NEW SOUTH WALES.

Westport Times, Volume II, Issue 283, 27 June 1868, Page 3

NEW SOUTH WALES.

The DuUbo Dispatch (jNT.S.W) eontains 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 hav r e had many cases of hardship to record ; hut 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 havo been on the river, no one has gone through as much and lived to relate tlic event. I shall nothing extenuate or set down, but as near as possiblo tell the talo as I have gleaned it from the poor sufferer himself' Me says:—l started from Yauda, on the Darling, about the 9th of April last, with a buggy and two horses, fou Glydagabambo, back country belonging to us south of the Dariing,a distance of eighty miles without water. I had horses I depended 011, 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 Tooralo;! 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, I changed my course due South, or what I supposed, South, and travelled forty or fifty miles, and found myself in mountains. These mountains or high ridges in all sorts of forms and directions, caused me to admit that I was iii an unknown country; and no water. The day had been very warm, and a painful sensation in the throat and tongue was felt; the horse was completely done ; here I camped. By daybreak I was after the horses, and'found they had left me in the night; found their tracks and with much toil (for I had eaten nothing since I started), in fact hunger I never felt, followed them for ten miles in a N. W. direction. About ten o' clock I came to my best 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 much relief, but it was voided almost as soon as taken. I here rested being quite 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 again 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 bark, it would preserve life for a day or two. At 4 p. 111. 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 be 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, aud plunging headlong into the water, was drowned."