October,
1845, and by the 14th of November he was in Auckland.

He arrived to find Kororareka in ashes, Auckland anxious, the
Company's settlers in the south harassed by the Maoris and embittered
against the Government, the missionaries objects of tormenting
suspicions, and the natives unbeaten and exultant. The Colonists had
no money and no hope. Four hundred Crown grants were lying unissued in
the Auckland Land Office because land-buyers could not pay the fee of
L1 apiece due on them.

But the Colonial Office, now that it at last gave unfortunate New
Zealand a capable head, did not do things by halves. It supplied him
with sufficient troops and a certain amount of money. The strong hand
at the helm at once made itself felt. Within a month the circulating
debentures were withdrawn, the pre-emptive right of the Crown over
native lands resumed, the sale of fire-arms to natives prohibited, and
negotiations with Heke and his fellow insurgent chief, Kawiti, sternly
broken off.

The Governor set to work to end the war. High in air, on the side of
a thickly-timbered hill, lay Kawiti's new and strongest _pa_,
Rua-peka-peka (the Bat's Nest). Curtained by a double palisade of
beams eighteen feet high by two feet thick, strengthened by flanking
redoubts, ditches, and traverses, honeycombed with rifle-pits
and bomb-proof chambers below ground, "large enough to hold a
whist-party," it was a model Maori fortification of the later style.

[Illustration: SIR GEORGE GREY

Photo by RUSSELL, Baker St., W.]

Against it the Governor and Despard moved with 1,200 soldiers and
sailors, a strong native contingent, and what for those days and that
corner of the earth was a strong park of artillery. The first round
shot fired carried away the _pa's_ flagstaff; but though palisades
were splintered and sorties were repulsed, the stubborn garrison
showed no sign of yielding, and the Bat's Nest, for all our strength,
fell but by an accident. Our artillery fire, continued for several
days, was--rather to the surprise of our Maori allies--not stopped
on Sunday. The defenders, Christians also, wishing to hold divine
service, withdrew to an outwork behind their main fort to be out of
reach of the cannon balls. A few soldiers and friendly natives, headed
by Waka Nene's brother, struck by the deserted aspect of the place,
crept up and got inside before they were discovered. The insurgents,
after a plucky effort to retake their own fortress, fled w