LOST IN THE BUSH.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 1162, 15 July 1885, Page 3

LOST IN THE BUSH.

Scarcely anything more wonderful, and we may add more touching, has ever been recorded in history than a narrative which has just appeared in the Australian papers concerning the adventures of Clara Crosbie, a little girl twelve years of age, who was lost in the bush near Lilydale, in the midst of a wild, lonely country, intersected by ferns, who had nothing to eat for twenty long days, and yet was at length rescued alive, and at latest accounts was in a fair way to recovery. After her disappearance search parties scoured the country, but not a trace could be found of the little wanderer, and sorrowfully at length she had to be given up as lost. On the twentieth day after her disappearance a couple of friends started to look for a horse that had strayed on the ranges, and as they were busy in conversation they were suddenly startled by a tiny little " cooey " — like a young balckbird's whistle, as they described it afterwards. In a very few moments they caught sight of the poor child whose life had been so miraculously preserved to that hour. A wan, emaciated little figure tottered towards them in an ulster, without shoes or stockings on, but quite sensible. She said : " I want to go home to my mother. I've been lost three weeks." Never became two mortal men more excited and moved than were the Australians at this spectacle, and never worked two men with more energy, with their hearts more thoroughly in their work, than these did to get their little charge into a place of safety, where her wants could be attended to. Her story, when it came to be told, sounded quite like a romance. After she was lost, she found the hollow trunk of a tree near a stream. During the awful period she was away from home, intense frosts and soaking rains prevailed, and still she was providentially kept alive. To get as much warmth as possible and to keep out the cold, she hung her apron across the opening in the trunk of the tree. Her corset was laid on the ground to keep the cold from striking through to her body. Her petticoat she wrapped round her feet, and her ulster she wore constantly after the fashion of a blanket. In this position she seems to have passed most of her time, occasionally going to the stream to get a drink. The last two days she was too weak even to do this. Food she had none. She once tried to chew some bark, but found it too bitter and spat it out. She said to one inquirer : —

I used to sleep a lot, and as soon as it was night it was day, and when it was day it was night quick again. On moonlight nights I heavd people firing guns, and I heard them knocking making a fence ; but when Lcooeyed they did not hear me. I used to sin«afc first, and pray that someone would come Tor me. I felt a pain the day after I was lost, but after that I only got weak, and the day before I was found I could not go to the creek for a drink. The morning Mr Curwan came a big black spider crawled over my face and woke me. It fell on my shoulder, and I took it off and said I would not be cruel enough to kill it, and threw it outside the tree. Then I heard people talking, but before I got up they went- away. I wont as far as I oould and cooeyed, and they came back to me.

We do not envy the man or woman who can read this simple little narrative unmoved. But we do envy those two Australians — Messrs Smith and Curwan — whose happiness it was to stumble across this trustful, innocent little maiden, and to restore her to the arms of a mother who had been mourning her as lost. — " Timaru Herald."