ARCHIBALD FORBES.

Patea Mail, Volume IX, Issue 1065, 27 July 1883, Page 2

ARCHIBALD FORBES.

Mr Archibald Forbes thus writes of a younger brother of his, who, after knocking about Queensland for some twenty years, eventually died in the Toowoomba Hospital in that Ooiony. The picture is both graphic and pathetic—the work of a mas’ter hand : Up among the heather hills of Northern Scotland two brothers were reared together in a Presbyterian manse. They went to the parish school together, and thence to the university. Both had rebellious, forward blood in their veins. The elder, after two years at college, went out into the world. It was for him a somewhat turbulent world, or rather he made it so. From the boat of a wrecked timber drogher from Quebec ho slid into the saddle of a heavy dragoon, out of that into the career of a war correspondent, and in that profession saw so great a variety of stirring martial life that he has ventured to tell of its episodes from the lecturing platform. The younger, and by far the more brilliant brother i-emained at the University until “ sent down” for a madcap piece of youthful foll3 r , in shame for this mishap he must needs be run off to sea, and sailored all over the world, till at length, some twenty years ago, ho stranded somehow on the shore of Queensland. Since then but vague and piece-

meal tidings of him reached his relatives —for ten years past none at all. It lias happened now to the elder brother —the war correspondent lecturing brother —to p?y a visit to Queensland ; and he naturally betook himself to search out the career of the trrant son of his father. The story of that career came in scraps. Now the scapegrace, was on a cattle station “up north”; now shepherding on the Burnett; now “ reefing” on the Mornish goldfield, itself all but a memory ere now ; again in. sugar at Mackay ; later, road making about Roma,and then another spell of shepherding at Mount Abundance ; still later in the washpool about Toowoomba ; and last of all the graveyard of that place, after a long illness in its hospital. The old, familiar, sad story of a wrecked life and a premature death. Yet no voice anywhere to utter aught save kind and loving words of the brilliant, reckless waif, always cheery, always a true friend—to all save himself, alas ; strewing his vagabond path with blithe humour, with yet remembered scraps of verse, here humourous, there tenderly pathetic. To the searching brother came men from afar off, just to testify the love they boro to “ poor old Alick rugged miners from Charters Towers, bush hands from the Downs, station managers who had “ bossed ” him, and had been chaffed or praised in his ever ready verses ; and the hospital • warder, too, in Toowoomba, who had closed his eyes (his own somewhat dim as he told the sad, simple story) ; and the old Presbyterian minister, also, to whom as the sands were running out, the son of the manse turned with re-kindled instinct of his boyhood. There were vague stories of a little book of poems that had been published somewhere ; but that trail was faint, until at length a Rockhampton man who had known and loved him whose name among his fellows was “ Alick the Poet,” brought to the brother the little green" volume, whose title page bore “ Voices from the Bush, by Alexander Forbes.”