LOST IN THE BUSH.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1220, 17 July 1885, Page 3

LOST IN THE BUSH.

Scarcely anything more wonderful, and we may add more touching, has ever been r.cordcd in history than a narrative which has just appeared iu the Australian papers concerning the adventures of Clara Crosbio, a little girl twelve years of age, who was lost iu the bush near Lily nale, in the midst of a wild, lonely country intersected by ferns, who had nothing to cat for twenty long days ; and yet was at length rescued alive, and at latest accounts was in a fair way towards recovery. After her disappearance search parties scoured the country, hut not a trace could le found of the little wanderer, and sorrowfully at last she had to he given up as lost. On tho twentieth day after her disapperirauoe a couple of friends started to look for a horse that had strayed on the langes, and when busy

in conversation they were suddenly started by a tiny little “couoy,—like a young young blackbird’s whistle, as they described it afterwards. In a very few moments they caught sight of the poor child wftose life bad been so miraculously preserved to that hour. A wan emaciated little figure tottered towards them in an ulster, without shoes or stockings on, but quite sensible. She said : “I want to go home to my mother, I’ve been lost three weeks.” Never became two mortal men more excited and moved than were the Australians at this spectacle, and never work d two men with more energy, with their hearts more thoroughly iu their work, than these did to get their little charge into a place of safety, where hoi- wants could be attended to. Her story when it came to be told, sounded quite like a romance. After she was lost she found the hollow trank of a tree near a stream. During the awful period she was away from home, intense frosts and soaking rains prevailed, and still she was providentially kept alive. To get as much warmth as possible and to keep out the cold, she hung her apron across the opening in the trunk of the tree. Her corset was laid on the ground to keep the cold from striking thiough;to her body. Her petticoat she wrapped round her feet, and her ulster she wore constantly after the fashion ot a blanket. In this position she seems to have passed most of her time, occasionally going to the stream to get a drink. The last two days she was even to weak to do this. Food she had none. She once tried to chew some bark, but found it to hitler and spatit out. She said to one enquirer : I used to sleep a lot, and as soon as it was night it was day, and when it was day it was night quicn again. On moonlight nights I heard people firing guns, and J heard them knocking making a fence ; but when I cooeyed they did not hear me. I used to sing at first, and pray that someone would come to me. I felt a pain the day after I was lost, but after that I only got weak, and the day before 1 was found I could not go to the creek for a drink. The morning Mr Curwan came a black spider came over my face and woke me. It fell on ray shoulder, and I took it off, and said, 1 would not be cruel enough to kill it, and threw it outside the tiee. Then I heard people talking, but before I got up they away. I went as far as! could and cooeyed, and they came back to me. We do not envy the man or woman who can read this simple little narrative unmoved. But we do envy those two Australians—Messrs Smith and Cm wan—whose happiness it was to stumble across this trustful, innocent little maiden, and to restore her to the arms of a mother who had been mourning her as dead. —‘ Timaru Herald.’