Arrival of the “ Storm Bird.”

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume II, Issue 117, 22 May 1863, Page 2

Arrival of the “ Storm Bird.”

THE TARANAKI TRAGEDY. (From the Taranaki Herald, May 9.) Our settlement has this week been the scene of another horrible and bloody tragedy. The blow so long imminent lias fallen at last, and eight of our fellow countrymen, gallant soldiers ail of them, without offence or provocation, in open daylight, and on the Queen’s highway, have been barbarously murdered. Losses'in fair and open war are grevious enough, God knows, though there is a certain fitness in brave men falling in battle, facing the peril which they have come to meet; but it is doubly painful to see them shot down without a moment’s naming or the possibility of defence, and not because they were enemies, as wo understand the word, but because they were the first who past of a race with which the unsatisfied thirst for blood of their native assailants made them desirous of going to war. And what makes their fate still more sad and painful, is the thought that it might have been averted. g It is impossible to deny that the authorities had timely warning of'at least what might occur. Did they use all reasonable means to guard against the danger ? Eight days before it was perfectly well known, at least to the settlers, that these same natives had stated their intention of beginning the war; and exactly one week before, as if to' foreshadow what would happen, they laid an ambush, one party of which was on the very spot now connected with such tragic memories. That these things were matter of public notoriety, readers at a distance may see by reference to this journal for last week. These were the intimations of the danger ; what were the'precautions.taken to’meet it ? Whatever they were, they were obviously inadequate. A grave responsibility therefore rests somewhere, and it is to his Excellency as supreme in native affairs, that wo mustllook injthe first instance. And the case as it concerns him appears to bo this. Either he knew of the danger and did not guard against it, —a case which we cannot for a moment suppose—or he was ignorant of (he danger, and thereof totally misconceived one of the simplest facts in the great problem which he came over here to solve. If Sir George Grey failed to estimate the stale of native feeling and the value of mil ivo threats, be failed in a vital point; audit will not alter (he case for the better to say that the settlers saw the danger ho could not see, and gave warning that he did not heed. The news from Waikato is again of’a most serious character, and, if true, as there is no reason to doubt, the horrible scene we have just witnessed may prove but the first blaze of a fire that will spread over the whole island. But even if this be true, and this great calamity of a general war is to come upon us, wo trust in God never again to have to record such a cruel and cowardly massacre of unoffending men as that of last Monday on the Wairuu beach.