THE BUSH FIRES.

Waikato Argus, Volume IV, Issue 237, 20 January 1898, Page 2

THE BUSH FIRES.

DEVASTATION AND DISTRESS. RUINED SETTLERS. HEROIC ACTIONS OF WOMEN. GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF TOUCHING SCENES. (by telegraph.—own correspondent). Wellington, Last Night. A jrECUL reporter of the Wellington Post in the fire-swept districts gives a graphic description of the devastation and distress existing over a wide area of country east and west ot Pahiatua, and to a considerable distance southward. In many cases the settlers fighting desperately to pave their homesteads were nearly suffocated and severely tcorchod. Some fell senseless, and a f«w lost their reason in the frightful ordeal. In hundreds of instances the savings of a lifetime were swept away, and the unfortunate settlers have to begin again in the midst of paddocks desolated with ashes and charred remains of nice comfortable dwellings. In many cases where husbands were absent, women faced the rushing wave of fire and sparks with heroic fortitude, and some are temporarily blind from the effects of the smoke. There is a typical case. Mrs Keppenstall, who?c husband was away, was left with an infant and her brother, a youth of 18 year?. When the flames swept down upon them they fought with the energy of despair against the blinding and suffocating smoke and cloud of spaiks, bat after some hours of desperate exertion were beaten back exhausted and sought refuge in a ploughed field. A fierce gale was blowing, and they were encompassed about by a firey ring. I quote further from the report : " A sewing machine, a couple of mattresses and some blanketß were all they had saved from the house, and with these they lay in the centre of a small patch of ploughed ground without hope, conscious that they had done their best, but had been defeated. Whilst lyiug there they saw their home burnt to the ground. At 2.30 it commenced to rain, and Mrs Keppenstall and her brother lay out there in the open with the little child amidst blazing fires, drenched with raio, and slept the sleep of the weary. Early in the morning the downpour had put out many fires, and they started for Pahiatua, but their eyes were so affected by the smoke they had great difficulty in finding their way, and the wonder is they ever reached the township. The simp'e pathos ot this story needs no elaboration, but it is only one of many. Iu another case a settler, named Mason, seeing that all efforts were unavailable to stay the advance of the tide of fie, called to his wife to desist and seek safety in the creek. " Drowning will be better than burning alive," was his brief comment on the hopelessness of the situation, but the woman bravely struggled on while her husbaud went for more water. "Oh ! Jacob, don't leavb me here to roast alive,'' was the desperate cry of the woman. One man trudged for several miles through burning bush and scrub, stumbling and falling at interval?, till he reached safe ground, arriving at Pahiatua thirty miles distant, so severely scorched and burnt, that he fell senseless. Many stories told are sensational in the extreme, and there is a gruesome tale of disaster and ruin and harrowing suffering.