nerve were a match for the invaders from the north.  In vain the Ngapuhi besiegers tried to lure him out from behind the massive palisades of Mata-mata, where, well-provisioned, he lay sheltered from their bullets.  When he did make a sally it was to catch half a dozen stragglers, whom, in mortal defiance, he crucified in front of his gateway.  Then he challenged the Ngapuhi captain to single combat with long-handled tomahawks.  The Northerners broke up their camp, and went home; they had found a man whom even muskets could not terrify.

Te Waharoa’s final lesson to the Ngapuhi was administered in 1831, and effectually stopped them from making raids on their southern neighbours.  A war-party from the Bay of Islands, in which were two of Hongi’s sons, ventured, though only 140 strong, to sail down the Bay of Plenty, slaying and plundering as they went.  Twice they landed, and when they had slain and eaten more than their own number the more prudent would have turned back.  But a blind wizard, a prophet of prodigious repute, who was with them, predicted victory and speedy reinforcement, and urged them to hold on their way.  Disembarking on an islet in the bay, the inhabitants of which had fled, they encamped among the deserted gardens.  Looking out next morning, they saw the sea blackened with war-canoes.  Believing these to be the prophesied reinforcement, they rushed down to welcome their friends.  Cruelly were they undeceived as the canoes of Te Waharoa and his Tauranga allies shot on to the beach.  Short was the struggle.  Only two of the Ngapuhi were spared, and as the blind soothsayer’s blood was too sacred to be shed, the victors pounded him to death with their fists.  Never again did the Ngapuhi come southwards.  So for the remaining years of his life Waharoa was free to turn upon the Arawas, the men who had slain his father and mother.  From one raid on Rotorua his men came back with the bodies of sixty enemies—­cut off in an ambush.  Not once did Waharoa meet defeat; and when, in 1839, he died, he was as full of fame as of years.  Long afterwards his mana was still a halo round the head of his son Wiremu Tamihana, whom we shall meet in due time as William Thompson the king-maker, best of his race.

Hongi once dead and the Ngapuhi beaten off, the always formidable Waikato tribes began in turn to play the part of raiders.  At their head was Te Whero Whero, whom in the rout at Mataki-taki a friendly hand had dragged out of the suffocating ditch of death.  Without the skill of Hongi, or the craft of Te Waharoa, he was a keen and active fighter.  More than once before Hongi’s day he had invaded the Taranaki country, and had only been forced back by the superior generalship of the famous Rauparaha, of whom more anon.  In 1831 Rauparaha could no longer protect Taranaki.  He had migrated to Cook’s Strait, and was warring far away in the South Island.  Therefore it was without much doubt that, followed by some three thousand men, Te Whero Whero set his