FIGHTING THE MAORI.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3345, 11 October 1911, Page 8

FIGHTING THE MAORI.

WITH THE LOST LEGION IN NEW ZEALAND. Te Kooti? That \v:as a man (writes Dr. Arthur Lynch, M.P, the Melbourne man who led the Irish Brigade with the Boers). Again and again during the coach journey through the North Island has name had been. pronounced with a mingling of respect and hate, and the ■story 'had been re-told" of his terrible exploits. The generation that had passed away had wrought marvellous changes in New Zealand, and when the old .settler who accompanied us pointed out the very field from which the Maoris had rushed, tomahawk in hand, upon the troops the tale seemed one of ancient history. A MEETING. Then suddenly, unexpectedly, on the hilly road near Pohui, we encountered Te Kooti and his men. He had been shot at, although we did not know it, the dav before. Pie was shot at again a few days afterwards. Some weeks later he was killed, and the score of the massacre at Poverty Bay was wiped off the slate for ever. Pohui was remote from civilisation, but Te Kooti’s warriors were well dressed, well mounted, all with new saddles. Te Kooti was reclining in the shade of a tree. Delighted at meeting the famous old warrior,l called cut a greeting in Maori. He sprang up and came forward. His 60 years sat lightly on that magnificently athletic frame. His step had the spring of a young brave, his eye the fire, his manner the courtesy of a nobel of Castile. He was dressed in a well fitting blue serge suit, his boots were polished, he wore gloves, he carried Iris tall liat in his hand. Te Kooti, after having a price on his head for a peiieration, had recently received a free pardon;, but with a warning not to go near Gisborne. And this was the one place to visit which has soul kept hankering. Hence the shooting, for the descendants of his victims had sworn to have revenge. BATTLES LONG AGO. Colonel G. Hamilton-Browne —'Maori Browne” —tells the story of the fights with Te Kooti and other Maori chiefs, leaders of the Hau Haus, about the year 1865 and onwards. Te Kcoti’s first appearance as a warrior reads like a page of Stevensonian romance. He had been deported, on suspicion, to Chatham Islands. He waited till the schooner Rifleman came to the island, seized the vessel, compelled the crew to navigate him and his warriors l to Wliareongaonga, and soon afterwards announced his return, .by the attack known as the massacre at Poverty Bay. From that time it was a case of pull Devil, pull baker, Te Kooti generally the Devil. “I know myself of no parallel in history,” sa3’s “Maori Browne, “where a man so hunted ever successfully evaded pursuit, but he eventually did so.” The story of the hunting makes exciting reading, for the Maori war was as desperate an affair as ever Custer waged against Sitting Bull, or Afrikanders or English against Dingaan or Cetewayo. One who has met these types can easily trace a family likeness, although their prejudices might be anathema, with cordial reciprocity. At bottom that sort is tough, brave, generous, chockful of faults, if 3*ou like, hut every fault the excess of some red shining virtue. A FINE RACE. The Maoris themselves were the finest of all the native races—strong, handsome fellows, bronzed like pennies, speaking the gentlest and most musical language known; intelligent, and chivalrous as knights of old. They were the men; who sent food to their enemy, because there was no glory in beating starving whites. And thev were the good souls who waxed so indignant at being attacked in the rear where they had no defences that they threw down teir arms and refused to fight with such dastards at all! Certainly “Maori Browne’s” book abounds with stories of atrocities, _ but even after all these years he begins a chapter. “I must tell you something about that bounder Te Kooti,” and he proceeds to compare him to Tilly, Cromwell, and Nana. Sahib! _ Maori Browne ahruys regards as miscreants those natives who desired to defend their countiy against the whites. The book gives us somethin# of the bracing air of the land of the Maoris, with: a few genuine pictures, lightly touched, of tire tough characters of the old colonial days. It is told as a ro_ mance; it would have been better to have given us tire straight unvarnished narrative.