We landed at Tauranga in December 1868, and Colonel Whitmore at once started off to make Te Kooti sit up, taking with him three hundred well-trained and seasoned men. Near a place called Patutahi we met Rapata and his men returning to Tauranga, and Colonel Whitmore did his best to persuade the angry chief to turn back, but this he refused to do, saying: “I never break my word. I have said I would go to Waiapu and I will, but I will return with more Ngatiporou and wipe out the Ngatikahungunu, the cowardly dogs who deserted me.” This would have meant wheels within wheels, or rather a civil war within a civil war, a regular Donnybrook, and it was only after much talk that the indignant warrior could be persuaded to forgo his vengeance against the other friendlies, though he sternly refused to fight again in their company or to alter his determination to proceed to Waiapu, so, a steamer having been placed at his disposal, he departed to his home, promising to recruit more of his own tribe and to return shortly. It was on this occasion I first met this redoubtable warrior and general, when, like all other men who love a man, I greatly admired him. Rapata Te Wahawaha had from the outbreak of the East Coast War played a very prominent part, and, one may truthfully say, had carved out in more ways than one his own path to rank and fame. He was a fine, handsome, athletic-looking man, evidently capable of enduring great hardships and fatigue, while you only had to look at his face to see that he had an iron will, the courage of a bulldog and the ability to command. When in repose he had all the good manners, the courteous bearing and the musical voice of a well-bred Maori, but in action the eyes blazed, the whole face hardened into a mask of granite, while his word of command was given in a voice that few who served under him cared or dared hesitate to obey. Although of aristocratic birth, he was not a great chief by descent, nor had he up to the commencement of the war given any proof of possessing any first-rate administrative qualities, or possibly in his paternal sub-tribe he had no chance of displaying them, but from the first fight, Mangaone, in which his tribe took part, he displayed such indomitable courage and resource that by the time I met him he was not only the principal war chief, but was looked upon as quite the most prominent man in the great and powerful tribe of Ngatiporou to which his hereditary sept belonged. He had from the very first set his face sternly against the new faith.