[Illustration: A MAORI PROPHET IN THE KING COUNTRY.]
"The road from Wairoa to Tauranga was rough, but the strong coach endured it without injury, and the team of six horses carried us along at a good pace. Tauranga has a melancholy history, as it was the scene of severe fighting in the Maori war. About four miles from the town is the celebrated Gate Pah, which was built by the Maoris as a defiance to the English, who had a fort at Tauranga. It was a fortification of double palisades such as the Maoris usually make, the inner line of palisades being much stronger than the outer one. Inside the inner line there is a ditch where the men can stand, with the earth breast-high in front of them; and they aim their guns through loop-holes notched in the logs of the palisades. The outer fence is expected to delay the assailants sufficiently long to enable the defenders to shoot them down. A Maori fort is constructed with much more military skill than one would expect of a people without any training in engineering work.
[Illustration: BRITISH SOLDIERS ATTACKING A MAORI PAH.]
"An English officer says that the salients, angles, ditches, and parapets of the Maori pahs greatly astonished the generals who tried to capture them, and often led to disasters. The Tauranga Gate Pah was held by about three hundred Maoris, while the English had about seventeen hundred men for the attack. They shelled the pah all day with heavy guns, and about 4 P.M. tried to carry it by assault. They got inside the pah, and there the soldiers were taken by panic, and retreated in disorder, leaving the Maoris in possession, though they evacuated the place in the night. The English lost twenty-seven killed and sixty-six wounded, and among the dead there were eleven officers.
"We went through the ruins of the pah, and could not understand how the Maoris were able to stay there in all the rain of shot and shell that was poured in before the assault. There is a monument at Tauranga to commemorate the event, and an English resident showed us the little cemetery where those who fell at the Gate Pah were buried. It is quite close to the sea, and, like English cemeteries generally, is carefully tended and kept in order.