A BUSH TRAGEDY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10110, 4 October 1910, Page 5

A BUSH TRAGEDY.

LIFE THE BACKBLOCKh. "ihe Kaiparoro' correspondent of the Wairarapa /»ge writes.—"As illustrating the hardships undergone by the man who takes up a section of bush land in New Zealand, I may mention the case of two youths of eighteen years of age, sons of well- | known settlers in this district. One was the fortunate (?) drawer of a bush section in the neighbourhood of Ohakune, and he and his chum have put, in several months felling bush on the said section. 'ihe distance of their camp from so-called civilisation was twenty-five miles —the road a bush track, which had to be traversed on foot, and there was no grass land to craze a horse at the journey's ei d. The owner of the section got up one morning and proceeded to light the camp fire, and his companion, after waiting some time for his reappearance, went in search of him. He found him, evidently in a faint, lying with his one foot in the fire, his boot nearly burnt off, and his foot badly burned. He did all that lay in his power to alleviate his companion's sufferings, and then, as there was no "medical chest" in camp he set out for the nearest township to j procure aid. He returned from his fifty-mile tramp the next day, with j necessary appliances, and then a few ; lonely weeks were passed by the in- , valid and his nurse, waiting for the patient to sufficiently recover to be | abie to return to civilisation. At j last a pack-horse was secured and the young pioneers joyfully turned their faces towards home. Their spirits ai'e, however, undaunted, and they have quite made up their minds to spend next winter in the lonely bush. Surely in cases like this the "unearned increment," one hears so much of nowadays, belongs to the sturdy settler, who sacrifices comfort, love of companionship, and often health, in his endeavour to carve out a home for himself, and to carry civilisation into the unsettled parts of our prosperous little country.