“There was little left to reward those who first entered the pa; they found about three tons of raw potatoes and a little Maori bread, but not a drop of water, nor any vessel to hold water. * * * They had no surgeons to attend to their wounds. One man had his left leg broken by a ball; he bound two pieces of wood round it with wild flax and fought on to the last. Another whose side was pierced plugged the wound with a cork and kept his place among the defenders of the pa. * * * We have officers here who fought through the Crimea and the Indian Mutiny; all unite in affirming that neither the Russians nor the Sepoys ever fought as the Maoris have done; all lament the necessity of having to fight against such a gallant race. On this point the whole army is unanimous; a different feeling may prevail among the colonists, who look forward to reaping a rich harvest from all this carnage and bloodshed.” A MAORI SURVIVOR’S STORY. THE RETREAT TO THE PUNIU. The following are extracts from the narrative given to the present writer in 1920 by the veteran chief Te Huia Raureti, of Ngati-Maniapoto, who with his father fought at Orakau: “Orakau was not a strong fortification. There was no proper palisading around the earthworks—we had not sufficient time to complete the defences—but there was a post-and-rail fence, in the form of a square, a little distance outside the trenches and parapets. The principal parapets were about five feet high and four feet in thickness, composed of sods and loose earth, with layers of fern pulled up and laid with the roots outward. The fern helped to bind the earthworks. We were still working away at the ditches and parapets when the troops came upon us. We had a sentry on the look-out, on the west side of the earthworks, the Kihikihi side, from which the soldiers approached. His name was Aporo. Suddenly his voice was raised in these words of alarm: “‘He pukeko kei te Kawakawa! Kei Te Tumutumu te mea e tata ana!’ (‘A swamp-hen has reached the Kawakawa! There are others nearer us at Te Tumutumu!’) “The ‘pukeko’ was the advance guard of the Imperial troops; the Kawakawa was the settlement near the large acacia grove [about a third of a mile north of the Orakau church and kainga.] The troops marched by the road which skirted the bush and up through the cultivations. Meanwhile some other soldiers (mounted men) had come a more direct way, a little to the north of the cart road, and we saw them at the peach and almond grove on the hill just west of the Tautoro swamp and creek about a quarter of a mile from our earthworks. Some of the troopers rode at our pa, but had to retire before our volleys. The main body of the soldiers came marching on; and another force which had marched up along the Puniu River, crossing and recrossing, finally fording the river near where the Waikeria joins it and coming out on the Orakau-Maunga-tautari Road.”