At last it occurred to a British officer that the Maoris wished their _pas_ to be assaulted, and that they considered it a victory when several scores of British fell in an attack upon a worthless stronghold, while the defenders quietly retired with at most two or three casualties. And this was the fact. Having grasped this truth the officer determined not to attack them; but marched up to the vicinity of a _pa_, sat down in front of it, and entrenched himself and his guns before it. This did not suit the Maoris at all. They saw that they would be obliged to go back sooner or later, without the satisfaction of killing fifty or sixty of the enemy, and they did not see where the process might end. In desperation they attempted several attacks against the English earth-works, but were repulsed with heavy loss, and were fain to draw back to another _pa_ further within the forest. The British followed, and went through the same performance again, with the same result. In a few weeks these particular Maoris gave in, for they saw no prospect of emerging from the forest again; and though they might have kept themselves alive on fern-root, they knew that their warriors would soon lose all physical strength upon such a diet. The Maori wars lasted in one way or another for nearly twenty years in a desultory fashion, partly owing to mismanagement, partly, I fear, because so many contractors in the colonial towns made money out of them that people were unwilling to let them come to an end. When the Imperial troops and money were withdrawn, and the colonists were left to finish the job for themselves, the trouble with the Maoris soon ceased. Lastly we come to those expeditions which even in these days tend to be most dangerous and costly, I mean those to such fever-stricken coasts as the Gold Coast and the Delta of the Congo, where all supplies and stores must be carried on the heads of men and women, and where even the strictest care may fail to avert deadly sickness. Twice within forty years has a British force marched to Coomassie; but the wise tendency nowadays is to entrust such work almost exclusively to native troops who do not suffer from the climate. The number of these troops has increased enormously of late years with the extension of our rule in Africa; and we are accustomed to treat the fact as a matter of course, without a thought for the man who has made these foreign levies what they are, and without whom they are nothing--the British officer.