NEW SOUTH WALES.

Westport Times, Volume II, Issue 275, 18 June 1868, Page 3

NEW SOUTH WALES.

The Dubbo Dispatch (N.S.W) contains the following account of terrible suffering, supplied by a Bourke correspondent, who writes :—" The report I to day send you will serve to show what a man may endure in these sterile regions. I have had many cases of hardship to record ; but this of Mr. W. B. Bradley's, of the firm of Cobb and Co., is certainly one of the most fearful I have ever known. Men have wrestled with the agony and died, but since I have been on the river, no one has gone through as much and lived to relate the event. I shall nothing extenuate or set down, but as near as possible tell the tale as I have gleaned it from the poor sufferer himself He says:—l started from Yanda, on the Darling, about the 9 th of April last, with a buggy and two horses, fou Grlydagabambo, back country belonging to us south of the Darling, a distance of eighty miles without water. I had horses I depended on, but after going thirty miles through the bush one of them knocked up and I had to camp. When I started I had only two bottles of water, which were now consumed. This camp I considered about thirty miles south of Toorale;I say south, but having no compass cannot be certain. I started next morning, one horse still very well, and went about seven miles. When I believed myself too much to the East, 1 changed my course due South, or *nat I supposed, South, and travelled *orty or fifty miles, and found myself in i

mountains. These mountains or hig ridges in all sorts of forms and dire* tions, caused me to admit that I w£ in an unknown country; and no wate The day had been very warm, and painful sensation in the throat an tongue was felt; tho horse -was con pletely done ; here T camped. By dav break I was after the horses, and foun they had left me in the night; foun their tracks and with much toil (for had eaten nothing since I started), ii fact hunger I never felt, followed then for ten miles in a N. "W. direction About ten o' clock I came to my bes horse, the other nowhere to be seen and being in a fainting state from thirst opened with my knife the neck vein and drank more than a quart of blood This horrible draught gave me mucl relief, but it was voided almost as sooi as taken. I here rested being quit< exhausted, my poor horse never leaving me; in fact, whenever I lay down

[ which I did towards the end of the : journey every mile or so he would stop , come back and neigh. When I agait , started I led him N. W., the course he was going when I recovered him, . this point I felt sure was the nearest to the river. About three o'clock found a kurragong tree and as well as I was able—for my knees trembled and my arms felt powerless—stripped away some of its bark, which I chewed, and found the sweet moisture of mnch benefit in clearing my throat and tongue; and I fell convinced should any one be in the like strait and have strength to procure plenty of this bam, it -would preserve life for a day or two. At 4 p. m. I again drank blood with exactly the same result; my poor horse Sydney, a TAS., was now literally staggering. All day it had been very hot, but at night it became quite cool, and I resolved to long hobble my horse and follow him; the reason of my hobbling him was that, weak as he was, he could outwalk me, and even then I had to follow the sound of the chains. After going about six miles thus he started into a reeling canter and stopped in a dry creek called Mulranya; here I knew where I was, and followed him to Marrandina, and lay down, ;when I again started the horse was gone. Ten miles had now to be got over, which took me about seven hours, when I reached one of my own tanks at Nultrania, fifteen miles from the Darling where I had sheep. The horse, Sydney, likewise found the tank, drank, rolled.and died ; the other horse got in next day, and plunging headlong into the water, was drowned."