NEWS FROIVI NEAR AND FAR.

Bush Advocate, Volume XVIII, Issue 490, 16 August 1906, Page 7

NEWS FROIVI NEAR AND FAR.

«. LONG FALLS NOT FATAL. On Saturday, May 21, 1808, a fall befell Captain Jones, of the Royal Fintehire Militia, the effect of which was remarkably slight, considering the distance he fell. Tlie regiment was quartered at Ilythe, in Kent, a town that has long possessed Government forts and a practising place for gun firing. He was standing with several other officers on the cliff at Folkestone, five miles north-east from the former town, when the earth suddenly gave way, and he was precipitated downwards. Escape without loss of life, or, at least, limb, seemed impossible, for the precipice is 549 ft deep, of which 261 ft is quite perpendicular. But in his fall he reached a small piece of rock which projected, against which his foot accidentally struck, and so his descent was stopped. He lay suspended for a quarter of an hour, without daring to move, when Thomas Roberts, a private in the came regiment, having bravely endeavoured to extricate his officer, himself fell to the bottom, and his survival from such a fall seemed hopeless. Nevertheless, though terribly bruised and cut in head and body, he was picked up, not merely alive, but without a single bone fractured, and, on being conveyed to the regimental hospital, he, t-o everyone's utter astonishment, was soon able to walk about, and the surgeon declared him out of all immediate danger. A rope being lowered to whero the captain was suspended, he succeeded, with great difficulty, in fastening it round his body, and was thus gradually drawn up by the almost despairing spectators, who found that he had happily escaped without sustaining any serious injury.