The Governor set to work to end the war.  High in air, on the side of a thickly-timbered hill, lay Kawiti’s new and strongest pa, Rua-peka-peka (the Bat’s Nest).  Curtained by a double palisade of beams eighteen feet high by two feet thick, strengthened by flanking redoubts, ditches, and traverses, honeycombed with rifle-pits and bomb-proof chambers below ground, “large enough to hold a whist-party,” it was a model Maori fortification of the later style.

[Illustration:  SIR GEORGE GREY

Photo by RUSSELL, Baker St., W.]

Against it the Governor and Despard moved with 1,200 soldiers and sailors, a strong native contingent, and what for those days and that corner of the earth was a strong park of artillery.  The first round shot fired carried away the pa’s flagstaff; but though palisades were splintered and sorties were repulsed, the stubborn garrison showed no sign of yielding, and the Bat’s Nest, for all our strength, fell but by an accident.  Our artillery fire, continued for several days, was—­rather to the surprise of our Maori allies—­not stopped on Sunday.  The defenders, Christians also, wishing to hold divine service, withdrew to an outwork behind their main fort to be out of reach of the cannon balls.  A few soldiers and friendly natives, headed by Waka Nene’s brother, struck by the deserted aspect of the place, crept up and got inside before they were discovered.  The insurgents, after a plucky effort to retake their own fortress, fled with loss.  Our casualties were but forty-three.  The blow thus given ended the war.  Heke, weakened by his wound, sued for peace.  Even tough little Kawiti wrote to the Governor that he was “full.”  Grey showed a wise leniency.  Waka Nene was given a pension of L100 a year, and ostentatiously honoured and consulted.  As time went on the Ngapuhi themselves re-erected the historic flagstaff in token of reconciliation.  From that day to this there has been no rebellion amongst the tribes north of Auckland.  Heke’s relation and name-sake, Hone Heke, M.H.R., is now a member of the New Zealand House of Representatives, which he addresses in excellent English, and only in May of this year the good offices’ of Mr. Hone Heke were foremost in quelling what threatened to be a troublesome riot among the Ngapuhi on the Hokianga.

The petty warfare against Rangihaeata in the Cook’s Straits district took longer to end.  It was a series of isolated murders, trifling skirmishes, night surprises, marchings and counter-marchings.  Their dreary insignificance was redeemed by the good-tempered pertinacity shown by our troops in enduring month after month of hardship and exposure in the rain-soaked bush and the deep mud of the sloughs, miscalled tracks, along which they had to crawl through the gloomy valleys.  And there was one story of heroism.  An out-post of the fifty-eighth regiment had been surprised at dawn.  The bugler, a lad named Allen, was raising his bugle to sound the alarm, when a blow from a tomahawk