It was pleasant for the colonists in all this turmoil of war to learn that their industrial progress and rise into a position of political and social importance had not gone unmarked, and that their Queen was now to recognise their standing by sending her son to visit them. Great was the enthusiasm and fervid the welcome which the Flying Squadron received on the 12th of April as the _Galatea_ with Commodore H.R.H. Prince Alfred of Edinburgh on board swept into Port Nicholson and boomed an answer to the thundering salute from the shore. Wherever the Duke appeared throughout the Australasian colonies he was well received; but nowhere with greater heartiness than in New Zealand. For the colonists there knew that they owed a debt of gratitude to the mother country--which to many of them was still "home"--and Britain's Queen was as loyally regarded as in her own sea-girt islands in the North. As if the visit of Queen Victoria's son brought good augury of peace, Titokowaru was no more heard of, and Te Kooti gradually declined in power, until, harried on every side, he fled at last into the country of the Uriwera, the wildest and most savage tribe in New Zealand. Their country--in the mountainous peninsula between the Bay of Plenty and Poverty Bay--was as wild and savage as themselves, and afforded an almost inaccessible retreat to the Hauhau fugitives. But men like Whitmore and McDonnell, not to speak of Kepa Te Rangihiwinui and Ropata Wahawaha, were not to be dismayed by savagery, animate or inanimate, and Te Kooti was chased from point to point until even his bold spirit began to quail, and he realised at last how terrible was the just anger of the Pakeha, slow to kindle, but inextinguishable by aught but the full satisfaction of righteous vengeance. Te Kooti's day was not quite done. He was not rash, but by no means a coward, never hesitating to expose his person when necessary; yet he was seldom wounded, while his hairbreadth escapes from capture and from death itself seemed to justify the growl of his pursuers that "the devil took good care of his own." On one occasion when his _pa_ had been stormed and he was within an ace of being taken, he apparently fell over a cliff, and the men who were chasing him hurried themselves no further. But, when they reached the edge of the precipice and peered over, instead of a mangled body, they saw a rope of flax, down which the wily Hauhau had slid into safety.