It was on the day following Te Kepa’s successful reconnaissance that the troops destined to form the party for the General’s projected march through the bush to Taranaki were warned to hold themselves in readiness to start the next morning, and I was delighted when Mr Roach informed us that our mess had been included in the party of forty Rangers that had been selected as one of the units of the column, which was to be composed of three companies of the 14th Regiment, eighty Kupapas and our forty Rangers. There was a considerable diversity of opinion among our men as to the advisability of this movement, all the old hands being unanimous that it would be a bitter hard undertaking, especially as we were to be accompanied by a long string of pack-horses, without which it is impossible for regular troops to move. These would impede our progress and necessitate much arduous fatigue in the way of road-chopping and getting them across the deep gullies, creeks and watercourses that everyone knew ran from the mountain down between its shoulders and spurs, over which our route must lie. Every yard of the journey ran through dense bush, and although Father Pezant had, with assistance of Maori guides, walked the distance in two days, yet that was a very different pair of shoes to conveying a long string of pack-horses, heavily laden, over the same ground. Then again, would there be any fighting? Our sages thought not. The natives themselves rarely used the route. Father Pezant declared the country to be quite deserted, and the Kupapas also asserted that that part of the district had never been inhabited, although none of them were conversant with the locality. We had therefore the pleasing prospect before us of slogging hard work without any fun to enliven it, and for the first time I heard colonial irregulars chew the rag (grumble). Now there are two qualities of grumblers. One is the open grumbler who grouses because it is his nature to do so and he can’t help himself, yet when it comes to the point does his duty and performs his work better, perhaps, than a more complacent man. Among such may be reckoned most old sailors and soldiers. The others are the stealthy grumbling dogs who incite young soldiers to mutiny, taking jolly good care to keep in the background, out of trouble, themselves. These are dangerous scoundrels who ought to be flogged and hung without mercy; no close season should be allowed for such vermin.