Te Kooti, having been foiled at Rotorua, and knowing the net was closing round him, made a bolt for the Uriwera country, closely followed by Captain Mair. A sharp skirmish took place at Kaiteriria, in which, getting the worst of it in the beginning, Captain Mair eventually drove him off the field with the loss of his best fighting man, the infamous half-caste known by the name of Peka, who in reality was the son of a big white official, and also of his pet torturer, Timoti Te Kaka, the latter having been wounded and, caught alive, met a suitable death at the hands of the friendlies. Te Kooti, however, managed to escape, and with his Chatham Islanders fled to Uriwera. It now very much looked as if we were in for another winter’s campaign in that awful country, but our men were by this time fairly worn out, and as it had been too often conclusively proved that untrained, untried white men were worse than useless in the bush, and also that the Taupo line must be guarded by men who could be thoroughly depended upon, and not by new chums, the new Defence Minister determined on trying a novel plan, which was giving a contract to the friendly natives to run down Te Kooti and his broken ruffians, while we held the chain of forts along the Taupo line, and by continuous scouting and patrols kept the Hau Haus from again breaking through and disturbing other parts of the country. Rapata and Kepa, with the Ngatiporou and the Wanganui tribes, gladly took up the contract, which amounted to this: they were only to be remunerated for work done--_i.e._ they received no daily pay, but were paid in the lump for the number of Hau Haus they killed and captured. Another expedition was started, composed solely of friendlies, under their magistrate, Mr E. Hamlyn, who, starting in from Wairoa, were to thoroughly punish the natives of Waikaremoana. It would take me far too long to describe the services rendered by these native columns and the bitter hardships they underwent following up, capturing or exterminating the remnant of Te Kooti’s followers, nor did we pass our time reclining on beds of roses, for although we had the shelter of our forts and a sufficiency of food, such as it was, yet we were never for a moment idle, as we had always to keep on the alert, and over and over again had to head off and drive back small gangs of flying Hau Haus.