acquaintances the Whangaroans of Boyd notoriety.  In a bush-fight with them he neglected to wear the suit of chain armour, the gift of George IV., which had saved his life more than once.  A shot fired by one of his own men struck him in the back and passed through a lung.  He did not die of the wound for fifteen months.  It is said that he used to entertain select friends by letting the wind whistle through the bullet-hole in his body.  Mr. Polack, who was the author of the tale, was not always implicitly believed by those who knew him; but as Surgeon-Major Thomson embodies the story in his book, perhaps a writer who is not a surgeon ought not to doubt it.

Of Hongi’s antagonists none were more stubborn or successful than Te Waharoa, a fighting chief whose long life of warfare contains in it many stirring episodes of his times.  Born in 1773 in a village near the upper Thames, he owed his life, when two years old, to a spasm of pity in the heart of a victorious chief from the Hot Lakes.  This warrior and his tribe sacked the pa of Te Waharoa’s father, and killed nearly all therein.  The conqueror saw a pretty boy crying among the ashes of his mother’s hut, and struck with the child’s face, took him up and carried him on his back home to Lake Rotorua.  “Oh! that I had not saved him!” groaned the old chief, when, nearly two generations later, Te Waharoa exacted ample vengeance from the Rotorua people.  After twenty years of a slave’s life, Te Waharoa was allowed to go back to his people.  Though, in spite of the brand of slavery, his craft and courage carried him on till he became their head, he was even then but the leader of a poor three hundred fighting men.

To the north of him lay the Thames tribe, then the terror of half New Zealand; to the south, his old enemies the Arawas of the Hot Lakes.  To the west the main body of the Waikatos were overwhelmingly his superiors in numbers.  Eastward the Tauranga tribe—­destined in aftertimes to defeat the Queen’s troops at the Gate Pa—­could in those days muster two thousand five hundred braves, and point to a thousand canoes lying on their beaches.  But Te Waharoa was something more than an able guerilla chief.  He was an acute diplomatist.  Always keeping on good terms with the Waikatos, he made firm allies of the men of Tauranga.  Protected, indeed helped, thus on both flanks, he devoted his life to harassing the dwellers by the lower Thames and the Hauraki Gulf.  One great victory he won over them with the aid of his Waikato allies.  Their chief pa, Mata-mata, he seized by a piece of callous bad faith and murder.  After being admitted there by treaty to dwell as friends and fellow-citizens, his warriors rose one night and massacred their hosts without compunction.  Harried from the north by Hongi, the wretched people of the Thames were between the hammer and the anvil.  When at last their persecutors—­the Ngapuhi and Te Waharoa—­met over their bodies, Te Waharoa’s astuteness and