The events of the New Zealand war need not here be recited, but it may be easily imagined that during the continuance of the fighting the extensive area of country ruled over by the Maori monarch was kept clear of Europeans. But in 1863 and 1864 General Cameron, at the head of about 20,000 troops, composed of Imperial and Colonial forces, invaded the Waikato district, and drove the natives southward and westward, till his advanced corps were at Alexandra and Cambridge. Then followed the Waikato confiscation of Maori lands and the military settlements. The King territory was further broken into by the confiscations at Taranaki and the East Coast, but no advance was, however, made, by war or confiscation, into the country which formed the subject of my explorations. The active volcano of Tongariro is _tapu_, or strictly sacred, in the eyes of the Maoris, and several persons who had attempted to ascend it were plundered by the natives, and sent back across the frontier. On the west of Taupo Lake lies the Tuhua country, whose people had from the first, from the nature of the district, been much secluded from European intercourse, and who besides had given refuge to many of the desperadoes of the other tribes; while to the south-west of Taupo Lake were the people of the Upper Whanganui country, who have always been suspicious and hostile, while for some considerable time, too, the whole district was in terror of Te Kooti and his marauding bands. It is from these causes that the vast and important area embraced by the King Country has remained closed to Europeans, and, all things considered, it is a fact which must ever remain one of the most singular anomalies of British colonization, that, after a nominal sovereignty of forty years over New Zealand, this portion of the colony should have remained a _terra incognita_ up to the present day, by reason of the hostility and isolation of the native race. Having pointed out the leading causes which resulted in the closing of the King Country to European settlement, it will be interesting to glance at the endeavours which have been made by the different governments to break down the barrier of native isolation, and thus to throw open to the colonists an extensive area of the island, which is, in reality, as much a portion of British territory as is the principality of Wales. As is well known, since the termination of the lamentable war between the two races, the King natives have, on all occasions, jealously preserved their hostile spirit to Europeans; while the peculiar state of matters involved in the whole question, while unexampled in the history of any other part of the British Empire, has been naturally a source of annoyance and even danger to the several governments of the colony who have attempted from time to time to grapple with the native difficulty.