THE NGATAPA VICTORY.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 13, Issue 652, 1 February 1869, Page 2

THE NGATAPA VICTORY.

To the Editor of the Hmoke's Bay Herald. [Per favor Editor H. B. Times.J

Sir, —The letters of your corres. pondent James Hawthorne, —written from hence, and purporting to be a truthful and unvarnished tale of the ' exciting incidents of the battle-field, and of the less stirring, but, to some people, equally interesting, incidents of private life,—would be infinitely more entertaining . and amusing if more truthful and less abusive. His latest effort is an unqualified mass of mis statements and falsehoods, misleading the public, and creating an entirely wrong idea of what actually did take place at the glorious capture of Ngatapa. For instance, Major Westrup is said to have cut away the ladder by which the enemy, according to Hawthorne, effected his exit from, and his entrance to,. the pa. No such ladder was ever before known of, unless it might be Jacob's, and Te Kooti being, according to his own account, on good terms with the supernatural, might have got the loan of that ar« ' tide when he took himself away, for all we know to the contrary; for we could find no trace of either him or his ladder when we got into the pa, Mr Assistant-Surgeon Gibbes, we are told by the same trustworthy authority, " embalmed " the body of the Arawa chief killed in the action. Mr Gibbes had nothing to do with the "embalming" process as Hawthorne calls it. Our old friend Sur-geon-Major Ormond disembowelled the body and simply salted ifc—a very practical sort of " embalming" certainly, preparatory to it" burial here. The ceremony of burial w& duly performed at Turanganui, according to the rites of the Church of England, by a Maori priest, and with the usual military honors. I was a witness to all this, and I suppose a man may believe his own eyes. The Arawa contingent only lost one man, instead of four as reported. Facts are facts, and it is not necessary for the glorification or otherwise of any persons to attribute ' to them deeds which they did not do, or rather deeds which it was impossible to do. These, however, are matter of minor importance. But when we come to the serious charges brought against Captain Gundry and the Arawas, of desertion of their post, and in consequence of that desertion the escape of the enemy things are assuming too serious an aspect to be passed lightly over. That is a cruel libel against Captain Gundry and his men, and it ' is only relie-v ed of its direct cruelty by its actual absurdity. Gundry is one of our best officers—obedient, intelligent, and brave; and like master like man, his men are the same. The Arawas are excellent soldiers, and they axe not ot that order of animal calling itself a soldier, which believes that the whole duty of a soldier is comprised in the sim- ' pie process of doing what he likes. And so on through the whole series of Hawthorne's " interesting letters" —wilful misrepresentations, positive falsehoods, and, in short, regular " rot" altogether. To have prevented the escape of the enemy from Ngatapa was utterly impossible, even if we had 2,000 men. It is true that he fought us for a long time, bnt it is true also that he could at any time get down the precipitous side of the pa, without the aid of ropes as stated by your intelligent correspondent. But once out there was no return. It was one thing to get out of Ngatapa, and quite another to get in again under a heavy cross fire; therefore the enemy ran short of food and water, and in hopes of relief held out. as long as possible. "We. occupied every inch of standing-ground round the pa. That place which was not guarded] happened to be a steep where no ordinary man could find footing. When I tell you that our men lay 48 hours in the trenches without relief, and that we had not enough men to af-i ford that relief and maintain our position ; when I tell you that for two days and nights we lay without cover of any kind in heavy rain, in fog, in cold, and in mud; when I

further tell you that during those long and weary hours officers and men ate and drank what they could get in the trenches, working and watching, and that sleep, sweet sleep, could only be got in fitful snatches, when exhausted nature could. hold cut no longer—you may gather from that simple statement of facts how hard each man's lot was, and how utterly impossible was any further exertion to be expected or obtained from them. That is the sort of work our fellows had to go through, and although that sort of thing is more or less incidental to all wars, still in our particular little war each man had to do that, which under more advantageous conditions, would have been equally shared by three or four men.

Hawthorne speaks contemptuously of what he calls the " rations and forage correspondent" Unfortunately for the public interest and for the credit of the public Pre?s, that excellent arrangement of Col. Whitmore's by which the correspondents of newspape s of the Colony are placed in a position, if they choose to accept it, to obtain by personal observation any and accurate information of all the movements of our forces, was not taken advantage of by your respectable and fastidious correspondent Hawthorne, nor by any one else that I know of. The ration biscuit and meat was not good enough for his veil-regulated stomach, although officers and men alike shared the same fare, both as to quality and. quantity. But, for all this sqneamishness, I have seen that delicate creature J. H. hanging about the camp, picking up a bit of the despised biscuit here, and a bit of the objectionable mutton there. Our ration allowance is just enough for each man, therefore the excellent arrangement by which to prevent loafing, any person duly authorized as a newspaper correspondent can by reporting himself at head quarters obtain his honest allowance of food, but no more, and any information relative to actual operations going on. Colonel Whitmore and every member of his staff are perfectly willing and Yery anxious to give every assistance to the Press, with a view if possible to prevent the systematic misrepresentations contained in many journals of the doings of the forces. Mr Hawthorne, no doubt with the prudential object of preserving his precious and elegant form in the cause of mankind in general and of your paper in particular, rarely indulged even in the pleasant pastime of picking up the precarious living just alluded to, when there was the remote chance of a battle coming on, or any immediate prospect of a gun going off. Fortunately the respectable section of the "survivors" in Po\erty Bay utterly repudiate Mr Hawthorne and all his works.

We almost feel m if owed an apology' to the Hawke's Bay Provincial authorities for winning the victory of Ngatapa without their interference, but somehow or other things were managed so excellently by Colonel Whitmore and Mr Richmond, that upon the whole we got on remarkably well without the said Provincials. It does seem rather strange at first sight that anything on this Coast or anywhere else in New Zealand can be done without Mr M'Lean ; but for all that I have heard it remarked that we did much better this time without him than we could possibly have done with him. In short we think that the end justified the means, when that end is a complete victory and the means able and brave men.—Yours,

0. L. W. BOUSEIELD January 22, 1869.

The Dunedin Fine Arts Exhibition will open this day (Monday, Ist February.)

The William Cargill, barque, is now 108 days out irom London direct, and may be expected to make her number early this month.