THE WEST COAST.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 13, Issue 662, 8 March 1869, Page 3

THE WEST COAST.

affairs at the front.

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT\)

February 24, 1869. I see from the Hawke’s Bay Herald that very little takes place on our coast that is not as veraciously reported as was the case on your own had how many killed and how many wounded at the skirmish after the taking of Taurangaika 1 Well, the Herald gives us four or five killed, nine wounded, and some missing. The fact is, we had one native killed, three men slightly wounded, and two men missing for about an hour in the long fern half-a-mile from camp. The enemy had seven killed, we hear, in the same skirmish, besides wounded; and at Taurangaika they lost one killed and seven wounded. There has not been any loss of the “ run ” of Titokowaru either. Everybody knew where he was, because his fires could be plainly seen every day. But the country is so bad that unless he meant to halt there it was far better to let him .pas? on to better and better known ground. He has been scouted, and parties have been out in all direc tions, but no tidings of any general move can be obtained, so we must take him as we can get him. To do so we must axe our way , for the whole journey is dense bush and precipitous ravines. Nobody can be found to guide the Colonel in that country, so he is following his trail, and making it passable for the packhorses to bring up food. Commenc ing at Wevaroa a track has beeu cut down to the village of Perehama; thence up to the Kanaka flats, and down to Papatupu a good pack track and a pontoon built. Forward into the dense bush our men are now cutting a track, tw r o miles of which is done, but six more have to be completed before the enemy’s camp is reached. One day is like another, varied only by the incidents of the almost daily skirmishes, in one of which only have suffered any loss. That one was an ambuscade

by which seven men out of a party often lost their lives through going out on their own hook to forage for peaches, when they were caught and killed. Three bodies have been recovered to-day from the Waitotara, and two were recovered the day it occurred. One only, as far as we know, was mutilated— poor Sergeant Menzies, whose leg was cut off. The enemy have since several times attacked us, but have always been at once met and repulsed. We have sent 100 men to replace the 18th at at Taranaki, where an outbreak you will have heard of has occurred.

We learn from the Hawke’s Bay Herald that Colonel Whitmore is imitating his prototype General Cameron in his strategy. If he is, at all events the proportions are different, and the enemy’s tactics differ. Here we are at Weraroa, which the General did not take, and wanted 3000 more if it was to be included in his programme. One hapu of the tribe now against us, far worse

armed than they now are, attacked General Cameron not far from this in the open, and inflicted a heavy loss, though General Cameron had double our force, and all disciplined men. We have discharged 200 and sent 100 away, so our force is not very formidable, but we are advancing into a dense jungle further than regular troops have ever done before, well knowing that the enemy is not only awaicing us, but in large force in our front. His present retreat looks about as ugly a place as can be conceived —a deep gorge in a dark precipitous ravine clothed with the densest bush.

This kind of fighting is very different from anything every tried before out here. Not only is the enemy for the first time acting in a body, with all the experience of eight years’ continued warfare, but he is in very large force and excellently armed. This time he does not stand even at the edge of the bush, as on previous occasions, for he would not at Taurangaika, where the forces on each side could not have been very pnecpial, and where it was clearly intended to surround him, so that at Ro point at least would he have been

opposed to anything like his own ’strength. -Moreover, in all former fighting the troops had the prestige of the Waikato successes; here, as yet, there has been no striking advantage gained, and great reverses have been suffered, which, added to the horror the mutilation of the dead , and the cannibalism of the rebels , inspires, makes our men loss confident than half their number would have been in former times. Yet we have not, as in the “ good old days,” the encom agement of a kindly word. We are made the shuttlecocks of political partisans, and our dreary, dangerous task is made all the more hard to face by the taunts, sneers, and jeerings, of the local press. We are blamed because editors do not know where Titokowaru has ofone to. We are blamed because he bolted from Taurangaiki, as if, in addition to his own men’s pluck, Colonel Whitmore was responsible for Titokowarn’s. We do not hear the per contra. We do not read that whereas prudent men, before the troops marched, did not move out half way to Kai-iwi, now the harvest is being gathered at Nukumaru, and ladies and unarmed men ride everywhere from Wanganui to Waitotara. We hear nothing of the great load off everybody’s mind now that Nukumaru has been levelled, and Titokowaru has disappeared from ' this side of Waitotara. If all this is nothing, at least how much more could be expected 1 The enemy, if. he sticks to the bush, can retire to 1 Tongariro or Mount Egmont (hardly ' to your Forty-mile Bush, however) without a soul seeing his march, though he may ol course be closely followed. Not all thecavalry and 800 infantry the Hawke’s Bay Herald ' saw at Taurangaika, nor twenty times the number, could prevent him 1 doing this. Happily lie has plunged into the bush as far from potatos as ; he cares to go, and move where he will he must, if he leaves his present post, change for the better to us. >