OUR LITTLE POLKS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2014, 29 September 1892, Page 41

OUR LITTLE POLKS.

Bx Dot.

Dot will bt pleaied to recetre ihort letter! from juvenile oorrttpondenu on »ny m»ttcri ofinteroit to thcmiclvei— iliort itortei of pet unimals, description! of their favourite toyi, their partlef, »musenieaU, &o. The Icttcti to be written by the ohildren tnemaelres and*ddrei«od " Dot, care of the Editor," and to t* *«• Uihed in the page deroted.to •' Oar Little Fvlki,"

LOST IN THE MALLEE SCRUB.

A TALE OF DIMBOOLA LIFE.

By Calliope.

May, Johnny, and little Alice had gone out into the scrub to gather wattle blossoms and wild cherries, and to lock for Mina eggs. In their warnings they travelled too far, and thus got lost. Their mother called and hunted for them, but no sign of the children could be found. The news that their children were lost in the scrub soon reached Dimboola, a township on the Wimmera river, and willing searchers turned out to aid in the search. The children were sought far and wide, but no trace of them could be found. The wind had obliterated all sign of the trail. Nothing could be found likely to indicate the direction taken by the wanderers. The black trackers were completely at a loss, and the white men, after three days' search under a broiling sun in a waste of stunted scrub and bleaching sand, ■were well-nigh exhausted. They had searched all the likely places around the home station of N for three miles, and nothing had been seen or heard of the lost ones. The most sanguine among the searchers were getting cast down, and were beginning 'to lose all hope. Children of nine, six, and four years of age could hardly be expected to live, long under such conditions as no food, no water, the blistering sun in a tropical sky pouring down on them all day, the wide canopy of heaven and the wild dingo their companions at night. It seemed impossible for small children to travel far under such circumstances, and yet no trace of them could be found. The searchers scrambled through the dense mallee scrub, sometimes on a kangaroo track or sheep pad, at others edging their way as best they could through thickets of mallee. They shouted and cooeed, fired off guns, and blew their horns, but without result. It is not to be -wondered that after three days and three nights some of the searchers began to give up hope of finding the children alive. The poor mother, almost wild with grief and sickened by despair, was waiting and watching at the homestead for tidings of her children. She well knew the horrors of the death that awaited her children if they were not found. • She could not sleep, eat, sit, or stand; she must be on the move. The picture of her famishing bairns , ever present to lier mind rendered her life a living torment. When the third day came and passed, and no tidings reached her, her reason and her strength began to fail, but still she kept up. The father during all this time was out in the wilderness of salt bush, mallee scrub, and sand, urging on tho men, begging them not to give up the search. His blood-shot eyes and unsteady step told that even on his iron constitution the exposure, fatigue, and anxiety were telling. The men would have done "anything for him or his kind wife, and when the news went forth that the three children were lost in the mallee scrub, concern and sorrow was depicted on every face. The want of sleep was also telling on the other searchers. Toiling on wearily through dense scrub and over hot, dry ground, parched and hungry, even the strongest men soon begin to fail. The blood-shot eyes, the lagging step, the hopeless look betrayed the condition and , anxiety of each one of the party. In such a place, without water or food, there seemed small -hope of finding the children alive, or indeed of finding them ,at all. If grown men supplied with food and water become exhausted in three days what condition must the children be in without either ? At this stage the manager of the station called off a number of the searchers to beat up iv another direction, thinking that, maybe, the children had made a circle on the loose and shifting sand, getting back again on to the firmer salt bush ground beyond the homestead paddock. The salt bush and nardo country is generally of a firm nature, and traces are not so easily obliterated when once made as they are on the shifting sand and Mallee country. The shifting impressions made in tbe sand are soon lost, and it proved so in tbe present instance, for when the circle through the shrub bushes had been made, the trackers, with shouts of joy, picked up the first trail of the lost children. The blood-red sun had just begun to near the tops of the low pine trees when the joyous tidings were sent along the beaters' file. Now, when an Australian black is put upon a good trail he will follow it along with the unerring sagacity of a bloodhound. So it proved on this occasion. The blacks ran along at a good jogtrot pace, their eyes bent on the ground, and all their senses on the alert. The trail was followed until darkness set its seal upon further progress. In the morning at daybreak it was taken up again. Throughout all that day the track was followed, winding and turning in almost every direction imaginable, but strange to say always widening from the starting point. The children had run on thoughtlessly for a while, not caring which way they went. By-and-bye, however, the fact seemed to have dawned on them that they were lost. The blacks pointed out where they had sat down and had a good cry, then where they had spent the first night. They pointed out the- bits of rag, torn from the dresses of the children, hanging to the bushes. Slight marks, the turning of a leaf, the breaking of a twig, the displacement of a blade of speargrass, were sufficient to attract the hawklike eyes of the trackers. All day the weary search went on. The fourth day had come and gone, and the children were not found. Ah, who can paint the fevered feelings of the anxious parents, longing, waiting, hoping against hope, yet dreading the final discovery that would dissipate the gloom or seal their sorrow.

The fifth day broke clear and cloudless. The sun rose slowly over the low eastern pine ridges— large, round as a disc and bright as molten gold. The weary search went on. Miles had been travelled now. The station was 10 miles awaj, and the undulating, swaying, pathless waste of sombre-huedmallee stretched far away on either side. The trackers pointed oujfc whore Alice, the youngest girl, had given out, and told us how "big gull cally 'am." The stops are very frequent now. The searchers are slowing down the pace, dreading what the next few hundred yards must bring forth. The end is getting very near. The worst will soon be known. Johnny is knocking up. The struggle will soon be over, and seeing the traces of the terrible suffering on every bush and on evety stick, tears of sympathy spring to our eyes. In a few minutes all our doubts are set at rest. The wanderers are found — but, oh, the sadness of the sight ! Yes, the children are found, lying huddled together — dead in each other' 3 arms. The youngest appeared to have p-.sscd away first, and Johuuy and May at abemfc Lao uawa time. The attitude of the

Gore, September 17.

Gore, September 20.

little wanderers showed that the eldest had sheltered and tried to comfort the others to the end. The anguish, the pain and torture they must have suffered was evident on the line of march.

The sad news was quickly conveyed to the distracted parents, whose grief knew no bounds. It was thought best to bury the children near where they were found, decomposition having set in. A grave was accordingly made under a pine tree near by, and the three little wanderers laid away to rest. A few wild roses is all that now marks the spot. How many of those who stood around that lonely grave are alive to-day? Who can say? The sad sight turned the father's mind, and he died a few years after in the X Asylum, always looking for his lost children. The poor mother succumbed to the double loss of 'husband and children, and passed over to the shadowy vale a few months later.