WAR VETERANS.

Manawatu Times, Volume LXV, Issue 1824, 16 January 1913, Page 3

WAR VETERANS.

TALES OP OLD DAYS,

DARING THE MAERO

CAPTAIN PREECE'S QUOTA

(Says the Lyttelton Times.)

| The late Captain Turner, of i Turanga, formerly Government engineer in charge of Rotorua, was a man who had seen much of the face of adventure and sudden death in his colonial life. Physically he was a fine man, tall, straight and muscular, and he carried himself with the air of a soldier. He had had his share of active service, for in the Maori wars in the Bay of Plenty, 1864-09, he fought witli bravery and earned some distinction. He was a surveyor by profession, and when the war broke out he happened to bo working in the Tauranga district. He had previously gained military experience, and so he was given a commission. He took part in the battle of Te Ranga, in 1804, fought a short time after the disaster of the Gate Pa. The British and Colonial troops charged the Mao~ { rifle pits at Te Ranga, and took them at the point of the bayonet. Captain Turner, riding with the storming column, had his horse shot under him. Later he was under fire on several in the Bay of Plenty district, and while carrying out -his surveying duties ho was frequently in danger of ambuscade from Hauhau war parties. Those were the days when a "kairuri," as the Maoris call a survevor, had to have his carbine as handy as his chain and theodolite.

Captain Turner used to tell a story that concerned his pioneer surveying days and the famous volcanic peak of Tarawera. It was several years after the conclusion of the Maori wars, and he was engaged in making surveys in the TaraweraRotomahana country and establishing trigonometrical stations on various conspicuous mountains. He wished to ascend Tarawera for the purpose of taking observations and setting up a "trig" and one night he told his Maoris that they would have to be ready to ascend the mountain in the morning. He was camped 011 the shores of Lake Tarawera at the time. When his intention became known, the old men of the lakeside village came to him and earnestly requested him to abandon tion of climbing Tarawera. It was their sacred burial mountain they said; for generations they had buried their dead there in the cavernous recesses on its summit, and the whole place through and through. No booted foot had ever yet desecrated Tarawera, and if the pakeha was so foolish as to attempt the anger of the Maori gods and the Maori tapu some disaster was sure to befall him. They begged Turner to give up the idea; they did not want him gobbled up by the big wild "mero" and other uncanny creatures of the gloomy mountain—the "Maori devils," as Turner used to put it.

But the pakeha was obstinate, and insisted on ascending the sacred mountain, taking with him the few

native workers, who would brave the trip. "And what happened?" the captain's friends asked, when he told the story. "Oh," said Turner, "we didn't run across any Maori devils, but something unpleasant really did happen, for we climbed into a fog, and very nearly lost ourselves. And then it came on very wet, a terrible downpour, and w"e were miserably wot when we got through with it, and I didn't get my observation after all. The old Maoris said, 'Told you so,' or something of that sort, when we got back. They were convinced that we'd been punished for breaking the tapu of the holy mountain." Up in Palmerston North lives a Maori war veteran who possesses a stock of campaigning reminiscences that should be sufficient to fill a good sized book of adventure. This old colonial soldier is Captain G. Preece, one-time officer of the Native Contingent and the white Armed Constabulary, later a magistrate on the East Coast, and now a prosperous land agent. Captain Preecejs father was a pioneer missionary to the Maoris, whose field of labours was chiefly in the Bay of Plenty and the Urewera Country. George Preece was born at Whakatane, but the first place of which he has recollections is Ahi-Kereru, near Te Whaiti, a lonely spot in the heart of the Urewera Mountains, sixty miles from Rotorua. In that remote and savage place, hemmed in by wild forest ranges, a mission station was established under Mr Preece over half a century ago, and there the valiant missionary laboured until the outbreak of the Hauhau war broke up his station and wrecked his hopes. Young George Preece became an excellent Maori linguist, and having military inclinations he joined one of the colonial corps 011 the East Coast, and was given a commission as lieutenant in the Native Contingent that hunted Te Kooti from place to place in the campaign of 1809-70. One of his close comrades those days was Gilbert Mair, then lieutenant, who gained his captaincy and the New Zealand Cross for a particularly brilliant piece of work in 1870, near Rotorua, where he defeated Te Kooti and a largo Hauhau force, with a small body of Arawa Natives, killing the notorious half-caste Peka McLean and about twenty other rebels. Preece also won the New Zealand Cross; this decoration was conferred upon him for his services at the siege of Ngatapa in 1809. 111 1870-71, he and Mair had some very rough and arduous campaigning in the vicinity of Lakes Waikaremoana and Waikareiti and in the great forests of the Urewera Country, pursuing Te Kooti and his few remaining followers. Often they were quite without food, except for what they could obtain from the not-too-hospitable bush. Amongst Captain Preece's wartime reminiscences is a little story concerning a certain young officer in a colonial corps whose excitable ways and professions of reckless valour gave his comrades considerable amusement at times. This lieutenant. —who shall be nameless—was one of the members of Colonel Whitmore's expedition to the Urewera Country by way of Fort Galatea and the Ahikareru Valley in the year 1809, and his immediate superior was

the late Major Mair (elder brother of Capain Gilbert Mair), an officer noted for his coolness and for his hatred of anything approaching fussiness and unnecessary talk ou the part of his subordinates. The force was marching up one of the bush-clad gorges in the rugged mountain-land, and was about to storm a Maori pa. Mair was ordered to send forward a detachment to take up a certain position. The youthful lieutenant, frothing for an opportunity of distinguishing himself, wanted to lead the detachment, but Mair, considering him too fussy and excitable and unreliable, detailed another officer for the work. Upon this the annoyed subaltern, dancing with excitement and annoyance, rushed up to Mair and yelled: "Oh, I'm not to go then, Major Mair, am I? You won't send me! I'm a coward, Major Mair, am I then? Oh yes, I'm a coward; I'm a coward, Major Mair!" The Major just looked calmly at the yelling one a moment and then he said quietly: 'Shut up, you fool; nobody's denying it!" And they say that retort did effectually shut up the lieuenant for the rest of the campaign. He made no more fatuous protestations of his bravery.