A few days afterwards we received the intelligence of the massacre of Poverty Bay, and it was decided to despatch Colonel Whitmore with two hundred picked men to the east coast. It was, however, first necessary to provision Patea, and the strong redoubt at Te Wairoa. This was done, and then, handing over the lines of defence to local militia, with one hundred Armed Constabulary to give them backbone, the little Colonel in an infernal temper embarked, on the 2nd December 1868, with two hundred and twelve men for Poverty Bay, and I bade farewell to the west coast for a time. PART II CHAPTER I WAR ON THE EAST COAST OF NEW ZEALAND--YARN OF THE GATE PAH After a voyage during which nothing happened worth recounting we landed at Tauranga, a pretty little township with a good harbour situated on the Bay of Plenty; but before I proceed with my own personal yarn I think I might give you some idea of the fighting that had taken place on the east coast previous to our arrival there, and also a brief account of the extraordinary ruffian, Te Kooti, we were about to encounter. It is very difficult to write an account of New Zealand warfare, as it was mainly a jumble of innumerable skirmishes dotted here and there with an engagement that by stretching a point might be termed a battle. Again so many different tribes took part in the twelve years’ continuous fighting, while the various campaigns would often partially die away only to flare up again, and so many separate expeditions took place at one and the same time as to render it almost impossible to write an account of the long war so that it could be understood, much less be made interesting to an ordinary reader, who would quickly become confused and bored by a superfluity of dates and of the Maori names of trivial combats, although each of them was necessary and cost the men engaged therein much hardship and bloodshed. When the war originally broke out in 1860 the east coast tribes sat tight and did not join the Taranaki and Waikato natives, but at the end of 1863 they had in a great measure joined the coalition of the tribes under the newly elected Maori king, and in 1864 a large percentage of them, abandoning Christianity, adopted the crazy Hau Hau faith. At this period, many settlers having been murdered, General Sir Duncan Cameron proceeded to Tauranga in April 1864, with a field force of two thousand men well supplied with artillery, having moreover at his disposal a splendid naval brigade drawn from five ships, and with this fine body of men attempted to overawe and subdue the rebellious district.