FORGOTTEN GRAVES.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 79, 5 April 1910, Page 3

FORGOTTEN GRAVES.

OF SOLDIERS AND SETTLERS. AT OHAIWAI AND~RUAPEKAPEKA. > A broken column, and the brambles that obliterate^jnark th& place where Lieutenant Philpotts and a hundred British soldiers fell in a battle with the Maoris at Ohaiwai, lone ago. When Mr. Hamilton (director of the Dominion Museum) was in th& north last week, he visited the scene of the fight. A church, he says, now occupies the site of the pa, and in the grave-yard lie the remains of a tall Oamaru-stone cross, set up years ago in memory of the slain. To-day the shaft, which the seasons have attacked, and the cross aie in pitiable ruins on the ground. The shaft has been broken in three pieces. It is regrettable that no action has been taken to restore the interesting monument. At Ruapekapeka, too, numbeis of Britons were killed in the siege of the Maoris' stronghold there, and it is said that the places where the dead rest have been forgotten of the living — "all unwept, unheeded of men's eyes, where they fought and died." Fire, vegetation, general neglect, have blurred out all traces of the graves. The men who perished in that lonely land have now no memorial. A reference to the records shows that the engagement at Ruapekapeka was the last of the Maori war in the north. The natives were ir a strongly-fortified position, but they relaxed their vigilance on a Sunday. They imagined that the pakehas would not fight on a Sunday, and the defenders of the pa gave themselves over to such domestic occupations as cooking. However, all days are one day to pakehas in war time, 'ihe Maoris were taken by surprise, and subdued.