Tamarere, a chief who lived at Tawhitinui and Hiruharama. escape into the rugged country inland from the river. Their first encounter with pakeha weapons was in 1819, when Nga Puhi came with muskets. As Nga Puhi, under the chief Tuwhare, advanced up the river, many of the Wanganui warriors closed in at their rear, attempting to cut them off. ‘But,’ an old man said many years later, ‘what was that to Tuwhare? He cleared a path for his party by the terror of his guns. When we heard the sound of those guns we thought they were pu-tatara [trumpets], and our old men said, “does this man think to conquer Ngati Hau with his war-trumpets? Are the descendants of Ao-kehu, Haupipi and Pae-rangi flying from a sound?” So said our warriors: but when we saw our men falling dead around us, struck from far off by an invisible missile, then the knowledge came to us that this was the new weapon of which we had heard, and we saw that our weapons were of little avail against the pu-mata, the muskets. Still we resisted the advance of Nga Puhi, and attacked them whenever the opportunity offered’. In 1840 Colonel Wakefield visited Wanganui, and bought large areas of land in return for goods such as firearms, blankets, red nightcaps, lead slates, beads, razors, pocket handkerchiefs, shirts, umbrellas, and fish hooks. A further payment of money was made some years later as compensation for this. An Anglican mission was established at Putiki, and a Roman Catholic one up the river; flourishing orchards were planted, and the pas there had new names: Jerusalem (Hiruharama), London (Ranana), Corinth (Koriniti), Athens (Atne), and so on. Then, in 1864, the Hau-haus came down the river, paddling through the great gorge below Taumarunui, where the high cliffs go straight up from the water, and the river flows very slow and deep—travelling to attack the pakehas in the new town at the mouth of the river. They were defeated by the Wanganui Maoris at Motua Island, at Ranana; this was the last battle to take place on the river. They were led by Major Kemp (Keepa Rangi-hiwi-nui). This occurred at the same place as the old soldiers' meeting described on pages 36 and 37 of this issue of Te Ao Hou. Down by the river, a few hundred yards away from the modern hall at Ranana, Major Kemp's old carved meeting-house is still standing. The two chiefs who are shown above were photographed in the 1880s.