(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XIX, Issue 1877, 23 July 1863, Page 3

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

Tlievo is next to nothing to report since the 'Storm Bird' left. The natives are quiet; no one knows what the Taranalns are doing. They keep out of the way of our bushrangers, and as active operations are suspended here for a time, no one has been down to see -what they are aboiit. A small party of unarmed settlers looking for their_ cattle, on the other side of Bell Block, fell in with a few armed Maoris, supposed to be from Ifataitawa. The latter did not attempt to injure them, but said if they met any soldiers' or " wild pakehas" (bushrangers, guerillas, or gorillas) they would shoot them— they did not want to hurt Bell Block settlers. I give it as reported to me. "With regard to Hapurona, who is a great hand at bluster as well as fighting, Tamihana Bays of him that he is like the wind, one day making a great uproar and the next he is quite still, you look about for him in vain. A second party of bushrangers has been raised from No. 1 Volunteers and the Militia, under Captain Webster, so that now, including officers, there are about 100 men in this most useful sorvice. Their numbers have thus been doubled but their efficiency has been reduced m about the same proportion by taking away from thorn the revolvers and breech-loading carbines with which they were armed. This is a very heavy blow to the men, to have their long Enfields given batik to them to go through the bush with, when what they want in a gun is handiness and rapidity of fire. Are the Auckland men who are to receive them more likely to meet with the enemy, under circumstances where they will be as usefid to to them as they would have been to our men ? Diphtheria, I am grieved to say, is increasing. Two young girls have just died from it. July 21, Natives have brought in word this morning, that the Taranakis and their friends' are busy putting in their early potatoes. When they are coming to lurk on {whakwpirvpiri), lay this ,is done ambushes, and kill those they can catch.