Some of the isolated settlers supplied themselves with small armouries of weapons for defence in case their homes were attacked. In our Orakau homestead there were, beside the cavalryman’s regulation arms, a double-barrel gun and a Spencer repeating carbine, a novel weapon in those days, American make; it was the U.S.A. cavalry arm. It held eight cartridges, fed in a peculiar way, by spring action through the heel of the butt. Towards the Puniu, on a lonely hill where a few bluegums mark the site of a long-razed dwelling, there lived an old soldier who had been a gold-digger, and he devised a method of winning safety, in case of an attack, which would naturally suggest itself to an ex-miner. He dug a tunnel from the interior of his little house to a point on the hill-side, concealed with a growth of fern and shrubs; there he considered he could make his escape into the scrub if his assailants burned his house over his head. There was another pioneer, a veteran of Jackson’s Forest Rangers, now living in Auckland. He told me of his preparations for defence on his section, which was partly surrounded by bush, at Te Rahu, a short distance from Te Awamutu. There was an old Maori potato-pit, one of the funnel-shaped ruas, not far from the house, and this he determined in one period of alarm to convert into a little garrison-hold. He made it a comfortable sleeping-place with layers of fern and blankets, and after dark at night he cautiously retired there with his carbine and two or three other shooting-irons and plenty of ammunition, and spent the night with an easy mind. His companion was his little daughter—his wife had died—and there the pair rested till morning. To make his retreat doubly secure the ex-Ranger had dug a short tunnel from his rifle-pit, emerging in the fern, so as to have a way of retreat in case his stronghold was forced. The place was quite an ingenious little castle; and, as he said, would probably have been secure even had his home been attacked, for fern grew all about it, and was not likely to have been discovered except by a dog—and the Maoris did not take dogs with them on a raid.