The road hereabouts passed over a slight elevation which assumed the form of a circular hill about fifty feet high, but the ascent to which was very gradual from the plain below, while it was naturally flanked by deep gullies down to which the sides of the hill fall in a long sweep. There was nothing in this place to render it remarkable other than the fact that it was formerly the site of the celebrated Gate Pa,[16] and it was to the east of it, in the fern-clad flat below, just eighteen years ago, that General Cameron, with two regiments of infantry and a body of marines, numbering in all 4000 men, took up his position to storm one of the most formidable of Maori strongholds. Thoroughly equipped with all the appliances of modern warfare, the 43rd and 68th Regiments manoeuvred into position to attack a force of 500 natives armed only with the rifle and tomahawk, and entrenched behind a rude stockade of _manuka_ and fern. At first victory seemed easy for the Imperial forces, and, with such powerful allies as the bayonet and Armstrong gun, there appeared little more to do than to scale the redoubts, storm the rifle-pits, and place their colours on the summit of the Gate Pa. But with that cunning strategy which characterizes savage races in the art of war, the Maoris had hit upon a grand idea to deceive their enemies. They did not place their red fighting-flags in the _pa_ where their main forces were, as the _pakeha_ would have done, but they distributed them in outlying positions below the stockade, and then they surrounded their false encampments with barricades of plaited twigs, and covered their rifle-pits with roofs of fern. The stratagem was successful, and Cameron directed his fire against these decoys, but of course without effect. The firing continued from daylight until late in the afternoon, when a storming party was told off to rush the place. The gallant 43rd were the first to scale the stockades of the _pa_, but their leader was immediately shot down, and they retreated in disorder; while the 68th, charging the right flank of the enemy's position, were thrice repulsed and driven back under a galling fire. It was now found, just as at Balaclava, that "some one had blundered," and that the British were firing upon one another instead of upon the enemy. The natives now, surrounded within the _pa_, rallied their forces, and as the dark masses swept down upon the thin red line fighting with the bravery of despair, a panic seized the Imperial troops, and then began one of the most terrible repulses and massacres ever experienced by British arms.