LOST IN THE BUSH.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VII, Issue 341, 25 March 1874, Page 3

LOST IN THE BUSH.

"Lost in the bush." Who is there for whom these words have not a terrible significance ? The dwellers in cities at Home can have but little conception of the horrors that await the unfortunate being thus situated, but whatever alleviations may be at hand to prolong and sustain life, and perhaps ultimately save it in the Australian bush — no such hope can be held out to him who once gets lost on the"trackless snow clad mountains of Otago. There, caught in a snow storm, though battling for life, the battle is in vain, for you are contending against a foe invincible and irresistible, who leaves you not until you succumb to his deadly embrace, from whence you glide into that torpid sleep from whence there is no awakening. ' Such has been the dreadful fate, as I this evening learned, of a young man named Roderick Stronach, brother to Mr. Donald Stronach, Ida Valley station. It appears that the deceased and another brother Mr. Wra. Stronach, started on Friday evening week from the Teviot with the intention of going to Switzers, taking a short track over the mountains, and had got some distance on their journey when a disagreement arose between them as to the shortest route to their destination, one advancing one way an*d the other another. They ultimately agreed to separate, eacli one taking his own way, but before doing so, one remarked to the other that they would see which arrived home the soonest. William arrived safely in due time, but the other brother never reached that home, but journeyed to another one, and to a better, it is to be hoped than this. From that time until to-day search parties were out in all directions, but without finding any traces of him ; and as time wore on all hopes of ever finding him alive were completely abandoned. These anticipations have been unfortunatelj but too fully verified, for at tho time of my now writing I .received the following telegram from the Teviot, which, while extinguishing the last spark of hope, graphically proclaims the dreadful ending :—: — "He was found dead under an overhanging rock on the Whilecombe, his horse being dead." What more is needed ? Mo pen can describe more fully the sad event, and scarcely any room is" left to the imagination to picture the desolate surroundings of the few brief moments that closed the poor fellow's career, his futile attempts at shelter from the pitiless storm of blinding snow flakes that encircled him — for on that night and part of the next diy the weather was exceedingly bad here ; it rained for nine or ten hours, and if considered bad in the Dunstan valley it is not difficult to conceive what it must have been in the elevated region of which I speak — the horse dead, too ! Whether the animal died from excessive cold or dropped from exhaustion, its energies overtaxed be3 r ond its powers by a desperate rider riding in desperate need wildly and furiously for his life, can never now be known ; all we kn"ow-is the fact that horse and man went down before that storm, as naught was there to witness their last moments but the storm and the tempest, the overhanging rocks, and the appropriately named snow clad Whi'tcombe, towering up in its lonely grandeur, silent and majestic, unmoved by the contention of elements, the tempest that raged around it, and mayhap the last look of him who perished in its view. Few persons but those who have gained their knowledge by experience can understand how rapidily the temperature changes when travelling over our moun f ains, even in the comparatively easy journey from Clyde to Nevis. You are by no means free from danger through the summer weather — at one time you are jogging along, coat off, muscles relaxed, sweltering in the noon-tide heat, when all in a moment, without scarcely any warning, a wind rashes upon you like a tiger springing from his lair, making it as much as you can do to get your coat on with the fierceness of the wind ; your frozen fingers can scarcely hold the reins, an! your teeth are clenched as if with tetanus. This is a true phasu of summer mountain travelling when your body from its previous state of heat is utterly unable to cope against the sudden depression of temperature, and this, no doubt , is how so many are lost in seemingly easy jouneys. — " Mercury."