4:0 Transactions. 



days anyone might retii-e unmolested from the pa, but on the fifth day 

 Hauwhenua, with all it contained, would be taken and destroyed." No 

 answer was returned, but during the interval a multitude of all ages and sexes 

 issued forth from the pa, and marched in close order along the road by 

 Matamata to the Thames. That night Te Waharoa's ranks were recruited by 

 many slaves, who deserted, under cover of darkness, from the retreating 

 Ngatimarus, and on the following day the pa was assaulted and taken. The 

 fall of Hauwhenua, which occurred about 1831, terminated the residence of 

 the Ngatimaru on the Waikato ; and was followed by operations, from a 

 Waikato basis, which were successfully conducted against them, on the line of 

 the Piako. 



Whilst the earlier of these events were proceeding, the Ngatimaru chief, 

 Takurua, maintained his position at Matamata ; but about that time he 

 appears, after much fighting, to have judged it advisable to accept terms of 

 peace proposed by Te Waharoa. They were to bury the past in oblivion, 

 and both parties were to live at Matamata, where, it was said, there was 

 room for all. These terms were practically ratified by Te Waharoa and 

 Takurua living side by side, in the utmost apparent friendship, for a period of 

 about two years. Waharoa then, however, committed an act of perfidy, 

 condemned even by the opaquely-minded savages of that day, by which he 

 obtained sole possession of Matamata, and so turned the balance of power in 

 his own favour, as greatly to aid him in his ultimate designs. One 

 afternoon he left Matamata on pretence of a necessary journey to Tauranga — 

 a circumstance rather calculated to lull suspicion than otherwise — and during 

 his absence, his tribe at midnight rose, and massacred, in cold blood, the 

 too confiding Takurua, and nearly every man of his tribe. Their bodies 

 were devoured, and their wives and property were shared by the ruthless 

 Ngatihauas. 



This Maori St. Bartholomew's day occurred about 1827, and so weakened 

 Ngatimaru, that Te Waharoa was enabled, after the fall of Hauwhenua, to 

 push his conquests to tlie foot of tlie Aroha, and it is difficult to say where 

 they would have ceased, had not his attention been unexpectedly diverted by 

 the casual murder of his cousin Hunga, at Rotorua, in the latter end of the 

 year 1835." 



I make no apology for citing these instances of atrocity, which exhibit, 

 in the strongest light, the dreadful character of the wars carried on by the great 

 chieftains in the North, during the twenty years succeeding Hongi's return 

 from Europe. Indeed, this period has been well characterized by Mr. Colenso 

 " as a fearful period in New Zealand." " The Ngapuhi," he says, " being well 

 armed with muskets, revelled in destruction, slaying thousands. At Kaipara, 

 Manukau, Tamaki, the Thames, the interior of Waikato on to Rotorua, and 



