The heaviest fighting and the hardest work would fall to the lot of Colonel St John’s column, as we not only had to fight our way right across the worst of the Uriwera country, but it was absolutely impossible for us to use a pack-animal of any sort, so that we must carry everything necessary on our own backs, or go without. Winter was also beginning, which that year promised to be a very cold one. It was quite impossible to defer the expeditions, indeed it was high time something should be done, as Te Kooti, just previous to our arrival on the coast, had made one of his lightning raids against the Mohaka Settlement, where (thanks to the--well, let us be charitable and call it discretion--of the militia officers, who, although amply supplied with men and horses, made no offer to resist him) he had brutally murdered over seventy white settlers and friendlies, so that we were all boiling to get after him. Although everyone worked with a will, it was not before the 2nd of May sufficient stores and ammunition arrived to enable us to make a start, but at daylight the following morning the field force paraded in front of our camp at Oporiau, numbering, all told, two hundred and forty-five white men and one hundred and eighty friendly natives. That parade was a queer sight and one that would have made a stickler for military uniforms shudder. Our men, dressed in their blue jumpers with their shawls round their waists, and smasher hats, looked like disreputable Highlanders, while we were loaded up like pack-donkeys. To give you some idea of our loads let me tell you what each man had to carry: a Schneider carbine with one hundred and sixty rounds of ammunition; a revolver with thirty rounds; and of course each man carried his tomahawk, sheath-knife and pannikin; then each four men had to carry, taking it in turns, an axe, shovel or pick; then every twelve men in like manner carried a case containing four hundred and eighty rounds of carbine ammunition; while each division had to carry five stretchers. After these loads had been apportioned, each individual might hump as many blankets, as much clothing, rations and private property as he saw fit, but all officers under field rank had to take their turn at the extra ammunition, tools, etc., as well as to hump their own swag. True we were all picked men, tried and seasoned by many months of bush warfare, in robust health, and, with the exception of a couple of field officers, not a single man under the age of twenty-four or older than thirty.