Tauranga is the native name of a district on the east coast of New Zealand, about a hundred miles south of Auckland. It has long been the site of a missionary establishment under the charge of Archdeacon Brown, who has laboured among the natives during more than twenty years, and remained unmolested at his field of duty during the progress of the present war. A few British settlers had established themselves there for purposes of trade, and a resident magistrate was appointed to watch over the interests of justice. The Maoris of Tauranga are and always have been a warlike race, but there was no reason at first to question their loyalty. During the prevalence of the war in the Waikato district, the principal seat of the late campaign, the Maoris at Tauranga remained faithful in their adherence to the British Crown. It was only after the hostile tribes, driven from their land in the Waikato by the advance of our army, had dispersed themselves in the south, that symptoms of disaffection appeared among the natives of Tauranga. The fugitives excited the alarm of their countrymen by asserting that they also would be stripped of their lands, and thus inciting them to revolt. The effects of these incentives to rebellion became so marked, that the 68th and 43rd Regiments, which had recently arrived from India, were sent to Tauranga to overawe the disaffected. This movement brought matters to a crisis; a small portion of the natives remained faithful to the British Crown, while the great majority left their homes and joined the insurgents. Our forces encamped on a small peninsula called Te Papa, which is connected with the mainland by a narrow isthmus: the command was intrusted to Lieutenant-Colonel Greer, of the 68th Regiment. The hostile natives continued to hover round our camp, cutting off our supplies, and seizing the commissariat cattle within a few hundred yards of our sentries, without any attempt on our part to punish their audacity. Emboldened by our supineness and their own success, they resolved at length to erect a pa, and the site they selected would have secured the approval of Vauban, if he had been still alive. In truth, the Maoris of New Zealand, though they have never studied at Woolwich, are adepts in military engineering; instinct in their case has supplied the want of science. The sites of their pas, which are simply redoubts built of earth and inclosed with a wooden palisade, have always been chosen with the double intention of inflicting the greatest possible injury on their assailants, and securing their own retreat when their position becomes untenable. No attempt was made to restrain the natives from erecting a pa at Tauranga; the work went on for weeks, and our men quietly looked on. It is a far easier matter to prevent the erection than to effect the capture of a pa, but there may have been causes for this inactivity unknown to us. Be that as it may, the pa was built without interruption on the narrow slip of land