ON THE SCOUT IN NEW ZEALAND
(_Told by the old Kai Tongata_)
It was in June 1869 that Te Kooti, chief of the rebel Hau Haus, caught
a party of mounted volunteers on the hop, at a place called Opepe, on
the high plateau near Lake Taupo. The men, worn out by a long march,
and soaked through by the cold winter rain and sleet, had taken
shelter on some old whares (huts) and were trying to dry themselves
when a few Maoris came up, and, declaring themselves to be friendlies,
joined them at their fires.
More and more of them gradually arrived, until the volunteers were
outnumbered, and then, on a signal being given, the natives sprang on
their unsuspecting victims, and the tomahawk did the rest. The victors
did not stay long at the blood-stained spot. They knew that Colonel
McDonnell, Colonel St John and, worse than anyone, Major Ropata Te
Wahawaha, with his friendly Ngatiporou, were not far away, and that it
behoved them to hump themselves and travel before the avengers could
reach them. Some of the volunteers had escaped, and two of them joined
up with Colonel St John's column, with which I was serving, the same
evening as the massacre took place.
It was at once boot and saddle, and before nightfall we had marched to
Opepe.
Colonel St John had reached the spot before us, in fact the men cut up
belonged to his column, and he had only left them the morning of the
massacre to rest themselves and horses, while he went on to visit a
Maori chief about ten miles away.
Next morning we were on the spoor, and followed it through rough
pumice-stone gullies for some miles, in pouring rain and sleet, then
lost all trace of them in a dense scrub of manuka bush, so we returned
to Opepe for the night.
The following day it was determined to send scouts out to find where
the enemy had retreated to.
We had followed Te Kooti since July 1868, when he had escaped with 160
fighting men from Chatham Islands, had landed at Whare-onga-onga,
close to Poverty Bay, and had gathered all the disaffected Maoris in
the country to him. He had sacked Poverty Bay, murdering about ninety
helpless settlers. He had fought us twice at Makaretu and innumerable
other places, had captured a convoy of ammunition, had fortified
himself at Ngatapa, where he had repulsed, with heavy loss, two
assaults and had only evacuated the pah when starved out for want of
food and water. And although we had, in the pursuit, captured and
killed 136 of his men, yet he himself escaped and reached the
fastnesses of the Uriwera country.
In April 1869 he had swooped down on the Mohaka settlement and had
murdered in cold blood seventy whites and friendly natives, and then
retreated to Taupo country with us at his heels.
In fact he had kept us lively for a year, and was going to prevent us
getting rusty for two more, until, having lost nearly all his men, he
retired into the King country, where we could not follow him; and he
lived there quietly for twenty years, and at last died in the odour of
sanctity, highly respected by all who knew him. For nearly four years
we were on his track: his escapes were numerous and miraculous, we
destroyed band after band of the desperate savages who joined him, but
although he was wounded twice we never got him.
Bad luck to it, I'm off the spoor. To get back.
It was determined to send out scouts to locate Te Kooti, and I was
chosen with two men to do the job. It was a big contract to handle.
One glance at the map will show you Lake Taupo. We were at the
north-east corner, about ten miles from the semi-friendly pah at
Tapuacharuru (Sounding Footsteps), our base was at Opotiki, eighty
miles away, on the Bay of Plenty coast. There were at that time no
roads, no bridle-tracks, no paths; no game existed in New Zealand, and
there was no food to be procured for man, and but little for horses.
No white man, with the exception, perhaps, of a stray missionary, had
ever penetrated to that part of the country, which was composed of
dense bush, mountains and broken ground covered with manuka scrub, or
long fern, which grew from six to ten feet high, and it was in the
depth of winter, bitterly cold and wet. The enemy had retreated in the
direction of the great volcanoes Ruapehu and Tongeriro, at the
south-east end of the lake, about thirty-five miles from where we were
camped, and in an awful country, quite unknown and hostile to us. This
country had to be searched, Te Kooti found and attacked before he
established himself in another stronghold and recruited his murderous
band of bloodthirsty savages. The columns could not advance and look
for him; they had no food to feed man or horse during the time it
would take to find him. No, they must fall back nearer the base, and
the scouts must find him, and then the troops and horses, well fed,
could make a rush for him and perhaps put an end to his career. My
orders were that I was to find Te Kooti and return to Opepe, the
Colonel promising he and the column would meet me there on the
sixteenth day, when I was to guide him up to the quarry.
How I was to find the bounder, and how we were to live while we were
looking for him, was left to me. It was certain that Te Kooti would be
looking out for anyone who might be impudent enough to look for him,
and if he caught us our fate was certain, though, of course, we could
only guess at the nature of the torture to which we should be
subjected. Even if we were lucky enough to be able to blow our own
brains out before we were captured, the Colonel would lose the
information he required, and more men would have to be sent; so that
it behoved us to keep ourselves and our tracks hidden, and to see
without being seen.
How we were to live I left to Providence; it was beyond me. We were
all hardened bushfighters, and we must take our chance.
My two companions were queer characters; both of them had been
sailors: one of them, Pierre De Feugeron, a Frenchman, the other a
Kantuarius Greek. They had been mates for years, were both splendid
scouts, expert bushmen, good shots, and utterly fearless. Well, no
sooner had I got my orders than we started. Our field kit consisted of
smasher hats, dark blue serge jumpers that reached to the knee, but
during the day were drawn up and fastened round the waist; we wore no
trousers, but had shawls round us like kilts. I wore shooting boots
and socks; the others went barefooted with sandals. Our arms consisted
of carbines and revolvers, and we each wore in our belts a tomahawk
and sheath knife. On our backs we carried a blanket rolled up, in
which was some very bad bacon and worse biscuit, four pounds of each;
and with this we were to penetrate thirty-five miles or more into an
unknown country, as rough as any in the world, find a wily enemy and,
above all, get back with our information.
It may not seem much to the man who has never been out of Britain, but
a Colonial will appreciate the job at its true value.
We left the camp from the north side, and made a wide detour to the
north-east, before we struck to the south-west, to touch the lake. The
enemy had retreated almost due south, through a number of rough
pumice-stone gullies, and it was more than likely that a sly old bird
like Te Kooti would leave an ambush on his spoor to cut off any scouts
that might be sent after him, or, in case a strong party followed him,
to give him news of their movements. I did not want to fall into that
ambush. I had been in a few before, and did not like them; and so went
round to try and cut his spoor a good way south of where we had
abandoned it on the previous day.
All that day we tramped across deep gullies and through manuka scrub,
very often having to head off our road to examine the ground on either
side of us, and to take bearings to our rear as well as to our front.
A good scout should always do this, as he may have to return a sight
faster than he went; and he must remember which way he came; he has no
time to think much when a war party is after him.
Well, as night fell we came to a range of mountains covered with bush,
and I reckoned that, with our detour, we had made quite ten miles to
the south of Opepe, and were well on our way. It had rained all day,
except when it sleeted, and of course we were wet through, yet we dare
not light a fire. For all we knew we might have been spotted and
followed; so we entered the bush, and as soon as it was quite dark
moved carefully a mile away and, eating a small handful of biscuits,
wrapped ourselves in our shawls and blankets and slept as well as we
could.
It froze hard that night and the cold was intense; in the morning we
were up as soon as a glimmer of day came, and started to cross the
range of mountains. The bush was a regular New Zealand one, composed
of trees of gigantic size, and with a dense undergrowth that nothing
but a pig or an elephant could get through. We therefore had to take
to the bed of a creek and follow it up to the ridge. The water was icy
cold, and the cold drip from the trees and bushes wet us through,
although it did not rain. With nothing but a few bits of flint-like
biscuit to chew, up we went, and came to the top of the range, and
there we rested and got a view of the country.
To our west was the lake, and to the south was the cone of Tongeriro
and the three peaks of Ruapehu; between us and them was range after
range of hills, below us lay a deep valley, and, tough as we were, I
almost feared the job was too tough for us. To despond is one of the
last things a scout should do; so after more biscuit off we went
again, and, striking another creek, we descended the bed of it till we
came to the river that ran through the valley and entered the lake at
the foot of it. I determined to descend the bed of this river, as I
thought I might cut Te Kooti's spoor on the beach of the lake, which I
determined to examine next morning. I feared to do so that evening, as
they might have ambushed the drift, and there was also the dread of
the ambuscade he most likely had left behind to watch our camp.
This party, after they had watched the column move away, would most
likely, provided they had not seen us, be on the march to catch up Te
Kooti.
We therefore hid on a fern ridge with the drift in view of us, and
fortunate it was for us we did so.
We had not been there long when we saw coming from the north, along
the beach, a party of twelve natives; and I felt much relieved, for I
knew at once that they had not seen us, or they would have been after
us, and that I had been quite right to make the detour I had done.
They marched quite carelessly, evidently thinking no white man was
nearer them than the retreating column, and when they had crossed the
drift lit a big fire, cooked food and warmed themselves; then, leaving
the fire burning, started at a rapid pace for the south.
We watched them round a far cape of the lake, then down we went to
their fire and warmed ourselves and cooked a bit of bacon. Thankful we
were for the warmth and food; but we dare not stay long.
I wanted to get the benefit of the open beach, and also to spot their
camp fire that night; so, as soon as our frozen limbs were thawed and
our food swallowed, we were off, hiding our spoor as well as we could.
That night we saw their camp, and envied them as we lay hid in the
fern shivering with cold; for again we had a hard frost, and our
clothes were far from dry; but a scout must put up with cold, heat,
hunger, thirst, and be ready to face, smiling, anything that falls to
his lot.
The earlier in life he hardens himself to do without rotten sweetstuff
the better, and always remember that cigarettes are the invention of
the evil one.
Well, day after day this sort of life went on. If I were to try to
describe our adventures day by day they would fill a book; let it
suffice that for ten days we lurked through tangled and dripping bush,
waded up the bed of mountain torrents, crossed snowclad ranges, and
struggled through matted fern, soaked with rain and sleet during the
day, and frozen stiff during the bitter nights. Our miserable rations
were gone. Sometimes we found a rotten matti-tree, and from it
extracted the white grubs, which we ate thankfully. Once we found some
potatoes.
At last we discovered Te Kooti, and where he was building his new pah.
For one night I prowled round it, and long before morning we were on
our way back. For the first two days the same care had to be taken to
hide our spoor; it would never do to be caught or killed after all our
troubles and sufferings.
On the third day I moved down to the lake.
We were starving: not just hungry, but absolutely starving. As the
evening was coming on, in a small bay I saw the smoke of a fire; that
meant Maoris camping. They had food of some sort, and we decided to
have it.
The bay was an inlet, into which a small creek emptied itself, between
two low ridges of fern. A short detour led us to the bed of the creek,
down which we descended as quietly as otters, while the noise of the
stream drowned any slight noise we might make in wading down it. The
creek ran into a small clump of tree ferns, and we crept on till we
came to where the party was encamped at the mouth of the creek.
There were four fine-looking big Maoris. Their canoe was drawn up on
the bank of the creek with the paddles leaning against it. Had there
been more than four paddles it would have meant that some of the party
were absent; but now we knew we had only the four in front to tackle.
We dare not use our fire-arms on account of the report. No, the job
must be done with tomahawk and knife. We were within twenty feet of
them.
A glance at my companions and we laid down our carbines, slipped off
our blankets and drew our tomahawks and knives.
One more look. The four Maoris were sitting by their fire, unconscious
of our presence. A nod to my mates and we sprang at them. Whiz, whiz
went my men's knives--they were both past masters at the art of
knife-throwing--and over went two Maoris with the knives buried up to
the hafts in their bodies.
I rushed my man, but, surprised as he was, he was a splendid, tough
old warrior, and jumped at me, his tomahawk swinging loosely in the
air above his head.
I had practised hard with the tomahawk for the last two years, but I
knew I was no match for the old man. I therefore determined to rush in
on him, guard his first blow and use my left fist. (I was very strong
in those days, and a good boxer.) Throwing up my tomahawk, I guarded a
smashing cut at the left of my neck, and although I felt the keen edge
of the blade cut my flesh on the left shoulder, the impetus of my
charge carried me in, and lashing out with my left I struck him full
on the throat. Down he went, astonished by this novel mode of attack,
and in another moment the head of my tomahawk was buried up to the eye
in his brains.
When I looked round the fight was over, the only unwounded Maori
falling an easy prey to the combined attack of my two desperadoes.
Pierre, a splendid cook, was already looking into the pot that was on
the fire, and, declaring the contents to be good pork, not long pig,
we were soon enjoying it. To get rid of the bodies did not take long.
The marks of the struggle were obliterated, and we were off. Two days
more and we reached Opepe; and, true to his word, my colonel met us
with a strong patrol. We were thin, footsore, our legs torn, our kit
in rags; but what mattered that? We had done our duty and had got
back with valuable information, and as we swallowed some hot tea we
did not care for the past--it was past. My wound was nothing--Pierre
had stitched it up--and as I once more donned my breeches and boots, a
clean shirt, and threw my leg over my dear old horse, I was as happy
as the day was wet.