1052 



A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



cut the chain. No violence was offered. Ten days later martial law was proclaimed, 

 and a body of troops under Lieutenant-Colonel Murray marched to the Waitara block, 

 ten miles from New Plymouth, for the protection of the surveyors. During the night 

 Kino-i's party built a pah commanding the road, and stopped an escort. The Governor 

 replied with the following manifesto : " To the chief who obstructs the Queen's road. 

 You have presumed to block up the Queen's road, to build on the Queen's land, and 

 to stop the free passage of persons going or coming. This is levying war against the 

 Queen. Destroy the places you have built ; ask my forgiveness, and you shall receive 

 it. If you refuse, the blood of your people be on your own head. I shall fire upon 

 you in twenty minutes from this time if you have not obeyed my order. T. GORE 

 BROWNE." The natives evacuated the pah, and the troops destroyed it. A few days 



WAITARA. ' 



afterwards a party of some seventy natives returned and built a stockade on the land. 

 H.M.S. Niger had just arrived with a re-inforcement of the Sixty-fifth Regiment, and 

 on the i;th of March, Colonel Gold marched out with a detachment of artillery and 

 three guns, two hundred and ten men of the Sixty-fifth, a party from the Niger with 

 a rocket-tube, twenty mounted volunteers and a company of the Royal Engineers. 

 The natives were summoned to surrender, but refused, and the troops opened fire 

 with shot and shell. 



On the night of the ijth, the stockade was found to be abandoned, but the 

 Maoris were entrenching themselves in stronger positions, and the restriction on the sale 

 of arms having been foolishly removed in 1857, they were well supplied with munitions 

 of war. The settlers abandoned their homesteads and sought refuge in the township of 

 New Plymouth, whither the troops followed them, and the natives, on their part, ravaged 

 the whole country-side. King! had hitherto held aloof from the "king movement," but he 

 now gave in his adhesion to it, and about the same time the Ngatiruanui tribe joined 

 in the rising. On the 3Oth of March, a pah on Waireka Hill was assailed by sixty 

 sailors of the Niger, eighty-four men of the Sixty-sixth, and one hundred and sixty 

 volunteers. The volunteers were the first to arrive, but were obliged to seek cover 

 after a hot engagement, while the military were in danger of being cut off and 



