MAHURANGI.

New Zealand Herald, Volume II, Issue 335, 8 December 1864, Page 4

MAHURANGI.

THE ESCAPED liEBEL PRISONERS.

[?KOII A COBEESPOJTDENT.]

December 6 You Trill, I expect, be anxious to learn in town what is now going on in these parts. With us, at auv rate, all is excitement and uncertainty. We (J 0 no j know at what moment our worst fears niav be realised, and the peace of the district jeopardised trr the acts of the foreign natives now running about the country.

On Thursday night last a body of natives, numbering 102, armed to the teeth, and bearing the Kino'j flag, came over from k'aipam to join the rebels alreadv located at the Puho : a Muhurangi. Sixty are sun. posed to be of the rebel party, which left Omaha and wont on a recruiting expedition to the Otomatea at Kaipara, and the remninder are supposed to befriends or s-ympathisers of Ruarangi. 'J hey came to the paddock of Captnin Cooper about eleven o'clock at night, and danced the war-dance, and kept up a continual din the whole night. On Friday mornino they proceeded to Mahurangi, where they were well received by the wlio'e party. They are re<*ula»lT drilled twice ea<"h day, and everything is done br sound of the bugle, even their call to mealß, planting maize, &c.

A party of these rebel natives went to the house of Captain Cooprr, who lias a native wife, and told her that she, for her safety, in cafe of a row, must either plat e herself under the protection of her own peopls or leave the district. Mrs. Cooper, with her familv left cn llonday for town by the cutter 'Four Sisters.'

People here a>o anxiously asking when they are to be delivered frrm the state of Maori terrorism, in which they have been living since the escape of the Maori prisoners. A firm and decided course of action, taken even now, by the Government, would dt ter natives from entering on a rebellion, which once commenced may spread far and wide.