IMPORTANT NEWS FROM THE EAST COAST.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume XIII, Issue 553, 20 February 1868, Page 3

IMPORTANT NEWS FROM THE EAST COAST.

(Wellington Independent, ISUi February.)

The Government stt-amor Start, GiPt. Fairchild, arrived in harbor yesterday, bringing intelligence of a skirmish between some men of the Waikato Militia and a party of lianhaus, within a few miles of the settlement at Opoiiki. The Sturt left Opotiki on the evening of Thursday last, and brings down despatches to the Government. It ap pears that on Monday, the 10th inst., a party of sixty of the Colonial Forces under the command of Major St John, Captain Skene, and accompanied by Assistant-Surgeon Oliver, were at the Waimana Plains, situate about ten miles inland from Opotiki, when they were fired on. Shots were exchanged on both sides, and it is thought that three of the enemy were killed, but this is not known as a fact, as the rebels drew off, taking any killed and wounded with them. Oae of the Colonial Forces was struck in the leg by a bullet and another was grazed, hut neither of the two are seriously wounded. The rebels left a quantity of their baggage on the ground, and amongst it a number of letters the tenor of which is alarming, as they were evidently affirmative replies to other parties of Hauhaus to rise against the pakehas. The news of the skirmish has not taken the Government by surprise, as the whole of the correspondence received from Opotiki and Tauranga was not of a satisfactory character, and and all pointed towards the probable results of the unsettled feelings of the surrounding natives.