THE HOLE OF DEATH.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VIII, Issue 2436, 27 October 1886, Page 2

THE HOLE OF DEATH.

It is au awful sijrht to <ee a iii.ui drown but with and skill no man need drown. Fancy a sea in wlr.cii t)itte is no swimming, and a sea into which you may plunge iinaw.ips. A mau is galloping over the green prarie looking out from under his broad sombrero at the lazy cattle and the tirarie dogs lying iu the sue. Suddenly there is a sound like a giant's throat asrallowiug a choked cry of terror. Tho tall reed-like grass is waving where the hone aud rider were just now. The antelope ou the crest of die divide yonder look round them watchfully. But there is nothing to fear—no man in sight. He is goitur to town that rider, with the wages of a hard winter's work in his pocket, riding his favorite broncho, dressed iu the buckskins he has fringed iu the winter evenings, ready to show the foolish girl 3 how brave he looked in his rude attire. Where is he now he and his horse J In a grave of slimy shivering mud alkali paste, blue with a uameless tint of putrid death, has filled his throat—covered his eyes before he could close the lids. What does this mean—some hideous freak of nature, some work of a devil endowed with a moment's power2 No ; only an alkali sink—only a natural well tilled with a paste as yielding as water, retentive as hell. Picture to 'yourself the surface seething back to its normal quietude with an indescribable grip, a ghoul-like smacking of grave lips; a crave that supplies itself with dead, a grove that buries almost before it kills, an insatLtWe, bottomless Jjnivo, set like a trap for.the living! The sink-hole is not always covered with grass ; sometimes it lias a caked and seamed crust of bluish--white alkili on the top of it. But even that is a poor safetruard. for the long grass around it will hide it from the rider until it is too late to avoid it.

The tenacity of this paste of mud is something incredible. 1 have' never seen a man caught in a sink-hole, but I have seen a man ride to the edge of onp, discover it t<«i late to turn his hoise, and shaking himself loose in the saddle, vault, over the horn pommel, when the pony wan caught, striking the ground far beyond the sink-hole. There were twenty inen there, and before the horse sunk far there were half a dozen ropes fast to him. Half a dozen strong ponies can pull almost anything, but they could not draw that horse back from the grave that was closing over him. There is a strong suction about this alkali mud—it holds all it grasps with a horrid pertinacity.