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Of Gudgeon's two books I much prefer the Reminiscences, which on the whole tell more about the war than any other volume one can name. Sir John Gorst describes the King Movement and his own experiences in the King's country. Swainson takes up his parable against the Waitara purchase.
Therefore it was without much doubt that, followed by some three thousand men, Te Whero Whero set his face towards Mount Egmont, and swept all before him. Only at a strong hill-pa looking down upon the Waitara river, did his enemies venture to make a stand.
It was near those quaint conical hills the Sugar-Loaves which, rising in and near the sea, are as striking a feature as anything can be in the landscape where Egmont's white peak dwarfs all else. Compared to the force in the Waitara pa the garrison of this last refuge was small only three hundred and fifty, including women and children. But among them were eleven Whites.
Once, however, with an undue contempt for the British soldier, a contingent, newly arrived from the Waikato, occupied a dilapidated pa at Mahoe-tahi on the road from New Plymouth to Waitara. Their chief, Tai Porutu, sent a laconic letter challenging the troops to come and fight. "Make haste; don't prolong it! Make haste!" ran the epistle. Promptly he was taken at his word.
They swaggered among their old foes and servants, and ostentatiously disregarded their advice, much to our advantage. In June we were defeated at Puké-te-kauere on the Waitara. Three detachments were sent to surround and storm a pa standing in the fork of a Y made by the junction of two swampy ravines.
In the first place he and his tribe owned the beautiful Waitara lands which lay close to New Plymouth, and a Naboth is always open to the old charge, "Thou didst blaspheme God and the king."
A party of British soldiers were ambushed and killed before the offer to give back the Waitara was proclaimed, and again the flames of war broke out. The governor ordered the Auckland army to cross the Mangatawhiri River, and the act was taken as a declaration of hostilities. "It is now a war of defence," said Tamihana; "nothing is left but to fight."
Unfortunately, his ministers were slow to give their consent, and the delay spoiled what would otherwise have been welcomed as an act of grace. Moreover, he himself made the error of first taking military possession of a block in South Taranaki, which the Maoris were holding as a pledge for the restitution of Waitara, and they were naturally led to distrust the governor's good faith.
Moreover, there were the Ngatiawas, who, led by Wiremu Kingi, had migrated to Cook's Straits in the days of devastation. They claimed not only their new possessions much of which they sold to the Company but their old tribal lands at Waitara, from which they had fled, but to which some of them now straggled back. On this nice point Captain Fitzroy had to adjudicate.
He convened a great meeting on Oct. 23, 1862, at Peria, to discuss the Waitara and other grievances. It began with solemn evensong, and on the following Sunday morning Tamihana himself preached an eloquent sermon from the text, "Behold, how good and joyful a thing it is, brethren, to dwell together in unity."
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