blesome growths.
Inland the great forest, mantling the volcano's flanks, and spreading
its harassing network like a far-stretching spider's web, checked
European movements. From the first the English officers in command
in this awkward country made up their minds that their men could do
nothing in the meshes of the bush, and they clung to the more open
strip with a caution and a profound respect for Native prowess which
epithets can hardly exaggerate, and which tended to intensify the
self-esteem of the Maori, never the least self-confident of warriors.
A war carried on in such a theatre and in such a temper was likely
to drag. There was plenty of fighting, mostly desultory. The Maoris
started out of the bush or the bracken to plunder, to cut off
stragglers, or to fight, and disappeared again when luck was against
them. Thirteen tiresome months saw much marching and counter-marching,
frequent displays of courage--more courage than co-operation
sometimes,--one or two defeats, and several rather barren successes.
For the first eight months the advantage inclined to the insurgents.
After that their overweening conceit of their Waikato contingent
enabled our superior strength to assert itself. The Maoris, for all
their courage and knowledge of the country, were neither clever
guerillas nor good marksmen. Their tribal wars had always been affairs
of sieges or hand-to-hand encounters. Half the skill displayed by them
in intrenching, half the pluck they showed behind stockades, had
they been devoted to harassing our soldiers on the march or to loose
skirmishing by means of jungle ambuscades, might, if backed
by reasonably straight shooting, have trebled our losses and
difficulties.

Early in the war we did none too well in an attack upon a hill _pa_ at
Waireka, a few miles south of New Plymouth. Colonel Murray was sent
out from the town with some 300 troops and militia to take it, and at
the same time to bring in some families of settlers who had stuck to
their farms, and who, if we may believe one of them, did not want to
be interfered with. The militia were sent by one route, the troops
took another. The Maoris watched the arrangements from the hills, let
the militia cross two difficult ravines, and then occupied these,
cutting off the Taranaki contingent. The militia officers, however,
kept their men together, and passed the day exchanging shots with
their enemy and waiting for Colonel Murray to make a diversion by
assail