To understand the positions of the king party and of the colonists, it is necessary to form a picture of the frontier line. From Ngaruawahia, the Maori king's capital, the River Waikato flows northward till it reaches a point not much more than 40 miles from Auckland. Here it takes a sudden turn to the westward. Its previous course may be compared to the upright stem of the letter T: from this point it forms the left arm of the cross. The right arm of the T is supplied by the smaller River Mangatawhiri, which here falls into the Waikato. The cross of the T extended from the western sea almost to the Hauraki Gulf, and divided the country of the "king" from that of the white man. It was quite near enough to the capital to fill the Aucklanders with anxiety, and on one occasion, when a few turbulent spirits broke through the boundary, the settlers on the Manukau left their homes in alarm. Sir George Grey was genuinely anxious to avoid war, but he tried to cow the Maoris by driving a military road from Auckland to a point just outside the frontier line, by depositing bridging material upon the bank of the Mangatawhiri, and by sending a war steamer up the Waikato. In the early part of 1863 he endeavoured to deal justly with the Waitara difficulty by holding an enquiry into Te Rangitaake's claims over the block. It was found that the chief's rights were valid, as Martin and Selwyn had all along maintained, and the governor at once resolved to give back the land unjustly seized. Unfortunately, his ministers were slow to give their consent, and the delay spoiled what would otherwise have been welcomed as an act of grace. Moreover, he himself made the error of first taking military possession of a block in South Taranaki, which the Maoris were holding as a pledge for the restitution of Waitara, and they were naturally led to distrust the governor's good faith. A party of British soldiers were ambushed and killed before the offer to give back the Waitara was proclaimed, and again the flames of war broke out. The governor ordered the Auckland army to cross the Mangatawhiri River, and the act was taken as a declaration of hostilities. "It is now a war of defence," said Tamihana; "nothing is left but to fight." The country upon which the governor thus launched his 10,000 English troops was one which was little known to Europeans, but it certainly was not savage. The Austrian geologist, Hochstetter, who explored it four years previously, found hardly any white men except the missionaries; but he was struck with the order, the reverence, and the prosperity which were seen in every part. Rangiaohia, where the "king" had his abode, is thus described: