Wallingford Decr. 5th. 1868 Dear McLean, Early in the afternoon a chance paper brought me the general news of a success at Poverty Bay. Later your Telegram with the particulars has come to hand and I congratulate you most sincerely and thankfully on the result of your labours. I would rather than anything that this should have occurred as it has done before little Whitmore could interfere and meddle. I hope now that the Tuparoas have succeeded in catching the enemy and smashing him before W. can get up to them. If they only manage that it will be glorious. I wont write more about that it seems to me that those scoundrel Ministers sent little W. up to rob you of your justly earned success. I have had a great many people here today on one business and another. Some from Waipukerau who tell me that His Lordship's pockets are brimful of Telegrams from Stafford and that one Telegram was read by Russell as from Stafford saying that the Govt. had sent Whitmore and his 300 men at your repeated and earnest call for assistance, and that to meet your cries for help the Govt. had risked the safety of the West Coast. If Stafford is telling lies of this kind it is shameful but by no means unlikely. He is not particular as to the means to injure an opponent. I wrote to you last night about the Manawatu reports - I find that the Resident Natives have recd. similar warnings from the Manawatu Natives, the difference being that the raid is said to be likely to be made by Wi Hape and his brother Hau-Haus and in no way mixed up with Titokowaru. I do not myself place any reliance on the report. Still the Natives are much alarmed at it and believe it correct. The panic here and at Porangahau today was very great but I have laid it again. Still the Bush road must be looked after I sent you a Telegram this afternoon asking you to instruct Weber to employ a person named Heythesin or some such name. He is a very respectable young man, well brought up and steady and moreover not given to taking up false alarms. He has horses and knows the Manawatu country and people. He is the best man I know of and I asked you to tell Weber to employ him and put him on to communicate between the settled district (about Tahoraite) and here. A man named Raymond a sawyer who has a bit of land at Palmerston has been recommended to you today from Waipukerau. He is well enough but still only a sawyer class man and knows nothing of Maori or Maories. Still I believe he is steady and he wd. do perhaps failing a better to keep up communication between Palmerston and Tahoraite. I feel sure you will start this scouting party at once - for if it do no other good it will restore confidence and give security. To-night I had a long letter from Draver of Waipukerau begging me to support a request that P. Russell has made from the Waipukerau people for 50 mounted men to be stationed at the Stackade Rua Taniwha. I of course replied that I wd. communicate with you. My opinion is that a small force might profitably hold the Waipawa Mate stockade and keep charge of such ammunition as may be sent there and that then that Stockade sbd. as it ought be made the rallying point for that part of the district. But I wrote you my opinion abt. the Stockade panic yesterday. The Porangahau people today came up to press for a Stockade there. The fact is the district is defenceless the people feel that there is no system for defence and they are consequently easily alarmed. I sent my Porangahau people back again telling them a week wd. probably let us know whether there was danger or not. They replied they were cut off from the rest of the district. To this I said if real danger comes and there is no way of getting the women and children away a steamer shall come for them to Black Head - on this assurance they went away satisfied, but you may imagine from what I have written that the alarm in the inland districts is growing. Lord Henry wrote me today for 15 stand arms which I have here and which he says belong to his Company. You sent them to me at the time of the Wairarapa threatening. I should prefer keeping them until this storm has blown over, as in event of trouble this District wd. be separate and is very poorly armed. If you approve my keeping them, send me word please remember this and tell the Militia Office to acquat Lord Henry accordingly. It is late and I must close. In haste, Yours always, J.D. Ormond.