In the evening we visited the native _kainga_, and spent some time with the Maoris in the _wharepuni_. There were about twenty natives present, men, women, and children, and in the centre of the primitive apartment blazed a huge fire, which threw out a terrific heat, and rendered the place almost unbearable. The natives were mostly short of stature, with hard features, and I remarked that they spoke with a much harsher accent than those further to the north, and that they clipped many of their words in a remarkable way. When Turner inquired for an explanation of this habit, they stated that their great ancestor, Ngatoroirangi, when he came over in the _Arawa_ canoe was engaged in baling out that craft during a storm, and that whilst so doing he caught a severe cold, which caused him to speak in a sharp, halting kind of way, which has been imitated ever since by many of the Whanganui tribes, who claim descent from that celebrated chief, and who has been before alluded to in a previous chapter as the first explorer of the country. On the second evening after our arrival at Karioi, and when all hands were assembled in the homely _whare_ watching the big pots boiling for supper, in fact, when everything looked _couleur de rose_, a horseman rode up bespattered with mud from head to foot, bringing a packet of papers and a handful of letters. This was the Napier mail, and we hailed it with delight, as it was the first tidings of civilization we had obtained since we left Tapuwaeharuru, over twenty-four days past. We anxiously scanned the telegrams, to see what had arisen with regard to the Mahuki difficulty, when we learned that the native minister was about to leave Alexandra to travel by way of the Mokau River to Taranaki, in company with a body-guard of armed natives, under the chief Hone Te Wetere, that Mahuki's tribe was going to oppose his journey through that portion of the country, and that a gallows had been erected at Te Kumi, to hang the native minister and all other whites that might be caught across the _aukati_ line. This news, which was about the most exciting item of intelligence the papers contained, was discussed with much gusto. The mere idea of war in the King Country--Alexandra in flames and a minister hanged--seemed to act like magic upon the heroic hearts of the cosmopolitan community at Karioi. This new phase of the native difficulty Turner and myself treated with apparent indifference, but in reality, coming as it did at that moment, we secretly deemed it of no small concern, as we had determined to leave Karioi on the following day, re-enter the King Country at its southern end, and come out somehow across the northern frontier. In the suggestive words of the schoolboy, we never "let on;" but, as a matter of fact, from the time we left Karioi until we crossed the _aukati_ line at Alexandra, five weeks afterwards, this significant item of intelligence was our _bête noire_, as during our progress northward we