The peculiar satisfaction that a field-research worker derives from digging up the true stories of old adventure, the real thing from participants in the events narrated, is comparable to the feeling of a successful treasure hunter who finds that he has struck the right spot and the gold's there—the authentic chest with skull and cross-bones. My years of search and enquiry into the frontier history of New Zealand have brought me much treasure of that kind. Its transmutation into a means of livelihood, or part of the means, was another thing. The process of discovery usually cost more than the great game yielded. But the search was the thing, the pleasure of exploration in bush and hill fort, the talks with the grey old people who were the last survivors of the warrior glory of their people. The meagre and unsatifying and usually inaccurate published accounts of Maori war episodes often prompted long trips into remote places to learn the exact facts while yet there was time. More often there was no written record at all. Two things were necessary, indispensable. For one, the ability to speak Maori, and a solid groundwork of historical tribal and military knowledge. Next, a diplomatic approach in the Maori manner, for many rather awkward questions were necessary if one were to get to the bottom of some at first inexplicable happenings. It was always desirable, if possible, to hear the narratives of the past on the actual places where history was made, and from men who had helped to make that bit of history.

A procession of dark old faces passes, men who had followed Te Kooti or fought against him, men still older, deeply tattooed patriarchs whose memories went back to the cannibal age. Two of Hongi's aged warriors even; a number of Hone Heke's. They are all gone, long ago; those meetings in some dimly-lighted thatched whare, or out on the fern-covered mounds and crumbling parapets that were once fields of battle and siege, can never come again. Pakeha friends, too, old officers of the colonial forces, old Forest Rangers; tall, lean veterans of the scouting trails, neighbours on the old King Country frontier, old bushmen and camp-mates. Frontiersmen who had lived years on the edge of adventure. They, too, have gone, but what they knew has not been lost.

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This story, gathered from old campaigners on each side, is an example of the historical episodes which were not chronicled by eyewitnesses or detailed in official despatches. But its chief value lies in the fact that the scenes of action can still be traced exactly. Rauporoa pa, on the green banks of the Whakatane River, three miles in from the harbour and the little town under the cliffs, is one of the very few places in our country where the battlefield and the fortification lines have been saved from ruin.

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