at the engagement of Orakau on March 31, 1864. The detachment was commended for the firmness with which they had held their ground against superior numbers. The next time any of the XVIIIth were in action seems to have been on the 25th of August. The attack on Ring’s convoy had shown how easily traffic could be stopped in the Hunua forest. To make communication safer through this belt of bush the Government of New Zealand set a large number of men to cut down the scrub on either side of the road. Soldiers as well as civilians were employed on the work; among the former were a party of a corps which appears not only to have been ignorant of the first principles of warfare, but grossly disobedient to orders. General Cameron had officially reminded the troops that axe-men should always be protected by a covering party; but the detachment disregarded this order and, far from taking precautions for their safety, piled arms near the road under charge of a single sentry. The Maoris crawled through the bush, rushed the sentry, and before the detachment could regain their rifles nearly all the arms had fallen into the enemy’s hands. Several of the ---- were hit; the remainder, defenceless without their rifles, had fallen back for shelter into the forest, when the guard of a convoy, chiefly composed of a company of the Royal Irish, under Captain R. P. Bishopp, appeared on the scene, and after an hour’s sharp skirmishing succeeded in driving away the enemy. In this affair one man of the XVIIIth was wounded.[197] Early in September the headquarters of the Royal Irish were moved to Drury, leaving two companies under Captain Noblett to man the Queen’s redoubt. During the month three detachments of the battalion had brushes with the enemy. Half a mile from the village of Pokeno, near the Queen’s redoubt, a party of 62 non-commissioned officers and men, under Ensign C. Dawson, were attacked by a body of natives, who fired into them from the rear. A bayonet charge drove the enemy into a gully, down which the Royal Irish pursued them for half a mile, when a burst of war-whoops and yells from the village warned Dawson to collect his men to meet a fresh danger. Making his way back to Pokeno, he was received by a volley from Maoris hidden among the stumps and logs of timber in a clearing in front of the village, and from another party on his left flank. Dawson had his men well in hand, kept them in skirmishing order, and maintained a steady fire from all available cover, until he was extricated from this unpleasant situation by the arrival of a party of the 40th, and later by a further reinforcement, the escort to a convoy commanded by Captain Noblett, XVIIIth regiment. The Maoris fled before the levelled bayonets of the combined detachments and took refuge in the bush, into which the soldiers could not follow. A few days later, a convoy in charge of a body of volunteers broke down at Pukekohe, near Drury; some of the Royal Irish, under