ANTS AND FIRE.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 9, Issue 578, 26 October 1920, Page 2

ANTS AND FIRE.

AGONISING DEATH. For grim bush, tragedies (states .; contributor to the Bulletin) I enter the death of old "Bluey" Blake, a settler in the Moree distridt of New South Wales, in 1912. "Bluey," whose holding was a good twenty mile;away from the next nearest place was burning off dead timber one day when a tree around the foot of which he had built a fire, fell and pinned him down. One branch caught him across the legs and knocked him on to—of all places in the world—an ants' nest. Then the tree trunk started to burn up towards him, and between the ants and the approaching fire, ever drawI ing closer by inches, it would take a combined Dante and Zola to picture his agonising torments as he lay there for three days and nights. To make it worse, a light rain fell, somewhere, as near as could be arrived at by those who found him, about the second day, but not enough of ir to put out the fire came down, and so his hopes of escape from death by burning must have been dashed to the ground after having been laised up. Probably unconsciousness supervened before a merciful death came to his rescue.