IFHOM OOIt SPECIAL REPOBTBB.J !■ is hardly worth while for me to say that the grand •ohemeof military settlements, by which we were to be secured from native disturbance, the £3,000,000 loan to be paid off, and New Zealand made rich and pros perous, has tamed out, to put it as gently ai possible, not a success. Just look at the position of matters at Tauranga for the last few weeks, where what was once the strongest of our settlements has had to be guarded by a tribe of Maori allies. Nothing surely could be more humiliating than that. We mnst not, however, give up hope of these settlements, but do | all we can to save out of the wreck of a vessel badly put together at first, and which those who ought to have done the most to preserve endeavoured wan* tonly to destroy. The Ist Waikato Regiment is to be located at four places — Tauranga, Whakatane, Ohiwa, and Opotiki— and, as I have lately been at all those places, a few notes of my hurried visit may not be uninteresting. In the first place, T may say that the occupation, of those places sven by small bodies of men would render safe nearly the whole coast of the Bay of Plenty. Between Tauranga and Whakatane is the Arawa country, occupied at Maketu. Otomarakau, and Matata, more securely than any of our military settlements Trill be for a long time ; while beyond Opotiki ate kaingas of tribes who are not likely to involve themselves in war. Thus too we should have possession of every river and harbour on the coast. I left Tauranga on a Friday morning, •lept at Matata that night, and reached Opotiki on the Saturday afternoon. Surely, in all New Zealand there is not a grander scene than that I saw when riding over the sand hills on the beach towards Opotiki. Eastward was the wild huddle of mountains running out to the East Cape; close below was the plain, -with its network of rivers, and then the background of mountains, wooded to the very summits. I was quite astonished at Opotiki, not being prepared for the fact that it has advanced further, and is advancing faster, than Tauranga. Well-built houses are erected far out into the plain, and there is a larger amount of fencing erected than at Tauranga. 