Hunting the Hermit.

Patea Mail, 24 April 1882, Page 3

Hunting the Hermit.

The hermit living in the bush behind Whenuakura was the object of a hunt last week. The Gower Brothers started with Constable Crozier to track the “ wild man,” and they spent a long hard day in the work, with some success. They found enough to show that there is a hermit in the bush, and that he hud shifted his camping ground within a few days. The party visited the old whare where the hermit must have been living lately, hut most of the former signs of his occupation had been removed. The i party searched 1 many: hours, going some miles back in the bush, and finding no trace of a wild man, though seeing pigs and cattle which had worked a good way back in the dense undergrowth. As the party were returning along the track cleared lately by surveyors, a little side-track was noticed running'only a few yards off the. survey track. Following it, the party found two rata trees, and behind the second tree, as if concealed from the survey track, they found traces of a fire, but the embers had been scattered to hide them, and the burnt patch was! covered with pulled grass. These were signs of a desire to conceal even the making of a fire ; and it is reasonable to .suppose that a man who conceals hiscamping ground in the bush is actuated by other;than ordinary motives.

Bat this hermit’s lair contained other things to show, that the hunters were on the right scent.. . Three bundles were found rolled up like swags ;: thesei.containing blankets, shirts, some wheat, an adze used by carpenters, and other odd articles. A clean spade was,also-there. The hermit seemed to have quitted his recent lodging in the oil whare; leaving the, trap-door and tunnel and the stores inside, but intending probably to remove all he wanted to a fresh lair' further away from settlement. , , . There was a Captain O’Connell; squatting ; about the district during, summer, and his habits seem to correspond with those of the Whenuakura hermit. The captain is a roan of broken fortune and eccentric habits. He .was formerly a lieutenant ,in the royal navy ; and fori many months he has been living a fugitive life, squatting 'oil one farm or another near the bush, and subsisting on isuclri diet las he could'“gather from i fields. If the captain has . taken to stealing clothes and tools from farmers’ outhouses, he will have a hard time, for he is' sure to be hunted flown as a nuisance,