AFFAIRS AT THE FRONT.

Marlborough Express, Volume IV, Issue 160, 20 February 1869, Page 6

AFFAIRS AT THE FRONT.

The Editor of the Wellington Independent has turned volunteer, and gone to the Front; the following is an extract from his last letter, as published in that paper on Saturday last; — Wanganui, Tuesday. I don’t know what the Independent has been saying about recent events at the Front; but though His Excellency Sir George Bowen has expressed “ great satisfaction” thereat, and the Government are jubilant, I myself, whb have been up there, had access to the best sources of information, and witnessed a little of the work, cannot find anything to crow about. We have taken some six weeks to obtain possession of an empty pa; fighting, with about equal loss on each side ; and in the end have been completely out manoeuvred. The enemy is hack again at Nukumaru , in the bush behind the pa, and now we shall require to commence operations de novo. How we are to get at them again, it is difficult to say, but meantime they have escaped scot free. 1 am not going to bother you with a recapitulation of old news, but perhaps some of my personal experiences may not be uninteresting to your readers. I got a note from head-quarters on Tuesday saying that operations had commenced, and determined to start forthwith. Nobody for a moment imagined up to that time, that Titokowaru would not show fight, or that the pa would be taken for another day or two, so finding that some friends had postponed their start, I waited and got off the following morning at six o’clock with Messrs, Handley and Hurley. And a glorious ride we had, in the cool of a lovely morning. Away we went up Victoria Avenue, past Victoria Water, and soon came in view of Westmere, with its well fenced paddocks and pretty lake. The properties on both sides of the road, belonging to Messrs. Taylor & Watt, Handley, Peat, and Goodson, are very fine places, looking like the homesteads of wealthy English yeomen; and in the good old days when wool was high and stock at a premium, must have yielded a handsome income to their owners. A brisk canter along the Government road, and a turn to the left, brought us to O’Hanlon’s Hotel, near the Kai Iwi stream. At this point we struck down for the beach, which is overhung by abrupt cliffs perhaps 200 feet high, affording an admirable chance for stray Hauhaus to have a pot shot at unwary travellers below. The beach road, however, was safer than the inland, where ambuscades were quite common, indeed Col. McDonnell had been fired at and hitwhiletravelling by the latter only two days before. However, we wem’t “potted,” and rode on rejoicing, till after crossing the Opehu stream, and striking inland through some sandhills, we got on to a tolerably good road again, winding through a beautiful country —undulating flats, varied here and there by patches of bush, and backed by a range of hills and forest stretching far inland. We were getting near Nukumaru, when there rode up to us a horseman. “ What’s the news 1” said Hurley. “Oh !” replied our friend, “the Maoris have hooked it, and we’ve got the pa.” “ What” said I, “hasn’t there been a fight—and hasn’t anybody been killed?” “Not a bit of it,” rejoined the cavalry man. “ The Maoris hooked it through the night, and when we took the pa this morning there wasn’t anybody there.” And so it was. *1 think I d—no—blessed—everybody and everything for the next five minutes. The enemy had run away, and the fight wasn’t to come off. We had got the pa—without even an old woman in it—indeed, as I learned afterwards—.there was only a dead dog and a living pup'py—which young Crawford got—to be found there. The whole story of taking the pa may be told in half a dozen lines, Whitmore gradually approached it, got up earthworks, blazed away at it all Tuesday with cohorn mortars and Armstrong guns, made a breach in the pallisading, and then, thinking of making an assault, found the enemy had run away by the back door ; so it wasn’t therefore difficult for us to get in at the front.