#5. Kororarika Burnt.#--On 11th March, 1845, at daylight, Heke with 200 men crept up to the flagstaff, surprised the men in the house attached, and when twenty men came out of the lower block-house to help their friends on the top of the hill, he attacked them and drove them down to the town in the hollow beside the shore. Close to the beach was a little hill, and on the top of this hill stood a house with a garden surrounded by a high fence. Behind this the soldiers and all the people of Kororarika took refuge. From the rocky high ground round about the Maoris fired down upon them, while the white men fired back, and the guns of the _Hazard_, which had come close in to the shore, kept up a constant roar. For three hours this lasted, ten white men being killed as well as a poor little child, while thirty-four of the natives were shot dead. The Maoris were preparing to retreat when, by some accident, the whole of the powder that the white men possessed was exploded. Then they had to save themselves. The women and children were carried out boat after boat to the three ships in the harbour. Then the men went off, and the Maoris, greatly surprised, crept cautiously down into the deserted town. They danced their war dance; sent off to their parents in the ships some white children who had been left behind, and then set fire to the town, destroying property to the value of L50,000. Heke's fame now spread among the Maoris. When the settlers from Kororarika were landed at Auckland, homeless, desperate, and haggard, a panic set in, and some settlers sold their houses and land for a trifle, and departed. Others with more spirit enrolled themselves as volunteers. Three hundred men were armed and drilled. Fortifications were thrown up round the town, and sentries posted on all the roads leading to it. At Wellington and Nelson also men were drilled and stockades were built for defence.