DISGRACEFUL PROCEEDINGS

New Zealand Mail, Issue 896, 3 May 1889, Page 27

DISGRACEFUL PROCEEDINGS

(per press association.) Auckland, April 25. It is said that Mr Porter, licensee of the Railway Hotel at Mercer, intends to apply to the Defence Minister for compensation for damage done to his property, as he alleges, by several of the Volunteers who attended the Easter encampment. In a letter to the press, Mr Porter states that when the train to Hamilton with the Volunteers reached Mercer a number of men entered the diningroom, and, turning out the person who was in charge, cut and slashed at everything on the table and carried away several articles. Some went into the bar, and a jar of brandy and some bottles of stout were taken, whilst the other rooms were looted, glasses smashed and further damage done. The railway officials also coinplain that tho windows and fittings in the train conveying the Volunteers to Hamilton were broken. A Hamilton correspondent writes—- “ What might have proved a serious fracas occurred on Sunday between a number of the Voluntee&s and some Maoris who were attending the Salvation Army services in Hood-street. The Maoris had come from their settlement in a wagon, from which the horses had been taken, and in which an old woman had been left sitting, Some Volunteers having been marched into town from the church parade, got round the wagon and ran it away, upsetting the old woman out of it. The old woman seized a tomahawk, and in a mad fury attacked the Volunteers, who drew their side arms and kept her off, literally " at the point of the bajmnet. A Maori ou horseback, with an axe in his haud, camp to her assistance, and was kept off also with sticks and anything that came to hand till their fury had some, what abated.”