LATEST NEWS FROM THE NORTHERN PROVINCES.

Evening Star, Volume III, Issue 787, 13 November 1865, Page 2

LATEST NEWS FROM THE NORTHERN PROVINCES.

We take the following from the Southern Cross :—By the arrival, early yesterday morning, of the Government paddle-steamer Huntress, Captain Stalker, we have intelligence from Opotiki up to Tuesday last, on which day the p. s. Sturt arrived there from Matata, with thirty-one of the prisoners captured by the Arawas at Te Teko, and identified as the murderers of Janies Fulloon and the ill-fated crew of the Kate. They had been sent on from Matata by Messrs Commissioners Clarke and Smith, and were accompanied by Mr Mair, R.M., and the lad White, the half-caste who was instrumental in saving the life of his father, Mr Bennett White, of Auckland, at the time of the murders on board the Kate. Mr Mair and the half-caste identified the prisoners as taking an active part in the murders on that occasion, whilst the names of twenty-three out of the number are found in the warrant issued for the apprehension of Fulloon’s murderers. Te Hura, the principal chief of Opotiki, and Heremona f the Taranaki prophet who introduced Hauhauism into that district, were among the number brought up in the p.s. Sturt to Opotiki. The prisoners will, it is presumed, be tried by courtmartial, and sentenced accordingly. The halfcaste lad, White, distinctly recognises amongst the number captured the murderers of Fulloon, Robinson, and Captain Pringle, of the Kate. Several Arawa chiefs were passengers in the Sturt, and could also identify the natives as those in Whakatane at the time of the murders. An engagement took place between a party of our forces stationed at Opotiki and a party of

Hauhaua, on the 24th nit,, at a pah near Ohiwa. The skirmish is described as brief, but decisive; the rebels escaping from the pah with a loss of four killed and one wounded, and without inflicting any injury on our men. The skirmish arose in consequence of a rumor gaining currency in camp that the arch-fiend Kereopa was to be found concealed in a pah inland of Ohiwa; but on the attack being made no tidings of his whereabouts could be traced. Actuated witb the same feeling of revenge against Kereopa, an expeditionary force left Opotiki to pursue the rebels inland, on the morning the Huntress left for Auckland, and also for the purpose of intercepting a party of rebels wbo are believed to have escaped from Waiapu, and to be occupying a pah inland of Ohiwa,