lies undoubtedly proved far
more efficient than the regular troops had usually been permitted to
be. They did not think it useless to follow the enemy into the bush;
far from it. They went there to seek him out. They could march many
miles in a day, and were not fastidious as to commissariat. More than
once they gained food and quarters for the night by taking them from
their opponents. In a multitude of skirmishes in 1865 and 1866, they
were almost uniformly victorious. Of the laurels gained in New Zealand
warfare, a large share belongs to Ropata, to Kemp, and to Militia
officers like Tuke, McDonnell and Fraser. Later in the war, when
energetic officers tried to get equally good results out of
inexperienced volunteers, and when, too--in some cases--militia
discipline had slackened, the consequences were by no means so
satisfactory. It did not follow that brave men ready to plunge into
the bush were good irregulars merely because they were not regulars.
Nor were all friendly natives by any means as effective as the
Wanganui and Ngatiporou, or all chiefs as serviceable as Ropata and
Kemp.

The east coast troubles began in March, 1865, with the murder at
Opotiki, on the Bay of Plenty, of Mr. Volckner, a missionary and the
most kindly and inoffensive of mankind. At the bidding of Kereopa, a
Hau-Hau emissary, the missionary's people suddenly turned on him, hung
him, hacked his body to pieces, and smeared themselves with his blood.
At another spot in the same Bay a trading schooner was seized just
afterwards by order of another Hau-Hau fanatic, and all on board
killed save two half-caste boys. A force of militia soon dealt out
condign punishment for these misdeeds, but meanwhile Kereopa and his
fellow fire-brands had passed down the coast and kindled a flame which
gradually crept southward even to Hawkes Bay. In village after village
the fire blazed up, and a rising equal to that in the Waikato seemed
imminent. It was, indeed, fortunate that much the ablest warrior on
that side of the island at once declared against the craze. This was
Ropata Te Wahawaha, then and afterwards the most valuable Maori ally
the Government had, and one of the very few captains on either side
who went through the wars without anything that could be called a
defeat. Without fear or pity, he was a warrior of the older Maori
type, who with equal enjoyment could plan a campaign, join in a
hand-to-hand tussle, doom a captive to death, or shoot a deser