Wallingford Nove. 19th. 1868 My dear McLean, I only wrote you this morning so of course have little to say as however the Policeman will be returning in the morning I send a line to thank you for the copy of your letter to the Govt. Which tells me what is going on. Your massing the force you have at Turanga does you great crediti I did not see the way to such a force when I urged you to ask for the Arawas. I see you think of moving men from Wairoa. How can you make sure that the enemy will not whip back into the Wairoa district and be down upon them. If Kooti be really Pah building in the Poverty Bay district then the chances are in our favor for we have good ground to fight him upon - if he goes back to his fastness at Puketapu we shall never lick him without a trained force to lead. I am glad to hear Richmond is behaving well - I feared they were not supporting you as they ought, but as you say it is not reasonable to expect too much. One thing I am glad you have done and that is to insist that the Military officers communicate thro' you. You will never do any good unless you have this power. I saw clearly enough when I was at Napier that that was the greatest weakness of all the arrangements. It turns the heads of silly old fellows like Lambert to be as they think free to follow their own devices. You have done right to insist on this and to stick to it. About Frazer no doubt he worked well in the last East Coast business. I fear however from what happened whilst we were at Wellington that he is not very reliable. The fact of his telegraphing to Whitmore the same day as he telegraphed to you that Telegram you showed Haultain. - ''that now that he Whitmore was to command he and the men were all right'' had made me very doubtful of Frazer ever since. It was one of those tricky things that I dislike so much. The force you have sent away from Napier will leave our district very bare indedd. We must hope no movement will take place on our frontier just now for we should be badly prepared to meet it. I would still advise you to have Maori Scouts at the Titiokura and Runanga if that line is well watche d there is no fear for this district for we should get ample notice of any movement. It is by no means unlikely that these wretches may take advantage of so large a force being at Poverty Bay to make a quick raid on some other part. If they will only stick at Poverty Bay district and fight us there we could ask nothing better. There is a feeling growing up among our Natives that we are asking them to fight for us and are not willing to fight ourselves. Henare Matua spoke of this to me the other day and said it had been matter of dissussion among the Chiefs at Pawhaikairo and Pakowhai. There is no help for it that I can see - the only thing that will remedy that will be the arrival of a force of the Constabulary they are now raising. There is no fresh news from the Manawatu side Locke went in there this morning and will tell you about those parts when he comes out. I wrote a note this morning to Rathbone telling him to keep the people in his neighbourhood quiet and assuring him that early intelligence of any hostile move on our settled districts wd. be received and the Settlers warned when the danger arose. Meanwhile I told him to tell the people to keep quiet and pay no attention to what this person or that person tells them. Little Whitmore seems to be retreating by last accounts from West Coast. I have been very glad to hear from you what is doing. Always, Yours very truly, J.D. Ormond.