Football and cricket, polo and other matches flourish, in which distinction is enjoyed with a pathetic disregard of the morrow. When it chances that the "demon bowler" of the regiment, who has taken five wickets in four "overs," is himself bowled next day with a smaller ball and yet more deadly delivery, short shrift and brief requiem suffice. The batsman's stumps are scattered, and no L.B.W. affords an appeal to the umpire. In polo the fortune of war, indeed, dwarfs the untoward accidents of the game. Who can object to a "crumpler" of a fall, when horse and rider may so soon form part of the sad company "in one red burial blent"? No! the bugle-call sounds to arms, and his comrades form in line, all unheeding of the gap in the ranks. There is a superficial appearance of callousness about our British customs in this respect. But none the less is deep and sincere mourning made for the dead; none the less among Britons in action all over the world is care for the wounded, self-sacrificing heroism in the field, so common as to be inconspicuous. Hurdle-racing, not to say steeplechasing, was in abeyance, owing to the low condition of the cavalry arm, and the extreme difficulty in procuring fodder. The climate and the native pasture forbade the grass-feeding, which in Australia would have been all-sufficing. But polo, owing to the exertions of those officers who had served in India, and to the occasional capture of Maori ponies, became most popular. Football, again, was eminently suited to the damp and cold region in which their lines were cast, and supplied the means of warmth and exercise at small cost. These sports kept up the spirits of the variously gathered forces. The Maori allies took to the game of football with zest and enthusiasm, their astonishing activity and strength making them almost an overmatch for their British instructors. Their shouts and war-cries, when there was no particular need for caution, made the camp lively and animated, tending to produce, as similar sports peculiar to England and her colonies always do, a feeling of harmony and good fellowship between the different orders and races, invaluable for the _morale_ of the heterogeneous force gathered on the banks of the Waikato. But all other interests and expectations were dulled in comparison with those which prevailed on the day when the somewhat irregular arrival of the mails took place. Often by water would the messenger appear. A canoe would steal up to river-bank or lake-shore at midnight, freighted with the hopes and fears of a thousand lives; or a solitary native would come tearing through the mazes of the forest, bleeding from briars, panting audibly, like an Indian runner in the old French war of the Canadas, and, casting down the precious wallet with a "hugh!" expressive of deep relief, saunter off to the Maori camp, where a sufficiency of pork and kumera awaited him, or at the worst, dried shark, pippi, and fern-root.