‘The house is one mass of flame—it is near falling—when another Maori bursts from it, gun in hand, and drops pierced by bullets while dauntlessly aiming at the foe. As he fell the timbers of the roof bent inward, the house tottered, and with a crash crumbled to pieces on the well-fought ground. “Seven charred bodies of Maoris and the first Defence Corps man were found among the blackened ruins. That fortress had held ten defenders. What would not ten hundred of such defenders do when properly armed and commanded? Yet I am sorry to say that much of this unyielding desperate disposition is based upon one of the worst if the strongest features in Maori character. “After the fall of the house there remained nothing to do at Rangiaowhia. The General, fearing the results of straggling in such a rambling, extensive community as this, together with the presumed absence of water in the most important military points, decided on returning to Te Awamutu. “On our way to Te Awamutu I had occasion to observe the peculiar insensibility to wounds in Maoris; the same that I had previously observed in North American Indians. I had seen an immense, brawny Maori lying on the ground covered with blood, Dr. Mouat, V.C., of the Staff, attending him with his usual skill and celerity. I thought that kindly attention but thrown away, for the Maori had a sabre cut over the head, a revolver bullet in his mouth, a shot through the liver, and a sabre cut over the back. He was carried in a stretcher half way to Te Awamutu, when he insisted on getting out, and walked the remainder of the way. I saw him the following day in hospital, sitting up among the female prisoners, chatting in such an unconcerned way and with such equanimity of expression in his features that I doubted the evidence of my eyes that this could be the same man I had seen on the previous day with four wounds, each of which would have prostrated for some time a European.” A veteran of No. 1 Company of Forest Rangers, Mr Wm. Johns, of Auckland (formerly of Te Rahu), gives the following account of his experiences at Rangiaowhia: