On the edge of the great forest, some miles to the south of the Waitotara River, was the site of the olden Maori village, Tauranga-ika. In front fern and grass lands stretched away to the sand-dunes of the sea-coast, with here and there a small shallow lake; in the rear was the dense and roadless bush, a perfect and safe retreat for the Hauhaus in the event of defeat. The country hereabouts was dotted with the white man's farmsteads; but the whites had been driven off before Titokowaru's victorious army, leaving their homes, the labour of many years, to go up in smoke, and their sheep and cattle to feed the Hauhau bands. Wanganui town was only a day's march away, and Titokowaru's council of chiefs, eager to follow up their victory at Moturoa, proposed to assault the town and massacre every soul in it. This old-time village was fixed on by the Hauhau war-chief as the site of his new fighting _pa_, for he abandoned Papa-tihakehake soon after the repulse of the white forces at that strong stockade. With the wariness of the Maori strategist, he avoided a second attack in any one entrenchment, and sooner than risk another, and possibly disastrous, engagement at Papa-tihakehake, he took the trouble to construct an even stronger fortification, a splendid example of native military engineering genius. In the building of this new _pa_, Kimble Bent and his Hauhau comrades toiled early and late until it was completed. It was of large size, fully defended with palisading, trenches, parapet, and rifle-pits. It was between two and three chains in extreme length at the rear, with a somewhat narrower front. The ground in front was bare of forest, but carried high fern cover; on the flanks were burned clearings, dotted with blackened tree-stumps and cumbered with logs; then the forest, with some beautiful groves of _mahoé_ on its outskirts. Two rows of palisades, high and strong, were erected around the position; the posts, solid tree-trunks, were from six to twelve inches thick and ten to fifteen feet high; the rows were four feet apart. The spaces between the larger stockade-posts were filled in with saplings set upright close together, and fastened by cross-rails and supplejack ties; these saplings did not rest in the ground, but hung a few inches above it, so that between them and the ground a space was left for the fire of the defending musketeers, who were enabled to pour volleys from their trenches inside the war-fence on any approaching enemy with perfect safety to themselves. Behind the inner stockading was a parapet about six feet high and four feet wide, formed of the earth thrown out of the trenches. The interior of the _pa_ was pitted everywhere with trenches and covered ways, so that in the event of attack the defenders could literally take to the earth like rabbits, and live underground secure from rifle-fire, and even from artillery. The place was a network of trenches with connecting passages, roofed over with timber, _raupo_,