Mr Andrew’s Fate.

Manawatu Herald, 14 April 1904, Page 2

Mr Andrew’s Fate.

HIS DEAD BODY FOUND IN

THE BUSH. NO STRENGTH LEBT TO FIRE HIS RIFLE. The search for poor over. On Monday evening, seven days after he left his camp, his dead body was found by F. Steffin, deerstalkers’ guide. The news was at once sent to Martinborough, and a horseman arrived shortly after two o’clock on Tuesday morning; but he was hurried away again with a police officer to bring, in the corpse. The information to hand is that Steffin, one of Ross’s party, was out with two deer-stalkers, and crossing a level piece of ground at six o’clock in the evening, found the body of Mr Andrew lying in a clearing. Very little information was made, but evidently the unfortunate man met with an accident, and had slowly died from exposure and starvation. One leg was much swollen. A, rifle a double-barrelled Winchester Express—within arm’s reach, and some empty cartridges and a halfsmoked pipe were near by. Judging from the look of the body, Mr Andrew had probably died on Sunday. The spot where the body was found was about two miles from the camp of Ross, the well-known deerstalkers’ guide,, about eight miles from where Andrew left Hughes and Wilson, and about half a mile from a well-defined track. This confirms the opinion that the shots heard on Wednesday and Thursday by the stalkers in Ross’s camp were signals from the poor lonely man dying on the hill saddle. Ross’s people, of course, did not know then that anybody was missing ; but when Ross came to Martinborough on Saturday, he was informed, and left on Sunday with the intention of searching the locality where the shots were heard.

On Saturday M. Orbell and J. Kilminster, while stalking, fired a shot at a stag and wounded it. When the echoes died away a shot was heard from the saddle where the shots were fired which Ross’s party had heard. The two men thought it peculiar that they should hear this, and fired again at the stag for the double purpose of killing it and seeing if an answering shot came from the hill. None came. Poor Andrew, as it afterwards turned out, had not strength enough to fire his rifle. Orbell and Kilminster considered then that somebody had fired the shot at a stag. Messrs Hughes and Wilson, who went out with Andrew, and who have been indefatigable in their efforts to find their comrade, were on Monday working towards the where he lay dead. THE UNWRITTEN TRAGEDY. Mr Andrew had some food with him when he left the camp, but only about enough for at most two days. The exposure to the terrible

weather and cold that he suffered was undoubtedly the principal cause his death. The horror of those and nights on the hill in the (pouring rain, the bitter cold, the suffocating, blinding fog, the utter loneliness, the hope and the dying of hope after each cartridge was fired for the help that never came, will never be told.—N.Z. Times. At the inquest a verdict was returned that .Mr Andrew' died from exposure and exhaust ion.