarious. The Government schooner in the mouth of the river was seen for hours trying to come out to us; and we were contemplating the agreeable predicament of having to wait perhaps two or three days for a change of wind, or to give up the expedition altogether--as other vessels have often had to do; --when fortunately an inward bound schooner hove in sight, was hailed, brought to, took us on board, and was in a few minutes struggling among the breakers--the sudden change from 1,200 to 12 tons causing a curious amount of sea-sickness in some of those transshipped. However, we passed the dreadful bar in safety--the main and not very encouraging subject of conversation during the traject being the loss of the captain of the Government brig Victoria, a short time before, in an attempt to cross it in one of his boats.

At the helm of our little craft I recognised an old acquaintance. By trade and education a groom, this man worked his passage out, before the mast, in the vessel

[Image of page 343]

which brought me from London to Sydney in 1846; and he showed such a singular and intuitive talent for steering, that the master of the Agincourt--a 600-ton ship--preferred entrusting the wheel to the groom-boy than to many of the old sea-dogs on board. He too, it appears, became convinced that his vocation lay rather towards the tiller than the curry-comb. He preferred riding the waves--"curling their monstrous backs," to those of the buckjumpers of Australia. In short, he was now part owner of a coasting craft in good practice; and he put his little vessel at, and over, the bar of Wanganui with the skill and pluck that might more consistently have been expected from him had it been the bar of a riding-school or the top bar of five!

The banks of the Wanganui River are so low and featureless, and the course of the river so twisting, that a surveying vessel bent on discovery might pass within a mile of the shore without perceiving the entrance. We grounded on the mud of the channel two or three times--once near some high bluffs of sand connected with terrible tales of massacre and man-eating--at which old Rauperaha played a good knife and fork--in times long past; and from whence we could have been hotly peppered, as our craft lay wedged in the mud, by any one bent on receiving the Governor with such a compliment. Having got again into deep water we hoisted sail, and moved slowly up the tolerably wide and passably pretty river. About 3 P. M. we were met by some of the officers of the garrison in their boats, and, at about

[Image of page 344]

five miles from the mouth, came to anchor close off the settlement, and were quickly landed by the Rattlesnake s boats lying there.

The New Zealand Company's settlement of Wanganui consists at present of a church and some forty houses, scattered over a dreary flat of alternate sand and swamp. Two spurs, elevated perhaps sixty feet above the plain, abut upon the village from its rear, and on their extreme points have been erected two stockades, commanding the settlement and the river, which is here a fine stream about 150 yards wide. The opposite or left bank of the river has the advantage in altitude, Shakspeare's cliff being four or five hundred feet high. Nearly facing the village is the native Christian pah of Putiki.

In the year 1840 a large tract of land was purchased at Wanganui by agents of the New Zealand Association, and received the name of Petre. Seven hundred pounds' worth of "goods" is stated to have been the price paid to the natives, among which "goods," was "one case of fire-arms only." The deed of sale was ratified by the signatures of twenty or thirty of the head chiefs. Legends hint that the commixture of white man and Maori on the first foundation of this offshoot of the New Zealand Land and Colonization Company brought anything rather than moral advancement to the barbarians. Its infancy was disgraced by scenes of profligacy and low life-- drinking rum "from the wood," and dressing in mats and blankets--{"more Madrum')--being some of the more Innocent and intellectual pursuits of the rough Sybarites

[Image of page 345]

of young Wanganui. In short, like Kororarika, Wanganui got a bad name--a bad thing to begin life with-- and, if it has escaped the dog's fate, it has at least been in continual trouble since its birth.

The really earnest and deserving settlers--and Wanganui numbered several--were constantly obstructed by the natives in the occupation and culture of the allotments they had purchased. The warlike tribes of the interior-- highlanders in birth and spirit--to whom the river was a great thoroughfare, kept the place in a harassing state of inquietude, ruinous alike to the comfort and the success of an adventurer on a new home. The purchases of land were repudiated by the natives; and ultimately the district had to be repurchased by a commissioner of the government.

The rapacity of the Maoris increased by what it fed on. The settlement was openly threatened. The colonists began to desert it. Military occupation did not mend the matter, as far as regarded the townsfolk; for the officer who first commanded there showed his soldierly qualities by garrisoning and stockading such houses as suited his purposes of defence, and destroying such as hampered his glacis. Finally, the barbarous massacre of a harmless English family in the vicinity, and the gradual investment of the township by a war-party, variously computed at from six to eight hundred men, and the assembly of other rebel clans in the passes of the river and the neighbouring district of Manawata, put the coping-stone on the general panic; and although

[Image of page 346]

some of the bolder few remained to fight--"to see the soldiers through it," as they expressed it--the majority of the inhabitants, never I believe amounting to more than 300 persons, betook themselves to Wellington for a safer and quieter life. The friendly native residents and the Maori women living with the whites--like rats deserting a falling house--disappeared from the place; and Wanganui remained a purely military post beleaguered by a vigilant and treacherous enemy. In this capacity Wanganui has some important features. The land is naturally clear of timber, and tolerably practicable, at least along the river banks, for the movements of troops. A fine stream, rising among the snows of Tongariro, and the populous mountain and lake districts around its base, runs about 150 miles through a country in which are seated many wild and warlike clans, some of them inhabiting pahs inaccessibly posted on naturally conical hills, whose only approach is by ladders.

The British position commands the passage of the river, (which is the main line of communication with the coast road,) its traffic, and the fishing banks at its mouth --thereby debarring the natives, if hostile, from their only channel for the supply of necessaries and luxuries, among which latter, tobacco and ammunition may be accounted the chief articles.

There are at the present time 500 British troops stationed in the two stockades of Wanganui; and, I suppose, although the panic has ceased, not fifty settlers for them to protect.

[Image of page 347]

It was in December 1846, soon after the defeat and dispersion of Rangihaieta and his "taua" in the Horokiwi valley, that, in consequence of apprehensions entertained by the Governor for the safety of the settlement, the officer commanding the southern district, Lieut.-Colonel McCleverty, D. Q. M. G., despatched for its protection from Wellington a force consisting of about 185 men of all arms, including a few artillery, with nine officers. Sites were quickly selected for stockades and block-houses, officers and men were soon hutted in temporary warrees of reeds, the position was entrenched and surrounded with double palisades, bullet proof, and a few light guns and mortars were mounted.

Rangihaieta was not far off, among his relations and friends at Manawatu. He does not appear to have co-operated directly with the revolted party at Wanganui; but he did not fail to divert himself according to his peculiar tastes--now plundering some poor unarmed settler--now levying tolls upon cattle on the coast road and driving them off. In April last (1847), with thirty or forty wild hands in a single war-canoe, he made a descent upon the island of Kapiti, where he laid under contribution an Englishman named Brown -- securing among other plunder some fire-arms and fifty pounds of gunpowder, with a supply of lead and bullet-moulds, doubtless the especial objects of his marauding visit. On the same day, and in suspicious connexion with this expedition, occurred near Wanganui one of the most appalling and sweeping massacres of a peaceful house-

[Image of page 348]

hold that ever blackened the history of a savage race, and harrowed the feelings of the white inhabitants of a savage country--namely, the destruction of the Gilfinnan family. Let me relate it as succinctly as possible. On the evening of the 18th April, Mr. Gilfinnan, a settler residing about five miles from Wanganui, was heard calling from the opposite bank of the river for a boat to be sent for him, as he had been wounded by some natives. He was brought across the water, and found to have been severely hurt by a cut from a tomahawk on the back of the neck. On the following morning, the officer commanding the post despatched a party of armed police and friendly Maoris, accompanied by two or three gentlemen, to Matarana, the residence of the sufferer, in order to ascertain the fate of the family, when they discovered the house burnt to the ground, and lying round the ruins the mutilated bodies of the mother, two sons of twelve and four years old, and a daughter of fourteen years. The eldest daughter, a girl of sixteen, had escaped, badly wounded, and four other children remained unhurt. The same day, the news of the murder and the names of the murderers having reached the Missionary pah of Putiki, just opposite the cantonments, some of the natives tendered their services to attempt their capture, for they were known to have fled up the river with their booty. The Christian chief, Honi Wiremu, (John Williams,) with six other young men, in a swift canoe, pursued, overtook, seized, and brought prisoners to the British camp five of the six assassins. A Coroner's

[Image of page 349]

inquest, assembled by the commandant, returned a verdict of "wilful murder" against four of the prisoners, expressing a strong conviction that the fifth was also an accomplice.

The district of Wanganui was at that time under martial law, which, however, would expire with the current month. No time was therefore to be lost, and Captain Laye, (58th Regt.) the commandant, lost none. He brought the villains to trial by a general court-martial, composed of seven officers, on the 23d of April, continued by adjournment to the 24th. All the five prisoners pleaded guilty to charges of murder and robbery. The four men were condemned to death; the other prisoner, a boy, to transportation for life. The 25th was the sabbath. On the morning of the 26th April, the four murderers were hanged on a gibbet in front of the stockade. The lad, wretched at the prospect of transportation, earnestly requested to share the fate of his associates in crime. I saw him afterwards, a fat soft-looking youth of sixteen, working on board the Government brig as one of the crew, well looked to, of course.

The evidence of the bereaved but somewhat singularly fugacious husband and father, was as follows; --"On the evening of the 18th April, I went to my stock-yard to see if everything had been right during my absence in town. I had not been there long, when I saw a party of six natives descending the hill in the direction of my house. I returned to the house and met them.

[Image of page 350]

After the usual salutations, I asked them where they were going. They answered, 'pig-hunting.' They asked for food, tobacco, &c, and insisted particularly on having flour given them. I told them I had none to spare. I then commenced walking backwards and forwards, conversing with them, they apparently in perfect good humour. A dog accompanied them, evidently of European breed, which they called Pepper. I caressed the dog. Two of the natives then drew near me; one opened the door and tried to enter the house, but I would not permit him. He said he wanted a fire-stick to light his pipe, which was given to him. He was the tallest of the party. I then continued to walk to and fro, and had just answered some question, when I felt myself struck from behind with a tomahawk on the back of the neck. I immediately called out to my family, 'Barricade the door, --I am tomahawked;' and then got into the house by means of a back door. Almost simultaneously the windows were dashed to pieces with bits of scantling. I had the candles put out, and water thrown on the fire, and secured the door with a bit of wood. At length, at the repeated entreaties of Mrs. Gilfinnan to make my escape, as it was my life they aimed at, for they never injured women and children, I consented, and got out of a small window which they had not yet discovered, then crawled through the garden and fern, and succeeded in making my way to the river." This deponent swore positively to the identity of the prisoners.

[Image of page 351]

The scene described by the police sergeant on reaching the fatal spot is truly pitiable. "On the road to Matarana, we met two of Mr. Gilfinnan's children. They said their mother, sisters, and brothers had all been killed by the natives. The children were given in charge to two of the natives of Putiki, who conveyed them to the house of the Rev. Mr. Taylor. On arriving at Matarana, I found the house burnt down all but the walls. The body of Mrs. Gilfinnan was lying a few yards from the house. There were two or three deep cuts on the back of the head, apparently done with an axe, and a piece cut out of the cheek with a sharp instrument." (This the miscreants afterwards acknowledged to have devoured amongst them.) "The bodies of a girl about fifteen years old, and a boy about four years old, were lying near her. The girl had one wound on her arm, and several on the back of her head. The boy had the back part of his head cut off. Hearing the cry of an infant, I proceeded in the direction, and on the way discovered the body of another boy, about ten years old, lying on his back, with the back part of his head laid open, and the brains protruding. A little further on, inside the stock-yard, I found a child on the lap of a girl; the latter had been severely wounded by a tomahawk over the left eye; the child was covered with blood, but unhurt. On passing over the ground again, I discovered a child, about a year old, lying on its face in the fern asleep and uninjured. Dead poultry

[Image of page 352]

were lying about on the ground. We carried the dead bodies, the wounded girl, and the two children, into the town."

It was a good and gallant act on the part of Honi Wiremu and his companions, and an interesting proof of the ameliorating effects of Christian teaching, that they should have so strongly testified their abhorrence of the barbarities committed by their countrymen, as to resolve to bring them to justice at the risk of their own lives. Indeed, the forcible apprehension, by only equal numbers, of a band of ruffians from whom a desperate resistance might be expected, required a mixture of rashness and ruse that seldom go hand in hand.

Mr. Power, one of the gentlemen who volunteered to ascertain the fate of the wretched family, thus closes his animated account of the pursuit of the assassins:-- "The fugitives, who by this time were fifty miles from the settlement, and no longer feared pursuit, were taking it easy, singing songs, and bragging of what they had done. As their canoe ran alongside of that of the murderers, Patapo, a wild young chief, and a great favourite of the officers, who was hidden in the bow, saw that one of the fugitives had a cocked musket beside him, and that the others had arms lying within reach; and being anxious to take them alive, he, with a tomahawk between his teeth, made one spring on the fellow with the musket, seizing it, and at the same time upsetting the canoe. In a few minutes the whole party were captured

[Image of page 353]

in the water." Yet nothing could be more modest than the tenour of the evidence he gave on this exploit before the Court-martial; it was a model for a despatch after action. It would seem that this brave young chief was still a heathen, as he knew not the nature of an oath. I feel pleasure in adding, that the Governor-in- Chief, in reporting these matters to the Secretary of State, writes, that he had "satisfied himself that Captain Laye, in adopting these proceedings, had followed the only course that was open to him, and that there is little doubt that his firmness and decision saved the country from a serious rebellion."

In this opinion I heartily concur. I am aware that there were sticklers who condemned the whole measure as illegal. Military law, right or wrong, had been proclaimed by the gallant Captain's superiors; the ordinary law was therefore, pro tem., in abeyance: and I consider it a happy circumstance that at such a juncture a prompt arraignment, a simple formula, a trial "according to the consciences and to the best of the understandings" of seven honourable gentlemen, and a swift execution, should have filled, for the nonce, the place of that cumbrous piece of machinery--that net full of large meshes, called the civil law.

It is to be hoped that Wiremu and his colleagues were handsomely rewarded. I never heard that the bold Captain met with any solid acknowledgment of his services in this and other instances. White apologists of the native New Zealanders--some of whom will go any

[Image of page 354]

length to prove them mirrors of knighthood, instead of truculent cannibals--assert that the massacre of the Gilfinnan family was perpetrated in "utu" for a wound inflicted upon a Putiki chief by a young midshipman-- his pistol having gone off by accident. The truth is, that the natives of Putiki were totally unconnected by relationship or friendship with the assassins; and that the wounded man, being kindly and skilfully treated by the English surgeons, entertained no ill-will to the youthful cause of his injury--much less an indiscriminate desire for vengeance on the white race.

At Sydney I subsequently became acquainted with Mr. Gilfinnan, who is an accomplished draughtsman. He exhibited in that city a large oil painting, representing the interior and surrounding scenery of a New Zealand pah, which will, I think, be regarded as a curiosity, and gain him credit as a painter in England-- whither he has since gone with his more than decimated family. In forty-eight hours after the receipt at Wellington of the news of the murder, the Lieut.-Colonel commanding had hired vessels and embarked for Wanganui a strong reinforcement. Captain Laye, assured that the execution of the murderers would exasperate to the utmost the passions of the ill-disposed natives, set to work to strengthen his position, clearing the glacis of brushwood, stockading two of the strongest houses at the extremities of the village, and levelling, after a council of war, the residence of a settler in the close vicinity of the camp, which the enemy, now assembled within two

[Image of page 355]

miles of the place, showed evident intentions of occupying. He enrolled some of the gentlemen of the village in a volunteer corps, formed rallying places for the townsfolk, completed his supplies, and, in short, inspired all hands, civil, military, and naval, (for from the first there was a gun-boat at Wanganui, under the orders of a most active officer,) with a reliance on his forethought and determination, which made them encounter cheerfully the privations inseparable from their position. First blood was drawn by the scouts of the enemy catching and tomahawking a soldier of the 58th, who, in breach of orders, had strayed away from the camp. The policy of the Maoris was to draw the garrison into a fight on ground chosen by themselves. Posting their forces on a hill, about two miles off, they tried every manoeuvre to lure the British from their works--sometimes pushing skirmishers within one or two hundred yards of the palisades. The commander, however, aware of the ambuscading habits of the Maoris, stood fast; and on one occasion, after a small party had played off, until they were tired, a multiplicity of insulting pranks without any success, he saw a body of about one hundred and fifty men rise suddenly from among the fern, where they were concealed, like the men of Roderick Dhu, and retire to the camp on the hill. Other parties of the enemy showed themselves on the opposite bank of the river, and the guns of the fort tried their range upon them with some effect. The chief, Mamaku, had about four or five hundred men encamped; three hun-

[Image of page 356]

dred more were reported to be coming down the river; and, worse than all, the Christian natives of the district, with the exception of those belonging to the Missionary pah of Putiki, under the spiritual charge of the Rev. Mr. Taylor, a good and zealous man, arose in a mass and joined the hostile Taua.

On the 18th May large bodies of the insurgents were seen approaching the place from all directions. They took possession of the surrounding hills and of several houses on the outskirts of the town, and, keeping well under cover, opened a harassing fire on the stockades, the village, and the gunboat in the river. Too weak in numbers to move out by daylight to attack the enemy, the captain despatched at night two strong parties to seize the buildings occupied by the foe--a duty which they gallantly performed--the Maoris plundering and evacuating them at the first onset. The troops suffered no loss, but the rebels, in addition to some thirty men wounded, lost a great fighting chief, Maketu by name, who was killed by a musket-shot in the house which stands in the right-hand corner of my sketch. 1 The hill from which this view is taken was strongly occupied by the rebels, and the building just in advance of the house before mentioned was stockaded and held by a captain's detachment--by a soldier of which this shot was fired. I traced the course of the bullet, which afforded no bad proof of "Brown Bess's" power. At one hundred and fifty paces the ball had passed through five planks,

[Image of page 357]

including the garden paling, as well as through the skull of the chief, as he crouched on the floor fancying his person quite secure. Another minor chief was also slain. After the fight their friends retired for a time to bake the bodies of the slain, and to vow vengeance. They were seen the following morning sitting disconsolate on the hills lamenting their loss, and soon afterwards all had disappeared.

On the 4th June Lieut.-Colonel McCleverty arrived at Wanganui in the Inflexible, with a strong reinforcement --raising the numbers in the camp to about 550 men, and assuming the command. During the week he made reconnaissances three or four miles up each bank of the river, thereby ascertaining that the enemy's camp, which was posted on the right bank, was covered by a series of entrenched ravines, stretching from a swamp to the river; but that there was no regular pah. His Excellency, the Governor, who had repaired to Wanganui, took active interest in these movements, as well as others.

On the first occasion a naval party co-operating, or intended to co-operate, with the troops moving along the shore, pushed up the river in boats, and, landing in rear of these entrenchments without any communication with their necessarily slower friends on land, burnt some of the huts of the hostile camp; and their leaders were displeased that the sister service did not turn the reconnaissance into an attack, and storm the breastworks and entrenched gulleys. The colonel, however, feeling that

[Image of page 358]

a direct assault on so strong a position would be to play his adversary's game, resolved not to throw away his men for the poor result of winning a barren post--only taken up by the rebels to be abandoned after a double volley or two at the exposed soldiers--the utmost probable loss to themselves being a few kumeras and a cluster of raupo 2 huts, built in two or three hours. There was no particular end to be gained in precipitating an engagement on the enemy's ground. The lapse of every day would cause starvation, discontent, and the gradual dispersion of adversaries unprovided with stores and greatly in want of ammunition.

On the 1st July he beat up the quarters of a marauding party, who were destroying property and driving away stock beyond the heights of St. John's Wood, to the northward of the English camp, and succeeded in recovering some of the settlers' cattle. A few days afterwards the rebel tribes seemed to be gradually closing round the settlement--considerable numbers showing themselves on either side of the river, as well as on the before-mentioned heights, distant about a mile and a half from the town. Finally, so insolently bold were some of the native scouts in an attempt to cut off a herdsman and his charge under the very guns of the fortress, that two parties, under active subalterns, were sent to drive them off. The scouts fled--doubtless according to pre-arrangement--towards the hill of St. John's Wood, and up a steep ravine which had been

[Image of page 359]

strongly entrenched, and behind which among the trees a body of the rebels lay concealed. The soldiers, dashing after the runaways, were received with a heavy fire, which they of course returned, and an action was commenced. The colonel, having come up, sent to the camp for reinforcements; the insurgents were strengthened from their supports in rear of the wooded heights; and in a short time about 400 men on either side were briskly engaged. The enemy had the advantage of strong earthen breastworks drawn across the narrow and rough ascent, with flanking entrenchments on the sides of the gully--while the troops were wholly exposed. Indeed no ground could well be more unfavourable for the attacking force. The only approach from the British stockades to the heights of St. John's Wood, was along a narrow ridge of dry sand, scarcely passable by three abreast, hemmed in on either hand by deep, swampy land, broken yet affording no cover, for the long reeds were worse than none. A subaltern's party, thrown out to the left for the purpose of turning the flank of the rebels and diverting their attention from the main attack, found themselves suddenly over their knees in water and mud, whilst the tall and strong flags almost overtopped their heads; --a most helpless predicament in which an equal number of the more active and lighter-armed foe might have easily destroyed them. And, indeed, had they not been promptly extricated, such must have been their fate; for the enemy had marked their vulnerable position, and were preparing to take advantage of it.

[Image of page 360]

This party reached the terra firma of a sand hillock trending into the morass, and were reinforced from the town just as a strong body of Maoris issued against them from the entrenchments. The small party of artillery, with a brass three-pounder and a field howitzer--little better than playthings--pushing gallantly along the natural causeway, opened a fire on the fortified ravine, which was answered by a volley of musketry that put two of that corps hors de combat. A second subaltern's party, better posted, connected the right flank of the troops with the river, where the gunboat, under a well-known indefatigable Lieutenant of the Calliope, confronted and drove back the chief Mamaku himself, who, with a numerous band, made an attempt to get into the rear of the British by the bank of the stream.

In the hope of tempting the enemy from their cover, the colonel now tried the effect of a partial retreat, withdrawing and altering the position of the guns; which movement was no sooner observed by the Maoris than, with a deafening shout, they rushed boldly down the hill, and, musket and tomahawk in hand, fell upon the nearest of their white opponents. Then the soldiers, turning upon their savage assailants, charged the foremost at the distance of fifteen paces, overthrowing those who waited for the touch of the bayonet, and driving the others, in hot haste, back to their breastworks and reserves. On our side one officer was wounded; and a young acquaintance of mine, of the 65th, narrowly escaped being tomahawked by a stalwart warrior, who

[Image of page 361]

sprung upon him while stumbling among the fern, but who was shot through the head by a soldier of the 58th, just in time to arrest the stroke. Two privates were killed, and eleven wounded, one of whom died subsequently. Nothing but the well-known awkwardness of the New Zealanders in the use of fire-arms can account for the small execution done by them during this skirmish.

After the brisk brush just related, the rebels stuck fast to their works, which were admirably though only temporarily constructed--all approach to them being impossible except under a front and flank fire. The swampy nature of the ground at the foot of the range rendered abortive any attempt to turn the position, except by a very long detour from the right--a detour, however, which doubtless the gallant colonel would have seen right to attempt, had the Maoris given him another opportunity of attacking them in the same position. The affair of the 19th, brought on by the rebels themselves, commenced too late in the day to admit of any circuitous manoeuvring before action.

It was difficult to obtain trustworthy information as to the enemy's loss. Three men are known to have been killed, and ten wounded, of one clan--the Ngati-ruaka--which, being connected with the Christian pah of Putiki, communicated to them the loss of their friends. The chief of this tribe, Paore te Hotite by name, was slain in single combat, by a soldier of the 58th, who, after bayonetting his antagonist, coolly

[Image of page 362]

walked off with his double-barrelled fowling-piece. Of the damage sustained by the various tribes headed by Mamaku, Te Hapua, Te Pehe, Ngopera, and others, little was heard; and great care, as usual, was taken by them to conceal its amount. In this action there were but two or three natives fighting on the side of the British; one of whom was wounded. Yet in none of the New Zealand battles would a strong band of native allies, under an enterprising leader, acting on the flanks of the enemy in ground impracticable for the heavy soldier, have been more useful.

On the side of the rebels there were many missionary and hitherto loyal Maoris; and among the wounded and the foremost assailants of the soldiers was a native teacher of the Gospel. This fellow was one of a party who surprised and wounded a Mr. McGregor of Wanganui in a foolish attempt to reconnoitre from the top of Shakspeare's Cliff. He was chased down the hill, and severely hurt by a shot; but his life was saved by the intrepidity of a young friend of mine, Mr. Middleton of the 58th, who, with the master of the schooner Edward Stanly, (who carried us over the Wanganui Bar,) crossed the river under a sharp fusillade, and picked him out of the water into which he had thrown himself.

After the affair of St. John's Wood there occurred a singular scene. The natives of Putiki pah, anxious to know how it had fared with their relatives in the enemy's camp, got permission from the colonel to visit

[Image of page 363]

them on the hills; and accordingly an animated bout of hand-shaking, nose-rubbing, and kororoing took place, according to Maori custom in like cases. Two or three days later, the hostile natives, who still displayed considerable numbers on the heights, and who occasionally exchanged shots with the British picquets, returned the greetings of the Putikis. A chief, named Te Hapua, ran forward towards the English post, with a piece of white paper on his ramrod, and called for Hori Kingi, (George King,) the chief of the Christian natives. A crowd of the Putikis, with the colonel's sanction, rushed into the plain beneath the stockades, and about a hundred of the rebel warriors came down to them and performed a frantic war-dance in a dense body within easy reach of the guns. As a point of honour, these, however, were silent for a time; the crowd retired, and shortly afterwards a series of the most furious dances took place in succession along the whole crest of the ridge occupied by the enemy, showing that they were still there in considerable force. Their yells and roars, as of a convocation of tormented wild beasts, resounded through the hills, and were distinctly audible in the camp. The Putiki renegades were the first to desert the rebel ranks; and shortly afterwards the Taua broke up altogether from the British front, and dispersed into winter quarters--a movement to which their usual desultory mode of warfare, the scarcity of ammunition and provisions, (for these wild warriors had hitherto lived from hand to mouth by plundering the cattle and

[Image of page 364]

swine of the settlers and loyal natives,) the severe cold of the season, and, perhaps, the slight taste of the bayonet they had enjoyed, all contributed to incline them.

A long-threatened, and, by the troops, ardently hoped-for, assault on the British stockades never took effect, though, it is said, the storming parties for each, with the chiefs to lead them, had all been regularly "told off." Their plan was to set fire to the reed huts of the cantonments within the palisades by throwing fire-sticks upon them, and to rush to the attack during the confusion occasioned by the conflagration. Had they made this attempt with real determination to do or die, few of them would have escaped the latter fate. The grass roofs of the warrees had been rendered fire-proof by a covering of bread-bags steeped in lime-water, and there were upwards of 500 British soldiers within the forts, with artillery, while the enemy, but little more numerous, had no guns. Superstition, as I heard, was one potential cause of the abandonment of the projected onslaught. On the evening of the night fixed for its execution, the priests or seers consulted the relative positions of the moon and of a certain star--the former being considered to represent the beleaguing Taua, the latter the British camp. These very diplomatic horoscopists did not fail to discover that the aspect of the two luminaries was unpropitious to Maori success; for the crescent of the half moon had its back turned towards the flashing rays of the star, instead of threat-

[Image of page 365]

ening it with its horns, which would have been the favourable augury. They did, indeed, deserve the name of sages, who thus read the fortunes of an attack upon the English position.

The sustained blockade of the river, and other stringent measures enforced by the English, reduced the natives residing on its banks to the greatest straits; and, under the pressure of famine, a numerous deputation of men of note, in the month of October last, came down to the camp, and tendered their peccavi to the officer then and still in command. He assured them of the pardon of the Governor-in-Chief upon certain conditions. His Excellency is now here to name these conditions, and, on their ratification by the contrite rebels, to administer absolution for past transgressions.

In reviewing the Wanganui campaign, as far as could be done through the medium of public and private correspondence and confabulations with actors therein and commentators thereon, I have found much to admire, --many individual instances of gallantry, firmness, and self-devotion; much cheerfulness under hardship and privation; --for, be it known, Wanganui life was not a life of kid gloves, patent leather boots, soft lying, and delicate feeding; as, indeed, may be said of all the past New Zealand campaigning. The cardinal fault of it may be characterised by the homely phrase of "too many cooks." There were military cooks, sea cooks (famous fellows, we all know!) and civilian cooks, who, although full of good feeling towards each other and of

[Image of page 366]

zeal for the common cause, were, collectively, not always unanimous as to the modus operandi--or, (to carry on the culinary metaphor,) as to the materials and mode of serving up "the broth." Some wanted to serve it up hotter, --with more pepper; others desired to "draw it mild." No two tastes agreed. In short, amongst them, it was "spoilt."

It is with every sentiment of respect for the great talents and undoubted gallantry of "the fighting Governor," that I venture to state my conviction, that interference in military details by a civilian, of whatever rank, is productive of confusion, subversive of unity of plan and steadiness of purpose, and destructive of that sense of responsibility which by a leader of troops should be not feared but deeply felt. If such a personage must be present during the prosecution of military operations, he should be considered in the light of an amateur--no more; and, unless his counsel be asked, he has no more right to meddle therein than the spectator at a game of chess, cricket, or cribbage. He may distribute oranges and consolation to the wounded if he pleases; and, if he be a military man holding a high civil office, he may tender his services as a subordinate in the field, --a course of action whereof an exalted instance occurred in the late war in Hindostan; an instance too well known, too much honoured, to need closer allusion. In making this passing remark, chiefly with reference to the operations round Wanganui, I must, on the other hand, observe, that in some of the

[Image of page 367]

earlier war passages in New Zealand, where large bodies of natives fought on the English side, the consummate tact of Governor Grey in the management of the Maoris was of good service in securing the cooperation of the friendly chiefs and their followers, as well as in deterring from active hostilities against the British the doubtful and wavering.

With the skirmishes at Wanganui terminated the New Zealand War, --the first, and the last, I verily believe. The Maori is shrewd enough to know when he is over-matched. When Honi Heki first cut down the British standard and unfurled that of revolt in the country, there was no vessel of war on its seas, and only one company of soldiers on its soil. At the close of the Wanganui campaign in August 1847, there were two splendid regiments, full 900 strong each, a powerful naval force, including a steam-ship of 1,200 tons, and a strong band of Pensioner Fencibles, gradually increasing in numbers. The elder chieftains, who are not ignorant of English tenacity of purpose, well know that from whence these came, more "hippas" and "hoias"--ships and soldiers--would be forthcoming if necessary. With such odds against him, the Maori, who takes up fighting as a stimulating pastime, not as the business of life, discovered that macadamizing on commissariat pay, pig-and-potato dealing at the settlements, and even psalm-singing with the missionaries, were more profitable than warfare--the hardest of all fare. The happy result of this conviction is, that he is gradually sacrificing his

[Image of page 368]

innate love of laziness and blood for the arts and customs of civilized life. The least to be expected of the white usurpers of his country is, that they will heartily assist in the amelioration, moral and material, of the natural owner of the soil.