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Updated: September 23, 2025
At this moment a hundred Maories were assembled in the "pah," old men, full grown men, youths; the former were calm, but gloomy, awaiting the orders of Kai-Koumou; the others gave themselves up to the most violent sorrow, bewailing their parents and friends who had fallen in the late engagements.
Glenarvan watched with a beating heart, looking from all the interstices of the palisaded enclosure, and observed the movements in the native camp. The Maories had fled to the neighboring ledges, out of the reach of the volcano. Some corpses which lay at the foot of the cone, were charred by the fire.
A fresh position was again taken up in an opening, on the left and front of which the Maories had collected. The sergeant, ordering his men to extend in skirmishing order across the opening, kept up a hot fire for a considerable time with the savages, bringing down some who had climbed up into trees for the purpose of taking more certain aim.
"First," said Glenarvan, "I think we ought to start before we are driven to it by hunger. We are revived now, and ought to take advantage of it. To-night we will try to reach the eastern valleys by crossing the cordon of natives under cover of the darkness." "Excellent," answered Paganel, "if the Maories allow us to pass." "And if not?" asked John Mangles.
We had not been long at anchor before we had visitors half-breed Maories, who, like the Finns and Canadians, are farmers, fishermen, sailors, and shipwrights, as necessity arises. They brought us potatoes most welcome of all fruit to the sailor cabbages, onions, and "mutton birds." This latter delicacy is a great staple of their flesh food, but is one of the strangest dishes imaginable.
Maories appreciate being spoken to at length and with due respect, and they listened politely, making speeches in their own fashion in return, until towards eleven, when most had gone to rest. The two Englishmen wrapped themselves in their great coats and lay down, the interpreter bidding them lie near him.
"All the nicest people in Pendragon," she said; "and they are rather ridiculously critical, and of course they talk." He looked at her and laughed. "I wish they were Maories," he said, "I shouldn't be nearly so frightened!" She leant over the table to emphasise her words. "But it really does make a difference, Harry. First impressions count a lot. You'll be nice to them, won't you?"
Four hundred Maories who were shut up in the fortress of Orakau, besieged by 1,000 English, under Brigadier-General Carey, without water or provisions, refused to surrender, but one day at noon cut their way through the then decimated 40th Regiment, and escaped to the marshes." "But," asked John Mangles, "did the submission of the Waikato district put an end to this sanguinary war?"
The native prophets called on all the Maori population to defend the soil, and promised the extermination of the pakekas, or white men. General Cameron had three thousand volunteers at his disposal, and they gave no quarter to the Maories after the barbarous murder of Captain Sprent.
Several bloody engagements took place; in some instances the fighting lasted twelve hours before the Maories yielded to the English cannonade. The heart of the army was the fierce Waikato tribe under William Thompson. This native general commanded at the outset 2,500 warriors, afterward increased to 8,000. The men of Shongi and Heki, two powerful chiefs, came to his assistance.
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