In the series of skirmishes dignified by the name of the Maori war of 1860-61 the natives had carefully studied our tactics and our weapons; and in the war of 1863-66, in order to bring into play the muskets and double-barrelled guns with which they were armed, and to minimise the effect of our rifle and shell fire, they selected positions open in front, with flanks resting on rivers, swamps, or impenetrable bush. They made great use of earthworks and of redoubts, square or oblong in shape, flanked at opposite angles by bastions and surrounded by ditches, in some cases twelve feet wide and measuring eighteen feet from the bottom of the ditch to the top of the parapet. Pushed out to the front and flanks were two or three tiers of rifle-pits or short trenches, connected by sunk roads with each other and with the main work. The marksmen in these pits were often protected by head cover, made of trunks of trees or of hurdles thatched with fern and covered deep with earth; and to break the force of a bayonet charge, stout palisades were sometimes built in front of the rifle-pits with spaces left for grazing fire to sweep over the glacis. Yet though this system of fortification showed that to their natural cleverness the Maoris added the power of rapidly absorbing new ideas, their intelligence failed them in one essential particular. In the selection of a position they never realised the importance of a good water-supply, and when an attack was threatened they neglected to store their works with water, trusting to their young men to bring in by night the quantity required for the next day’s consumption. Thus after a close investment of a few days they had no alternative but to cut their way out or to surrender.