ch fairly belonged to the settlers, but on which Maoris were
squatting. Under orders from the King natives, the Ngatiruanui
retaliated by surprising and killing a party of soldiers, and the
position in the province became at once hopeless. 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. His diplomatic advances and offers of local
government were met with sheer sulkiness. The semi-comic incident of
Sir John Gorst's newspaper skirmish at Te Awamutu did no good. Gorst
was stationed there as Commissioner by the Government, as an agent of
peace and conciliation. In his charge was an industrial school. It was
in the heart of the King Country. The King's advisers must needs have
an organ--a broad-sheet called the _Hokioi_, a word which may be
paraphrased by Phoenix. With unquestionable courage, Gorst, acting on
Grey's orders, issued a sheet in opposition, entitled _Te Pihoihoi
Mokemoke_, or The Lonely Lark. Fierce was the encounter of the rival
birds. The Lark out-argued the Phoenix. But the truculent Kingites had
their own way of dealing with _lese majeste_. They descended on the
printing-house, and carried off the press and type of _Te Pihoihoi
Mokemoke_. The press they afterwards sent back to Auckland; of the
type, it is said, they ultimately made bullets. Gorst, ordered to quit
the King Country, refused to budge without instructions. The Maoris
gave him three weeks to get them and depart, and very luckily for him
Grey sent them.

The Governor pushed on a military road from Auckland to the Waikato
frontier--a doubtful piece of policy, as it irritated the natives, and
the Waikato country, as experience afterwards showed, could be best
invaded with the help of river steamers. The steamers were, however,
not procured at that stage. About the same time as the Gorst incident
in the Upper Waikato, the Government tried to build a police-station
and barracks on a plot of land belonging to a friendly native lower
down the river. The King natives, however, forbade the erection,
and, when the work went on, a party of them paddled down, seized the
materials and threw them into the stream.

It was now clear that war was coming. The utmost anxiety prevai