HAWKE’S BAY THREATENED.

Hawke's Bay Weekly Times, Volume 2, Issue 90, 21 September 1868, Page 230

HAWKE’S BAY THREATENED.

We are hot among those who are ever ready to to: take needless alarm, hencO we have not' hitherto shared the anxiety of some who have re : gairded the escaped prisoners as menacing the outlying settlements of the Province. While We could not shut our eyes to the danger to which these settlements were exposed from the proximity of the fanatics, we were still inclined to believe that, unless attacked by the settlers, they would abstain from outrage or aggression. We were inclined to regard their newlyerected pa as purely defensive, and their planting operations as indicating an intention of settling down in quiet, unless, as we have said, they should be interfered with. We were led to the above conclusions more particularly from the consideration of the extreme moderation of their conduct at the Chatham Islands at the time of their escape, when, flushed by the success of their insurrection, they found their guards and overseers bound and at their mercy —-they did not commit that havoc and destruction which,* under such a contingency, might have been expected at their hands. However, our confidence has been at length destroyed, and we are convinced that the worst fears of those from whom we differed were well founded. • On Saturday afternoon' the news was brought into town. by a native whose testimony can. be -relied on, that a despatch from the oscapees—who are still entrenched in proximity to Poverty Bay and Wairoa—to the tribes of the Taupo district had been intercepted, that the tenor of this despatch was a request to those tribes to join them in a rising against‘the settlers, such rising to .take place at once—in fact, before the end of the. present month. This information is •of ‘ importance, as showing the intention of the fanatics, and that the attitude of simple defence hitherto maintained by them . has been assuined to give a false security to.the settlers until such time as they, should become strong * enough, by accessions to. their force, to hope for a certainty of. success in their meditated, attack upon the now almost defenceless settlers. This information was at first imparted to Mr . Samuel Locke, and was by him promptly conveyed to the authorities here. - Now fully appears the error of Lieut.-Col. Whitmore in recommending the rempyal of our small force, and of the Stafford Ministry in carrying out such removal in the face of the indignant remonstrance of the population- of this Province. But for the providential discovery of the intentions of the rebels by the intefception of the despatch above referred to, while we write these lines the outsettlements of Wairoa and Poverty /Bay might ’have been devastated. "