them was as three to one. On the same day a Maori ambuscade attacked an escort under the command of Captain King, of the 18th Royal Irish, in the neighbourhood of the Queen’s Redoubt; our men, who were straggling along the road, smoking and chatting, with their rifles uncapped, resisted as much as they could, and escaped with the loss of four men, twelve rifles, and the carts and horses left on the field. If any of the Maoris fell, their bodies were removed; no traces of them were to be found the following day. [Illustration: Assistant-Surgeon Temple, R.A., assisting Captain Mercer, R.A., at the attack on the Pa of Rangiriri.] Redoubts were then erected for the protection of Auckland; the bush was cut down for hundreds of yards on either side of the Great South Road; a Commissariat Transport Corps of nearly 1000 men was raised; four regiments of Militia were recruited, chiefly in Australia and the South; the strength of the Imperial forces was raised to 10,000 men; including local corps, we had about 25,000 men under arms to cope with the enemy, who have never been able to bring more than 600 men into the field. If the country had been open, the war would soon have been brought to a close; but our men had to pass unfordable streams and to force their way through the bush. The enemy fell back to a place called Mere Mere, situated on a rising ground on the Waikato, about nine miles from the Queen’s Redoubt. The enemy’s only artillery consisted of two old ship’s guns loaded with tenpenny nails; but the place was believed to be impregnable, and our men remained in camp there for three months. It was the old story of Sir Richard Strahan and the Earl of Chatham. General Cameron was longing to be at them, but he had to wait for Sir George Grey, and Sir George Grey was waiting for nobody knows what. The expense of supporting such an army in the field is enormous; three millions of money have already been expended. At length our troops advanced to attack the Maori stronghold; the preparations were as elaborate as Uncle Toby’s for the siege of Dunkirk, and something brilliant would doubtless have occurred if the Maoris had been a little less impatient. They evacuated Mere Mere, and fell back to Rangiriri, where they had a strong pa on the summit of a rising ground situated midway between the Waikato and an inland lake. If we were too slow at Mere Mere, we were a little too fast at Rangiriri; because the former was a place of no great strength it was inferred that the latter was the same. A rush was made; the outer works were carried; but the attacking party fell back on finding themselves confronted by other works of still greater strength. To retreat was to lose the _prestige_ of our arms, and to invite the neutral tribes to rebellion. The place must be taken at all hazards; a second rush was attempted; the officers advanced in front, and cheered on the men, but the men refused to stir. The general then turned to the fifty artillery