Best. — Old Redoubts, dc, of the Wellington District. 19 



BoidcoWs Farm Post. 



At this place the troops were camped in tents and farm buildings without 

 any protection, hence we have no defensive works on which to remark. 

 The attack of the 16th May, 1846, was the natural sequence of establishing 

 this singular form of military post. The site of it was near the spot marked 

 on the map issued by the Lands Department, and entitled, " Wellington 

 Country District : showing Native Names." 



The Taita Post. 



As this place is always called " Taitai," which, according to Mr. Buck, 

 a surveyor, of Hutt, is its correct name, our early settlers must have 

 formed their own ideas of how it should be spelt. The name of Nainai 

 appears to have suffered in a similar way. 



The Wellington Spectator of the 28th February, 1846, remarks, " The 

 stockade and barracks to be erected in the Hutt district will be 90 ft. square, 

 and will be composed of trees 12 in. in diameter placed closely together and 

 loopholed all round ; the stockade is to be splinter-proof. When com- 

 pleted it will be capable of accommodating eighty men and two officers. 

 The site fixed upon for the stockade is near Mr. Mason's house, or rather 

 beyond the present encampment. It is intended to have it completed in a 

 month's time." 



The post was, however, established a considerable distance above 

 Mr. Mason's place, its site being on the western side of the present hotel at 

 Taita. A local paper remarked in May, 1846, after the attack on Boulcott's 

 Farm (see New Zealand, Journal of the 10th October, 1846), "After getting 

 rid of the Maoris on the Hutt, His Excellency decided on building a block- 

 house, and maintaining a post of a hundred men somewhere about Mason's 

 section, considerably in advance of the picquets surprised by the natives 

 (i.e., Boulcott's Farm). Instead of this being done, the Superintendent 

 and his coadjutors objected to the amount of the tenders for building the 

 blockhouse, and, the Governor yielding to them, the soldiers fell back to 

 Boulcott's barn, where they were attacked." 



Shortly after the above appeared we find the following in a local paper 

 (see New Zealand Journal, 21st November, 1846) : " The troops and the 

 native allies in the Hutt have been forming an entrenched camp at Taita 

 in the shape of two squares connected at an angle of each, and having a 

 communication from one to the other." 



It would appear, however, that a number of Militia were stationed at 

 Taita when the attack on Boulcott's Farm took place, 16th May, 1846. 



In Captain Collinson's report we find several statements concerning this 

 post : " The flat part of the Hutt Valley is about eight miles long and two 

 broad, covered with forest. About two miles up it the New Zealand Com- 

 pany's road crosses the river ; here a small stockade called Fort Richmond 

 had been erected some time before, and was occupied by a party of 58th 

 under Lieutenant Rush. Two miles farther on was a settler's house called 

 Boulcott's, in a clearing of some twenty acres, and two miles farther was 

 another house called the Taita." (See Plate I.) 



Collinson tells us that Maori depredations caused the Governor to take 

 action : " He proclaimed martial law, and (under the usual fiction of con- 

 sidering the natives as rebels) he sent a herald to inform them of it, and 

 at the same time ordered the Taita farm to be occupied by a company of 

 the 96th. ... In March, 1846, there were three detachments occupy- 

 ing this little valley, fifty men at Fort Richmond, fifty men at Boulcott's, 



