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The remnant of the Waikato tribe having become well armed and well exercised in shooting under Te Whero Whero, they laid an ambush for Pomaré and killed him with almost the whole of the 500 men who were with him. The other tribes joined Te Whero Whero, and in successive battles ruined the Ngapuhi.
By getting round to the side of their camp, and behind it, he made it necessary for them to fall back again, which they did. Rangiriri.# They now made themselves very secure at a place called Rangiriri, where a narrow road was left between the Waikato River and a boggy lake.
If the war in the Waikato, and its off-shoot the fighting in the Bay of Plenty, had been in thick forest and a mountainous country, the disparity of numbers and equipment might have been counterbalanced. But the Waikato country was flat or undulating, clothed in fern and with only patches of forest. A first-class high road the river ran right through it.
Rauparaha, the young chief of a small tribe living round the harbour of Kawhia on the West Coast, realised that his Waikato neighbours must from their geographical position acquire the precious weapons before his own tribe could do so. The outlook was desperate, and the remedy must be of an heroic nature. Rauparaha travelled down the coast to Kapiti, and there saw a European whaling-ship.
They left their pahs, and though a series of skirmishes took place, yet the Waikato rebellion was ended, and Cameron had only to leave a sufficient number of military settlers along the Waikato Valley to make certain that peace and order would be maintained.
Gorst as magistrate and schoolmaster in the heart of the Waikato. The native authorities would allow no one to appear as a suitor in his court, but they took an interest in his school, and visited it from time to time. But Taranaki still seethed with discontent, and murders sometimes occurred. Tamihana's position became more and more difficult.
In March hostilities were stopped after a not too brilliant year, in which our casualties in fighting had been 228, beside certain settlers cut off by marauders. Thompson, the king-maker, coming down from the Waikato, negotiated a truce. There seemed yet a fair hope of peace. Governor Browne had indeed issued a bellicose manifesto proclaiming his intention of stamping out the King Movement.
Sir George Grey was genuinely anxious to avoid war, but he tried to cow the Maoris by driving a military road from Auckland to a point just outside the frontier line, by depositing bridging material upon the bank of the Mangatawhiri, and by sending a war steamer up the Waikato.
Not far from the lake there are smaller basins, in which the water is not beyond what would be agreeable for a warm bath; while it is of a blue colour and beautifully clear. On both banks of the river Waikato, also in this neighbourhood, are found numerous basins full of boiling mud or slime, which cannot be approached save with extreme care, owing to the softness and slipperiness of the soil.
The war beginning again there in 1863 smouldered on for more than three long and wearisome years. But the main interest soon shifted from Taranaki. In the Waikato, relations with the King's tribes were drifting from bad to worse. Grey had been called in too late. His mana was no longer the influence it had been ten years before.
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