The nearest farmer neighbour was the farthest-out settler of all—Mr Andrew Kay—and very far out and lonely his home seemed, on the verge of the confiscation boundary. Maoris were more numerous than pakehas; many a savage-looking and tattooed warrior, wearing a waist-shawl—for the Maori had not then taken kindly to trousers—called in at the home from one or other of the large villages just over the border; and native labour was employed at times on the farms. That was long before the day of the dairy factory and the refrigerator, and while living was cheap there was little ready money in the country. No monthly cheques for butter-fat then; no competing buyers coming round for crops or stock. When a mob of cattle was ready for the market it had to be driven all the way to Auckland; and often there was mighty little profit for all the long hard work. Wheat was one of the staple crops, and in the early years it was threshed by hand with the old-fashioned flail and the grain carted to the nearest flour-mill. There was a water-mill on the Manga-o-Hoi, on the old swamp road between Kihikihi and Te Awamutu, and further south in the Waipa-Waikato country there were several wind-mills. I think I recollect two wind-mills of that old type on the road from Te Awamutu to Hamilton; one stood at or near Ohaupo. For many a year after the War periodical scares of a Maori invasion were raised in the border settlements, from Alexandra and Te Awamutu around the confiscation line to Cambridge. The shooting of the surveyor Todd on Pirongia Mountain in 1870, the tomahawking of the farm-hand Lyon on the Orakau side of the Puniu in the same year, and the murder and decapitation of Timothy Sullivan near Roto-o-Rangi, on the Maunga-tautari side, all set alarms going. Every settler was armed, and the old Militia organisation presently was supplemented and made mobile by the formation of a fine body of frontier horse, the Te Awamutu and Cambridge troops of Waikato Cavalry. Well mounted, armed with sword, carbine, and revolver, able to shoot accurately and ride well, and thoroughly acquainted with the tracks, roads, and river fords, these settler-cavalrymen could not have been surpassed for the purposes of border defence. Formed in 1871, the troops remained in existence until the introduction of the mounted rifles system in the beginning of the Nineties, and many hundreds of young fellows passed through the ranks during that time. In the early years, when the two troops were a real bulwark for the frontier, Major William Jackson, the veteran of the Forest Rangers, commanded the Te Awamutu troop; his lieutenants were Andrew Kay and William A. Cowan (the writer’s father), the two furthest-out settlers of Orakau. Captain Runciman commanded the Cambridge corps. Te Awamutu was the usual drill-ground of Jackson’s troop, and the shooting-butts were on the Puniu side of the settlement.