day before our men advanced, the Maoris had begun what they meant to be their march to Auckland, and the two forces at once came into collision.  In a sharp fight at Koheroa the natives were driven from their entrenchments with some loss, and any forward movement on their part was effectually stopped.  But, thanks to what seemed to the colonists infuriating slowness, the advance up the Waikato was not begun until the latter part of October, and the conquest of the country not completed until February.

To understand the cause of this impatience on the part of the onlookers, it should be mentioned that our forces were now, as usual in the Maori wars, altogether overwhelming.  The highest estimate of the fighting men of the King tribes is two thousand.  As against this, General Cameron had ultimately rather more than ten thousand Imperial troops in the Colony to draw upon.  In addition to that, the colonial militia and volunteers were gradually recruited until they numbered nearly as many.  About half of these were, at any rate after a short time, quite as effectual as the regulars for the peculiar guerilla war which was being waged.  In armament there was no comparison between the two sides.  The Pakeha had Enfield rifles and a good supply of artillery.  The Maoris were armed with old Tower muskets and shot-guns, and were badly off both for powder and bullets, while, as already said, they were not very good marksmen.  Their artillery consisted of two or three old ship’s guns, from which salutes might have been fired without extreme danger to their gunners.  If the war in the Waikato, and its off-shoot the fighting in the Bay of Plenty, had been in thick forest and a mountainous country, the disparity of numbers and equipment might have been counterbalanced.  But the Waikato country was flat or undulating, clothed in fern and with only patches of forest.  A first-class high road—­the river—­ran right through it.  The sturdy resistance of the natives was due first to their splendid courage and skilful use of rifle-pits and earthworks, and in the second place to our want of dash and tactical resource.  Clever as the Maori engineers were, bravely as the brown warriors defended their entrenchments, their positions ought to have been nothing more than traps for them, seeing how overwhelming was the white force.  The explanation of this lies in the Maori habit of taking up their positions without either provisions or water.  A greatly superior enemy, therefore, had only to surround them.  They then, in the course of two or three days at the outside, had either to surrender at discretion or try the desperate course of breaking through the hostile lines.

[Illustration:  War Map]