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London, England, 1858-08-21 00:00:00

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LONDON, SA'

4-

NATIVE POWER IN NEVI ZEALAND.

The following extract from a letter written by Dr. Neild,
of New Plymouth, will be found interesting :
"About ten miles from New Plymouth, New Zealand, a
, deadly strife is going on between two men and their fol-
lowers. Wiremu Kingi, always opposed to Europeans, and
who once openly, before hundreds of natives, called the
much boasted Sir George Grey a lying Governor ;' this
chief, with 500 men, is besieging Thais, always a friend to
Europeans, with 120 men. Ihaia cannot hold oat in his
fortress above a week, and then comes an awful massacre,
for Kingi's mob declare they will kill every man, woman,
and child in Ihaia's camp ; and Kinglii has sent a letter to
the commander of onr garrison of 250 troops, to say that
when he has done with Ihaia he will, in spite of a recent
proclamation of the governor, escort through the town
some of his allies from Ornate, and, if molested, he will
'open a butcher's shop for selling the pakeba's flesh.' This
fellow is a church Maori, as all our worst rebels have been
—Heke Ranperaba and Rangihaeata, of the Wairan
massacre, &c. But he forgets one paint. He may come
into the town, but he would never leave it alive.
He is so intensely hated that nearly all the settlers would
rein any risk to shoot him. You have no conception of
the desperate irritation of mind towards this big savage
and his mob in the breasts of our people. And if the
Maories provoke a collision, my own belief is that they will
be nearly exterminated, and that nothing in North America
will be worse than the doings here. For nearly 20 years the
Government has pursued a temporising course. The Maories
believe forbearance to have meantweakness, and the settlers
have felt their interests sacrificed to savage caprice. They
have been driven from lands bonght and paid for, and cooped
up within a territory of only six miles radius, whilst be-
yond this to the north lies a glorious country for fifty
miles, not forest but fern land, yet well watered and
timbered, of which the natives do not and cannot culti-
vate one acre in one thousand; and yet from this land
they have driven us and keep us. Our little settlement
contains or did 2,500 people. On 125 miles of coast in
our province there are 1,700 natives. I cannot wonder
that the temper of New Plymouth, after so long a time of
patient waiting and the endurance of insolence untold,
should be as it is. Most earnestly do I wish that the two
races could be reconciled to a new order of things, and
both sit down under English law and government. But our
Maories despise us and our laws, and our soldiers to boot.
Their civilisation is all fudge. They copy our dress and use
ploughs, &c., because the one is convenient and the other
brings them money; but they are savages still none the
less. I know the minds of two natives that brought on the
present contest; the most ferocious was a quiet seeming man
who had lived ten years in town as a servant to one of our
merchants. No sepoy could be more dangerous.
" I will now describe a visit I lately paid to both the fight-
ing parties as temporary colonial surgeon, and in company
with two government officers of the native department,
before the militia were called out. The parties are placed on
the banks of the Waitara river, ten miles from the town,
headed by Wiremu Kingi, and Ihaia and Nicoruna. The
former heads from 400 to 500 besiegers; the latter chiefs
have only 80 or 100 men, and hosts of women and children.
The quarrel has reference to land. During the last four
years tae natives have been taught by missionaries mot to
sell the land. Hence sprung up the land league. One of its
members here (Katatore) shot down a native chief magis-
trate, in British pay (Rawiri), and six other men, when en-
waged in cutting the line of some land they wished to buy.
The Rawiri's friends were besieged by Katatore. Katatore
had 250 men from the south to help him, but Ihaia came and
rescued them, the price of his services being a piece of land,
on which, in Maori warfare, he had built a pah, which lie
called Ikamvana, namely, Inkerma3. This land he was
entitled to sell according to Maori customs. Meanwhile a
sort of peace was made, but not by Ihaia. Katatore nego-
tiated to sell land, and arrangements were nearly concluded,
when the vile, treacherous, Puketapti mob—the nuisance of
this place, instigated by Wiremu Kiugi, it is believed, and
certainly by two native magistrates, paid £5O each per
annum by our government to keep the peace (oh! how
one's blood stirs to write this), laid a trap for Ihaia. They
laid a plot to murder Katatore, and got Ihaia to consent to it
and be concerned in it ; but they were the conspirators;
hide's party, not his own hand, did the murder, and then
the miscreants instantly jeinerli Wiremu Kingi to destroy
Maio. Thus they got rid of Katatore, anti now nearly of
Linda, and hoped either to keep their land or get all the
money for it themselves. Ihaia defended his Ikamvana pah
for some time; but as it was near our settlers, and not
wishing to endanger them, he left it and went down to his
land at Welfare, taking post in his pah Te Kuraka. There
we went to see him. Riding through a splendid but unoccu-
pied country, we came to the river Waitara, a good stream,
navigable by boats and canoes, and fordiug it up to our
horses' girths, were met at the farther side by two videttes,
each with loaded double-barrelled guns. One went before,
the other followed us, first, past an encampment, chiefly of
women, cooking food for the men—a position well defended
by breast-high earthworke, with good loopholes for firing
from. The Maori, like the Turks, fights only under cover.
Thence, we zig-zagged along the face of a very steep cliff,
here and there passing :small pickets of men and boys, all
armed with loaded guns, and at last were conducted to
head-quarters, nameiyathe deep trench of, an old pall, well
posted, inaccessible from the river, ewe by our path ;
whilst its approaches on the other side were plain land.
Here we met in council the malignant Wiretnu Kingi and
the chiefs of his Tana,' or war party. The object of our
visit was broached, namely, that in the absence of our
colonial surgeon, J, as his deputy, had come to dress the
wounded. Oh, yes, quite right, dress our men,' said
Kingi's party, but the ` rangoa,' or medicine, a term having
with the Maori the same bread meaning it has in North
America—' the medicine must not go to Ihaia. ".Oh, oh ! '
very nice this, dress you, and then let you tan bid me—the
Government surgeon—to dress the other side ; he at once
your partisan and slave, when every personal feeling revolts
from your treachery, cruelty, and malignancy.' A smart de-
bate arose, but argarnent was vain, and I refused to dress
any unless I might dress both. Yet thiswas painful and cruel
werk, for close by, in a small but, lay a Maori, with a ball 1
in his foot, who overheard the deba'e, and who made the
retna k, Ah, it is all very well f r Wiremu Kingi to say
he would not send for the doctor to dress him, but I want
this ball out duly foot.' lie died that day wt ek ! Further
be it observed, that this same hateful Wiremu Kingi never
fights or runs one bit of risk himself. Like other big bul- !
lies, be is a thorough coward. Yet, it is by the will of this
fellow, almost solely, that we get no land, and are virtually
ruined if we try to realise our investments. He has not one
wrong to urge against us, nor has his character one redeem-
ing point. I formally refused to act, unless I could act for
both sides, and so the mater ended. To keep honour
bright' even with these fellows, I gave them my ' kit' of in-
struments, dressings, and dinner, whilst we went to the be-
leaguered camp. 'These was no objection to our visiting it,
but ' take no rongoa ;' our horses were accordiogly left,
saddles and brides on the ground, tethered in a patch of
oats, a crop wasted for war; and passing other outposts of
earthwork and trees, loop-holed, as before described, we be-
gan to come near Ihaia's pah—showing and waving arms
and bats, to prevent lungshots' at us in mistake. We
saw where the besiegers, a week b fore, had tried to
creep up to a second pah of Ihaia's through standino, corn,
but were seen and repulsed with some loss. Reaching
Ihaia's pah we passed through its double
palisading and
visited the inmates, who looked, to my eye, haggard and
harassed. One poor fellow was dying of cousutnption, and
two other., Luke' and Toby,' were shockingly sounded
by an ambuscade and skirmish, the results of which had
brought me down. One had seven tomahawk cuts—slashes
four inches long—and two musket-ball wounds, one at the
hip and out at the back, the other in at the thumb and out
near the wrist, in again in the upper arm and out of the
shoulder ! Toby had a b3ll lodged against the bones of the
leg. Yet I must not, in ho tour, help them, save, to-
day, dress them with water. I may here say I was
pronounced correct in what I did officially, and in a few
days after two settlers, a surgeon and a merchant, rode
down, and, at great risk, stole into the pall, dressed
the men and removed the ball, and Luke and Toby are
well again. Wiremu Kingi's cruelty recoiled on him-
self, at least on his soldiers—and Ihaia was not hurt
by it. Leaving the pah, and again using precautions
to avoid ' long shots,' we went to the old Pukerangeora's
pah, where the ambush lay which had caught Ihaia's peo-
ple whilst out to get food. Two fine oxen of his, shot that
morning, lay dead to rot on the ground. I picked up two
ball-cartridges, and my companions found a tong broken-
handled tomahawk. a broken musket, a cap torn in front bv
a ball, and some other clothing of the men killed when Luk-e
and Toby were wounded. We soon found ourselves amongst
a dozen Maories, all with guns loaded and capped, and whose
number quickly amounted to 28, by twos and three out of
the trenches of the old fortress. We told them of the clothes,
gun, and tomahawk, and with much impartiality we took
to Ihaia's men what had belonged to their comrades, and
went back to Wiremu Kingi with their friends' relics.
Another brief call at Karaka, an interview with
the two chiefs, Ihaia and Nikoruna (Isaiah and
Nicodemus), and then we returned to our horses
and Wiremu Kingi's mob. We called at an out-
post full of men armed, and, asking for my kit, it was
promptly handed to me, the mouth tied with flax, and the
contents untouched. I sat down and took my sandwiches
amidst a grove of guns, rubbing sheulders with their owners,
all friendly enough, and courteous—greedy as the al aories
naturally are, no one, by gesture or word, showing a desire
to share my Kai-rai,' but I gave part away. Wiremu
Kingi came up and wished to see my instruments ; so I sat
down with him and showed them with much unction. Pity
he could not benefit by them. Wioilst saddling my horse, a
Maori, a tarnata non, or common man, made inquiries about
the wounded in Ihaia'e pah, and the savage fellow gloated
over every bit of detail about the wounds and cuts he could
wring out of me. I told him as little as possible.
"My four-and-a-half years amongst the finest race of
savages in the world' brings me to assent to the remark that,
' you may Christianise and civilise savage individuals but not
a nation. And our missionaries who have laboured amongst
them 25 years are constrained sorrowfully to confess their
once hopeful converts are not only negligent and retrograd-
ing, but are worse than ever they knew them in heathen-
ism. . . And I don't think our now virtual ascendancy will
be allowed by this warlike race until therelbas been, as Col.
Mandy says, in Our Antipodes,' another, and, to the
natives, a surely fatal, appeal to arms.' I think it might be
averted with the greatest advantage to both sides; but I see
no signs save an ultimate tempest. My visit to this most
beautiful country—like the Tamar Valley, but richer even,
though uncultivated and bathed in the intense, clear sun-
shine of a New Zealand summer sky—ended by again ford-
ing the river near its mouth, up to my knees on my mare's
back—but a good wetting matters little here. We rode ten
miles on the black iron sand beach, in the teeth of a strong
S.W. wind, which made my lips sore for a fortnight, yet I
took no cold. I must confess to having felt much interest in
seeing thus, in actual existence, Maori warfare, pahs, stock-
ades, sec., &c., yet I came away heavy-hearted; for if we
could but have fair play, and we want no more, I rather pre-
fer the Maoris' presence to their absence—whilst, as it is,
even a more Christian man than I am cannot easily take the
bitter draught we have to drain in our present mutual rela-
tions. However, our settlement is so palpably going to decay
that some step must be taken on our behalf. So much for
this ruinous, tedious Maori war of blockading and starving
out. We are at quiet again for a time, but 48 hours ago
Ihaia made a sortie, 30 of his men were killed, one belonging
to tribes on the Wbanganhui river, who will now send men,
perhaps 300, to avenge him, and thus tribe after tribe gets
drawn, till it is impossible to Say how many may eventually
be collected bore."


-...'

PRICE 4D, STAMPED, SD.

THE NAVY.

The Mersey, 40, screw steamer, at Chatham, has had her
lower masts put on board, and the tops over the mastheads.
The riggers yesterday commenced their labours preparatory
to sending her toPortsmonth,where she is to be made ready
for sea.
The Amphion, 46, screw steam-frigate, has been towed
into Chatham harbour, to be repaired.
The Duck, Weal, master, has commenced unshipping war
stores at Chatham, from Devonpoit and Portsmouth dock-
yards.
The Victor Emmanuel, 91, screw,-Capt. J. Willcox, C. 8.,
will go to Spithead on Tuesday, when she will take in her
lower-deck guns, powder, and shall. She has bent sails.
The Oberon, 3, paddlewheel stelsm-vessel, Lieut.-Com-
mander F. G. C. Paget, will sail to-by for the Brazils.
The Agamemnon, under the shears at Por:smouth, caught
fire at 4 o'clock yesterday afternoon in her engine-room, but
the fire was put out in a few minutes, without the assist-
ance of the fire-engines.
Rear-Admiral the Hon. G. Grey returned to Portsmouth
on Thursday morning, from visiting the Channel I-lands,
in the Portsmouth cutter yacht, and hoisted his flag on
board the Excellent.

The Alfred, 50-gun sailing frigate, was brought down from
Porchester Lake, Portsmouth, on Thursday, ald will go
into the basin to-day.

The Vulcan, 6, Won screw steam troop Alp, is ordered to
be brought forward for steam reserve at Pcrtsm luth.

The Falcon, 17, screw-sloop, in the steam basin at Ports-
mouth, is nearly completed in her fit out, and is ready for
commission.

The Argut, G, paddlewheel steam-sloop, Commander H.
F. W. Ingram, arrived at Spitbead yesterday morning, from
Plymouth.

The Euryalus, 51, screw, Captain J. W. Tarleton, C. 8.,
is to go out of duck on Monday, and go to Spithead.
The Imperieuse, 51, screw, is to go out of the steam-basin
at Portsmouth on Monday, and to lie laid up in stern re-
serve.

The Neptune, old 120; sailing ship, io No. 3 dock at Ports-
mouth; A strong body of shipwrights have been placed on
this vessel, and have commenced removing her upper deck
to bring her down to a9l screw two-decker ; Le elver
sheathing has been stripped off, and arrangement: made for
lengthening her by the stern to receive a screw propeller.
The Victoria, 121, screw, Is progressing in a nr'st satisfac-
tory manner in her Majesty's dockyard at Portsmouth'. Iron
ribands have been placed in the after part of the slip to
secure her from the vibratory motion of the working of the
screw, and so, holding the timbers together in a compact
b xly, as to prevent the chance of leakage in the weakest
part of the vessel.

The Admiralty lev6e at the Devonport Dockyard com-
menced at half-past 10 on Thursday morning, and did not
conclude until after two o'clock. Upwards of 100 officers ob-
tained audience. Sir J. Pakington lunched with Admiral
Superintendent Sir J. Pasley, and shortly after three o'clock,
accompanied by the other members of the Bmrd, ini?ected
the screw steam-frigate Liffey, 51, lying off the arsenal, and
then embarked in the gunboat Redwing, in which they pro-
ceeded up Hamoaze, by the Keyham steam-yard and the
new Government powder-works in course of construction
and extension at Bull Point. This excursion closed the offi-
cial inspection at Plymouth. Their lordships returned in the
evening to the Diadem, which got up steam, and at seven
o'clock dropped frem Hamoaze into the Sound, under
salutes from the Plymouth citadel; returned from the an-
chorage ground, where the ship remained until early yester-
day morning, when she sailed for the westward. Admiral
Martin and Sir B. W. Walker r9turntd to town on Thursday.
The following appointments were made yesterday at the
Admiralty:—C. E. D. Willcox, Acting-Mate, to the Victor
Emmanuel; M. Burton, Surgeon Superintendent, to the
True Briton, convict ship ; T. D. Allison, Acting-Assistant-
Surgeon, to the Victory ;. T. Jameson, M.D., and S. Reid,
Acting-As'istant..Surgeon', to the Impregnable; and F. H.
Chown, Clerk, to the Madagascar.